I have a good TBM friend who has been divorced for 4 or 5 years. Her ex-husband has since left the church. She told me the other day that her young daughter no longer wants to stay with her dad and step mom because they drink coffee. Already the church is teaching this child to put the church above her dad. My friend has also told me how her son has been struggling with the divorce. None of his friends have divorced parents and no one in their ward is divorced. My thought is that the church is doing more to divide this family than the divorce is. I want to say to her (but don't dare) that one of the best things she can do for her kids is to take them out of an environment that teaches them that their family is broken and can't be happy because their parents don't live together. The church is a toxic environment to kids with divorced parents.

That is so sad. My great grandmother was one of the most amazing people I have ever met. She lived through the depression and would often tell me stories of the sacrifices and work she did to make it through. She raised some great kids including one who served in the Pacific Theater in WW II. One of my most favorite memories of her is going to visit and smelling the coffee she would drink. I can't smell coffee to this day without thinking of her. To think that this girl doesn't want to spend time with her dad over something so amazingly TRIVIAL is just sick (and yet also just so so mormon).

We were just talking about this the other day. It's because the church teaches that "No success can compensate for failure in the home." What a load of crap, and what a burden that puts on very young people to make a 100% right choice at an early age. They are telling missionaries in General Conference that their highest priority after a mission is to find a wife and get married. The HIGHEST! Wow. And should that marriage end in divorce, then no other success can ever compensate for it. That's why divorce in mormonland is so devastating. It's heartbreaking to watch.

You're exactly right. It also applies to people like me who haven't yet been married. Nothing I have accomplished in my life matters because I haven't succeeded in relationships. Just the other day my parents lectured me for 30 minutes about how I need to date, be less picky, and get married.

My husband's kids disowned him a few years ago. However, during their one and ONLY visitation with us, the younger daughter who was then aged 9, saw two beers in our refrigerator. She slapped my husband and accused him of getting drunk.

My husband secretly reads this child's blog and just found out that she has submitted her paperwork to go on a mission. She turned 19 yesterday. I hope she gets a large dose of reality, but somehow I think she will become even more entrenched in Mormon nonsense.

your husband's children, I want to take a 2x4 and paddle their butts after sending their SICK mother into orbit without a pressure suit.

I'm hoping your wonderful husband is able to maintain his good nature, and of course, thanks to him for his service.

I know divorce is tough on kids, especially when their mother is nuts. But sadly, my husband's daughters must not have inherited much from their dad's side of the family. Their mother sure seems to think she spawned them all by herself. At this point, I think we'd be proud to let them indulge in that false reality. Their behavior has been shameful and embarrassing.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/07/2012 01:51PM by knotheadusc.

so Mistydiamond, your parents want to put you in prison and stunt your mental and emotional growth.
think of it as if you were in the Middle Ages and were forced into a convent because they found out you were an atheist.
marriage is not for everyone.
Librarian

Thanks for your comment. Being single and how my family treats me because of it is something I've been struggling with lately. I do want to get married at some point, but I don't want to settle.

For many reasons, marriage hasn't happened for me yet but I hope someday it will when the timing is right. It is really hard to break the brainwashing that I've been under my entire life. I've been told thousands of times that it's my duty to marry a righteous returned missionary priesthood holder in the temple. I have been able to break myself of the place and type of person I want to marry. But still can't break myself from the idea that if I don't marry I have somehow failed at life. It's something I have to fight every day and remind myself that I have worth regardless of my relationship status.

Your comment helped reinforce to me that the problem lies with the church and the brainwashing I've been put under, more than that the problem lies with me.

The church can't say it's not the end of the world if your parents divorce because then, when the kids grow up and marry, they'll think it's not the end of the world if they should face divorce.

Of course, it's NOT the end of the world, but the church has invested so much in its idealized view of marriage and its central place in the universe (see the proclamation on the family) that it has to keep perpetuating its lovely, unrealistic myth, even if it destroys families and individuals in the process.

they since disbanded the ward, combining it with another through ward boundary changes.

IT is tremendously unlikely that no divorce exists in your friends' ward, and no remarried couples with prior divorces, or blended families with step parents exist in your friends' ward. In fact, my grandmother from Spanish Ford Utah got a divorce after a temple marriage in the 1920s, and my great great aunt also Utah got a divorce from a BYU music professor she found making out on the couch with another woman (and she died in her nineties in CA.) Brigham Young even divorced some of his women. Joseph Smith encouraged his wives often to divorce their spouses to officially, not just spiritually marry him. Divorce is PART of mormonism. It always has been.

Yet I too clung to the fantasy only through the church would I be free or safe from divorce. Then it happened- I was in a ward with a divorce melt down.
In fact, it was the hideous ward climate in hallways as this many couples melted down- all with five or more children in each family-
that made me initially go inactive. After all, I wanted my marriage to be 'forever' so I couldn't be around people like them.

30 years this June (oakland temple) and 12 years since having marriage blessed (this time with mother in law present) in Catholic church at St. Mary's.

It WAS the mormon church and the Visalia mormon experience that demonstrated clearly to us- my husband and myself- that in no way was staying mormon cause or likely to support us in that 'sickness and health' 'to death do us part' staying on the journey until the boat was one man down in the sea of life quest as lovers and best friends.

It became a more toxic environment than the continuation high school where I taught expelled teenagers or the homeless shelter I taught at when victims of domestic violence used the computer lab. Conflict tension rage vindictiveness anger arguments made relief society and the halls of the ward house- intense. I came home from a visalia ward relief society and said to my spouse: a domestic violence or grief group counseling session would be less intense than that. I'm not going back.

divorce is the Apex of Daylight between what Mo scriptures & leaders say and what the actual on-the-ground practices (and therefore policies) are.

Christ: Divorce is only for Adultery/Fornication (Bible AND Book of Mormon)

O.T. Prophets: Don't divorce

ourgen GAs (FP Stmnt): Divorce is of Satan.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/06/2012 10:54PM by guynoirprivateeye.

TSCC really IS a very toxic place for divorcees and children of divorce. I feel very ashamed that I even tried to keep my kids in the church after my divorce, thinking they needed the church worse than ever. I divorced-remarried-divorced my TBM husband. The first time, when my kids were younger and we lived in Utah was so awful. Especially the way my kids were treated. I could handle the shunning I got since I didn't like any of those people anyway. Second divorce we were in the Southeast and the kids were older. It was much easier. We didn't have mormon neighbors, the ward was really struggling and we were needed, and none of us really cared that much by then.

It is so nice now to attend a church where my marital status, nor my gender, has any bearing whatsoever on what I can volunteer to do, or how my service is appreciated. If anyone saw a guy's truck parked in front of my house all night, they wouldn't be calling to try to find out if I need to be reported to the bishop (as happened in Utah), they'd be calling wanting to know the scoop, hoping I DID have a guy there all night and giving me the "you go, girl!". I know I am one of the movers and shakers of the congregation. I've been asked to be on the Board of Directors, something I'll probably take my stint at some day but am trying to avoid right now.

I have single woman friends who are still active LDS and I look at them and think I would just kill myself if that were my life. And hearing about young families who live in Utah and who divorce just makes me so sad for what the kids will go through. Someone should be shot for making a kid uncomfortable because they have a parent who drinks coffee. Gotta love that Famiilies First "church."

Out of my tbm family, half of my tbm, temple married uncles have been divorced. I can't know what was going on in those families or marriages, but there is plenty of divorce throughout mormonism. Even Brigham Young was divorced, and married divorced women.

Half of all marriages (in the U.S.) end in divorce. Mormon marriages (even temple marriages) also end in divorce. The statistics put out by the church say 6%, but I strongly suspect those statistics are the temple divorces from the first presidency. Despite an acrimonious divorce, I know plenty of people who will still be married for time and all eternity, and /or have their children with a new partner sealed to their first husband.

There are plenty of happy, successful, well-adjusted single people. Growing up mormon, I never got that message. The message was that I was not whole if I was single - without a partner. That message is damaging and untrue.

One sister married her BYU sweetheart. He cheated on her. She divorced his ass when she found out he had a pregnant girlfriend. She did the horrible LDS single mom dating thing for about five years. Finally met a Mormon guy who didn't care she was no longer a virgin. They celebrated their 35th anniversary last week.

Another sister married a divorced guy she met at BYU. About 25 years and 9 children later, he died. Good thing he left some excellent life insurance behind. A few years later she remarried to a divorced guy. But he turned out to be a jerk and a disruption to the family, so she divorced him a couple of years later. Now all her kids are grown and it looks like she is happy being retired and single.

One of my brothers died in his early 60s. He widow remarried a widower a few years later. The guy turned out to be an @sshole who was also draining her bank account to support his hobbies. She divorced him. Now she has married again and is off serving a couples mission.

I have a divorced TBM nephew who is about to remarry after five years or so. I have a divorced apostate niece who has remarried, and a twice-married, twice divorced TBM niece.

Then there's me. I resisted marriage until I was 38 when I thought I found a perfect match. Didn't want kids, atheist, same line of work, same weird sense of humor, etc. Too bad we both had toxic baggage that therapy couldn't work out. We divorced after five years and now we're buddies.

So at least my family has the taste not to badmouth divorce too much. They've seen some of the hows and whys of it and understand there are usually good reasons for it even if there are bad side effects. Most of our divorces turned out for the better.

and I also had a lot of divorced female friends where I worked--I had a good idea of what my kids were in for when our marriage was on the verge of collapsing (most know--he was gay and cheating and ex. sec.).

I didn't leave the lds church because I didn't believe, I left it to save my kids from the fallout of the divorce. I would not allow them to be pitied, to be treated like second-class citizens. I always assumed I'd go back--but I left to save my children from the attitudes mormons have toward divorcees and their kids.

Never made it back. I took that long vacation and it all fell apart.

Nobody who is divorced should expose their children to the lds church.

1. TSCC breaks down marriages and foments a climate which actually results in more divorces.
2. TSCC teaches that marriage is not unconditional but only conditional so long as both parties are active in the church. Husband not "honoring his priesthood"? Grounds for divorce.
3. Unconditional love is required in marriage and that love must continue without condition of any kind and despite whatever may befall. The conditional love and marriage of TSCC is wrong.
4. The error stems from teaching all women that they must seek an RM to marry in the temple, rather than one they truly love and is kind and strenghens them, etc. I wonder if the leaders ever noticed that in blessings I gave to our children I never said they should marry an RM or marry in the temple.
5. The result of teaching our children contrary to TSCC is that ten of our children are married and none have been divorced. Also, as for age of marriage, we stressed that one can marry at any legal age, that for one it may be early or for another after 30 and any age is fine. We also stressed the importance of learning and education.

Divorce is terribly hard on everyone involved, without the church making it immensely harder. I've seen what they do to single mothers -- it's shameful. They teach kids that they will basically never be OK because the parents divorced. The divorced dads -- well, they get sympathy, casseroles, and dinner invitations to members' homes where they are set up with suitable single women.

I've seen this happen over and over and over.

Twice, I have watched adult Mormon women try to set up inactive (but still married) men with Molly-Mo virgins. I don't even want to contemplate the twisted thinking going on there. Disgusting.