okay. so, super long story but basically I'm a nevermo who made the super smart decision to date and fall in love with a mormon boy months before he left on his mission. pls dont berate me for this. anyways, we obviously broke up (without much choice),so these past two years now we've still been emailing regularly. while he's been gone, I took it upon myself to look at mormonism with a genuinely open mind, with the intention of proving the church to be true. well, as you may guess, my efforts were impossible, because the church as you all know is a big ugly fraud. I had told my mish that I had been looking into the church...so he probably got his hopes up but upon finding all the crap the church hides I sort of just started avoiding the topic with him. We got in arguments when it was obvious he was trying to convert me and we didnt speak for months.
anyway, fast-forward to now, we're back to talking and have been for a few months now. He comes back in less than four months, which really gives me anxiety because we both confessed we still after all this time have intense feelings for each other.
I decided to come clean about what I thought about the church. The reason for this NOW being he just sent a mass email about how solid his testimony is...which I think freaked me out. this thought of losing him to mormonism...anyways The last thing I sent him was a message which basically amounts to "While you've been gone I put my heart and soul into investigating the church because I love you and I'm sorry to say this but after what I found I know the church is not true." I did not lay out ANY reasons or facts about why I thought that it was not true, I just expressed my anger and sadness over the facts the church hides from its members. And I told him that if his church is really true, it can handle his questions and doubts (he had sent a message before saying how his solidified testimony "chased all his doubts away). So I just encouraged him in that. And I sort of gave him the ultimatum saying if you know I'm not in the picture of your life as a non-member then just tell me so I can stop torturing myself over this. In the end, I reassured him I love him, as a mormon and not as a mormon. ugh. I hate that I love reading these ex mormon stories because I think I'm just fantasizing about him leaving. Its really taking up too much of my brain space.
So.. even if this doesn't break his shelf...maybe I planted a seed somewhere in there. what do you guys think? How do you think he'll respond?

Sounds like you are both trying to fix each other, to make the other person something they are not.

Think about that for a moment. Is that really love? For me, if I feel I have to change someone to fit what I feel is right, it isn't really love.

just to reiterate...I really wanted the church to be true. I spent months in denial because I truly want to spend my life with this man. I told him in the last message I don't have any intention of changing him and he has every right to dismiss everything I said. I don't want to change him...but like every one on here who has loved ones who are mormon...its hard not to feel like you need to "save them". I am trying not to cross that line and give him completely free will to make his own choice.

"maybe I planted a seed somewhere in there" <- The desire and hope the person will change. You also told him TSCC isn't true, but, from what I read, didn't give any reasons behind this accusation. To him it is a baseless attack on his religion.

To me, the post does not read that you love him as a mormon. In deed, his Mormonism seems to be causing a lot of problems.

okay...I can see that. I realize that maybe I can perceive my intent as being pure but its easy for an outside perspective to pick out me trying to force something on him that isnt him. and maybe I was unintentionally, out of desperation. Now I feel just incredibly guilty...my intent was not at all to attack his religion...I tried to be very careful about not doing that in the message. but to him, youre right it will look that way. I might have just screwed things up. I appreciate your thoughts.

You already love him, so that means you love him as a Mormon. Now you have to see if he will love you as "not a Mormon".

Sometimes they encourage missionaries to repeat "their testimony" in order to convince themselves the "church is true". OP can only present him facts and see if they break his shelf.

If not, the OP is best to move on. I'm assuming they're around the same age, in which case they have a lot of life ahead of them, so don't despair about a lost Mormon love interest.

lady - you haven't thought through the issue... say he does come clean and becomes an ex-mo. What about his mom and dad? sisters and brothers, aunts and uncles etc that are mo.

They WILL never stop trying to convert you/him back. It's like a cancer in remission that keep coming back and back.

run - run - run - as fast and as far as you can when this - else you be infected with this virus.....

Bang Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Sounds like you are both trying to fix each other,
> to make the other person something they are not.
>
> Think about that for a moment. Is that really
> love? For me, if I feel I have to change someone
> to fit what I feel is right, it isn't really love.

yah, but manipulation and counter manipulation is MORmON style love at its best !!!

A high number of Mormon missionaries go inactive or leave the faith after their return, but given your friend's recent email, I would not count on him being one of them.

During their exit interviews with the mission president, missionaries are often counseled to marry in the temple ASAP upon their return (some MPs will suggest a six month timeframe.) It is not at all unusual for young, healthy missionaries seeking companionship to do just that. Also, your friend will also have a target on his back, as faithful young Mormon women will now see him as a desirable mate, having fulfilled his priesthood responsibility.

All I think you can do is to be truthful with your friend -- that you will never convert to Mormonism, and you will not consent for your future children to be raised in that church. If you are honest with him I think you will find out soon enough where he stands.

Seems a difficult situation and maybe never work out, however I'm almost as old as the hills and have many nephews who served and are serving missions. Some are totally dedicated to their call, later when they get home and out of the mission environment they seem to change their dedication. It would be sad if boy friend eventually softens up and it was too late.

I'm a totally dedicated atheist and my wife of 60 years is a dedicated JW, we have nearly always got a long fine. I give her, her way and she gives me mine. And we are close.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/01/2017 05:42PM by gannosu.

This makes me happy. Congrats on a happy marriage.

When I was home from my mission a week or so, a nevermo girl who I had gone out with a few times called me up. She was the daughter of a Lutheran minister actually. Anyway at the end of our date, she told me how she would like to see me more, but wouldn't as long as I was involved in with Mormonism. She then tried to share concerns about the cult aspects of the Church.

Being so freshly indoctrinated, I told her how wrong she was and bore my testimony. I was in no frame of mind to analyze what she was saying. I wish now I had listened to her. Not necessarily even to see where the relationship would have led.

Very high chance your missionary will react the same way. It could take years for him to come around, if ever.

He's away, lonely, isolated, etc. Your emails are probably the closest thing he enjoys to female companionship. I wouldn't put much stock into his professions of love at this point.

As others noted above, he'll be a hot commodity when he returns. If he's still TBM, he'll forget you faster than you can imagine. If his testimony is faltering, he may cling to you.

Either way, you'll find out pretty quickly upon his return.

Take it easy and take it slow. When he comes back give him time to return to normal reality. He may be acting like he is 1000% devout because he is under pressure and this is what the leadership of his mission expects of him. If he really cares for you he may change, he may not. Right now it's looking like the majority of missionaries go inactive pretty quickly if they don't go to BYU, so see how it goes. 19 is pretty young to be deciding on your entire future life. Take it slowly. I married a girl I met the year before my mission and we have been together for a very long time, but were not a good example of what usually happens.

In any case I think a young person should fall in love several times with different ones before they make the final commitment.

The only thing I would re-iterate in this comment is to let him "get back to reality". When all of my son's friends came home from their missions, they were still zealots for at least a few weeks. The mission doesn't end just because they came home. The mormons still control every minute of his time. Going on "splits" with the missionaries in his ward, giving talks at church, sometimes they even set him up with a job, like door-to-door pest control sales or window washing thru a "company" affiliated with the church. They keep a very close eye on them - don't want to take their foot off the proverbial gas pedal. They don't want them to get too comfortable.

I served a mission in the Philippines (86-88). I had a solid testimony of the LDS church. When I came home I wanted to marry in the temple ASAP. I remember that the biggest reason for me to marry was to have LDS-sanctioned sex. Of course I couldn't admit that to anyone, not even myself but looking back, that was the reason. I married the first woman to give me the time-of-day and that proved to be a horrible mistake.

I heard once that a returned missionary is someone who talks about nothing but the gospel but who thinks about nothing but sex. This was true for me anyway.

I am a sucker for true-love stories. I know what it means to be in love in a big way. I fell madly in love with my second wife (before we were married obviously). I now understand what unconditional love feels like. Mormons don't have that. Their love is always based on the idea that he can love you as long as you are in his cult.

There are phases your RM will go through. If you attack his belief as soon as he arrives home he will dismiss you and write you out of his life. If you really want to be with him then you should avoid talking about the church all together.

I'm not trying to help you be emotionally healthy, I'm just trying to tell you what will most likely work. Avoid talking about the church for at least the first 6 months. Spend time with him and show him you are a good person. Over time he will realize that you are a good person who doesn't really need the gospel. It will put him in a moral dilemma - continue to be with you or write you off. At least you will have his hormones working in your favor.

One more thing...there will be some competition over him from the other TBM woman in his life. His family will try to set him up with a number of willing TBM woman they know. He will be spending time in lots of church activities and meeting a dozen other girls who are already mormon and willing to marry him. The number of RM's that young mormon women can marry is dwindling so the competition will be fierce. You may have to attend some young adult activities just to keep up with the competition. Again, I'm not trying to help you be healthy I'm just letting you know what you are up against.

My hope is that over time he will see that you are awesome and he loves how he feels when he is near you. You can help him find the permission he needs to be with you and be ok as a cult member. Tell him that he did his time for his church. He doesn't need to give them anything more. He did what was required of him and now he can have something for himself that he really wants. You both can have a wonderful life together without the church. You can show him true, unconditional love - and this is something the other TBM girls can't give him. What would happen to his relationship if he marries a TBM and he wants to leave the cult? That would not be the case with you.

Anyway I'm rambling. I do think it is worth a shot. Good luck!

praydude,

THANK YOU THANK YOU from the bottom of my heart Perhaps it is because we are both sucks for true love, but I really do believe in the power of unconditional love. Sometimes I feel discouraged and uncertain with my pursuit of this man because of the doubts people feed me about the future of our relationship. Many of my non-mormon friends ask me if its really worth all the trouble, and each time I confronted with that question there isn't a single thing inside me that doesn't scream YES OF COURSE IT IS!!! Love like this is the only thing that's worth the trouble.

I appreciate you giving insight into the phases he will go through when he comes back. I intend to do exactly as what everyone is saying, which is to proceed slowly and with love and gentleness. I don't care if it will take years for his shelf to break. Or if his shelf breaks at all. I really just want to give him the best love he will ever know.A whole frickin lifetime of it. sorry for the super cheese.
anyways yea, thank you for having hope in us haha. if everything works out in years time I'll post on here and give u a shout out

If you love him, ask him how he could, in good conscience, sing the praises of a rapist who raped his followerz wives and teenage daughters, while discriminating against gay parents by rejecting their children?

I didn't believe in true love until it hit me in the face. As a mormon I didn't think it existed. True love is a powerful thing, and it is not something to be taken lightly.

More than anything else, more than the "anti-mormon" arguments, the evidence that the church is a fraud, or obvious failings of the church doctrine, the thing that helped me out of the cult the most was the example of unconditional love from my wife (then girlfriend). She showed me that she would love me wither I was mormon or not. She is an amazing woman really. Her example of how to love other people and to be a force for good in this world put my mormon roots to shame. She didn't let me off lightly either. She challenged me about the VALUES of the mormon church vs ETHICS. It wasn't the failing doctrines of the church that snapped me out of the cult, it was her example of what it means to really have love and compassion. Once I understood that it was easier to see the church for the fraud that it is.

A truly loving god would see that I am trying to make the best of my life knowing everything that I know and proceeding with the best possible choices that I can make - and he (or she) would have to forgive me if I can't believe in him or her. Unconditional love is the cult-breaker. One can't experience that and still rationalize the mormon god-man relationship.

After a few meet-ups with him make sure to show him how you feel. Don't hold back. Let him know you will have him in your life no matter what. Let him know you are a soft place he can fall. Don't talk about the church (normal people don't do that anyway) just talk about you and him and your feelings. Love like that is almost impossible to resist. Open and honest. You may fall on your face and get the shit kicked out of you by love but it is worth it. To live any other way is to live a half-life, like a hollow human making do with the mundane. This was the choice I had to make and I chose love.

If your relationship gets physical, make sure that he is prepared for where you are both headed. Make sure that he is willing to accept the consequences of it. Verbally ask him if he is OK with where you are headed. If you push this too soon he will blame you (while labeling you as a whore) and kick you out of his life because he is taught that it is ok by the misogynistic cult he belongs to. This will be something that he really wants but he will be too afraid to ask for. There is much shame in mormondom for physical intimacy and this can be a real problem. Just make sure that he knows EXACTLY how you feel and give him the room to let you know how he feels.

When I was 20 and returning from my mission I would have given my heart over to someone like you who could show me unconditional love. It would be the first time in my life that I would have felt such a thing. It is my hope that your return missionary doesn't shut his heart off to such a thing. Missionaries are taught to "lock their hearts". They are taught that emotion is subservient to intellect. I can tell you that since I have followed my heart I have never been disappointed. I'm very proud of who I have become and I'm also glad to have followed my heart. My heart never lied to me. (unlike my intellect) Ever.

Good luck with your RM! We are the truth-bearers of true love! True love works like a beacon shining in the darkness laying all the cult's horrid lies bare! The church is a lie and if he is willing to follow his heart he will see that in time. Time is on our side because time favors the truth.

One more thing...To all of the posters who want to say that your boyfriend is a write off - I was in that man's shoes too. I was a returned missionary who never knew what unconditional love was. We all know what this woman is up against because we all were in the cult at some point. It is important to really understand the gravity of her situation BUT we can't simply give up on people because they are in a cult. If that were the case I would have remained in it, never knowing there is a better way. Luckily for me I found my future wife who showed me by her example what unconditional love was.

All I'm saying is give this young man a chance. He's trying to do the right thing and he's just in a controlling cult. There is still hope for him. I was there too.

I married a TBM five years ago. I told before we married that I was never going to convert, and I told her why. She knows that I know it's all bogus, and yet she still will periodically get upset with me because I won't convert. The only arguments we've had have been about my "choice" to not believe in something that was so obviously started as a scam.

Quite frankly, religion bores me; and I'd have no interest in arguing with my wife or my in-laws about Mormonism. But they cannot talk about anything else, and the only way for me to avoid drama at family/Mormon functions is to not say anything and to ignore most of what is said. My wife and her family think that I am anti-social and borderline rude, but I'm just trying to maintain the peace for the handful of hours I have to spend with them.

The upshot is, forget the mishie until after he has actually left the church and forged his own life as his own man. As long as he is a member and unwilling or unable to stand on his own against pressure from his TBM family, you will be standing on your own alone, biting your tongue to keep from being "that gal" who ruined Thanksgiving or Aunt Alma's 90th birthday party.

I sort of agree with you because the ideals of "true love" don't take into account the realities of dealing with TBM family and friends. Most families have elements that suck. TBM families even more so. If your TBM elder follows his heart it also means that he will have to stand up to his family that helped manipulate him to go on his mission in the first place.

It is a tough place to be and when I was at that point in my life I chose love. It still was difficult. My TBM parents paid for my ex-wife's attorney and tried to take me for everything I owned. They worked to estrange my kids from me and they nearly succeeded. Many court battles later I was awarded primary custody of my children because their TBM mom was too unstable.

My father died a couple of years ago and for the last 10 years of his life I didn't talk to him...and then he died. My TBM mom and I talk now but we are still dealing with this cloud of judgment and hate with the things they did to me when I divorced my first wife to be with my true love.

Why do I say my true love is actually my true love? I don't know other than she is the best person I know. She works hard and is honest and shows me in her actions that she loves and supports me. We don't celebrate the "Hallmark Holidays" like Valentine's day or even our own anniversary. To us, true love means that we show each other every day why the other is so important and precious to us. If I can't show my wife everyday by my actions that she truly matters to me then a card on a holiday isn't going to make things better. We know that we love each other by how we treat each other every single day.

It has been 12 years now since I found my true love. I wish this gift on everyone I know. I hope you are able to find it for yourself. Your missionary may open his heart to that...or he may not. Either way, you know you CAN love someone unconditionally, and that is what matters. You have that love inside of you. It will find its roots when the right person comes along. I hope for your missionaries' sake that he is the one. It is a beautiful thing.

You deserve better. You can do better than someone who believes in eternal polygamy. That's NOT love.

Love is a force of nature. Much like a hurricane. Much like the sunrise. Love defines why we live. Love binds us together and makes our lives bearable.

If I were a praying man (I'm an atheist) I would pray for this missionary. I want to pray for all the missionaries in the cult. There is a better way. Choose love! You not only won't regret it - you will be rewarded with a lifetime of open, honest, connection to the great beauty that is encapsulated in our human experience. It is difficult to describe. I feel such gratitude for my life and for finding my true love. I want this for everyone. It has been 12 years now since I found my true love and everyday is a gift. Everyday is a chance to show her how important she is to me. I want this to happen for the rest of the world. I should probably sign off before I sound too crazy. The world needs more unconditional love for the poor wretched fools who sacrifice everything to a cult the way I did.

Some great posts there, Praydude. Thanks.

^^ agreed. Your words on this, praydude, have been such a wonderful gift to me.

In the past fews weeks since I have posted this, my missionary and I have been having discussions about the problems in the church. We do not argue over them, however we talk about them and discuss how our perspectives are bringing us to different conclusions. He has admitted there are not answers to some of the problems, however, for now, he says its an ongoing study for me and for him. These conversations do not go in circles like they did a year or so ago before when it was clear he was just trying to convert me. Something, I don't know what yet, is beginning to happen. I think he is receiving my perspectives, which differ greatly from the people in his current environment, and considering them with great sincerity. I don't want to get to excited about that though, because he still clearly has strong belief in the Church. The important thing I think is we are remaining completely transparent to one another about our feelings, ideas and thoughts, and something, however small, is clicking for the first time.

And if any of you are praying people, I would be greatly appreciative of your prayers for my missionary (as so wonderfully suggested by praydude). His freedom, well-being and happiness is so so very important e to me. He deserves nothing less than the very best life and love. Thanks all

I have enjoyed our conversation and it gave me a chance to reflect on my life's journey and how much I have to be grateful for.

I would try to avoid religious subjects with your missionary if at all possible. I would focus on his feelings and what he is going through. Same for you. Talk about music, movies, fun things you both want to do when he arrives home and what he wants to do after he is back home. Leaving the cult is a long process and it will take years - even after one realizes the church is a sham it still takes a long time to process.

It would be helpful for you to read about the stages of loss. These steps are what everyone goes through. Denial can take a while and be frustrating, but then comes anger. I was there for a long time, probably several years truth be told. I still sometimes get angry about the cult when the subject comes up. My wife did a wonderful job helping me through the extraction-from-the-cult process. She did it by loving me and reaching out for help and advice from other ex-mormons in our area.

Good luck with your missionary when he arrives! May love triumph!! I've got my fingers, eyes, and toes crossed for you both.

Pray dude is right. Don't talk about the"problems in the Church". Luvsick, you should be the oasis in the desert, the safe port in the storm, the breath of fresh air. Stay above the fray for now, don't turn this into a choice between the Church and you. Your strength will be greater when he's home and out of the pressure cooker of "Church, church church, and religion, religion, religion." Talk about friends, music, art, ...I don't know, just stuff people in love talk about.

Let's face it, you aren't going to make any decisions before he comes home...don't box him into a corner where HE thinks HE has to...you very well might lose while he's in brainwash city. Things change when you come home. Plenty of time then to worry about the problems in the church, etc. The way things are going for the Church, it will probably be worse by then.

It's time to be a friend, not an adversary.

^^^ THIS ^^^^ I totally LOVE this post! Give him time to adjust. It may be a few months. A returned missionary is a fragile thing. Don't push him right when he arrives home or he will break. I do hope he sees YOU as the oasis in the desert! What a fantastic analogy. You are going to be the soft place he can fall to. His support and safety. Unconditional love is such a powerful thing.

Please let us know how things are going a couple of weeks before he arrives!

Yes!!! +google

Please google "lds endowment" there are movies on youtube. It is 1 hour and 19 min long. The lds faith has a different believe and watching this could help you understand it better.

I would simply say after praying to Heavenly Father, I was moved to investigate the facts or fiction of the church. The Lord told me and showed me it was all a fraud. That will either shut him down once and for all...or peek his interest. At this point..that is the only thing that will work imho.