From your post, it's clear that you not only correctly concluded that Mormonism was (and still is) a crock, but have realized that responsibility for your life rests with you and no one else, ultimately.
BTW, I left the chronically dishonest and manipulative LD$ Cult/Crutch 21 years ago. Since then, 100's of 1,000's of people have resigned from the Mormon Church, having realized that its foundation was Joseph Smith's lies and generations of 'faith'-promoting propaganda.
Kindly know that you're in good company! From the New York Times a few months ago:
"In the small but cohesive Mormon community where he grew up, Hans Mattsson was a solid believer and a pillar of the church. He followed his father and grandfather into church leadership and finally became an 'area authority' overseeing the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints throughout Europe.
"When fellow believers in Sweden first began coming to him with information from the Internet that contradicted the church’s history and teachings, he dismissed it as 'anti-Mormon propaganda,' the whisperings of Lucifer. He asked his superiors for help in responding to the members’ doubts, and when they seemed to only sidestep the questions, Mr. Mattsson began his own investigation.
"But when he discovered credible evidence that the church’s founder, Joseph Smith, was a polygamist and that the Book of Mormon and other scriptures were rife with historical anomalies, Mr. Mattsson said he felt that the foundation on which he had built his life began to crumble.
"Around the world and in the United States, where the faith was founded, the Mormon Church is grappling with a wave of doubt and disillusionment among members who encountered information on the Internet that sabotaged what they were taught about their faith, according to interviews with dozens of Mormons and those who study the church.
“'I felt like I had an earthquake under my feet,' said Mr. Mattsson, now an emeritus area authority. 'Everything I’d been taught, everything I’d been proud to preach about and witness about just crumbled under my feet. It was such a terrible psychological and nearly physical disturbance.'
"Mr. Mattsson’s decision to go public with his disaffection, in a church whose top leaders commonly deliberate in private, is a sign that the church faces serious challenges not just from outside but also from skeptics inside.
"Greg Prince, a Mormon historian and businessman in Washington who has held local leadership positions in the church, shares Mr. Mattsson’s doubts. 'Consider a Catholic cardinal suddenly going to the media and saying about his own church, "I don’t buy a lot of this stuff,” Mr. Prince said. 'That’s the level we’re talking about here.'
"He said of Mr. Mattsson, 'He is, as far as I know, the highest-ranking church official who has gone public with deep concerns, who has had a faith crisis and come forward to say he’s going to talk about it because maybe that will help us all to resolve it.'
"Every faith has its skeptics and detractors, but the Mormon Church’s history creates special challenges. The church was born in America only 183 years ago, and its founder and prophet, Joseph Smith, and his disciples left behind reams of papers that still exist, documenting their work, exposing their warts and sometimes contradicting one another."
(Ref.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/21/us/some-mormons-search-the-web-and-find-doubt.html?_r=0 )
From ABC News in SLC in Jan. 2012:
"The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is losing a record number of its membership. A new report quotes an LDS general authority who said more members are falling away today than any time in the past 175 years.
"At meetings like General Conference, Utahns may be used to seeing members of the LDS Church show up in record numbers. But according to a recent Reuters article citing LDS General Authority Marlin K. Jensen, for the church as a whole, the record in going in a different direction.
"Elder Jensen told the news outlet times have changed, and 'attrition has accelerated in the last five or 10 years.'"
(Ref.
http://www.4utah.com/content/news/top_stories/story/Number-of-faithful-Mormons-rapidly-declining/d/story/rvih3gOKxEm5om9IYJYnRA )
From a Reuters' Special Report ("Mormonism besieged by the modern age") in Jan. 2012:
"A religious studies class late last year at Utah State University in Logan, Utah, was unusual for two reasons. The small group of students, faculty and faithful there to hear Mormon Elder Marlin Jensen were openly troubled about the future of their church, asking hard questions. And Jensen was uncharacteristically frank in acknowledging their concerns.
"Did the leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints know that members are 'leaving in droves?' a woman asked.
"'We are aware,' said Jensen, according to a tape recording of his unscripted remarks. 'And I'm speaking of the 15 men that are above me in the hierarchy of the church.'"
"'My own daughter,' he then added, 'has come to me and said, "Dad, why didn't you ever tell me that Joseph Smith was a polygamist?" For the younger generation, Jensen acknowledged, 'Everything's out there for them to consume if they want to Google it.' The manuals used to teach the young church doctrine, meanwhile, are 'severely outdated.'
"These are tumultuous times for the faith founded by Joseph Smith in 1830, and the rumbling began even before church member Mitt Romney's presidential bid put the Latter-Day Saints in the spotlight."
"Jensen, the church's official historian, would not provide any figures on the rate of defections, but he told Reuters that attrition has accelerated in the last five or 10 years[.]"
(Ref.
http://uk.reuters.com/article/2012/01/30/uk-mormonchurch-idUKTRE80T1CP20120130 )
Info. about how cultic Mo-ism psychologically affects people and undermines their self-esteem, and how individuals can liberate themselves from it is online at
http://members.shaw.ca/blair_watson/The website mentions psychotherapist Dr. Nathaniel Branden, who pioneered the study of self-esteem decades ago. From Dr. Branden's website:
"Self-Esteem and Responsibility
"To achieve a healthy level of self-esteem, you must be able to accept who you are and be confident about your decisions and behavior.
"But there is another important ingredient in the development of self-esteem that is often overlooked — the ability to take responsibility for your future. To live self-responsibly, you must be able to influence your behavior freely in three major areas:
- Taking action in ways that will help you reach your goals.
- Being accountable for your decisions, priorities and actions.
- Thinking for yourself by examining and actively choosing the values that will guide yourself, rather than blindly accepting whatever you’re told by family, friends or the culture in which you live.
"Since being responsible for yourself requires effort, thought and a range of difficult decisions, many people convince themselves that it is an impossible challenge. Some blame others for their problems. Others hope that someone will come along and make everything all right.
"Remember: You cannot respect or trust yourself if you continually pass on to others the burdens of your existence."
(Ref.
http://www.nathanielbranden.com/discussions/self-esteem/all-about-responsibility/ )
Regarding your wife, I'm not surprised that she's depressed. If she was raised in cultic Mo-ism, she was 'brainwashed' from early childhood onward by the Mormon Church to become a so-called "wife and mother in Zion." Mentally and emotionally, from your post it sounds like she swallowed white-washed Mormonism and Mormon patriarchy's prescribed role for her, hook, line, and sinker.
Based on your post, I'd say that your wife has no sense or experience of her true self. The only 'self' - a 'brainwashed' 'self' - that she's known has been the one resulting from years of systematic Mormon indoctrination and conditioning, including all the dysfunction 'installed' on the 'hard-drive' of her psyche. It's a tragedy, really, but you were never responsible for it.
If you search for posts done by me on this board, you'll find a ton of 'faith'-busting info., including from lds.org and other official LD$ websites, believe it or not, that can be used to try to reduce your wife's naive 'faith' in Mormonism, the LD$ Crutch, and senior Mormon leaders who were unethically dishonest with the membership worldwide in order to keep JS' religious scam going.
Bear in mind that in the final analysis, you cannot force ANY Mormon to remove their mental blinders and take a long, hard look the IRREFUTABLE truth that Mormonism has been a multi-billion-dollar religious fraud since 1830.
Crucially, you're the captain of the ship of your life and it'll go in whichever direction you set. You're young and have decades ahead of you. It's your right to ALWAYS think for yourself, scrutinize what other people believe is 'true' and 'of God', and to live in accordance with your values and sense of purpose.
Now, if you decide to end your marriage at some point, I urge you to use the law (a formal separation or divorce agreement) to protect your vulnerable children from cultic Mormonism. As a concerned father, you have the right to insist that their exposure to it be limited, at least.
Importantly, Steven Hassan, a mental health professional in MA and America's leading expert on cults lists The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on his website (freedomofmind.com) as a thought-control organization. If you need (at some point) expert opinion from a licensed mental health professional presented to a judge about the harm that cultic Mormonism causes, I suggest you begin by contacting Hassan.
Another wise, rational-thinker is Richard Packham, an ex-Mormon, retired lawyer, and former president of the Ex-Mormon Foundation. His website is at
http://packham.n4m.org/Other resources for you:
"Exmormon Contacts and Resources" at
http://www.exmormon.org/helpers.htm...and "Our Community > Post-Mormon Chapters" (on the drop-down menu) at
http://www.postmormon.org/exp_e/Of course, people on this board can be helpful, so post here as often as you wish.
Finally, the following are words from the 20th-century Scottish poet Robert Frost, which seem to apply to your situation (and that of many other people who have left the misleading Mormon Church):
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim
Because it was grassy and wanted wear,
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
Best wishes!