You know a marital talk has had some success when you leave the talk and you are both tired, puffy faced from crying, and hugging each other.

She said that about a year ago (this is how women communicate with men), I had said that I struggled with my hate for the LDS church and my love for my family. At that point, she said, she realized that she was alone and had to be prepared for anything. She had also just said that she didn't care what I felt or thought about the LDS church. (This was the typical TBM move that had me reeling and heartbroken--the biggest emotional disaster in my life over the last few years, and she says she doesn't want to hear about it.)

To address what I had said that apparently had caused so much damage, I told her that I did not want her to feel alone. She said she couldn't understand such anger. Why pick at a scab? Let it heal, she said. To communicate to her the anger of the disaffected I told her she needed to perceive the aloneness and isolation of the disaffected and the anger that one would feel against an entity that claimed ownership of one's family relationships, in effect fighting you and pushing you to the sidelines of the lives of your family members, claiming their devotion and loyalty above and beyond their devotion and loyalty to you. One fought for one's family of course, and one obviously developed great anger against the organization that was isolating one from one's family, this created truly the twin horns of a dilemma. The very thing one is separating oneself from is the very thing that is pushing one away within one's own family, the very place where one expected to be safe from isolation and alienation. How could that not create anger? And then your family doesn't even want to hear about your suffering at the hands of the organization because they are loyal to what is isolating you from them. A person has to be very clear headed and emotionally grounded to keep separate his or her feelings about the LDS church and feelings for family members who turn away from you and toward the church. Talk about doing a number on people. No wonder the LDS church pisses off so many people. If a person came into your family and began to do that, you'd throw the SOB out of the house.

I told her of how there were people, disaffected with the church, who still end up paying for childrens' missions so that their children can go and serve this same institution that is causing the disaffected so much pain by isolating them from their family members. I told her, following Arza Evans, that that's power. I told her that one of the ironies among many was that that was an act of unrighteous dominion.

She listened.



Note: The term "splinched" came to mind more than once for how the LDS church leaves the disaffected (cf. Harry Potter universe, act of a wizard's body being torn in the process of a hurried apparition, a form of travel in the wizarding world. See http://harrypotter.wikia.com/wiki/Apparition and http://harrypotter.wikia.com/wiki/Splinching).

you nailed it. I don't think I've heard it stated better.

My TBM wife has let it be known unequivocally where I stand, and let me quote her: "my religion is more important than our marriage". As a non-believer you are emotionally banished to a remote island, and there's is absolutely no way you can call this to their attention. However, it sounds like you found a crack that opened at least temporarily. Hopefully, you can keep that crack open a while longer and have some more light creep in.

As a struggling Mormon I had a bifurcated mind with lots of cognitive dissonance. As an exmo my bifurcatioin has migrated externally and now I live in a bifurcated world where I am emotionally separated from my immediate family.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/16/2012 10:06AM by mrtranquility.

Your wife actually came out and straight up said that? Talk about slamming a door in one's face. I feel your pain.

I can only think that life throws us crises, health crises, mental illness crises, death, disability, the need to be on powerful medications, in short all the terrible stuff that can befall us, and who will be there for her at those moments? The pompous jackasses in white shirts and ties who show up for 30 minutes, give a blessing, say their mumbojumbo and feel like their work here is done, or you, who carries the water everyday, who husbands your lives together in so many ways?

I used to argue with young people (it's not a perfect argument but makes the point I think): You crap on your parents' lives and look down on them, but who will go 2000 miles to rescue you from some hell you've gotten yourself into? Some schmo priesthood leader, who can't be bothered because he thinks he has more important things to do by administering sacrament to the ward on Sunday, or your parents, who will fly or drive to where you are no matter what?

The priorities the LDS church enforces on its most ardent members are alarming, especially considering how the church brags about being so pro-family. "The family is ordained of God." Right, meaning that, from the LDS pov, because the institutional church IS God (or God's one true chruch), it basically owns your family, has trademarked and copyrighted it, as it were. And this despite what one has heard in LDS chapels and leadership meetings, that the whole purpose of the church and its programs is to strengthen the family. These folks just didn't add the proviso that the family is to be strengthened as a franchise of the LDS church and has no meaning or validity beyond the LDS church as far as the church is concerned.

Families can't be forever unless they are within the ambit or aegis of the LDS church, and we all know how marriages that are merely "for time" are sneered at in the LDS world. Which is interesting: The pro-family LDS church with all its squeaky clean wholesome family imagery considers its idea of family superior to or more relevant than any other families out there. How unwholesome a view the LDS church really has. Let more people see how creepy and bigoted these bastards' views really are.

What you are going through is emotional survival at it's most visceral. It is brilliant the way you described it and I appreciate the look into what your life is even if I have nothing to offer but good wishes and awe at the way you are handling it.

I swear sometimes you have no choice but to tango with the enemy.



(enemy=church-not your wife. I just realized that could be taken wrong.)



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/16/2012 11:37AM by blueorchid.

Thanks blueorchid. This "tango" of "emotional survival at its most visceral" seems to be well documented in the exmo community. I wonder why the LDS church, and all the more the members, ignore this pain and suffering. Surely the "spiritual" mission of the LDS church and its members would have them focus on such issues as these things interfere with re-affiliation, something that the church seems to be very interested in ("Please come back." "We miss you.").

On one level, I think the LDS church isn't interested in re-affiliating exmos or the disaffected because these people, from its point of view, are broken, unusable or of limited use. Likely no mission presidents or bishops or stake presidents are going to rise from such a group.

On the individual level I understand that really engaging with the issues of disaffection is almost the kiss of death of the faith of any member who truly engages in an exmo. And of course, most of them are afraid to walk that walk. Jesus wouldn't be, but that's maybe just the sort of hypocrisy in action that shows how hollow the LDS church and its mission really are. The lost sheep are unwanted, feared--unless they come back on purely on the terms of the LDS church and take back up their prior mental dissonance as spiritually wounded, deadened drones dutifully going to church and paying tithes.