I was only a TBM for like...2 months haha but during that time, well I look back now and think, huh. what a bitch! I was so judgmental and all I cared about was doing good things solely for the purpose of getting MYSELF higher in heaven...indoctrination at it's finest. Now, I do good things and volunteer to help other people...I don't care what I get out of it. I am so much cooler now! lol:) And before I became tbm...I was/am just chill, tolerant, crazy and happy! TBM me was stuck up and prude haha! So would you guys be friends with your old mormon selves?

I'm not even sure I'd want to be friends with myself now. I'm kind of an owl sometimes...

Probably. I had a lot of atheist and agnostic friend then so I'd probably accept the current "me".

NO,I was a sanctimonious prig.

I have a lot of family who weren't active mormon. I have a lot of nonmormon friends and they all liked being around me even when I was TBM. I liked being around them more than mormons and I spent most of my time with them--not TBMs.

I was never a good fit for the morg, as hard as I tried to be.

Hell no, I would have never been friends with me. I don't know how anyone ever was. I really didn't have much to offer in the way of real life experience, advice, empathy, etc. I was a robot that said and did all the things I was supposed to.

fallenangelblue Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Hell no, I would have never been friends with me.
> I don't know how anyone ever was. I really didn't
> have much to offer in the way of real life
> experience, advice, empathy, etc. I was a robot
> that said and did all the things I was supposed
> to.


Ditto. That was totally me. Wore Mormonism everywhere, even in the workplace and especially with my non-member family.

Yes! I never fit in. I always insisted on being myself. The audacity! I'm pretty much the same person. Just don't feel so tortured by people who want me to be someone i'm not

Back in HS yes I would have been friends with myself. I was fun loving and did have a lot of friends then. College and after no way. The guilt and shame from the Church had totally changed who I was. I have made a lot of progress getting back to the real me, but I still have a ways to go.

Nope

But would your old TBM self be friends with your new heathen self? I doubt it.

I got into being a TBM after or during my mission. I was always trying to be acceptable and I had developed some social skills from my non-TBM parents so I wasn't as bad as most missionaries. I think that I was likable but I never tried to act Mormon. I really identified with people outside the church much more.

I really don't see any reason to be friends with Mormons though.....they don't allow anyone to be connected to them on an honest level. They lie about their doctrine (milk before meat theory), and they have no idea how to have real compassion for others because they are programed to think that people deserve their trials and God is trying to teach something to everyone all the time. They don't know how to just live....they are robots living among humans and it shows.

Yes. I think I've always been likable, and totally able to be friends with people from other walks of life. But I think deep conversations were out of my realm. I had all the answers, so there would never be interesting dialogue about the purpose of life and such.

That would be difficult as I don't recall there ever being a TBM self residing in this body...LOL

Except for that over-zealous, ultra self-righteous phase I had during my sophomore year of high school. Of course, I was extremely self-conscious back then and would do anything to fit in, so I had several personas. But for the most part, I had plenty of nonmember friends (my two best friends, in fact, were nonmembers). So yeah, probably.

I don't respect the person I used to be, so no, I would not be friends with my former TBM self. I would, however, love to debate and humiliate TBM me and knock me on my sanctimonious ass. That little shit deserves it.

hahaha!

...is because I was a poor friend to anyone all my 18 or so TBM years (ages 20-38).
Mormonism made me so insecure that I distanced myself from my inactive family.
I was wary of making friends because, well, "friends" in Mormonism are so tentative.
The church conditions you to be wary of everyone.

I made better friends over a beer in a night than I made among mormons in a decade. But the church would say those aren't true friends...
...Why not?
What's a friend?
Guess what, friendship comes naturally if you don't handcuff it with a bunch of conditions.
My beer buddy and I just talk shit...no strings attached...no pretense of righteousness or partisanship...and NO ULTERIOR MOTIVES, no planning my move to give him the "gospel"...
...just looking forward to our next beer and catching up on bull shit.

So, no, I would not have made a good friend to myself, because the former TBM me would have seen the current me as a threat. And, I would see him as so oversensitive that I'm just bruising his fragility all the time, and I'd naturally back off.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 11/09/2011 05:39AM by amos2.

where Red is in his last parole review meeting, and he says:

"There's not a day goes by I don't feel regret. Not because I'm in here, or because you think I should. I look back on the way I was then, a young, stupid kid who committed that terrible crime. I wanna talk to him. I wanna try to talk some sense to him -- tell him the way things are. But I can't. That kid's long gone and this old man is all that's left. I gotta live with that."

Obviously, I didn't commit a terrible crime, but I feel that the current "me" would be able to convince the old "me" to drop it sooner. But... it's gone now.

Most of my friends were the no-mos anyway, so probably, yes.

...to to clue young me in. And to tell me what to invest in.

I would feel sad that someone who was trying so hard to do things right, was being taken advantage of by a cult. I would hope that she would wake up some day and I would want to help through her transition out of the church if/when she did wake up.

I avoid people like that now.