My son in his early 30's, married with 3 kids was contacted recently by a cousin he hasn't seen in 20+ years. We used to live in UT and this cousin was born a month after my son. We moved away when the two of them were small children. There was very little contact between them while we lived in the same town in UT and almost NO contact for that last 30+ years. This young man recently sent my son a letter which was so sappy as to be ridiculous.

As an exmo we know what the intentions are. My son has his own beliefs (he is not Mormon and has no intention of being one) but the letter was so weird that he felt he had to tell me about it. So inappropriate on a number of levels. Not the least being that in reality, he really doesn't even know this person.

Clearly my nephew is trying to win my son over to Mormonism. Why don't Mormons realize that people can tell how phony they are?

Too bad you got the TBM version of this. I reconnected with a cousin after about that long when I came out and left the church because I knew he'd taken that route a few years before--what a huge support it was. We're far closer now than back in our TBM BYU days.

Maybe the cousin has good intentions. I have cousins I don't know because of problems with our parents but I would love to reconnect with them and see if there could be a relationship mostly because I see how close my husband is with his cousins (regardless of religion) and I feel like I missed out.

The fact that this huge TBM family has no idea of the meaning of the word "cousin"...no idea what a cousin is or even a shadow of what it means to be a good one.

I know I did not go into detail about the letter but, rest assured, due to other circumstances that I cannot describe here, his intentions are to spread his Mormonism to my son.