Recently, there was a change in our bishopric. The previous bishop was an intelligent guy who had the cognitive capacity to recognize that my concerns about the church were legitimate. As a result, he was able to accommodate my lack of faith in a respectful manner that minimized my discomfort at church. However, the new bishop is an emotional guy who can't even announce new callings from the pulpit without choking up. He is a personal friend, but he is not able to understand my concerns with tscc and is, unintentionally, driving me away from the church altogether.

I'm starting to develop an exit strategy, which in and of itself is pathetic - only a cult would require an exit strategy. Consequently, for those of you who have taken the step of leaving the church, I'd appreciate your insights on what did and did not work for you and any suggestions you might have. In particular, I want to leave behind the church, but not leave behind every significant relationship in my life.

Following are a few details regarding my situation.

1) My entire family is very tbm, including my wife, my kids, my siblings, and my in-laws. I want to leave tscc in a manner that doesn't jeopardize my relationships with my family.

2) I have many friendships in the church, in part because I used to serve in the bishopric. Where possible, I would like to maintain these friendships.

3) There are lots of tbms where I work, especially in the departments that I supervise. I want to maintain these professional relationships as I leave the church.

Any suggestions on how to leave the church while maintaining family, friends, and professional relationships would be appreciated.

I have been discussing this question for about 7 years now since I got out but never have I heard or found a comforting answer. It's very likely going to be very difficult for you as it has been for most others in your position.
You are trying to leave a group that places a very high demand on its adherents to include insiders and exclude outsiders. That's it.

I don't advise this for your mental wellbeing. It is hard to maintain your self-respect and integrity. But I usually just don't comment and try to keep to myself when I'm confronted with Mormons voicing their small minded and myopic Mormon-created thoughts. I have my own small minded opinions but theirs are so obviously the product of a semi-annual General Conference and the combined biases of a ward feeding itself with hate and prejudices in the name of Jesus that it is hard at times to take.

If pressed I try to be as tactful without being tacit to their crazy in pointing out our differences.

For instances, yesterday our Mormon neighbor's invited us over for a movie (Guardians of The Galaxy) and after the movie one of them asked my teacher wife about the common core. He then went on about how Creationism isn't taught in school and how it should be. I told him that there was really no subject for it. I wanted to say it didn't belong and I did in a round about way. I said that it isn't really something that has way to teach it as it goes beyond the mechanics of how things work. Evolution is how things work.

He went on about yes there is that and ended it.

Most of the time things with Mormons are like this. They have no real meat beyond their milk. My advice is to try not and spill their milk and if you do and they are crying about it, don't slap them with your T-bone of non-Mormon enlightenment.

Yeah, it seems like maintaining relationships with tbms requires biting one's tongue a lot.

Elder B.

On the issue of teaching creationism in school, I have an idea. Put the mormons, the baptists, the muslims, the catholics, the born agains in a room together and tell them to come up with a complete curriculum - not just creationism. They have to lay out the entire story. Then we'll teach it. Once they can agree.

From the last point to the first...

For your work relationships, maintain them as work relationships. Don't get offended if they talk about church, and don't try to preach to them. If anyone asks, state you left the church.

I work with a group of strong believers (including one current bishopric member and a former bishop). They're all good people. They all know I'm out of the church. I don't walk away or make faces if they talk about the church, no more than they do if I chat to a non-LDS coworker about wine or beer.

Do not publish a big announcement to your work colleagues. Keep things professional. For the most part, this is an overblown fear.

As far as relationships with people in the church, be honest without being confrontational. Tell them you had moral differences (or whatever the case may be) with early church leadership. Don't be intentionally vitriolic -- saying JS was a rampant sexual abuser and BY was a racist, while true, will not endear you to them.

Don't shun them. Also, don't cease communication and then wonder why nobody is talking to you. I chuckle a little bit when I read about people being 'shunned,' when all they've done is stopped communicating. In many of those cases, the person doing the 'shunning' doesn't even know if you want to be contacted (and people complain about being contacted, too -- can't have everything, I guess).

Maintain a relationship, I suppose, is how I'd put it. My wife and I have not attended in well over a year, but we still chat with the neighbors and get invites to the neighborhood events. Even some cookies at Christmas! That is, in large part, because we've made an effort to remain integrated at the level we wish with the community at large.

With your family, I have little advice to offer. My wife left about six months after I did. Her family remains TBM -- she's the 'black sheep' (the one out of seven kids to break away). Focus on your immediate family first, as that should be the priority.

You have to ensure that *they* are comfortable talking to you about your departure. See my top point about making unnecessarily vitriolic statements. You have to make your way of life attractive (ie, not embittered and angry) if you want them to join you. So to that end, give them a safe place to land, as it were, when they begin to question.

Hope this helps.

Thanks for your insights alpiner. Your right, all relationships are not created equal, and it is the relationship with my wife and kids that I need to focus on the most.

From my perspective and experience, you are asking for the impossible. It is possible to maintain relationships with TBMs at least for a time, but it will require you to do many uncomfortable things.

First, they will require that you "respect" their faith. That means that you will never point out any logical errors or negative feelings you may have about TSCC, it's leaders or it's members. Period. However, the TBMs will also expect that you listen to them talk about TSCC and how wonderful it is all the time. You will be expected to patiently and happily allow other people to teach your kids things you do not believe, and even insert themselves in your marriage to protect your wife from your apostasy. Any pushback on any of this means that you are an anti-Mormon abusing innocent TBMs and their church.

You will also have to tolerate all the talking behind your back about how sad everyone is for you, and even more sad for your poor family. You will lose their respect, period. Some of your "friends" will stop being your friends and insist that they are just so busy. They will also insist that their sudden absence from your life has absolutely nothing to do with your leaving TSCC because they totally like people who are not mormon.

In order to maintain these relationships, you will also be required to humbly submit to repeated efforts to explain to you how wrong you are, how you only left because you were offended or wanted to sin and how you know it's true anyway so you need to come back. Anything bad that happens in your life will be pointed out as a result of you leaving TSCC.

Then, when one of your kids gets married in the temple, you will be required to sit outside and wait because you decided to be unworthy to be at their wedding. You will need to sit outside so that you are "supporting" them and so you will be in the happy family pictures taken afterwards and everything will look happy and family oriented to other people. They will remind you that you brought this upon yourself. Loving, providing for and sacrificing so much so that your kid could have everything they need to succeed in life obviously does not make you worthy to be at their wedding. This does, however, make you worthy to pay for all wedding costs. Any sadness or anger at being excluded from your child's wedding will be denounced as bitter anti-Mormon abuse of all the TBMs around you. You see, even though it is them excluding you from your own child's important moment in life, they are still your victim and expect to be treated as such.

I'm sure I missed many other things that you must do or endure to maintain your relationships, but this is at least a taste of what will be required. It means a lot of work, self-control and tolerance of abusive behavior to maintain most relationships with TBMs. I wish you luck and hope you will figure out a way to do it and maintain your sanity.

Your response isn't the silver bullet solution I was hoping for, but I appreciate the healthy dose of reality. Ultimately, I have to accept that leaving the church will inevitably affect many of my relationships with tbms. Thanks for your insights.

Great thread for those in similar situations! Thanks for posting it and thanks for all the great comments.


Edited for grammar.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/12/2015 12:54PM by moose.

How much does your wife know about your feelings concerning the church? As you mentioned above, your relationship with her is going to her a prime concern. There are lots of threads on this, but to summarize, the thing that seems to work best is to go gently with your wife. Let her know, clearly and often, that you love her and that your feelings about the church in no way lessen your love for her.

If she is one of those who believes that the church is the center of your relationship, it will be difficult. Many have said that helping your wife in every way you can is a good idea. Do anything possible to make your home a haven for both of you. If she takes the kids to church, help her in any way that you reasonably can. Have a great meal waiting when they get back. And a clean kitchen, and so forth.

Do everything that you can to reduce the stress that is on her. She may well feel intensely upset, if this is fairly new to her. Help her through it --- don't try to force her.

As to professional relationships, the less said about religion the better. Do your best to keep religion out of your workplace. If you are a supervisor, be there for your staff as a reasonable, responsible, caring manager. That will be the most effective thing that you can do to maintain good relationships.

As to everything --- remember that you can't control what anyone else thinks or feels. Some people will react poorly. Some won't. (I hope.) Just do your best to be positive, and that is probably the most that you can do to keep (and attract) positive people.

My wife is very aware of my feelings about the church, which admittedly hasn't been easy on our marriage. In fact we just met with the bishop earlier today, and he extended a very time demanding leadership position to her. For the first time in her life, my wife turned down a calling because she thought it would have a negative impact on our marriage.

Great suggestions on how to support my wife even if I'm not in church. Thanks.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/11/2015 08:51PM by procrusteanchurch.

Has anyone else looked into the New Order Mormon movement?

I read about last night for the first time. I found it very interesting. I don't think it is a sustainable solution - I don't know how you could be a practicing NoM at TSCC without being excommunicated eventually. But I think it is an interesting middle ground.

I'm so sorry to say that this is so often the goal and it never fully comes to fruition.

Please be prepared to find new friends and be satisfied if a few of the old ones remain.

I am proud of you for seeing reality and leaving the Mormon mindset. Many can't do what you've already accomplished.

Focus on your wife if she is TBM it will be really hard on her. We got married in the temple a few years ago. Yet I soon had the feeling that my husband didn't really believe in the church. We would go to the temple and he would asked me what I liked about it. He would make fun of me when I was reading the Book of Mormon and he would ask kind of anti Mormon things. Long story short somehow I ended up online because I wanted to know about polygamy some of my ancestors have been polygamists wives. We resigned together in 2012. My perspective on this as someone who used to be very TBM is tell your wife first in a gentle and kind way. Reassure her that you still feel the same about her and your family. Somehow I thought if he doesn't believe in the church anymore he must not believe in our marriage because we got married in the temple. Feelings of guilt came because if I would have been a better wife I thought then he would have stayed in the church. After a while I accepted that we believe in different things and that is ok. I was more hurt that he kept his disbelieve a secret from me for so long. What else is on his mind and he is not telling me? Is he in love with another woman? I went into really questioning our relationship till I realized he probably knew that loosing my religion would really turn my world up side down. I don't deal well with change I love my 10 year old car and I am not thinking of changing my car anytime soon lol. Then it hit me like a rock I wanted him to accept that i was a TBM yet I couldn't accept that he was not.

Here is how I have handled it

- At work, I dont discuss religion directly. I have several TBM co-workers who knew me as a mormon. I never told them I left the church as its really not their business and honestly I never really discussed religious stuff when I was mormon as its not appropriate work place discussion material. I still am happy to talk to them about their callings or their kids being on missions as that isnt really a religious discussion in my view. I don't discuss things like going out drinking, etc with them because they wouldn't be interested anyway. So far its been years and no one has ever asked me if I am still active or a member or whatever. Of course if you have more pushy co-workers or you yourself have talked a lot about your faith then you will probably need to broach the subject at some point. My suggestion would be to just say you are inactive and leave it at that. If someone pushes as to "why" you can easily say you dont feel thats appropriate workplace conversation material.

- I never had many mormon friends or friends in the ward and the few loose friends I did have I didn't care about losing. Neither party made any effort once I dropped out of going which was how I wanted it. This is probably going to be hit and miss. A lot of the time mormons are friends with you because its easy to maintain friendships with people you see all the time at church and because you have that one major life component in common (the church). If the mormon church is the primary thing you have in common you can be sure that the relationship wont last. If being mormon doesnt have much to do with your relationship it may last, but that will often depend on how you act. As others have state you need to be willing to listen to them talk about church all they want while never disagreeing with them or bringing up an alternate view point. Be prepare for at least one and maybe a couple of them to make bringing you back into the fold their primary aim in life.

- Family, especially wife/kids is tough. Personally I didn't (and wouldn't) treat my wife (or any adult member of my family) with kid gloves. They are grown adults. If they throw a hissy fit because you are no longer mormon they have some serious maturing to do. Everyone's approach is different though and how to handle it depends on what you are willing to sacrifice to maintain your personal integrity. I was honest from day one with my kids, I wasn't about to lie to them or let them be raised in a church without knowing the full truth about it. Beyond that they are my kids, and I love them no matter what they believe. All I want is for them to be happy but still I am always honest with them. This is not an easy approach, but I have never felt like I lost my personal integrity and that matters a lot to me. Some of my familial relationships have suffered (especially with my mom) but my wife followed me out eventually so that was a plus, and my kids never wanted to be mormon anyway, it was just something I was forcing on them.