The religious life was never about unconditional love it was about who had "the right" to do whatever they wanted to do relative to others.

When someone had a good time in the middle of innocent plenty it was "pride", but when some "hot shot"/manipulative EGO just did what he wanted to it was seen as completely lawful and OK because somewhere someone of dignity had said it was OK.

After reading Strickers book I personally must say that in my community most of the people who turned to religion did it to hear someone finally say that they were lovable, "normal" and "Ok".

We all looked for the wrong solution to our problems. It was just more of the same that had put us down in our community outside the Church.

So it was never about love it was about the value of pride and envy and who had the right to feel good, normal and OK. Same thing different name. Waste of time. The only real winning was to find the exit door and Marion Strickers book putting words on the paradoxes.

I’ve never been in a ward without gossip and backbiting (horses bite each other’s backs when they’re pissed btw). There’s something wrong with a religion that makes people like that. Mormonism makes most people worse than they would be without it. That’s why it’s popular with messed up people. They want an excuse to suck.

Completely agree with this. I see mormons do horrible stuff which, shocking as it is, they believe is “good”. Inside the mormon church I really felt the constant judgment that people unconsciously enjoyed levying at each other, and particularly at people like me who didn’t fit the mold. It makes mormons feel better to criticise others because they feel terrible inside, and THAT is the outcome of a religion that teaches they will never be good enough. Therefore mormons take huge pride in whatever level of ‘purity’, ‘service’, ‘godliness’ aka position in the church they are perceived to have reached.
A few weeks ago my brother made a point of telling me how he had consecrated the grave of his FIL during burial. The FIL wasn’t even mormon but he was allowed to do it. He told me this with great pride, and I have to say, defensiveness in his voice. I later pointed out to him that such things are just not interesting to me. That is probably the best thing to say to mormons. Kind of like, whatever, that’s boring. I’ve stopped hearing from him since I said that. But I’d recommend it as the nicest yet worst insult to get any boasting mormon off your back.
Another example of that is my SIL has stated that things I’ve said against the mormon church are “unforgivable”. I was really in a state of shock to hear that word used. I’ve forgiven far worse things in my time and I’m not even religious.
My brother and SIL also think they are 100% right and justified for trying to turn my daughter mormon against my wishes and saying bad things about me.
Basically mormons always think they are right no matter what they do. If you are not mormon then most of what you do is seen as wrong and sinful. It is hypocritical and arrogant.
It is totally shocking.

My therapist asked me once why I married my gay husband and I told him that I felt like there was something wrong with me and so maybe he could love me because there was something wrong with him. Mormons treated my whole family like there was something wrong with us. Now most of us are out. My sister, who is the only one still considered a mormon, hates mormons and she only goes because her husband wants her to.

We were the "fringe element." There is a list of mormon royalty on this board somewhere. I showed it to my sister and she laughed until she cried. There were only a few people who ever treated me well in mormonism. My husband told our TBM daughter that I was never happy as a mormon and I wasn't. I didn't realize it until he said that.

My husband is mormon royalty as they knew how to fake it. He's still considered mormon royalty (my sister and I figured it out). My sister said that when they move to a new ward (which they do quite often), the people think they are mormon royalty, but soon learn that her husband is royalty and she is fringe element.

Religion did NOTHING for our family. Living in Utah, many of my siblings still feel like second best. I flaunt my lifestyle now. I just call him my husband as he legally is, but we haven't been a couple for 24 years.

>>So it was never about love it was about...who had the right to feel good, normal and OK.

I can relate to this as someone who was raised in the Catholic church. Catholic children who are receiving instruction prior to their first confession and communion are given a list of the ten commandments. Each commandment is gone over in detail about how this applies to modern life. So when you are a young child (I was probably about 8 at the time,) you are taught that you are not okay and that all of your "sins" need to be absolved by a priest on a regular basis.

So what exactly does your average 8 year old need to confess? I really struggled to find something to tell the priest. Hmm, let's see. I thought a bad thought about my mom. That might work. I was angry at my friend. Does that apply? And what is this whole thing about not coveting your neighbor's wife?

True-believing Catholics spend so much time examining the state of their souls, that as an adult, I began to think of it as unhealthy. I referred to it as, "staring into your own navel syndrome."

Also, as I grew into adulthood, I started to form my own opinions about what is sinful and what is not. Catholics used to joke about "artificial" birth control -- "I told my priest that I sin every day. I take my birth control pill." But there is truth in that jest. I figured if I had sex outside of marriage, and my partner had no serious complaints, it was nobody's business but my own. And if birth control is anything, it is a gift from a loving god to his or her women.

I left the church as a young teen over its unequal treatment of women. I am not a second-class citizen and I will not willingly be a part of an organization that views me in that manner. Yet it took a good twenty or thirty years for good old-fashioned Catholic induced guilt to fully resolve. In this manner I can relate to exmos who have years of PTSD from leaving their church.

Years after I left the church, I had a chat with the neighborhood priest in Brooklyn, NY where I lived at the time. We were just on the street, shooting the breeze. He seemed like a kindly soul. I told him that I had been raised in the church, and he urged me to return and "make a good confession." I couldn't relate to that at all. What would I confess, that I took a few pens home from the office? Yeah, no thanks. Years later I drove past that neighborhood church, and another denomination had taken it over.

It took me years to fully understand that I am okay. There is nothing wrong with me that any God needs to forgive. I don't sweat the small stuff. If I need to make something right with another person, I do. I don't need an intermediary to tell me that if I do A, B, and C, then I am okay.

I used to listen to a local radio talk show host; he would talk about what was going on behind the scenes with world geo-political events.
On April 6, 2015, he told the listeners that he had changed his mind about the subject to be discussed that morning and instead talked about "changing your thoughts".
That date was the day I came alive and changed my thinking and unofficially left the church.
He said that no matter what the religion (but it was addressed particularly to anyone LDS), from the time we are little children, we are taught that we are never good enough. "Lower than the dust of the earth". "You can do better" "How come Johnny down the street got an A+ and you only got a B?"
We need to re-wire our thinking and come to the realization that we ARE GOOD ENOUGH, right from birth.
It was an eye-opener for me to learn that the word "Perfect" doesn't mean being condemned to run in the never ending race with that carrot in front of you. It means "complete" or "whole".
After the his program was done that morning, I started to do my own research into the "anti mormon"info on the internet, and the rest was history for me.
He also said that religion is the most suppressive/oppressive force on the planet, and I have to agree with him.
So know that you are indeed good enough.

Nice to read how all of you got out of the maze.

Personally I felt at one point in life that the mental patterns that dominated the social life were unreasonable and not suitable for adult people. To keep reproducing them were out of the question. I had to choose between reasonable freedom or infantile social control. I choose freedom.

People that I looked up to during my formative years (people who always corrected me for my own good) turned more and more into people I would describe like life-like versions of Ernest P. Worrell. It was enough.