I know we shouldn't dwell on the past but do you think you could have gotten out of the church earlier if there was something someone could have said or done for you that would have saved you all the time in the church?

In one paragraph, what could someone have said to you that would have hastened your exit from the church?

I'm always fascinated by what someone realizes, observes, reads, or experiences that sends them down the rabbit hole.

I was unafraid to read "anti" literature so I would have been lost my belief within a few chapters of reading Mormonism-Shadow or Reality by Jerald and Sandra Tanner and been out of the church 10 years earlier (this was before the internet) and not wasted two years on my mission and my years at college as a TBM.
If I could have someone go back in time to when I was say, 16 years old, handed me that book, I would have been done with the church much earlier.

That being said, I know many of you would not have straight up read what you perceived as an anti-Mormon book, but if you could send someone back in time and say something (in less than 500 words), or show you something, that would have sent you on a fast track to learning the truth, what would it be?

Reading the Doctrine & Covenants in my mid 30's is what finally convinced me it was bull shit. I'd like to think I'd have seen that had I read it as early as my teen years. Who knows?

Reading the miracle of forgiveness also did it but that one wouldn't have gotten me out because it just confirmed what was already deeply engrained in me by TSCC and mother regarding sexual sins. I'd have agreed with that whole thing until I finally got out into the world and met women who had been raped and molested. I could see for them that none of it was their fault but had I read the book earlier I could not have seen it for myself.

I think the leaked videos of the apostolic meetings are fairly damning to their image that God is using them to run his church. The paranoia over gays and pirates is ridiculous. I wish that you tube would have been available to see how bad the Hinkster was lying again and again.

I can't help you here, being a nevermo, but just wanted to tell you that I think this is a very interesting question and I'm anxious to keep checking back to read the various responses :)

If I'd been rescued by child services as a kid.

*like*

If someone would have told me straight to my face that God wouldn't help me No matter what I did for the church I would have been long gone but I learned the hard way that there is no Jesus or anything closely resembling one it's all fantasy in that org when put to the test. And if there is a god he better resign thats all I gotta say.

I probably never really believed the Mormon doctrines. The BOM was poorly written, tedious, gory, and a nasty turn-off. The D & C was even worse. I believe that most humans have an innate sense of love and justice and--well--humanity. Mormonism went against all of that. What little girl would believe the polygamy ever was and ever would be "God's new and everlasting covenant"?

My parents could have gotten me out sooner--if they had been HONEST with me! Neither one of them wore their temple garments, or ever attended the temple. They pushed me into a temple marriage, and when they couldn't go, they hustled during the few weeks of my engagement, bought garments. My dad paid out several thousands of dollars in tithing. If they had just said to me, "We don't really believe in all of Mormonism, and we won't be able to go to your temple wedding." Then, I would have said, "If you don't believe, then, why should I? To be honest, I'm still in love with my atheist childhood/high school sweetheart, and I choose to marry him."

It's hard to forgive my parents for pushing me into a temple marriage to an abusive monster, that we barely knew.

IF ONLY my parents had told me the truth! It was more important for them to keep up appearances, and go along with the cult lies, than to insure their daughter's happiness. We all dearly loved my atheist boyfriend.

There are posters here who are out of the cult, yet still leave their children under the bus, in the firm grip of the cult, and cult family members. These parents, and my own parents, expect children to fight battles, alone, against an evil, lying, manipulative business--and these are battles that the parents themselves didn't have the courage to fight!

Maybe I made up for my parents' forcing me to attend a church that they knew was a cult. I had my children resign with me, and I promised them that they never had to go Mormon meetings ever again. They cried for joy. With my own children, this got them out of the cult SOONER.

^^^^^

Incredibly powerful story. Thank you so much for posting this here, Breeze. I'm blown away.

I harbor the same resentments. Neither parent of mine was exactly the straight laced model of Mormon living. But they sure did expect me to live it.

Years later, after I had left the church in my early 40s, my father made the comment to me that I was supposed to be his "ace in the hole". In other words, he expected that in the final judgment he would be able to point to his stalwart son as evidence that he had been a good father and a good person. Because he sure wasn't going to get into the CK on his own merits.

Why I should be expected to live up to some standard that he so obviously wouldn't live up to himself has always been baffling to me. It was interesting to me that my parents thought nothing of paying $400 or so a month to send me on a mission but would never seriously consider paying for school. Having a missionary son reflected well on them within their Mormon social group. But you could forget about sacrificing time or money on anything that didn't somehow benefit themselves.

My dad knew enough about the church, it's historical warts, the manipulation tactics they used, and he wasn't particularly faithful. So I still don't understand why he could never walk away from it and take us kids out with him.

deleted



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/04/2017 01:52AM by Strength in the Loins.

Strength in the Loins

I can relate to your story. My parents also expected me to carry the Mormon torch despite their shortcomings and crisis of belief. At one point, my dad got into it with GD instructor in the 80s. He told the class that "JS was a lazy treasure hunter that didn't want to do an honest day's work to earn his pay. That's why he started his own religion." Those comments got him called into the BP office and lead to his own 2 years of disbelief and inactivity. Yet, he expected me to serve a mission because he wanted the bragging rights at church.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/01/2017 06:49PM by steve benson.

I had a sort of spiritual queasiness for a long time, but didn't know why. After reading several posts on RfM, I realized what the problem was, and what could be done about it. It took me about 6 months to resign after discovering RfM.

If I knew sooner what I know now (thanks, internet) I would have left whenever that was.

liesarenotuseful Wrote:
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> If I knew sooner what I know now (thanks,
> internet) I would have left whenever that was.

Was that in the 1990's then?

If later, then what got you to look at the truth online?

Getting out wasn't on my to do list. I was inactive for so long it hardly mattered. Had I known about this site (or had the internet) in 2000 after dad died and the HP geezer asshole I've written about started pestering me, I would have been out then.

State intervention. I was a minor when I figured it out.

First biological hazardous i.e. Mortality event ....

If something was set in place kinda like safe sex except it was acknowledging mortality, life's difficulty, so you'd kind of expect it and respect it... respect yourself....

And not knuckle down in anxiety to your first tumor surgery or facing your first emergency.

Maybe the blessing sequence re initiated some sort of submission response in vulnerability to the l d s tribe....

I tried to not let a Mormon reset button roll in the next generation facing their own mortality issues.. well we will see how that goes,

I think if I would have had time to think...instead of the endless "to do" list that came from raising a large family and being a good Mormon lady. If I had read books like Sacred Loneliness earlier, I would have opened my eyes. If I lived somewhere besides the Morridor where everyone I knew thought the exact same thing and echoed the exact same party line, I might have questioned.

So many reasons why I should have left sooner. Most people who know me would never have believed I'd be out, especially my family. It had to be life experience. With all I went through, things just DID NOT ADD UP. It just all fell apart FINALLY in a few moments and I was done.

I think for many people it is that way. They can have all the info (like my daughter does) and I think it is a very personal experience.

I had 3 siblings out before I was and they have told me that my leaving gave them permission to let go FINALLY.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/01/2017 08:08PM by cl2.

My parents could've said it didn't matter to them whether I went on a mission. The Selective Service could've said I had a really high draft lottery number instead of 8. I wouldn't have spent two years selling the lies and would've walked away from the church two years sooner.

My parents went apeshit crazy after I joined. Several times they threatened to kick me out of the house, as I had "dishonored the family," in their eyes.

Later In life, my Mom apologized and said she may have prolonged my stay by pushing so hard against the church. In the end, we both agreed that none of us were prepared for what joining the Mormon church really entailed. Peace, everyone!

Nothing could have gotten me out sooner. I was so TBM. I needed the leaders to go too far. And they did. I needed to see behind their words. And I did. I found poison there. I couldn't have made my discovery without being so immersed. Luckily that happened not long after the mission for me. In a way, I had to overdose.

Access to the Internet, I suppose. It was really when Google took off that I started noticing that when I searched on a Mormon topic, there was always another result or two challenging the topic.

Reading the BofM and the D&C hoisted up the red flags, but I ignored them. I wish the CES letter had been around because I would have immediately left after reading it.

And that person would have represented a brilliance & calm understanding of the nonsense.
My DH was angry with the church stupidity....my nephew was all Christian....I needed a voice of reason.

RfM was my quide. And back in the day "how to resign" info.
I also read some of the Tanners information.....

I had not been active for decades but felt afraid and alone.
Luckily, we didn't push any religion on our kids....we ended the insanity. And they don't have a clue how lucky they are.

Also my grand daughters are so unaware of the one & only truth.
Whew..........dodged a bullet.

Since I still have TBM family.....Dad only knows I'm inactive. But Dear Sister knows I resigned. I just wish she would doubt a lil. She's kept so busy in her ward that it's a lifestyle.

But I'm the Aunt who isn't Mormon.....it's obvious. And hopefully I am the Aunt who represents "safe acceptance" beyond religion.

KJ/AnonyMs



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/02/2017 11:24AM by kj.

kj Wrote:
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> And that person would have represented a
> brilliance & calm understanding of the nonsense.
> My DH was angry with the church stupidity....my
> nephew was all Christian....I needed a voice of
> reason.

Powerful words.
I've heard them from others, too.
They're one reason, when somebody insists I "respect their beliefs" and not speak up or criticize, I tell them to bite me :)

I stopped attending the day I moved out of my parents' house the day I turned 18. I didn't resign until 7 years later, honestly because I didn't know resigning was an option. My parents put the church on my tail, and I had strange men from the family ward and women from the singles ward showing up at my house ALL THE TIME. After I hung up on the Bishop, he called back and left me a voicemail that said if I didn't want to be part of the church, I could resign and he would expedite my resignation. A Google search brought me here in 2009 =)

My dad had a chance to get us all out when I was 6. He stopped attending for a while. My mom diligently took the three of us every week (ages 6, 4 and 1). One Sunday she left my 4 year old brother and me in Sacrament Meeting when she had to take my youngest brother in the hall. My brother and I started playing and making some noise, and the Bishop's wife had to come sit with us (she was my friend's mom, so I thought this was no big deal). My mom was mortified. She dragged us home (we missed Primary!) and left us in the car while she went inside and yelled at my dad about how he absolutely had to come back to church because she couldn't do this anymore. My dad could have said that she could go and he would watch us, at least me and my 4 year old brother so that mom could attend. But no. Instead he reactivated and is still very active, 25+ years later.

I always wondered how much happier my childhood/teenage years would have been if dad had got us out, and how much better my relationship with my dad would be today.

If I had developed a backbone sooner

Basically, if I hadn't been mind-f***ed by the cult-like manipulation of the Mormon church. I had been conditioned to blame myself when things didn't add up or work out the way they were promised. No testimony or answers to prayer? I must not have enough faith, or wasn't trying hard enough, or righteous enough.

Without the mind job, the FIRST time I read the Book of Mormon and didn't get an answer, I would have realized Moroni's promise was a false promise. But GOOD people got answers, so I had to try at least 17 more times over about 20 more years. It also took some other issues to cause major cognitive dissonance before I finally started questioning the CHURCH, instead of blaming myself.

In short, a healthy sense of self trust would have gotten me out sooner.

When I was sixteen, I refused to go to church and suffered for my bad decision. I finally relented but left for good as I was nearing the end of college. At that time, I thought being a non-mormon would be worth any price. I intended to get a job and live with no friends or family if necessary for however long it took to learn to live in the outside world. Fortunately, it didn't turn out to be as daunting as I imagined and I've lived a happy life since then.

I would like to have left earlier but I needed a place to live and food to eat until I could make it on my own.

Nothing. I had to go through a set of experiences and do a lot of research at a time in my life that it made sense to do so.
It all had a certain kind of time line, based on what I experienced. The timing had to be perfect. And it was.

I've said many times, there is no contest. We leave if and when we determine we need to do so.

I would have left sooner if I had known how many wives Joe had and their ages.

But didn't you hear that TLBWWW? I did as early as the late 70's in my late teens early 20's.

I would have left decades earlier if i'd have known where to look for the truth.

I lived in places where very few people knew what a mormon was. Ironically, that was 45 minutes away from Kirtland Ohio.

I didn't have the internet, I didn't know about the Tanners or Fawn Brodie. If I would have known sooner, I would have left sooner.

It is what it is. I can't go back in time. I'm just beyond happy that my husband and kids are also out. My grandkids will never have to deal with the mormon BS.

There were so MANY triggers that should have sent up the ol' red flags...
Though by some standards I should have left earlier than I did,
but, all in all, I'm content that it went the way it did for as long as it took (several decades).
If I could go back, knowing what I know now, they'd have kicked me out for being a disruptive SOB.

Trusting my own questions as being valid. And, the emergence of the feminist era.

I resented the priesthood-for-men only, and thus (supposedly) making men the boss of women (as they already were in so many other areas of my life).

One instance stands out in my mind. I went to a private affair in church, which was the setting-apart(?) of a grandson who had become of age to be given the priesthood. At this event, it was even discussed whether or not I--being a female--should be allowed to attend the affair!

Instantly, I realized, that even this no-nothing and couldn't-care less" lad, supposedly, now held more stature in the church than I (who had been a faithful, contributing, member of the church for several decades). This really stung.

I think this contributed to my determination to study the beginning of the priesthood and the church. And this study taught me the nonsense of an angle (of all things) supposedly having bestowed the office of "Elder", and then pd, on J.Smith and Oliver Cowdery--all of which was convoluted nonsense based on ignorance.

For instance, Peter, James, and John, who supposedly had bestowed the priesthood on J. Smith, never themselves held this office--nor could they have, as only the brother of Moses (Aaron, and his posterity), were given this title and responsibility.

At any rate, I realized that none of the Biblical characters Joseph claimed gave him the priesthood were not even, themselves, eligible to have it.

Furthermore, the computer era come into being, which made it ever-so-much easier to investigate the beginning of the church and priesthood. And, from there, my brain began to open up on the subject of if the church really was--as called--true.

I'd say 2 things could have extracted me form the cult sooner.

1. High school friends that had facts and evidence to explain why the Mormon church was a fraud.

Since they had no clue what Mormons believed, and had no clue about the problematic history, that was a missed opportunity. We never discussed Mormonism, but if they had done so, and explained a problem or two, I would have understood very easily in my pre-mission indoctrination phase.


2. The internet would have gotten me out sooner.

Unfortunately by the time it came along I was a fresh RM, fully brainwashed, and it took a while for the Internet to drill through that thick layer of defenses I'd built up on my mission.

If I had masturbated earlier. Once I did and nothing bad happened, I started to realize that I was being lied to. That led to more research and finally reading NMKMH, when the dam broke and I was free at last.

Ohhh your parents made a rookie mistake in the Shame Business. Never insist there are immediate punishments. Tell them God will punish them in God's time. If it doesn't happen in this life, then your next life is doomed to be spent as a servant.

Good question. I got out fairly early in life (mid-20's), but I had opportunities to reach for the eject handle sooner.

* My first encounter with a serious "shelf" issue was reading some of the non-standard versions of the first vision while I was perusing books at the local library. I was 12 or 13 years old at the time. I tried to stuff that encounter down the memory hole, but it would come up from time to time and I never felt comfortable with the answers LDS defenders came up with. I knew we had been taught that it was super important that Joseph Smith understood the nature of Godhead with God the Father and Jesus Christ as two separate and distinct "personages"--with HG bringing up the rear. Then in this context that was not important--huh? I didn't have the guts to follow this evidence where it led, which is probably just as well because it would have led to mom and dad labeling me as a problem, defiant child etc. Who knows, I could have ended up at one of those God-awful reform camps in rural Utah to learn some respect.

* The other inflection point was deciding to go on a mission. I felt really conflicted about it all, but somehow pretzeled my brain into thinking it was the right thing to do. Honestly, there were some other things I probably would have rather done. But in my family nothing would have been viewed as equally worthy of praise as going on a mission.

* I was 24 once I really started to get a full picture of the deceit of Mormonism. But it took me a couple years to emotionally and practically process that to the point where I could fully stop participating in Mormonism, and eventually resign.

I guess the upshot is that it was too emotionally painful to defy the expectations of my family and culture until I had a comprehensive picture of just how messed up Mormonism was. It is so hardwired into the view of Mormons that people who defy the LDS Church are headed down the road of venal criminality. Maybe it's only natural not to want to be viewed that way. Once my view of the possibilities of how to live expanded beyond the confines of Mormon thinking, I could eventually learn to toss out those parameters and tell them to stuff it!

Oddly enough, a lot of the anti-Mormon stuff that was around when I was growing up in the 1980s was counter-productive and only served to push me in deeper. Most of it was produced by evangelical christian sects with an obvious axe to grind and very little regard for the truth. (Evangelicals are even worse than Mormons when it comes to lying.)

As a Mormon, I could easily pick out the lies and the distortions and so I believed for a long time that these folks represented the entire sphere of anti-Mormon arguments.

If there had been an internet and people like Richard Bushman and Jeremy Runnels when I was younger, I might have gotten out sooner. But honestly, I was in pretty damn deep. I think it took time and life experience and the chance to see how the church really operates to really get me to open up to the possibility of it all being false. It's not easy to hasten that process along.