I don't know if you guys remember me or not but in November I got your advice on how to tell my wife I didn't believe in the church anymore. She was pregnant and I received some advice from some of you that I should wait until the baby was born so she could have a peaceful pregnancy. I took that advice and our beautiful boy was born. I blessed him about 3 weeks ago. I finally got up the courage to tell her today. It was so hard! I barely did it. She was respectful and asked me about it. She was already suspicious about my testimony but I think I shocked her when I said I didn't believe in God. She cried a little for like an hour or so. She mentioned that this was happening to her because she was bad before she met me. I assume she's referring to a guy I know she slept with (before I met her). That kind of hurt but I'll let it slide today because she has a lot to take in. I did tell her I would still go to church every Sunday with her (I honestly don't mind going). I don't want her to be looked down on because I'm inactive. I also told her I'm the same person and I wasn't going to become a drug addict now or anything lol. She's really bummed but I'm glad we're finally on the same page after all this time. I'll probably just go to sacrament and Sunday school though when we go to church he he. Anyway, just wanted to get my thoughts out because I have no one else to tell right now. Thanks for reading. Feel free to comment, you can't offend me.

Wow, nuuvox, that's a lot to report.

As reported, things seem to be going as well as can be expected.

Good luck.

huh ?

Yeah, I blessed him because I wanted to give my wife the full experience. Also, I just kinda wanted to as well ha ha. I know it doesn't make sense but that's how it is lol

My husband sort of played along until both kids were baptized. Right or wrong, he didn't want to deal with grandparents being all whiny and sad about his falling away and making things worse.

We wasn't about to let some "worthy priesthood holder" jerk stand in. The kids promptly stopped going shortly after the last baptism and the grandparents were none the wiser.

There were plusses and minuses about the way we did things. There is not one right way to deal with this.

I wish you the very best! Faith or no faith shouldn’t be the cause of marital problems, but unfortunately, it’s causes many.

What you did was show her your integrity. I hope she sees you for the remarkable man you are, and that she can forgive herself for any past imperfections. Perhaps, letting her know that you love her and don’t judge her because of the past will bring you both together. In time, she may realize that God (if God exists) doesn't go around taking away testimonies of spouses. The
Boner.

Yeah, I've told her that I don't believe she was bad. Also, I told her if she believes in repentance, God isn't holding a grudge now is he? She just needs time I think.

My wife felt that infertility was do to me not being temple-worthy. I call that pretty fucked up.

Also, I get the blessing part. Even though my FIL did it in church, privately I gave my children blessings as their Dad who loved them.

That's sweet

Were you eventually able to do a Luke Skywalker using The Force to hit the central core?

Yep.

Insane Mormon Thinking: God says to himself, "ah, she's sinning.
I'll sit tight until she gets married and then I'll make her
husband lose his testimony . . . bwahahahaha."

That's a big bomb to drop on a believer. Sometimes they do better with some kind of statement that you believe God is love or some wishy washy vague woo.

First, congratulations on the birth of your wonderful son!

The saddest part is that your wife automatically blames herself for doing something wrong. Maybe some day you can point that out.

I'm glad that you get to be honest about it. That's a good thing. I'm also glad that you have a good enough relationship that you are willing to support her. Remember, she had no reference of thought outside the church views.

My husband played along for years waiting for me to catch on. I don't know if your wife ever will. If she is a reader and questioner, she might. Maybe her emotional needs and social needs will take priority.

My only advice is to be the best husband you can be so she sees that the "evil apostate atheist" villainization she hears at church is not true. Thank her for being the kind of person who values honesty. Be the best dad you can be.

Hoping for the best and thanks for sharing! Many here can relate.

Yeah, my plan was to tell her only about my lack of belief in the church but it slipped out (because I was being totally open probably).

Thanks for the advice and experience.

S



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/26/2018 10:11PM by nuuvox.

Sorry, I am having trouble with this thread and it keeps replying here under yours. Please disregard this comment.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/26/2018 10:30PM by nuuvox.

Don't worry about it. You're trying to deal with it in your way.

It's hard to know what will come next.

Will she simmer with passive aggressiveness?
will she keep blaming herself?
Will she fall out of love with you (because it was church-dependent)?
Will she roll with it and figure God will sort it out because you are a good person?
Will she buy a vowel and see though it herself at some point?

Whatever you do and whatever happens, know it is not your fault for being honest. It's not your fault you woke up to the nonsense. It's hard to go through life with someone in a faith bubble but it is possible. At some point she might recognize how lucky she is that she married you. She might not be able deal with it. Time will tell.

Thanks, I have enjoyed reading your comments and will take them to heart. I'll do my best.

Big bomb indeed. It’s like finding unexploded ordinance in your back yard, hoping like hell it’s a dud, and beating it with a sledgehammer. Of course, women do a slow burn, so you don’t know if you’re out of the woods yet.

Babyloncansuckit Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

> Of course, women do a slow burn, so you don’t
> know if you’re out of the woods yet.

Who are you talking about? 'Of course'?

True

I had a similar story. Told my wife of 4 decades I never believed. Got served divorce papers within a month. Churchco wins again. Hope your outcome is different. Remember you just changed her whole eternal existance. Tread lightly

Got it thanks. Sorry to hear that happened to you.

4 decades!? I read 4 years the first time. Holy cow, I'm very sorry for that happening.

There’s a big difference between exmo and Atheist, even though almost all exmos go through an Atheist phase. You can absolutely prove the church is false. However, you can’t absolutely prove there is no God. So realistically, you might move on from Atheism. Your wife may be comforted by that possibility.

You just can’t go back to being a Mormon. I know I sure can’t. Is it because I’m an Atheist? No, it’s because I love God. I’m a total fanboy. And the Mormons desecrate the divine in the most banal ways. I suppose maybe there should be a place where meaning well counts more than being effective, but we’re not like, five.

The advice given here, that has proven effective for other people, is to take a break from Church for a while. After you’ve decompressed, you and your wife can investigate low-demand community churches that don’t care whether or not you accept them. Staying Atheist forever may prove impractical in your situation.

That's interesting to hear that people go through an atheist phase. I wonder if that will be the case with me. Honestly, atheist is just a term I use to get my point across. If there is a loving God I am totally open to receiving a sign. However, he's been silent for 29 years now. Thanks for your comments.

It’s an issue of semantics. God is inside, not outside. If you are loving, God is loving, because God and you are hyperdimensionally connected. You exist in time and out of time simultaneously, solving the paradox of the Wheeler-DeWitt equation. You are an eternal being of light, as we all are, as we will discover en-masse over the next decade. Gosh I hate secrets.

Mormon God is a sock puppet for an old boy’s club. Not the same. Religions are technologies for experiencing the divine. That’s why so many widely disparate practices work. Mormonism generates faith. That’s good. But at tremendous personal cost. That’s bad. Meditation and Yoga are low impact practices. Here’s a practice that’s super easy and as effective as the Sunday 3-hour block:

Get nice and relaxed. Draw a long breath in through your nose. While you’re doing it, think of how grateful you are to be alive. Continue that feeling as you exhale, and at the end say “Thank you”. Do it a few times and notice how it feels in your body. You’ve just dipped your toe in the water. There’s so much to this Earth experience you wouldn’t believe it. You just have to be open to it. It’s okay if Mormonism was only a stepping stone. You’ll never cross a stream standing on one stone.

"If you are loving, God is loving, because God and you are hyperdimensionally connected."

Good grief.

I thought this sentence -- a rapture / 2nd-coming / end-of-the-world type of prediction -- was especially "good grief"-y!

Babyloncansuckit Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> You are an eternal being of light, as we
> all are, as we will discover en-masse over the
> next decade. Gosh I hate secrets.

So, Mr/Ms/Mrs Babolyncansuckit, what's the date?

Babyloncansuckit Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> You can absolutely prove the
> church is false. However, you can’t absolutely
> prove there is no God. So realistically, you might
> move on from Atheism.

theism = belief in a god or gods

a = prefix meaning "without."

If you have no belief in a god or gods, then you are an atheist.
There is huge difference between not having a belief in a god
and claiming to know that there is no god.

Not having a belief in a god or gods is not a character flaw,
nor is it something that needs to be "moved on from."

That said, I don't know that, decades ago, some pirate didn't
buried a box of diamonds somewhere in my back yard, but I'm not
going to dig up my back yard just because it COULD be true.

I understand wanting to get the blessing done before you talked with her.

Don't worry about the few that overlay your situation with their own narrow view of life.

I hope things work out for you. Be aware that your wife may share anything you tell her with the bishop resulting in him "seeking you out".

Hopefully you'll come back often and keep us updated.

Good luck

Thanks for your comments. I will "return and report."

Congratulations on the birth of your son! I'm glad that things are going well. In time, see if you can convince your wife to take a week off from church periodically. And if you haven't already, consider declining callings or only accepting a low-demand calling.

Congratulations on your new baby!

I remember you.

My husband and I met at BYU. We had been married about 6 years, when he found out that the cult was a fraud, and he told me, immediately, and shared with me, "No Man Knows My History," and some Mormon writings that were damning. I was very TBM, and I refused to believe anything he told me. We reached an agreement that church would not interfere in our marriage.

My husband couldn't go along and pretend to be a Mormon. He had too much integrity to be fake. The Mormons demanded too much of him, for him to "fly under the radar," and his TBM high priest father and Bishopric brother and RS president mother were in our ward. He stopped paying tithing, because he didn't want to pay good money to a fraudulent cult, to support it and perpetuate the lies. He felt he had already given too much to that scam, already. I understood, and paid tithing only for my own income.

The reality was, that my husband was "inactive" and a "non-believer," and everyone knew it. He still believed in God, but that made no difference to the Mormons we knew. We were no longer included in our TBM couple "friends' social activities, even outside of church. I was disrespected and even BLAMED for my husband leaving the cult. I experienced the nasty underbelly of Mormonism, because my husband was not there to smooth things out for me, so I could "fake it." He was not there to protect me and our children from Mormon abuse. After a year, I began studying for myself, and after 18 months, I left, along with our children.

My husband was patient, and offered us MORE to life than just church. We had fun family outings on the weekends, little league, soccer, vacations and weekend trips, etc, and became too busy to feel that there was any kind of "void" where Mormonism had once been. We still believe in God and Christ, and sometimes attend the Lutheran and Methodist churches. It's all about LOVE, really. If you believe in Love, it's the same as believing in God (not the Mormon God who doesn't love unconditionally).

I wish the same for you. Someday, maybe your wife and child will break free of the cult. I don't know of many people who have made a mixed-religion marriage work when one of them was a Mormon or other cult member. Cults are different than religions. Two different Christian religions of any kind seem to work out fine, though.

One woman on this board likes to give us tips on how to make a marriage with a Mormon work, and she does give good advice....
however it is the Mormon husband who pays the tithing! Not her! I haven't seen this work when the male tithe-payer is the one who doesn't believe. It's like, when you have to "put your money where your mouth is", that it all falls apart.

I wish you wouldn't have to live a life of pretense. Please understand, that I strongly believe this would be bad for your children! Responsible parents owe their children the truth. How could you ever look at that little face, and lie?

Let us know how things are in a month or a year, if you can.

The shock of your wife hearing you lost your faith in Mormonism and God both will be reverberating for some time to come.

It isn't going to be just her hearing the news. Once she shares it with friends and family, they will be on her side as in their book you are now an apostate.

Blessing your baby boy must have been a joy. I fear once the word gets out you don't believe, you may be disqualified from those things going forward. My heart goes out to you as you're caught between two worlds.

Mother who Knows says it well in that you don't want to live a lie teaching your children right from wrong. You're growing too, not only your baby boy. Consider it part of a learning curve that we're on. We didn't ask to be born Mormon, yet we were.

You take what good you can from the religion, and leave the rest. But don't let it define you or jeopardize your future.

Congratulations Nuuvox for being forward and honest with your wife. My heart goes out to you because I was there too. I'm a RM and a TBM for 34 years. It was not an easy step to take but we both took it.

I was a cultural mormon for a few years until I realized the damage I was doing to my kids by supporting this cult even though I didn't believe in it. From my perspective the mormon church is a harmful cult and I hope you are able to show the way out for the rest of your family. The leaving process takes years, perhaps even a decade.

To me relationships between family members are super important (if they are healthy) because there really is no god out there to save you. All we have is each other. I hope your wife will see that your love for her transcends anything the church can give her.

Good Luck to the both of you!

If God was punishing husbands for their Mormon wives not being virgins when they married, he would have a lot of punishing to do. Very few young Mormon women getting married today are virgins, although most claim they are. Some flat out lie about it, some try to justify that they are still virgins because of some technicality. I had a female friend claim that her boyfriend didnt finish hence she was technically still a virgin.

I wish society would move on from this obsession with female virginity.

A woman who has had sex still has value and can be a wonderful person--AMAZING.

And it's such a double standard. An experienced man is a stud. An experienced woman is a slut. Enough already.

The concept of virginity was invented by men . . . who thought
a penis was so magnificent it could change what a woman was.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/27/2018 03:52PM by baura.

Women were (and sometimes still are) viewed as personal receptacles for men to use. They don't want a "used" receptacle.

They don't want to use their resources on the product of a used receptacle that is not theirs. Laws and devices (chastity belts- sheesh) have been used to enforce that the receptacle that they pay for (dowry) is unused for centuries.

Women's role historically has been to be breeders under men's control. Just read the Bible.

I don't know if the new tend will continue (thank you independent women of Ireland for standing up to women-controlling traditions) for women to stop perpetuating this. Religion is doing its best to keep women in this mindset as nuuvox's wife's reaction shows.

This is the thinking behind chewed gum, licked cupcake, and handled rose which is still taught to women. This is the thinking behind men "giving away" their daughters to wed. Women still have so far to go but the recent progress is encouraging. Sadly, it is the women themselves who allow and perpetuate these attitudes.

Congratulations to you and bravo for your courage. My only input would be to try to get your kids out of it as soon as possible. It isn't fair to them to impose the burden of the church on them just to make things easier.

Congratulations and good luck on your journey. I left the Church 30 years ago, and first claimed to be an atheist but soon realized I was really agnostic - I had no proof either way, but was willing to entertain the possibility. 30 years later it really is atheist - I no longer entertain the possibility, nor do I believe. Just like faith, it requires no proof, just the belief that this journey is what we make of it.

I told my then-very-active-catholic-girlfriend I was an atheist over 26 years ago.
She married me anyway. Despite objections from many of her very-catholic friends (who all told her that I'd be a lousy husband, who'd get drunk and cheat on her and abandon her without "god").

We've had 25+ great years together, 3 wonderful kids, and face all our challenges with courage and solidarity.
Interestingly, her uber-catholic friends, who all married "good catholic boys," are almost all divorced, several were abused, most were cheated on. It's the former-catholic-girl who married the up-front atheist who wound up with the longest-lasting, most-loving, and most-stable marriage.

How about that.

I know what you did took courage. I salute you for it. Be sure to continue to be honest with your wife about your feelings for her (and your baby!). Be sure to let her know that this isn't "punishment" for her "being bad" before. Be sure to let her know that you intend to love her and be honest with her and stay with her for the rest of your life -- and do it.

So few would understand how difficult what you have done is and how honorable. I was just talking with some people over the week-end who were saying how ridiculous the Mormon church is but finished by comparing it to all other religion. For us who have been there, we know it is not. The Mormons make sure they "own" your family--and they often do. It is not just another religion.

All the best to you and I hope your wife appreciates some day that your difficult honesty leaves you standing taller than anyone she is going to rub elbows with at the ward house.

Happy for your child that he will have at least two points of view as he makes his own way.

Did you reassure her you wouldn't resort to eating babies for breakfast?
Personally I think it is more important to articulate an affirmative world view that has the power to guide your actions and decisions in the future.
Just saying, "I am an atheist" doesn't differentiate you from Pol Pot or Chairman Mao and could be why she cried for an hour.
Try telling her what you DO still believe in, that will leave her with hope for your future, rather than fear and loathing.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/29/2018 02:32PM by koriwhore.

^^^ THIS!!

I love this response because I do think it is important to re-affirm to her what you DO believe in. Things like "I believe in you" or "The only thing we have that we can rely on is each other" - that sort of thing.

Being an atheist means there is no god, afterlife, or magic that will come and save you. There is only us.

I've been creating every since.

I believe in life!
Because I'm alive?
I believe in death too;
But not as much, yet.

What will you do today?
Me? I will live!
If it involves love!

M@t

On any given day and depending on my mood, I may be an atheist, agnostic, apathist (religion bores me), or deist (even if there is a god, he, himself, is an apathist and really doesn't care too much about what's going on in our daily lives).

Regardless, it really doesn't affect how I treat my wife or anybody else. My wife acknowledges that I don't need religion because I "make good decisions", but is still upset that I don't convert because she doesn't understand how I can "make good decisions" without religion..."How do you know right from wrong?"

I empathize and wish you the best of luck. The best you can to is to keep loving your wife and reassuring her through your actions that you are a good man.

I went through this exact same journey although my knee SS were younger at the time 8&5. I took the approach of picking at the church wall brick by Brick. Not easy but I baptized both of my kids, gave my son the fake preisthood. Now flash forward my kids are 13&11. My wife has decided that staying gone in a Sunday and just hanging as a family is way more enjoyable then church. We have gone 1 time in the past 12 months. It can happen and you have to be very very patient. My wife knew full well I only did it to please her. I think she finally realized it was all pointless.

My advice to you is to not let anyone in the church dictate to you what you can and can’t do within the church and for your family. You be a Mormon in your way, whatever that may be. My bishop tried really hard to get me to not Baptist my kids. I gave him nothing to go off of. I went to church, didn’t participate, Watched football on my phone, and Never took the sacrament and when asked to do anything I politely declined.
I never thought it would get to appoint where we would stop going but it’s here and it’s wonderful. Be very very patient with your wife.

That's a good step to take OP. Some people will always feel a need to have a God.

I don't. Not convinced God is even something I need to get to know. This "God" tends to do it's own thing anyway regardless of whatever I'm doing.

When I told my wife that I no longer believed in God it did not go well.
It was also on a Friday the 13th and she just started her period. Triple whammy.
2 Years later she is still believing but our marriage is still intact but it was a long hard road. I wish you luck. It can be done.
Just be patient and super honest with her and your relationship can survive.

Out of all the identities to choose, why the compelling need to come out as the most distrusted identity when its not even a real thing? What difference does it make how you identify if it is based on a rejection of something thats just pretend?