There is an interesting trend among those I grew up with. Many of the most devout as teens and young adults are now out of TSCC. Many of those who were inactive, promiscuous, skipped their missions, etc are now some of the most loyal and active members.

Several people I grew up with fit this perfectly. They made some very poor decisions in their teens and twenties. They ended up in bad marriages (not that many active members do not), dead-end jobs (TBMs also), and a couple of them had runins with the law. In their thirties and forties they began behaving responsibly and coincidentally became active again. They have conflated attending the temple and sitting in church every Sunday with becoming serious about pursuing a career, finishing educations in some instances, and planning ahead.

As is everyone's propensity, they attributed correlation with causation. Getting an education, pursuing a career, and planning would have done the trick alone. The bakers hat, tithing, and several callings are merely coincidental. They fail to see those sitting all around them in church who did not finish their educations, have dead-end jobs, and had runins with bankruptcy court precisely because they were uber-TBM. Mission, too many kids too early, mom quites college to pop out babies, in some instances the father truncated his college education because of kids, bills, and callings. If one is not careful being a TBM can be just as devastating to career, finances, and family as getting plastered every night and watching TV all day rather than going to class or work. Both lifestyles can put someone on the edge and a few unexpected financial or other bad events can run a person's life right off the rails. Being a successful TBM just as being a successful party animal is often a matter of luck more than anything. Granted living a TBM life can, in some instances, make someone a better employee in terms of helping those with such inclinations to show up sober, or show up at all, and obey the rules.

I can definitely see where those who return are coming from. It can be very compelling when viewed in a cherry-picked, anecdotal way to see the TBM path as the way to success in life. There are always ways to explain away the cognitive dissonance creating examples of the TBMs who lives are train wrecks.

There are probably many factors at work. There seems to be a correlation between "gospel knowledge" and apostacy. Those who know more about Mormonism in general are often the ones who leave. Perhaps those who "sewed their wild oats" feel some need to make amends or perhaps found that lifestyle unsatisfying.

I haven't seen this pattern.

I was one of those who left returned and left again.

Got beat up in church and at school a lot because I was small, so it was only natural to hang out with the kids who were cool to me, and to learn their ways meant learning how to smoke, toke, and drink, which led to a spiralling out of control over the next several years.

So I did get reactivated at a time when I was on the verge of losing everything, and it literally saved my life and family and that was worth every sacrifice that the church demanded.

I admit that there were a lot of things that didn't make sense, but my commitment was total. No matter what happened, I would be the last remaining member of the church if it came down to it.

But as with any falsehood, clues begin to appear and you either ignore them or you study them. I learned quickly that there is no allowance for Bishopric to ask serious questions--Like why is a General Authority stating in GC that the church affirms the Noah story! Or helping an investigator by researching her question and knowing the answer you gave her wasn't true.

It seems that most people who truly believe are those who learn only what they are given, who accept only what the Living Prophet says today. They keep old teachings only as far as they are repeated today. They discard anything that the church does not continue to say.

I was recently asked why I can't believe when I know so much about the church. Why did I lose my faith when I know the truth? When the eyes are finally forced open, obsessive study almost always leads away from the church. Just look at all the exmormon scholars and excommunicated historians.

They call it faith and they claim they have studied, but in truth, have only studied the whitewash and they do it because they know somewhere deep inside that to look beyond the whitewash lies danger.

For me, if there is a monster hiding under the blankets, I would rather know than to climb in and hope for the best...even if that means losing sleep, and in the case of the church, honor and integrity and possibly salvation.