(The next installment after "One Man's Adventures in Alcohol": http://exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,1573898 . I hope this post in some way helps others seeking love and romance after Mormonism.)

After seventeen years of of marriage, and five solid years of trying to keep it together after leaving Mormonism, I finally separated from my wife in August of 2008.

As you can imagine, many different emotions, not all of them consistent, consumed me. I was shocked at some of the things that had occurred, hurt, frustrated, appalled, sad, disoriented, beyond exasperated, and disbelieving. Maybe strangest of all was a mixture of perfect clarity and resolution that the last last last straw had been broken and I could simply not go on, alongside a hope that somehow, a resolution could occur in the future, and our family could come back together.

I begged my ex to help me trust again, to recapture the magic we had once had, for both of us, for the kids...I set us up with a bunch of counselors, but in the end, shall we just say, it was not in the cards.

That left me a forty year old father of eight who was now single - and, still kind of torn: on the one hand, I still thought about my ex all the time, despite all that had happened; on the other, I was so frazzled over everything that had happened, that the other half of me yearned to just find someone new, someone I could just finally enjoy life with. She didn't need to be a knockout. She didn't need to be any particular age or race or religion or political persuasion. All I wanted (or at least, that half of me wanted) was someone kind, loyal, stable, and who could enjoy life.

So, I decided to start "getting out there". Dating, I mean. Maybe there was someone special out there for me.

One little problem was that I had never bumped around with girls, or hit on them, or lived with them or slept with them, or whatever, like most young guys do. So...I had no skills or experience. Yes, I'd had a few girlfriends in high school, but that was fairly light stuff. All I had really had was marriage to the same woman (who in many ways, was not like most women) for nearly two decades.

So at forty, I had had precisely one serious romantic relationship (and only one sexual partner) in my life, and I had zero experience in the rough-and-tumble world of non-Mormon love.

The first thing I did was put up a few profiles on dating websites. No one contacted me, and hardly anyone responded to my messages. It was disappointing - on an actual music tour, while I was still married, women green-lighted me all the time, and of course I would say no; but now that I was single and could say yes, it was crickets. (Sadly, a tour was not feasible at that time).

I looked at my profile again, and then an idea dawned on me: delete this stupid thing. I look "nice" in my picture, my bio is "nice", my hobbies are "nice", everything about this is "nice" to the point of being completely boring. "Nice" is a failure. What I need is: catchy; razzle-dazzle; striking; out of the ordinary; lunatic; funny; maybe even bitter or sarcastic; daring; ANYTHING except "nice". The proof was in the pudding: I had had virtually no responses. "Nice" was a loser.

Driven by evolutionary imperative, with one failed strategy behind me, I changed tack. I ran a Google search and found a hilarious picture that someone had created in Photoshop. It was of some Indian-looking guy screaming, but the eyes and mouth had been magnified. I created a new profile with an alias I no longer recall, but something completely insane, and then I wrote up the most off-putting bio I could. It included things like this:

"I enjoy spending time ALONE. As in, NOT WITH YOU, TALKING NON-STOP ABOUT YOUR LATEST FIGHT WITH YOUR GIRLFRIEND."

"I live in my mommy's basement next to the furnace. I am 'between jobs'."

"Hobbies: being mean to animals, Solitaire, video gaming up to fourteen hours a day".

"I'm looking for someone who, after twelve years of public school and four years of university, still thinks that astrology gives her meaningful life guidance".

Etc.

Well (thanks Jesus, for creating this insane world) the results were entirely predictable: an array of attractive women began flooding my inbox with comments like, "ROTFLMAO too funny! What do you really look like?", "Ha ha we should chat", "I just peed myself, are you this funny in real life?", "Hit me back, I loooove sarcasm".

Bingo. Of course. It all seemed so obvious now.

Emboldened by the success of my new mating strategy, I then set about creating more profiles - many more profiles - all fake, all using different sorts of pictures, all either completely bitter, offensive, funny, or even baaaad. The positive comments kept on pouring in; and when I found a prospect, I no longer sent notes like, "hey, saw your profile. Looks like we have a lot in common. Would love to chat. How long have you lived in Victoria?". Instead, I kept them very short and wrong. I mentioned things like being out on parole, that she wasn't my type, that I was already down to only three hundred pounds, that she shouldn't bother getting back to me, etc.

Again, my response rate skyrocketed. Now with an embarrassment of womanly riches before me, and new, ever more offensive profiles going up every day and attracting more and more, I was able to sift through and see which seemed like they might be a good match. So, I started to go out.

I'd never really done this sort of thing, but then, I thought..."how tough can it be to go hang out for twenty minutes at Starbuck's?". I figured I could not do worse than the average guy out there, and I came up with a simple approach:

Be clean, show up on time, pay for the stuff, make 'em laugh, be honest, let them sense a raw animal vigour underneath the gentlemanly courtesy, and then let the chips fall. If it's on, move - cobra strike. If it's not on *yet*, move slowly, like a panther. If there's no future, be courteous, but move on. This is about enjoying our time together, and getting to know each other, so...no stress, no pressure...it's supposed to be fun, positive, shared experience for both of us.

With that in mind, I stepped out into the non-Mormon world of dating and romance for the first time, and...I had a lot of interesting experiences. Like the time I fell for a beautiful, modest, kind, cheerful young woman, had an amazing day-long date with her finished off by a trip to a club that night...only to find out that she was one of the world's most famous porn stars. But that is a story for later on in the series, I guess.

Feel free to post your own experiences below.

More to come.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/05/2015 03:24AM by Tal Bachman.

Now that was just a shitty way to end that! Actually I'm quite jealous, not that you got to date a porn star(awesome!) but that you found an interesting authentic was to live life without guilt or shame or lightening bolts form an angry(Jealous because he didn't get to date a porn star) god.

I'll keep this short..I was divorced over church issues and married a long time..I put it in my dating profile. That was like honey to a bear.

The first two lds gals I dated wanted to sleep with me on the first date and made no 'bones' about it.
I did not partake but sure had my eyes opened. Haven't been back on the site since.

I never dated in high school (way too shy), then showed up at Ricks and Mormon girls were untouchable. 1: because they all appeared to be sooooo pure....& I wanted a wee bit of dirty. 2: I was never gonna go on a mission and all they'd been instructed to do by their mothers was "find a RM, marry him and breed". So I came home to Alberta and dated a number of girls until on a blind date in 1970 I met the Catholic girl who'd become my wife. Religion has never gotten in the way of our love and respect for each other. I truly believe that when love and/or sex is given or withheld for religious reasons, love was never really there in the first place. I know in my heart, that had I pursued a relationship with a Mormon girl, and it led to marriage, that marriage would have failed.

Ron Burr



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/05/2015 06:08PM by Lethbridge Reprobate.

I spent 29 years in a marriage discovering ever new ways that we were incompatible. If I learned anything about my second search was that I had to be honest - with myself and the women I was meeting.

The chief reason that I discovered myself involved in an intimate relationship with someone I couldn't ever hope to become intimate with was *not* because we didn't have sex until we were married. Even if we had sex, we wouldn't have been "ourselves" - but were fulfilling a prescribed dating role while hoping to fill ill-defined marriage roles.

We weren't honest. We were trying to present someone we hoped the other person could find attractive. Later we found ourselves married to strangers.

Far better to present myself as me. Life is far easier when someone falls into love with you - not a false version of yourself.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/05/2015 03:38PM by idleswell.

before I got married and I said many times that I would never date again UNLESS a certain person became available. He did. I was the one who made the "move" and had our old boss call him. My old boss is very mormon, yet he never could understand why I didn't marry this nonmormon guy. He thought he was wonderful.

There was no question in my mind that I would have sex with him and the first time we got together, we did. We had talked on the phone and e-mailed for 10 months at the time.

Considering who I married, this was quite an experience, and 28 years in happening.

We are still together 10 years later. Our lives are more every day routine stuff now. Though I will never remarry. Marriage was not good to me.

The key difference between love and sex with the Church as opposed to without the Church is that YOU decide when your relationships are ready to become sexual. When you are within the Church, the Church decides when you have sex.

Bumping to the top because I want to make sure there is a part 2.

Tal,
what is her stage name?

>
> As you can imagine, many different emotions, not
> all of them consistent, consumed me. I was shocked
> at some of the things that had occurred, hurt,
> frustrated, appalled, sad, disoriented, beyond
> exasperated, and disbelieving. Maybe strangest of
> all was a mixture of perfect clarity and
> resolution that the last last last straw had been
> broken and I could simply not go on, alongside a
> hope that somehow, a resolution could occur in the
> future, and our family could come back together.
>
> I begged my ex to help me trust again, to
> recapture the magic we had once had, for both of
> us, for the kids...I set us up with a bunch of
> counselors, but in the end, shall we just say, it
> was not in the cards.
>

Tal, not sure if this has been discussed yet here but... would it bother you too much to tell us what made your marriage colapse?

and he seems to be reticent to go there. He may be showing respect for his ex about not blasting to the internet about something so that is obviously painful to both of them but I have to admit that there is a prurient part of me that would like to know if she picked TSCC over Tal or if there is more to it.

Maybe someday he'll share.

We both discovered that Mormonism was a fraud, but our responses were very different. From what I hear, my ex continues to struggle in her ex-Mormon journey, and I am loathe to say anything which would make that journey even more difficult for her.

Got it ;)

Thanks for the peek.

I have not had luck with online dating....Ok Cupid just brought out the young, old and in-between looking for a hook up. The only nice guy I actually had 2 dates with was a Indian guy who was turned down by his arranged marriage back in India because he had a cross necklace.

Raj took me to a wine tasting once and another time we went to the Santa Barbara Polo Fields and saw a polo match. Quite a fun date. He was my son's age and not ready for relationship. But nice guy.

I am still hoping for a prince charming who hasn't been too beat up by life and it would be wonderful , I think, to have an EXmo as a partner. At least we would have something in common

I wish you well, Lue. Maybe someone should set up an ex-mo dating site so we can find someone to enjoy our "damagedness" with :)

I second it. How would we do that? Is there anything out there already for EXmo's ?

Just because a TBM spouse decides that you are not " toeing the line" and ends a marriage, doesn't mean you are damaged goods.


We aren't supposed to post our email addresses or any other identifing info on this site.

So I don't exactly know how to let others know I am available

Actually, lue, you are allowed to post an email address here, as part of your profile. It is recommended, though, that you use a "throwaway" address for RfM so you can't be too easily ID'd in real life. Other posters can look to find your email address if you want it to show. (You can add an email address to your profile via the registration option).

What isn't allowed here is to use RfM formally as a dating site, as in openly approaching other posters for individual meet-ups.

There are often notices of group events. If you could manage to get to some of those you will meet other exmos and one never knows who goes there. :)

Good luck! Don't give up all hope.

I met and dated several really quality, decent, kind, good men on OKCupid. One was married and in an agreed-to open/poly relationship. Unfortunately, there just wasn't any chemistry with any of them. Not only did I not want to continue dating any of them, I didn't feel inclined to fool around with any of them either.

I still consider this a positive experience, however, because it taught me there are good, kind, decent, single folks out there, and everyone's looking for a connection. I cannot be honest with myself and still say truthfully, "All the good ones are taken." Nope, there's some single good ones.

It's just that I wasn't terribly attracted to any of the ones I met. Which, I think is to be expected.

I think most people date in their teens and maybe also early 20s and then settle down with one person, so people who find themselves single again after age 30 find it much more difficult to meet a good match. And it is, because there's nothing like the target-rich environment of a college campus.

true about being in one's 20's or 30's one has a lot more to pick from. The Field is rich and ready to be harvested, so to speak.

I am glad to hear that there are still quality single men out there.

I will just keep looking.

I think it would help me if I lived in a bigger city though

Ditto to your last paragraph. I've wondered that too. It was easy for me to date in high school, and then college - it was college where I met who I eventually married, and had my children with. But we divorced early on, and I was quite busy raising a family and being a working mom to have much time for anything else.

Friendships, like dating, came easier when I was in high school. Even in my early career it was easier for me to meet both men for dating and friends for simple friendship.

Now that I'm getting older, I just like my down time. Love being a homebody. That's the part of being a Mormon I never outgrew. Just like taking care of my house and garden, and look forward to when I can retire so I can devote myself to my hobbies full-time. Have some creative talents I also hope to cultivate more when I retire from government service.

I don't even think about dating anymore. I never found the right person for me, and at some point I just gave up looking. Not that I gave up on love, because I'm a hopeless romantic. Just not really worried about it, which is another kind of liberation, including being freed from Mormonism. There we were over the hill if not married by age 25, and making babies.

One of my favorite songs is Lennon's "Watching the world go 'round." Where he sings, "Life is what happens to you when you're making other plans."

I've found that pretty much sums up how I feel about love, dating, and the other stuff including sex. Putting ads in personals and meeting people that way doesn't appeal to me, because it seems so canned - although one of my brothers met his wife online, and an aunt met her husband that way.

Wishing you all that you find what or rather who you're looking for. I know it isn't easy waiting for love to find you. Yet, that may be just what happens. It may catch you by surprise!

:)



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/07/2015 03:13PM by amyjomeg.

"Cobra strike" is my new favorite catchphrase. (Fist-bump chest-pound grunt-sound beer-salute in your direction, bro-ski.)

Okay, Last - I'll elaborate on "The Cobra Strike" in a forthcoming post :)

Please tell me that young lady was zoe holloway.