I'm just wondering how many of you went on missions thinking that you would ultimately hook-up with your pre-mission sweetheart and got dumped?

How bad did it mess with your mind?

The reason I ask, is that it happened to me and a few of my friends. I went out thinking my GF would be there in the end (after all it HAD to be God's will-and I KNEW she was the one) and she wasted no time dumping me as soon as I was home.

It really messed with my mind for a long time because I associated my feelings for her with the spirit and God's will and all that. When you are gone for two years you almost create a model of the person in your head that is beyond what they really were. I couldn't believe that after giving two years of my life to God, and going to the other side of the world for him suffering heartache, homesick, etc., he would turn around and screw me over like that. It took me quite awhile to get some perspective and get over it.

I guess it did help me to realize that "the spirit" was nothing more than emotions.

when it was just north of the COB. Good old Pres. Bird was running things. He talked to us about girlfriends... and in his power and infinite wisdom told us that since we were ministers of Jesus, we should stay focused on that, and then told us we should dump our girlfriends immediately.

For those of us who worried about who'd be there for us when we were done with our missions, that there would be plenty of "other girls waiting for their missionary" that we'd be able to have.

That whole week was such a mindF***.

As far as your original question... didn't really matter to either of us at that point. RM status certainly did change things, though.

Yeah. It sent me into my most severe melancholic period. I didn't realize it at the time, but it also damaged my faith. Her dad was a super duper spiritual guy with a big calling. His disapproval of our marriage plans had more force in that family than any spiritual experience my fiance and I ever had regarding our upcoming marriage, including temple experiences.

I didn't feel betrayed by God or feel like I deserved anything for being a good missionary. But I was really sad for a long time. My faith was completely gone within a couple of years.

As sad as it is, I kind of hope it leads him to leaving like you did.

What's even worse is that I'm kind of the one who spurred it. We never dated, but I know he always thought that we'd end up together. When he got back, I'd left the church and he was on my very short list of Mormons that I told.

Interesting that you say it damaged your faith because as I look back after all these years I realize that it did the same to me. At least it destroyed my mistaken belief in trying to "follow the spirit." The church can really f*** with a young kids mind.

OMG i really hate the church sometimes.

I was the one waiting - and I waited the whole two years. The Spirit told me numerous times while my missionary was gone that I was doing the right thing, this was both our sacrifices for the church and everything would be alright.

He seemed to love me right up until the week he got home. We were supposed to get married in Feb (he came home in Aug) but during the months between when he came home and when we were supposed to get married he started dating, then fell in love and ended up marrying another young woman in "our" temple.

This triggered the worst depressive episode of my life. I had to leave BYU, I was suicidal for several months and my faith in the church and God crumbled underneath me.

It took me about 6 weeks of medication and refusing to get out of bed or live life at all before I started inching forward again. And - when I did - I vowed that I would never play by the church's rules again. And I didn't.

I left on my mission in January. She was married in June to a guy 12 years older than her. She never had the guts to tell me, she just simply stopped communicating, I got the engagement news from my mother on Mother's day. I wanted to die.

By that point I was already having serious doubts about the church while on the mission, but faith or no I was in love. It was one of the most intense, searing pains I have ever felt.

I saw her once after the mission with her husband. I tried to say hi and congratulate her but she seized up at the very sight of me and hurried past me without a word. It was so incredibly bizarre.

Now I can say that i'm in a better place in life. I no longer have the robotic cultic "spirituality" that I once knew, and the universe is once again full of wonder. She'll never know that, nor would she care if she did.

Life is grand.

since I never went on a mission.

Maybe I shouldn't be telling tales out of school, but it did happen to my oldest brother. He got conned into going on a mission, when he was shall we say less-active, by his TBM girlfriend. After being back for a while and about to pop the question; she came clean that she didn't want to get married and that she had been seeing other guys, while they were together. Long story sort, he left the church and never went back.

6 months into my mission and it was adios muchacho. Well, that didn't take long.

Then to top it all off my Mom writes the MP as she was worried about me (grin).

dwindler Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> 6 months into my mission and it was adios
> muchacho. Well, that didn't take long.
>
> Then to top it all off my Mom writes the MP as she
> was worried about me (grin).


Bwahahahahahahahahaha! That's just priceless! Your Mom really wrote? :) God bless our mothers.

I was out 6 months too. She went through 3 b/fs while I was gone but was a freebird when I came back. In the end, we split up. I hope she's okay, she was a peach (albeit not the sharpest tool in the shed).

Ron

Yeah, I was heartbroken when my GF dumped me while I was on my mission. The guy she married seemed like a real tool.

Turns out he was a real tool. I re-established connections with her on FB years later and we ended up having sex. Yep. She cheated on her loser husband with me. We are very much in love. She's planning to divorce him and get with me.

Guess she made the wrong choice all those years ago, but hey, she's older and wiser now.

We met through HS friends, dated as inactives in Utah, had sex.

But she unintentionally let on that her dream since behive age was a temple marriage, and deep down she was sorry to have given it up. Then she acted like she gave it up as a sacrifice for me. I didn't want that on me.

(As an inactive professed agnostic who openly ridiculed the church, I was REALLY impatient with those who BELIEVED in the church but didn't practice it at all. That didn't make any sense to me. I literally had friends bawling deleriously drunk who bore their testimonies when I mocked doctrines like Noah's flood. Uh-huh.)

Then I had a change of heart. Due to an intersection of factors I suddenly believed the church was true, and decided to serve a mission. I quit all my vices immediately, including sex with GF. I thought she'd be glad, and she acted glad, but then she started getting jealous and insecure that I was CAPABLE of leaving her behind for two years. Pretty soon it was "you're choosing a mission over me". I moved further to the right than she ever would have wanted me to as a TBM. I nagged her to see her bishop about us. He just pissed her off by talking to her like a whore. She rightly just didn't see it as the sin "next to murder". But I did. I made her feel guilty that she had sex knowing the church was true, and that I was a lesser sinner because I sinned in unbelief caused by a broken home bla bla.

Looking back I had a dual mindset. Now I think that the reason I chose to go on a mission was that I WANTED her to dump me. She had cheated on me once and I feigned full forgiveness, but I still had a grudge, and I was too proud to be the weak one. I was torn between hating her and being in love with her. But I couldn't give her up, I was addicted. But I unconsciously sabataged it by being preachy and trying to drag her along to an absolute orthodoxy that she never wanted.

On my mission we wrote desperately long and frequent letters. She gradually admitted to non-specific weaknesses and preempted my reaction by saying she knew I wouldn't approve. Thus I never asked what she was talking about. I almost quit my mission when she asked if she could date. I was AT the mission home and it took 3 days for the prez to talk me out of it.

Then our letters tapered off. Then she admitted she was dating but still wanted to marry me. We didn't break up yet but I gradually let her go.

Then she called on the phone and told me she was getting married. I was happy for her, assuming it was to an RM in the temple.

Not until I got home did I find out she'd been having sex with him before they got civily married.

I moved on, got married to a TBM, had 4 kids. Oh hell I'm so lucky I didn't marry her. It never would have lasted. She got divorced. That's the last I heard.

Good story. You should write it out in more detail and publish it somewhere. Good stories expose what most people desperately try to hide.

I dumped a missionary--so I guess I'm just opposite.

I think the abuse goes both ways. I started a good job a few months after he left. I was the secretary for 20 MALE (oh my) chemists. He told me I couldn't talk about work or these men, but he and all his missionary friends could send out contests for bake goods to all the girls they knew, etc.

I put up with this attitude for so long and then I bailed and NOT for another guy. He called and told me he was coming home from his mission (I should have told him to, but not to marry me). His zone leaders sent me a really rude letter.

We did go out once after he got home. He married some other girl he dated in college and I'M SURE wrote to him on his mission, though he told me she wasn't. He was an as*. I'm lucky I didn't end up with him--and most of you know my marriage didn't work out--and I still say I'm lucky I didn't end up with him.

I left a beautiful, intelligent woman for whom I worshipped the ground she walked on (unfortunately I forgot to mention that to her, you know how it is, school being busy and all) to go on my mission.

Part way through I felt like re-organizing my life and for reasons not so clear to me now, dear Janed her.

She thought about that, wrote back, and said no, I was not dear janing her.

I thought about it, wrote back, and said she was right. So we wrote through my mission.

Some time after I got back she came back to BYU. We dated for a while, and then she shafted me for another RM.

Well, that sucked major, but what are you gonna do. As it turned out that affair didn't turn out. After they broke up I started dating her again, pretty seriously. Then I met the girl next door from Idaho and dated the two women for a while. (My major conclusion from that is that polygamy is expensive, tiring and takes more time than I could spare, but they were both great girlfriends.)

Eventually I had to make a choice, or delusionally thought I had to at any rate. I chose the girl next door from Idaho. Girl-who-semi-waited-on-my mission went on to success and fame and earns much more than I do. Oops.

So yes, I am scarred, just utterly scarred!

Well, there's more to the story than that. But let's dwell on my painful scars anyway.

;-)

lovingly carried the pictures of the two of us for two years. I sometimes think back and wonder what could have been, and have the same feeling as when I think about the time I almost drowned; gratitude for my subsequent good fortune.

In our mission the leaders got results by sayinng:

"It's the unworthy Elder that loses his girl."

Anon Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> In our mission the leaders got results by
> sayinng:
>
> "It's the unworthy Elder that loses his girl."


Wow. Now that's messed up.