Posted by:
exmonion
(
)
Date: February 17, 2018 06:39PM
Thank you, Frank in AZ, for your wonderful post! You write the truth. I appreciate getting a man's point of view on this. What you are going through is awful, and I wish you the best if coping with what I personally believe is an evil cult.
I was a faithful, true-blue Mormon follower, the only organist in our ward, and a certified teacher, so I feel that I did a good job of "magnifying my callings." Yet, I was a divorced single working mother, not temple-married. Because of this, my children were taught in Primary that we were NOT a "forever family," each of my children, and I, would be alone in the hereafter. So, what you wrote, really resonated with me:
"The biggest negative about allowing this to continue is that the very children, your children, that she believes she's protecting, are being subtly shown that something isn't right about their own Dad." (Their own Mom, in my case.)
My children and I had suffered Mormon physical abuse, in each of our childhoods, and had been threatened to never tell about it. Not knowing about the abuse, I forced my children to go to church. In those days, hard-rock music was to blame for kids' rebellions. Seriously--in RS, one teacher played one of songs backwards, and it sounded like "Here's to my sweet Satan" and "It's fun to smoke marajuana". I was so brainwashed, that I confiscated my son's music and tore up the posters off the wall. I honestly thought the music was making my son hate church. I can never apologize enough to my children, for trying to push a cult onto them!
The OP is right about Mormons never asking us flat-out WHY we left their cult. Not ONE Mormon has asked me! Plenty have told me, and for women, it is "wanting to sin," or "not being able to live up to Mormon standards." My answer to the latter is "The Mormon standards were too low."
One Saturday, I FINALLY ASKED my children WHY they didn't like church, and they told me of the past abuse that they had kept secret from me--physical beatings by Priesthood leaders, and an attempted molestation of my little girl. One second later, we were OUT, and we formally resigned together. My children were and are good, loving, honest, peaceful, hard-working kids, and didn't deserve abuse for being late for meetings or refusing to attend an activity, such as pioneer trek. My daughter didn't ask to be molested by a creep she loathed.
The only solution for us, was for me to tell the children the Truth, and then resign from the church, completely.
What happened after we left was not as bad as what we had suffered as Mormons.
Still, we are good people, and the Mormons neighbors don't like seeing our success, and my children have bought homes in the neighborhood, and their children are going to the same schools, and all of us are doing well financially and happiness-wise.
So, they make up stories to malign us! I didn't realize that other ex-Mormons and less-active Mormons have suffered from Mormon gossip, too. Yikes--at least they don't say we're porn addicts!
A picture is worth a thousand words, and what the Mormons see contradicts any stories they make up. Still, this might have done harm to our careers, had we not been with large, non-Utah-owned companies, or self-employed, or with mostly non-Mormon, out-of state clients, etc. Heaven help those employed by the church or other Mormons. I've heard of ex-Mormons losing their jobs, when they quit the cult.
But the OP might lose his wife's love and respect...so very sad.
If the OP stops going to church, his wife will be marginalized as "the wife of an inactive", and often blamed for her husband's inactivity. I have been there. She won't be included in the socializing, which is mostly couples. She, as well as her children, will suffer through the temple-marriage preaching, tithing demands, and other pressures. She will also be the brunt of Mormon gossip and even shunning. She will see for herself how nasty Mormons can be, if your life doesn't match up with their plan of perfection. Maybe then, she will start to study her way out of the cult.