Warning: this is long. My history with the LDS church and religion in general is tied up with so much of my personal history, it's hard to be brief about anything.

One of the most important things I've identified about myself over the years is that I was born a skeptic. I have no recollection of ever believing in Santa Claus, or the Tooth Fairy, or the Boogieman, or... anything, really. My mom tells me I confronted her about her Santa-lies when I was three years old.

I had a rich and imaginative childhood. I had no problem pretending that fairies existed, or talking animals, or magic, or any of those typical kid things. But at the end of the day, I knew that it was all pretend. And the truth is, I felt the same way about god.

I didn't have much exposure at all to Christianity until several years into my childhood. I knew the basics of the story of Jesus Christ as it related to Christmas (which we celebrated as a secular holiday), and I had a vague understanding that Christians believed in a "devil," and that "sinners" went to "hell" (all very strange concepts in the context of how I was raised). I was homeschooled, so my worldview was pretty sheltered.

I was raised in a Vaishnav (Hindu) household. My parents got involved in the Hare Krishna Movement some years before my siblings and I were born. It was actually a really fun culture to grow up in - lots of music, dancing, festivities, and awesome vegetarian food. But at the end of the day, no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't reconcile the stories with reality - they were just stories.

All in all, life for little-me was pretty laid back. My parents weren't terribly strict when I was little, and I was never under the impression that their love and acceptance hinged on my personal beliefs or decisions. But I played along, because I didn't want them to be disappointed.

My parents didn't get along very well (though we were shielded from most of it), and they split up when I was 6. They were never legally married, so the split was pretty straightforward, but there was a somewhat nasty and fairly drawn-out custody battle. My brothers and I initially lived with my mom, but we all ended up moving back in with my dad eventually. I moved back in first, then my older brother about a year later, and then my little brother a few years after that.

My mom moved a couple of states away when I was 9 or 10, and that was the start of my "rebellious years." I feel like I should clarify that I never faulted my mom for moving. Not then, and especially not now, knowing what I know of her relationship with my dad. Moving was the best thing for her. She's married to a great guy, I have an awesome step-family and a little half brother, and I wouldn't trade or change any of it.

After my mom moved, I butted heads with my dad a lot. He was afraid that if he let me go visit my mom, she wouldn't send me home. So it was a few years before I got to see her again. I was pretty resentful. My dad also remarried during that time, and there was a lot of tension between me and my stepmom.

When I was 12 or 13, I met the girl who would be my best friend for the next 15 years. I met her in a small homeschool group drama class, and we hit it off instantly. She invited me to go swimming with her and some friends a few days later. I love swimming, so of course I took her up on the invitation. I remember my stepmom saying "aren't they Mormon?" but I had no idea what that meant at the time.

I was caught completely off-guard when her parents dropped us off at someone else's house to carpool with a couple other girls, and when the person driving us (the mother of one of the girls) announced that we were going to say a prayer before driving to the pool. But I figured hey, whatever, gotta be respectful. So I rolled with it and kept quiet while she said the prayer, and then we were off.

We became close very quickly, pretty much instantly attached at the hip. I think I spent more time at her house than at my own. The fact that I was going through my angry, rebellious teenage phase played a lot into that. My dad was pretty protective of me and it was easier and more fun to spend time with people who weren't so "uptight" (read: people who weren't so invested in my well-being).

When I turned 14, she invited me to a stake youth dance. In retrospect, I can identify this as the beginning of the end - but of course, I was clueless then.

I had never been to any sort of dance before at all, so at the first slow song, her older brother grabbed me and pulled me onto the floor to dance. I'm pretty sure he was just being nice, but when my hand connected with his shoulder, it was like some sort of circuit was completed. Everything felt right. I actually paused and considered the feeling for half a moment, and then dismissed it.

My friend and I continued to spend time together. I practically lived at her house during my teen years. We did everything together. She invited me to fun church activities, and I got vaguely acquainted with her family's beliefs, the customs of the LDS church, etc. I went to girls' camp with her, and even attended church with them a few times. I even attended seminary with her for a year so that I could ride in with her in the mornings for a choir class we were taking at a local highschool.

I was pretty up-front with them that I wasn't interested in joining the church, but I was genuinely curious as to what it was all about (any form of Christianity still being almost entirely foreign at that point). I sucked up knowledge like a dry sponge, and they obviously loved to have the missionaries over for dinners and such while I was at their house. It helped that the missionaries were cute.

Ultimately, I look back on how things played out and I can see that there were a couple of major reasons for my eventual decision to join the church.

A big part of it was rebellion. I wanted an "out", if you will: a way to reject the religion and the culture I grew up in (which was actually quite a bit stricter than the LDS church). In a lot of ways, choosing to be baptized felt like a safe "out." It came with a built-in support network. I had a huge group of people rooting for me. And as great as my childhood really was (looking back on it), I was still a teenager, and everything about my home and family life felt tumultuous and drama-filled. I resented my dad for not letting me visit my mom for so long, I resented my stepmom for barging into our lives and changing everything, I resented my dad's house rules and his "overprotectiveness," and I was just generally an angsty teen. Attaching myself to a different group of people, in a lot of ways, felt like "screw you, I do what I want!" It felt good. It made me feel powerful and in control.

I also joined the church because I was in love. As much as I tried to dismiss my feelings for my friend's brother, they wouldn't go away. I had a handful of teenage crushes and romances, but they were always overshadowed by little, fleeting moments of chemistry that I tried SO HARD to ignore. I knew that he was getting ready to go on a mission. I knew that LDS culture frowned on members dating outside of their religion. I knew that it would be weird if I dated my best friend's brother. So I did nothing. I tried to pretend it wasn't there.

Then one day, my friend called me up on the phone. To complain about her brother's new girlfriend. Who was actually his fiance. Who was going to wait for him while he was on his mission and marry him when he got home. Who was also a non-member.

Ton of figurative bricks, meet face.

Suddenly, I would have given anything to go back and do something differently - to just plain do something instead of nothing.

I was an emotional mess for a while. His fiance and I became friends pretty quickly, and I was torn between wanting them to be happy, and feeling like it should have been me. It COULD HAVE been me.

Now, there's a crazy twist to this story, and I'm not even sure where to interject it because so much of the timeline blurs together in my memory, so here goes: His fiance was pregnant (not his baby, she was pregnant when they met), and she was considering giving the baby up for adoption. And his mom wanted to adopt the baby.

In retrospect, it's heartbreaking. His mom never really liked her, never intended to "let" them marry - she just wanted that baby.

He left on his mission, and his mom laid on the emotional manipulation. Looking back, it makes me sick remembering some of the things his mom said and did to ensure that she would give up her baby. I was there, I saw it firsthand, but not having kids of my own yet, I didn't really understand the gravity of what she was doing. I remember one time I was in the car with both of them, and Fiance was pouring her heart out about being unsure of her decision, and this woman burst into theatrical tears and started shouting at her - "How can you do this to me," "I need to know," "I can't do this if you're going to change your mind," etc. I literally cry sometimes when I think about it.

So his mom adopted the baby. And immediately she started pressuring Fiance to date other people for various reasons that ultimately all boiled down to the fact that she didn't think Fiance was good enough for her son. She'd gotten what she wanted, now it was time for Fiance to GTFO.

So Fiance dated. She met a guy, fell in love, broke things off with my friend's brother. All though this debacle, he was led to believe (by his mother) that Fiance had slept around and run off with another guy. He didn't even know that his mom had deliberately sabotaged his relationship until years later (a few weeks ago, actually).

Somewhere in the middle of all of this, I had made the mistake(??) of telling my friend about my feelings for her brother. I asked her to keep it in confidence, but of course THAT didn't happen. With Fiance out of the picture, his family hardcore latched onto the idea of getting the two of us together. Apparently even his out-of-state grandmother was doing her best to "plant the seed" in his head. In fact, I found out later, according to his ex (who we’ve re-connected with recently), when she left, his mom TOLD HER that it was fine because he was going to marry me instead. Ex told her it was going to bite her in the ass (I wanted to bitchslap my MIL when I heard that, I settled for high-fiving the ex instead).

Anyway. My now-DH and I had been corresponding via mail over the course of his mission, and eventually the topic of one of my letters turned toward a guy I was interested in at the time. Apparently that made him jealous, and he told me as much. He even went so far as to ask then and there if he and I could get together when he got home. I told him I wasn't going to make any promises, but that if I was available then, why not.

I tried to date. I had crushes, I went on a handful of dates, and I even had a couple of online romances. None of it worked out, because he was always there in the back of my head. I really, REALLY wanted to be single when he got home.

I also discovered a renewed interest in the church. I read the entire book of mormon and as much church literature as I could get my hands on. I attended the singles ward with my friend. I took notes, I researched, I even compared LDS doctrine and principles with passages from the Bhagavad Gita, to find similarities that I could more easily relate to and wrap my head around.

Of course I lied to myself. I told myself that I was doing this for ME, and that there was no way I was going to join a church for the wrong reason (especially for a *guy*). I was a very convincing liar.

And I prayed the hell out of that shit. I never got any answers. No warm fuzzies or burning bosoms. Plenty of emotional highs from talks in church, testimonies, etc., but I recognized those as endorphin surges.

Interestingly, my ever-present doubt has never hinged on any piece of LDS-specific doctrine. It wasn't even belief in god. My biggest sticking point, the one that I couldn't just drown in warm fuzzies because it felt good to believe, was the concept of Satan. I have never, ever, ever been able to believe in the existence of Satan. And as much as people say that everything hinges on belief in Jesus Christ, or a testimony of Joseph Smith, or whatever - that's equally true of Lucifer. If you don't have a testimony of Satan, everything else kind of falls apart.

But then I learned that "fake it til you make it" is apparently an acceptable practice (although they made it sound so nice - "borrowing a testimony"). And so I said to myself, dammit all, I am going to believe this, and until then, I'm just going to do it anyway. So I blew through the missionary discussions, got baptized, started attending church, paying tithing, and generally being a good little Molly Mormon.

His family was ecstatic. With their encouragement, DH and I quickly decided we were going to get married after he came home.

He came home later that year, and we got ourselves in trouble in no time flat. We felt obligated to hold out for a temple wedding, but there was no way that was going to happen. We were fooling around within days of him getting home. By the time my one year baptism anniversary rolled around, we were already having sex. So we planned for a civil wedding, dodging the issue with his parents for the most part. When they finally understood that we weren't having a temple wedding (and why), they freaked out. Withdrew their support, etc. We ditched our wedding plans and got married as soon as it was convenient. No real ceremony, no dress, nothing. We were married in a local park by our bishop, and some of our parents (his dad and my mom) weren't even there because we hadn't had time to plan (I'm still bitter about all of that).

He was disfellowshipped for one year, and I was on church probation. But we were "good" - we attended church the entire time, and on our first anniversary we were sealed in the temple. I'm not one who was alarmed by the temple. I found it underwhelming, bland, boring, tedious, and stuffy. It was no big spiritual experience for me. I felt kind of rushed through it, and really the impression I came away with was "this is it?"

I also suspected from the very beginning that the temple names were from some sort of list. When I went through my initiatory, it struck me as odd that the lady was able to casually throw her arm out sideways and scrawl the name (Naomi, if anyone is curious) on her little whiteboard, as if she'd done it a hundred times already.

After that we continued going to church, and threw ourselves into our callings. Aside from work, church was all we had time for. I was a primary teacher for nearly two years, which I loved until I got pregnant with our first child. Pregnancy made me hate children (thankfully I love my own).

Anyway. It was while I was pregnant that the whole Prop 8 thing happened. That was the first little jolt of awareness that the church was teaching things that I not only didn't fully believe, but had a very real, visceral objection to.

Even when I followed the line of thinking that homosexual behavior was sinful, I always saw that as a personal belief - a standard that an individual commits to uphold. NOT something to be legislated. Prop 8 made me feel ill, but I kept my mouth shut for a long time because the church was the only social network I had, and because I felt that there was still a lot of good in it.

It got harder to reconcile after having kids. I saw everything through the lens of "Is this how I want my children to be taught? Is this how I want them to grow up? Is this how I want them to learn to treat other people?"

My marriage kind of sucked, if I'm being honest. We loved each other, we had a healthy sex life, we got along. But his family had a lot of enmeshment issues that I didn't fully see beforehand. His parents, especially his mother, weren't respectful of our boundaries or our autonomy. They wanted to treat us as an extension of their family, our home as an extension of theirs, etc. He didn't see the issue with it. That's how he grew up. He was severely enmeshed with his mother. She called on him for everything, they were constantly talking on the phone, going out to lunch, etc. I put up with a LOT, but eventually I started feeling like the other woman in my own marriage.

We also had some issues in our marriage with porn. Which is ridiculous, because I've looked at and watched porn ever since I discovered the internet. But after joining the church, it was easy to fall into the trap of thinking that if HE watched porn, it must be because I wasn't enough for him, or because there was some problem in our marriage, or because he wanted to cheat on me. I also felt pressured into reacting a certain way. If I found evidence of porn on his computer, I thought I HAD to freak out about it, or *I* would be disappointing *him*. After all, that was part of my responsibility as his wife, right? Gotta keep him on the "straight and narrow."

Then, shortly before our second baby's first birthday, our marriage hit a pretty big bump in the road. We didn't realize it at the time, but one of my husband's asthma medications was causing him to become irritable and aggressive. He was constantly agitated and would get downright mean with the kids sometimes. Not to the point that I thought he would intentionally hurt them, but it was enough to worry me.

I was already resentful of him and insecure in our marriage thanks to always playing second fiddle to his mom, but before that point, there was nothing spurring me to action. I wasn't having very many loving feelings toward him, but I saw my marriage as a binding contract, I had entered into it voluntarily, and I was going to stick it out.

Then one day he got a little too rough with our oldest, and I told him that was it. He had to leave. At least for a night, and before coming home he had to go talk to the bishop and arrange an appointment for us with a counselor.

We got into counseling, and worked through our parenting issues fairly quickly once we figured out what was going on. But counseling opened a can of worms and our counselor zeroed in on our marriage problems. And of course, being and LDS counselor, it all came back around to porn. He must have a "porn addiction." So he started working on that, and we were working together on communicating and opening up and being honest with each other.

Some incredible changes happened within a few short months. When we started opening up to each other, we began to discover that the entire foundation of our marriage wasn't what either of us wanted it to be. The roles we had taken on didn't feel right to either of us. We BOTH resented the way things were. We were trying so hard to have the marriage we thought we were supposed to have, and we both hated it. We were miserable.

It was the first time in my life that I was able to admit to myself that who I was trying to be wasn't who I was, and wasn't even who I wanted to be. And I realize that I resented him for not being the perfect LDS husband, when that wasn't even what I wanted.

It took a lot to come clean about my own porn use, and how I KNEW (from experience) that him looking at porn didn't mean he loved me less. That I had made it an issue because it was "supposed" to be an issue, but it never really mattered to ME. From that day on, porn stopped being an issue. And it was so liberating to be able to just say: I don't care. I really, honestly don't care. If you want to watch porn, fine. It's okay. I'm hurt that you lied to me about it for so long, but I understand the position you were in, and it's okay.

As soon as we stopped letting other people's standards dictate our marriage, things were a million times better. We fell in love again. We were talking about everything, without the fear of being judged by each other or disappointing each other. We ditched the counselor, since obviously we weren't interested in working on porn "addiction" anymore (though I will forever be thankful to that counselor, since she was the first person to give voice to all of the issues I saw in his relationship with his family).

After a few months, we started sharing some of our "non-church-approved" sexual fantasies. His big one was a threesome, which involved me being with another woman.

He didn't bring it up again. He had just shared it as an insight into his head - just a dirty little fantasy. But *I* couldn't stop thinking about it. I couldn't get the mental picture out of my head. It forced me to stop and take a hard look at everything I had assumed about myself.

It was an interesting thing to be confronted with, because while I had always thought women were attractive, and I'd "jokingly" flirted with women for as long as I could remember, I had always held myself out as straight. My dad is pretty homophobic, so I never even considered growing up that I could possibly be anything BUT straight (you know, because if you're not straight, then there's something wrong with you, and there didn't seem to be anything wrong with me!). I had never entertained the notion of actually being involved with another woman in any way.

Yet I suddenly found myself questioning: AM I attracted to women? Those friendships I had as a kid that gave me butterflies - were those crushes? The fact that I blushed when pretty girls complemented me? Sneaking peeks at Playboy magazines as a kid because the pictures turned me on? The fact that my porn selections were almost entirely based on which girls I liked? What was going on, and why couldn't I stop thinking about kissing girls?

We were still attending church, but my perspective had shifted, and suddenly every single homophobic lesson and remark stood out to me, as if to say "there's something wrong with you."

If I had felt like I was the only person in the world in that position, my feelings about church might have been different. Even though I was coming to accept my attraction to women, I didn't really have a personal stake in the marriage equality fight - I was already married and very much in love with a man, after all.

Then around the same time, I also learned that my older brother (who I should mention was my absolute best friend growing up) is bisexual - something I had suspected for a while, but didn't work up the nerve to ask until I was working through it myself.

It made me feel sick to realize that for years I had aligned myself with an organization that would deny him the right to the same happiness that most people take for granted - if he just happened to fall in love with a guy. My brother is literally the greatest, most loving, caring, giving, selfless person I've ever known. The idea that I was surrounded by people who would be so hateful toward him because of who he might LOVE made me MAD.

If I'm being honest, I've always had issues with various points of LDS doctrine, history, church policy, etc. But I was pretty good at rationalizing, excusing, and justifying the things that didn't seem quite right. A lot of people end up researching their way out of the church, but that wasn't me.

I remember the last Sunday I ever attended church, the Sunday School teacher went on some homophobic rant and then had the nerve to ask if anyone in the room would "actually raise their hand in support of same-sex marriage." I wanted to stand up and give him a piece of my mind. I wanted to throw something at him. I wanted to get up and leave (and, if I'm being honest, I fantasized about burning the building down on my way out). Instead I sat through the rest of church, fuming. I knew I was never going back.

I was torn, because I had committed so much to trying to fit in there, trying to believe in something. And I felt like I didn't have a choice. I didn't want to go to church anymore, but I couldn't just STOP believing.. right? So I tried to tell myself that it was "just the people, not the gospel."

But one day, not too long after that, I literally woke up in the morning and it was gone. The sense of obligation, the struggle to reconcile ME with the person I was supposed to be, the desire to keep trying to believe in something that felt WRONG on every level - it was just gone. It was replaced by indignation. I had spent HOW many years of my life pouring my time, energy, and resources into an organization that teaches people to hate people?!

It felt like absolute clarity, to wake up and feel like I didn't have to be anyone but me. That I didn't *have* to believe in ANYTHING. I was able to look at myself in the mirror and say "I don't believe in god." And I was finally able to accept that about myself, and not care what anyone else might have to say about it.

And just like that, I was done. I haven't set foot inside a church building or shown my face at a church function since. It took a few more months for me to work up the nerve to officially resign my membership, but now I've been out for just about a year.

My husband was a little behind me in my journey out of the church, but pretty close behind. He still believes in *something* (he identifies simply as agnostic) and that's okay. We don't have to think or believe the same things. We love each other and respect each other, period. He might never officially resign from the church either, just because he doesn't want to deal with his family finding out, and that's fine too.

Despite how great it feels to be living genuinely as *us*, there is a sad part to this story too. My husband's family hasn't handled our exit from the LDS church very well. We've always been completely respectful of them. We left quietly, we haven't set out to challenge anyone's beliefs or anything like that. But from day one, they harassed us.

My MIL freaked out the first time she could tell DH wasn't wearing his garments. In a thinly veiled attempt to figure out what was going on, my SIL asked if we would work on getting our temple recommends renewed so we could go to the temple with her and her husband, and then she literally grabbed me by the shoulders and shook me when I politely and gently declined the invitation.

A mutual friend of mine and SIL was getting married. She's LDS, but her husband isn't. Most of their wedding guests were his friends and family, so they served beer. DH and I had one small can of beer each. His family was FURIOUS. They literally RAGED at us. Screaming, crying, emails, letters, completely blown out of proportion. From what I hear, MIL's version of the story is that we got completely trashed doing "shots of something" (there wasn't even any liquor at the wedding) and drove home drunk. With our kids in the car.

MIL has called me disgusting (not to my face - to my husband!) for wearing sleeveless sundresses, and she's tried to tell my husband that he should leave me because he must be miserable, that she "knows" the only reason he's staying with me is for the kids, and that she "knows" that I'm going to cheat on him, leave him, and break his heart.

I could go on and on and on. They have done nothing but spew unprovoked hatred and condescension at us since we left the church. Especially at me. In their eyes, I'm the villain in this story. They've tried to go around me to my husband, to undermine me and destroy our marriage because they can't accept or respect that we have the right to make our own decisions, and that we're happy.

We've had to systematically cut them out of our lives. First my husband's grandmother and aunt, then SIL (who, if you recall, was my best friend for *15 years*), and eventually MIL and FIL as well. We have minimal contact with one of DH's brothers, but that's it. His other brother started giving us the silent treatment after we cut off MIL and FIL.

We've lost nearly all of the family and friends who were the most constant fixtures in our lives. And that sucks. Especially for DH, since he grew up thinking that his family's love was unconditional. And it wasn't. Now we have to rebuild from square one, establishing new friendships, and redefining our entire concept of "family."

On the bright side, though, now we get to surround ourselves with people who love us and respect us for who we are. We get to live our lives the way we want to live, without feeling like we need anybody's permission or approval. And we get to raise our children in a home where they'll know that they're loved and accepted no matter what. Where they'll learn to love others. And hopefully not be judgmental dickheads.