I am curious to know since I have seen this scenario play out in several mormon families and good parents that raised them suffer.

I have one (adult)child that has not communicated with me for several years since I decided I had better things to do with my life on sundays.

I was good enough to raise them and support them until adulthood but not good enough for them when I no longer believed.

My adult son (now 58 years old) cut off all contact with me several years ago when his son (my grandson) left for a mission in Peru. I asked him for his boy's e-mail address. (I had always had the e-mail addresses of his cousins when they were on their missions.)

He refused to give it to me, accused me of wanting to sabotage his mission, etc. He would not believe that I had no intention of doing so. He accused me of lying, etc.

So much for "family-oriented" and "Honor thy father and thy mother..."

Oddly, his very TBM sister and I are on excellent terms.

Wow, that's harsh.

Your situation, and many others, are a most likely a result of a combination of parental and cult alienation syndrome against you. It is hard to fight that. Not your fault by any standard.

My children want nothing to do with the church. They came to this conclusion on their own. My oldest just sent her resignation in. (My youngest two were never baptized--when my oldest boy was baptized, it was obvious that he was doing it to please me, which is why I got baptized. I vowed to not do that again.)

I don't have that problem, children not talking to me, but I am afraid it may develop into a "wall" of separation as they get older. One child, my oldest son, is an RM, but is an apostate (I don't like that term) like me, so I assume we'll keep on good terms. I could see my daughter, who is on a mission, keeping her obsession with the church, and maybe ostracizing me. My two youngest totally f-ing freak out if I swear (the mild swear words, like sh$%). I am afraid they may be "mal-adjusted" and may not have a good relationship with me. For those of you who suffer like Mr. Packham, I'm sorry. It's a terrible thing for a child to do. We only have so many people who we can be close to, and to throw away a relationship over the LDS church is just awful. It is an awful institution, founded by awful people, and now run by awful people, and it causes awfully terrible situations within families. Peace and love I send your way to those who suffer...

My eldest son is not Mormon and is estranged. He blames me for raising him Mormon.

Ana

My oldest daughter has estranged me. She is still a TBM, and married to a TBM husband (i.e. related to Mormon royalty). When I left five years ago, my other five children more or less left as well. Not her though - she subtely estranged herself from me..never calls, never visits, never e-mails, never communicates. I had such a joyous relationship with her, my first born beauty. It's like I don't exist in her mormon world. She's bascially adopted her husband's father (FIL) as her dad now. I don't even get to see my grandchildren. Damn TSCC for breaking up family's. Stupid cult

An estranged TBM son-in-law and his large (he has 8 siblings) TBM family. This makes my daughter unhappy, and puts a strain on their marriage, because my daughter is an atheist at heart, and goes to church only to please her husband, and she misses meetings whenever one of her children is sick, or when she needs to rest. This doesn't go over well in her ward, so they are constantly pressuring her to take on more callings, but so far, she has stood up to them. Soon, my grandchildren will be facing baptism.

All of my other children and their spouses and I walk on eggshells around the grumpy Mormon SIL and his family. They dominate all the Christmases, Thanksgivings, summer vacations, every Saturday night, all day every Sunday and Sunday night, Monday night (FHE), and we keep the peace, and carefully plan around them. We will do whatever is necessary to try to ease the pressure on my daughter.

The Mormons get away with it, because we are afraid of them. Already, my daughter's in-laws keep my grandchildren too busy to spend time with me. That family are terrible gossips, and have accused me and my other children of things we would never do--always behind our backs--and we hear about it, and do nothing, for the sake of my daughter.

Does anyone ever confront their adult Mormon children, and tell them that they refuse to be estranged? A parent has the right to tell their child that this is not right! This is not Christ's way! God is Love, and where is the love?

But, no, we are all afraid of having our loved ones "manipulated away" from us by that evil cult. Because, folks, it does happen. Maybe we should fight harder for what WE BELIEVE. We believe in keeping our families together. We believe in integrity and respect. I swear, Utah Mormons are the rudest group of people I've ever met, and we need to keep our standards and boundaries with them.

But Mormons don't negotiate. They don't budge an inch. If you don't obey them, they dump you. Even your own children (and in-laws) dump you. How very sad. Is there anything we can do about this?

Does the church create a toxic culture that messes up some families? Does the church promote a false front, never being honest about your feelings or taking accountability for your actions (or beliefs)?

Many families are messed up, and sometimes mormonism makes it worse.

I can't speak for anyone else's family, but for my family of origin, there was a lot going on in addition to church. The LDS church didn't help. While there may be many families for whom leaving the church is the only reason for estrangement, I wonder if there are more reasons in some families. I know in mine, undiagnosed and untreated mental illness was a huge issue.

There are many more than will be able to respond here to this thread.

I am thinking of the hundreds of non-Mormon parents whose late-teen or young-adult children converted, and then cut off contact when their parents disapproved of their joining the cult.

About twelve years ago I was getting so much e-mail from parents in that situation, that I started an on-line support group for them. It now has over 300 members, all parents who have to some extent been alienated from their children (and grandchildren) because they are not Mormon. The stories are heart-breaking. Doubly so, because these parents knew nothing about Mormonism and did not suspect what their kids' Mormon friends (and the friends' Mormon parents) were doing, until it was too late.

It is one of the most evil aspects of Mormonism, in my opinion.

Yeah, right: "but the church does so much good!"

This is exactly what happened to my current husband and his TBM daughter. My husband was raised a Catholic and then married a women who "claimed" to be an ex-Mormon. After they had their first child, his ex went running back to the Mormon church and expected him to join her. He researched Mormonism and couldn't believe it and their marriage fell apart and they eventually divorced. His ex then raised their daughter in the Mormon faith (unbeknownst to my husband the brainwashing and manipulation that was occurring within the culture and from the ex-wife).

The TBM daughter has very little contact with her Dad and his side of the family (mostly indifference and contempt). She is now almost 21 and in a big hurry to get married.

Can you please share your support group information with me. My daughter starting pushing us (her family) away once she married into a Mormon family. Now she won’t speak to us at all and I haven’t see my grandchildren in two years

I'm not old enough to share in this kind of pain, but I am able to cause it.

In this situation I'm the child, trying to figure out whether or not I can keep leading a weird submissive double life around my TBM parents and siblings, or just simply disappear and hope for the best.

It's a terrible terrible feeling to realize I might have to make that choice soon.

My son and his family are Lutheran. His/their choice. No exposure to toxic Mormonism by design.

Lethbridge Reprobate Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> My son and his family are Lutheran. His/their
> choice. No exposure to toxic Mormonism by design.


I sent my daughter to a Lutheran school (I'm an Ex-Mo) purposely as an inoculation to prevent her from being vulnerable to Mormon social pressures. It worked although she is now not actively religious and that's fine with me.

I was chugging through this post w/o realizing how old it was until I saw anagrammy!


My kids were never in TSCC, but my TBM brother and his clan started shunning us after I put a stop to his wife sending my kids MORmON propaganda. This went on for years.

And along the "family" lines, he's an incredible hypocrite. A year before my wife passed away, they moved to a city less than 100 miles from us. We live near DC, and on multiple occasions they posted pictures of themselves in DC, which means they drove within 3 miles of our home. Never called. Never reached out. Etc. Not that I would have expected them to, but then when my wife passed he made a ridiculous self-aggrandizing post on FaceBook about how they were grieving with us, and how they'd miss her smile. Really? Could have swung by the house before she died. Or made a phone call.

MORmONs: keeping up appearances since 1830...



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/25/2020 09:54PM by Gordon B. Stinky.

I'm e strange adult.

Oh well, at least I am not a robot with no heart.

I guess I'm lucky to have the children I have. They aren't

judgemental about me and my choices. They trust my choices

and they love me no matter what.

You earned their trust.

The so called 'church' turns children against parents, and parents against children, lover against lover, and neighbor against neighbor, and so on and so forth...

You're supposed to see through 'the church' to the light (that's there already, just being blocked by the church).

Some people just can't see beyond the dark, which they've created themselves, with the concrete and concerted efforts of churches and their misleading messages and practices.

Without TSCC I'd have a stronger family, more and better communication, more peace and happiness, and more love at home.

TSCC gets in the way of NORMAL, Everyday, friendly relationships and activities. TSCC wants you to marry it and FORGET your family and friends.

It was terrible when I left, xwife ended up with an affair, my TBM daughters needed me and I worked very hard to make sure we had a relationship outside of church and its worked out very good, and of course I'm over the top good to them.

Also I know they are busy with kids and church so I don't expect calls, I do the calling, they do call all the time but see it as my duty to make contact and make sure the relationship is strong.

Both of my husband's TBM daughters were estranged from him. One of them finally started speaking to him again in 2017 after 13 years of total silence. The other remains estranged.

They became estranged when they were children, though, and it was mostly because of their mother's parental alienation campaign. She used the church to drive a wedge, mainly because my husband decided to resign. He and his ex wife were converts.

The younger daughter eventually realized how toxic her mother is, moved far away from her, got married, and answered my husband when he messaged her on Facebook. They had their first in person visit in 15 years back in March, just before everything shut down due to COVID.

Distraught wrote:

>Can you please share your support group information with me. My daughter starting pushing us (her family) away once she married into a Mormon family. Now she won’t speak to us at all and I haven’t see my grandchildren in two years

That support group was a Yahoo group, and all Yahoo groups will disappear on December 15 of this year. It had about 300 subscribers. There had not been much activity in the last few months, anyway.

As a lame substitute I started a Facebook group, Mormons Have My Child. If you find that group (which is not public) I will invite you.

Meanwhile, see my article "FAQ: Help! My daughter is getting involved with the Mormons - what can I do?" at http://packham.n4m.org/help-daughter.htm

You do great work, Richard. I can see how it could help many people. I'm glad you saw that post on this quite ancient thread.

All the new responses show how pervasive and ongoing this serious, and heartbreaking, issue is still.

I wish the Mormon leaders could counsel their followers to respect family connections irrespective of religious beliefs. Is that too much to expect?

On a different note, I wonder if RfM Admin would put a sticky note on page 1 here so people can find your new group, Richard.

Nightingale Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
>....
> On a different note, I wonder if RfM Admin would
> put a sticky note on page 1 here so people can
> find your new group, Richard.

Thanks for the encouragement, Nightingale.

That's a good question for admin.