hello dotdotdot.


I truly admire you for coming here. I know this must be excruciating to go through for the both of you.


I am non-believer, my husband is a believer. In my situation, I am not so concerned about who is right or wrong. More than anything I just want to be heard. I just want my feelings & opinions to have value to my spouse. Even if that means we still have to agree to disagree & just respect each others opinions. But, the things that hurts the most, is that he will not even attempt to understand way I feel the way I do. I am labeled the apostate which means my thoughts/feeling/opinions are automatically assumed invalid. My feelings & opinions are not going to go away because he ignores them or disagrees. It hurts, its like a knife in the back. I just want what I am willing to give which is simply respect.


You don't have to agree, you don't have to play the game of win or loose.. Give each other the benefit of the doubt. Take turns & have at least one conversation where you let your guard down completely, assume that you completely & totally wrong (just for the length of the conversation) and hear each other out & vise versa. Listen to hear what the other person has to say not to think about how you want to respond. Allow each other the courtesy of being understood.

You will both have some huge compromises to make. Drop the preconceived roles & duties. Drop the expectations that the other person needs to do as you do, & think as you do, to get along. Allow each other the courtesy to live a fulfilling & authentic life true their own self.

I wish you both the best.

Hi dotdotdot,

I want to tell you that telling my wife I didn't believe was the hardest thing I have ever done. I married her forever and meant it. For me coming to believe that the church was fraudulent meant giving up on that dream. I couldn't do anything about that because if the church really wasn't true, then they really didn't have the gift of eternal marriage to give. Even though I had come to believe that it was still a great loss to me.

I applaud your open minded approach and wish you the best in whatever you conclude, eventually my wife saw many of the things that I pointed out and drew her own conclusion. It doesn't really matter to you what she concluded as this is your journey not hers.

but since leaving I have met several different types of couples, some eventually leave together, some are split and make it work and others split up.

My dad had a great bit of wisdom that he shared with me when I got married some 20+ years ago. there are three things that can destroy a marriage if you cannot find a compromise and a way to make things work with your spouse, Sex, Religion, and Money. I have no idea on the first, but your post has mentioned already the last two. that means where you go from here and what you work out is pretty crucial to the survival of you marriage.

For my wife and I that marriage was our primary goal, we didn't give up on that neither of us did. our partnership was more important than anything else in our life and that put those three things into perspective.

Good luck in your research and I hope you make it work in some way.

SG

Bumping this one too..

I agree with Anona. You do not have to agree, you merely have to respect each other's right to hold different views and not be critical of those views. It's hard when one spouse, having been labeled the apostate, is totally ignored because the believer is obviously right as the gospel is true, you have a living prophet who can never lead you astray etc ...

What TBM's married to exmo's often lose sight of is the fact that their exmo spouses understand fully what the TBM spouse believes, often better than the TBM themselves, but evidence and logic have taken them on a different path. It is frustrating to an exmo when a TBM spouse is critical of their choices even though they have not examined the evidence or tried to understand the logic that has driven them away from the church.