Yes. My ex wife got active in the mormons. She wanted me to re-join and take her through the temple. I told her no way. Over the next year or so the church members and the bishop convinced her she could do better than me. We had a good marriage and a good business of our own. We divorced, lost our business, lost the house. All the time members were coaching her and telling her what she should do. She moved back home and lived with her parents. I never re-married and have been better off.
My discovering the truths of Mormonism lead to my disbelief which my then spouse could in no way handle and ended our near 40 year marriage. I am happily remarried to someone I love and accepts me for who I am and not what I should be according to Mormon doctrine. There is, however, a strain on the family relationship with my 6 children from my first marriage that is uncomfortable for me as well as them. This resulted from the divorce which was a result of the religion which we shared and in the end I left when it proved to me to not be what it claimed to really be. So I feel my family torn apart, in a way, due to the religion I was raised in.
Oh, yeah, big time. Still does. Takes a chart to figure out who is talking/not talking to whom, what, where, when and why and those of us who are non-members or apostates are the scum of the earth anyway . . . inthenameofjesuschristamen, of course!
Not in the way most families are torn apart. As for my EXTENDED family, I was the most devout, although I have some siblings/parents who were fairly active. My daughter is the ONLY grandchild or great grandchild who is an active mormon. My marriage was doomed because we married under the advice of mormon leaders.
I feel by being forced into this religion, and pretending to like it for the sake of my parents, it's tearing it apart and is going to affect our relationship when I move out. So yes, it is tearing the one thing I hold precious, apart.
My mother converted. I was baptized at 8. The church tried very hard to get my father to convert - he was the breadwinner. He's a non-gullible agnostic and wanted nothing to do with it. I remember the fights they had - my mother crying that if he didn't get baptized, they couldn't get their marriage sealed and they'd be separated forever, and my father telling her she was an idiot for believing that.
It didn't end well. My father - the least patriarchal father ever - pulled the Husband Card. "Your religion says to obey your husband. Your husband tells you to leave this stupid church."
We left. I was hurt at the time because church was about the only place where anyone even pretended to like me. My parents went through some major drama. But I'm glad we got out.
As a teenager I did some serious thinking and realized that I believe in God but I'm not a Christian. I don't believe that Jesus Christ was the son of God and the only key to eternal salvation. I finally spoke up at 19; t took 10 years for the dust to settle.
Some people are very comforted by a belief system - religion, politics, whatever - that tells them what to think and how to live. It makes the big scary world a bit more understandable. I am not comforted by those structures. This innate difference is what really separated my mother from her children. The Mormon Church was just a symptom.
I have a different take on all this--and I hope that someday you will make peace with your parents, but after reading this board (depending on how TBM they are), it makes you wonder.
My daughter decided to go back to the LDS church 4+ years ago (maybe longer). She has a twin brother. Her father is gay. I am a proud apostate adulteress (not divorced, separated 15 years). She consistently tries to pretend it doesn't bother her and then works herself to the bone mormon-wise. Eventually she will let it out that she has just been doing everything she can to save the rest of us. She just had a "breakdown" on Christmas Eve--letting me know what a failure I am because she needs to fix me (meaning go back to church, doesn't matter how successful I am anywhere else.)
I actually HURT for her--but I can't go back for her.
I just keep hoping she'll find a nice guy (nice mormon???) who she can make a nice little family with so she can find somewhere to belong.
She keeps moving further away from us so that the "distance" isn't so obvious.
I hope you find someone somewhere that you can share your new freedom with.
TBM parents now in mid 80's with three of their litter still TBM and four now exmo. The two sides in the divide have little if nothing to do with each other.
We still all love each other, but my tbm kids are no doubt wary of me, as I led two sons out, and they fear for their kids. So I leave them alone for the most part. I don't enjoy the uptight fear and judgment dance that inevitably gets play. And the rift between myself and DW has widened a lot. She's angry with the situation, and doesn't seem to be able to find peace.
The exmos continually try not to offend the mormons. You have to be careful what you say, how you say it, how you dress, what and when you eat, what you do and when you do it etc...
We are continually treading on eggshells and it's exhausting.
We don't drink or smoke, lie, steal, cheat, or even (gasp) drink tea, coffee or cola, but we will always be bad in their eyes unless we become submissive mobots again.
One mormon relative in particular is very aggressive about pushing mormonism onto us, but if we dared say anything, it would be our fault. We can't have normal conversations with him because he looks for ways to say that anything unfortunate that happens in our lives is because we don't go to church. He's had his share of tragedy in his life, but we'd never dream of blaming his misfortunes on his unworthiness!
Yep! My newly converted uber TBM step-dad divorced my mom who didn't wanted to convert fast enough. He married the 18-year old daughter of the than branch-leader. He himself became the bishop when it turned ward. Mom took that very hard, as did I. I wrote a letter about it to the missionary who had babtised him. He was truly shaken.
I moved out the day she had my oldest son baptized in that stupid cult.
It cost me $100,000.... and even worse my relationship with my kids. They are all still elementary school aged, but are constantly poisoned against me, by their mom and her parents.
My dad was a convert, my mom born to a TBM family. My mom absolutely hated my "other" grandma because she wasn't mormon. My grandma lost her husband when her kids were young, and she struggled to raise them on her own. When they were all grown and moved out, she was completely alone. The only grandkids she had were the five in my family and we lived six hours away. She wrote letters to me and my sister every week. Unfortunately, we never wrote back. My mom had always told us what an awful woman she was, and how strange she was. When we were teenagers, we found out for ourselves that my mom was wrong. I feel terrible to this day that I couldn't take the time to write to my lonely grandma. She didn't have an easy life, and all she wanted was to be close to her grandkids, especially the girls. And we ignored her because my mom poisoned our brains with her mormon crap. I visited her a few times after I moved out of my parent's house, but not as much as I could have. She died when I was 20, before I really got to be old enough to appreciate her. That was 11 years ago, and I'm still mad at my mom because she still calls my grandma "that awful woman".
My problem is, I have too much of a bite. I have to hold my tongue sometimes, especially if my kids are around, and they usually are when I'm with my mom.
It did for a while but after many years the TBMs finally came around and realized if they ever wanted to see me they were going to have to respect my choices.
I'm really glad that my mom and I were able to reconcile before she died.
Divorced because of it. No one ever talked to me, but can you imagine the support she got at church? My non-belief was the primary cause. All the problems were directly related to not following the tenets of the church due to non-belief. Two sons are done with it. Two are married TBM’s with TBM husbands. One is undetermined at this time and is at YBU.
I can see more clearly my ex-wife’s method of speaking more clearly now that I’m out. It is tough to keep her on track instead of her going into blaming mode when discussing post divorce issues. I don’t discuss the whys with her at all. I never asked her to leave and never asked her to not believe. She filed after I told her I was tired of being threatened with divorce if I did not conform and stop my “crap that no one wants to hear”. (Funny, I was only talking to those that did.) Both sons wanted to hear it and are grateful, I know because they both told me so.
My older son has a Non-mo girlfriend from Boston. She can see straight through the façade and nonsense. When she leaves a family get together she just goes “OMG this” and “OMG that”. I say “yeah, I know but they are clueless”.
My Mom was TBM and BIC and my Dad was a new convert when they met and married. My father’s family didn’t understand what he was doing but still wanted to have a relationship with us. He was born and raised a Catholic and grew up in CT. My Mom of course pushed them away, far, far away so I never had any relationship with them, nor did my siblings. I met them once when I was 6. My grandfather (fathers father) died when I was 8 and I remember telling my TBM family that maybe heavenly father took him away so early (he was in his early 50s) because he had work for him to do. My TBM mother told me that wasn’t possible because he wasn’t a Mormon.
My grandmother on my fathers side lived to be 96 years old and I never knew her.