Merry Christmas everyone. I'm sitting here drinking my coffee and life is good but not completely. Over the last several years after leaving the church me and my wife's life has gotten so much deeper and more meaningful but our world has also gotten much smaller. I was just thinking the relationships we use to have before leaving the cult. Christmas was a time when extended family dropped by and we had dinners and we also had a ward family with parties where I thought people were our real friends and cared about us. Now several years later our extended family will hardly visit our house. Oh yes they will drop off a gift with a smile and a quick hello but they don't stay. The big family Christmas dinner was always at our house over the years, Easter at my wife sister, Thanksgiving at another sisters house. Now they have slowly taken the Christmas party away to another house and we can come but it is hard when only a few people really talk to you and if they do it's superficial. My daughter is not invited to cousin parties most the time. My wife and I got mad a few years ago and told some people off and it helped for a few months but quickly went back to what I call soft shunning. So we realized we can't change people and we have to rebuild our world albeit a much smaller world. As I sit here and think of the past and the way it use to be I have to admit it makes me sad and I would be lying if I said it didn't hurt. I miss the people I use to know but not the assholes they turned into I would hope over time they would miss me and my wife but I'm afraid they don't. They just feel sorry for us because of our choices never mind we are better people now then we were back as TBM's. I also hate when I see ward members who I thought were real friends say "Oh we miss seeing you at church" really if you really missed me you would come by when things are not church related or invite me to go golfing again....... but you don't and you are not a real friend so our world gets smaller. The problem iswe live in Utah where 90% of my neighbors are Mormon. I saw a movie the other night where all the neighbors were from different religions, races and points of views and they were all close friends. As I watched I craved that experience like a man thirsty for water wondering in a desert. I know it was just a movie but I do believe that a neighborhood like that exists. So we will spend the rest of the day enjoying each other and probably not talk to any of our former friends and relatives because they already contacted us and checked that off their list of things to do and why do any more for apostates. On the other hand we are free and I'm not a judgmental closed mind person anymore. We also have a few exmo friends and they are a lifeline. One of them dropped by yesterday with a gift of a bottle of wine, they came in and we talked and laughed for a time, it was wonderful. So even though our world is smaller maybe there are better quality people in it. So I would suggest if any of you have a exmo friend out there make sure you have reached out today and said hi, they just might be craving it. It is just hard to be rejected and give up blood relatives. I guess freedom comes with a price I just wish is was not as high as it is.........

Thanks for sharing this. I miss some of my old life too.

church, but because of family members who choose to cause so much drama, too many people have been hurt. I was thinking some of the same things yesterday as you were. I took gifts to family members and I didn't see even ONE of them, just dropped them off.

I'm the one who has chosen to stay away because I'm the one who is supposed to fix it all. I've tried I don't know how many times and I have finally given up.

I also don't think that they don't miss you. They just like to be RIGHT. I know my sisters need me more than I need them, but I miss them. I also can't stand by and allow them to continue to hurt others and stand by and let it happen.

But I don't for one minute believe they don't miss you.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/25/2014 01:37PM by cl2.

If Mormons just knew, and lived by, [practicing] the Golden Rule, nothing would have changed at all (in these relationships) and the exchanges would be true, pleasant and lasting. If Mormons practiced what they preached the whole world would be a better place. Instead, we have to lead by example: open vs closed.

Just think of the relationships they are missing out on - not to mention the relationships they are causing other people to miss out on. What a pitty. Instead of living a life of integrity they are stuck picking at the bones after the good and hungry people have already eaten the meat-veggies and have moved on to cake and ice cream (which probably should be against the Word of Wisdom). They are lacking and don't see the cause of their lack or even notice what it is they lake.

While they are sitting around the squares with other squares, our circles are able to deepen and widen and cause many ripples, and other circles, to join us in partaking of the infinant an abundant feast.

Merry Christmas and great circles to everyone.

It is hard to lose out on relationships that you treasured. And especially so at the big family holidays.

If you can't have a big, happy family around you, consider this project for next year:

Talk with the people you see wherever you go --- work, shopping, volunteer activities (especially good, as many people who do volunteer work are short on family themselves), and so forth.

Find out who spends the holidays alone. For those among them who don't do it because they really want to be alone, start a new holiday tradition with new friends. Get together for a big potluck holiday brunch or dinner, Christmas Eve or Christmas day, or maybe on the day after (Boxing Day, for the Britannically aligned).

Exchange very simple gifts, like stocking stuffer sort of things, if you like. But primarily, spend the time with new people who will appreciate your friendship on special days.

I've done this for years, decades, in fact. My "family" of chosen friends is a wonderful group of people. We make a conscious decision to include anyone we know who would otherwise be alone. Many of us have become close friends throughout the year.

Honestly, the holiday get-togethers are way more fun that the old biological-family meals ever were. Far less tension, strife, opening of old wounds, and so forth.

In the meantime, know that many of us understand what you are feeling, and that we wish you the the very best holidays --- and new year --- possible!

Move to Sugarhouse. You will find the neighbors you're looking for. We're gay and ALL of our neighbors love us!
Location, location, location. And we are BOTH returned missionaries! No one asks (they all know we are gay) no one cares. Most are jack Mormons or exmormons, or never have been Mormons and REALLY don't care.

Move. Life will be more like the "real world"

Just my opinion, but we have said that if we won a multi-million lottery we would never move. We love our heathen neighbors and they love us



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/25/2014 03:55PM by lapsed.

You guys are great and some great ideas. Haha gay neighbors. You know several years ago I would of been shocked and afraid, I know silly but that was where I was at. Now I'm in a much better place and would be delighted for you to be my neighbors and part of my village. That is why what I have gone through and have lost is so worth it and I would never consider going back because I would miss out on great people like you even though my world or circle is smaller. Really there are pockets in SLC that are mostly non Mormon??? wow! I live in Utah County, I know I Know. Making a effort to reach out is a great idea. What is funny is over the last year and a half we have started to meet so many people in their 30's that have left the church it is amazing. We are in our 50's so I just may adopt some of you as our grand kids. As I have always said if freedom is priceless then it doesn't matter the cost to get it because it is worth it.

With family, I really think it's a shame when any of them let church membership come between them.

Beyond that, though, I can see how church friendships would dwindle. The main thing they had in common with you was the church community and a shared belief system. Those are two pretty major things. If you leave that community and belief system, they won't have so much shared experience in common and will not feel comfortable talking about the things you used to talk about. I don't think it makes them bad people.

That church community was so EASY, though, because everyone instantly had many things in common. Guess it's largely a matter of finding new shared things with new people. Maybe just one at a time and then maybe finding new connections through those people.

Oh, I feel your pain, Battle-Ax. Shunning hurts, because it is meant to be hurtful. Shunning is a type of ABUSE.

That said, do you really, really want to be with people who turned out to be a-holes? You are an unusual man, to want to be with your extended family. Most men pretend they have to leave early for a "previous engagement", or they retreat into the TV den to watch a game or something, or they walk around with earbuds and and text all the time. You are probably more social than most people, so you feel the loss more.

"Soft shunning?" Does that mean that the Mormon neighbors still speak to you? That they don't gossip about you? That they're not rude? The TBM's are probably nicer to you, than they are to me and my kids.

When we look back, we get nostalgic, and tend to glorify the old days. It helped me to remember the worst times, in connection with Mormon "friends." TSCC kept me way too busy accompanying and rehearsing choirs, performers, smaller singing groups, etc, and I needed that time to be with my children, shop, decorate, ski, skate, have some fun during their school vacation. I've been a single divorced mother, forever, and I had to go to couples Christmas parties, and play romantic piano music for them. I soon realized that the only reason I was invited to these parties, was because people wanted to sing Carols together, and they needed a pianist. So--I never felt the companionship you felt.

Remember the clean-up committees, folding the chairs and tables in the gym, hurrying your children out the door to meetings and activities they didn't want to go to. I remember hours and hours of baking and wrapping goodies for all the neighbors--exhausting and expensive for a single mother.

You wrote that you are 50. Church or no church, your life is changing. Young children bring a lot of socializing into our life. Children are a common bond for parental friendships. I used to volunteer at my children's schools, and sports teams. The non-Mormon friends I made there are the friends I have now. When your children get older, they don't spend as much time at home, and they just naturally don't include their parents as much. If you wait 10 years, or so, they will start including you again, and asking you to babysit for them.

Be glad you have a spouse. I got very tired of wandering around alone, most of the time, to Mormon weddings, funerals, various gift showers, and other parties. I find it a sweet relief to stay home with a good book. (Reading is one way you can make your world bigger.) The two of you are free to go to a movie of your choice, go out to dinner, do whatever activities you like, when you feel like it. You could even escape out of town, if you want. You are not at the mercy of someone else's plans.

It is much easier to make friends in California, for instance.

Who knows--so many Mormons are leaving the church--in droves--that most of your Mormon friends are probably on their way of becoming ex-Mormons, too. That happened to my cousins on my father's side of the family.

If they don't love you now, they never did. It was all based on you being a Morg. If you are not a cookie cut out of the rest of the family and friends, you are nobody.

Remember they faked it all along. You are worth loving in or out of the CULT and if they don't know that, FUCK them.

Get new friends. You can choose your friends. Ignore and shun your relatives. They can taste their own fowl medicine.

I've got a bunch of relatives that I never see because I an not in the CULT. Oh well!

The path of truth is a lonely one.
Straight is the path and narrow is the way...

Oscar says it best. . .

http://m.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3DLmQIzSF1yb0&ved=0CBsQtwIwAA&usg=AFQjCNGTfqTNFyKo8QVDwOMkr_9b3isxPg