Marage in trouble, (page 2)

Heavy Hearted

If there is anything that I can say to help her start to question where she is that would be great, I have brougt up a lot of things but anything helps.

You said that you were raised Catholic. I don't know what your (or her family's) religious preferences are now but one place to get the Catholic point of view is Jeff Schwehm's website. He is a Catholic convert from JW. He occassionally posts here. www.catholicxjw.com I don't know your current situation but I thought that I'd post that for you if it would be of any help.

mama1119

Maybe you need an intervention. Arm yourself with info on cults and the JW religion, and all of their false teachings.

Good Luck!

And keep up the good work not letting your children be involved! Best thing you could do for them!

fullofdoubtnow

Hi there Heavy Hearted, and welcome to the forum.

I find it interesting that your wife's jw friends have requested that you don't attend bible studies because you ask too many questions. Maybe you could talk to your wife about this, as jws generally encourage non believers to ask questions. Perhaps they are afraid that your questioning and, I suspect, their inability to answer you, might undermine your wife's progress, and expose to her the faults in her religion.

If you can use this as a way to drive a wedge between your wife and the watchtower, then use it, I certainly would. I wish you well.

Linda

OnTheWayOut

These are questions I found long ago on the internet designed to start people
thinking about involvement in the borg in a negative light. They are hard to just dismiss.
JW's will get frustrated by these questions, as not giving an honest answer can lead to
as much trouble as an honest answer. Try using some of these:

There are many religious groups which lead people astray from true Christianity.
Should a person examine not only the teachings, but also the history of any
religious organization before deciding it is the truth?

What if I joined a religious group to later discover that they have altered their
teachings or prophecies? Should I stay in it? What happens if I leave?

Does the organization or leadership claim to be a prophet of God?
What if their own literature shows that they do make that claim?

Both Deuteronomy 18:20-22 and Matt. 24:11,23-27 warn us of false prophets.
How would one identify a false prophet using these verses? Why are Jehovah’s
Witnesses not false prophets, have they ever foretold God’s Will and then were wrong?
Did they say it was God's Will, or their own thinking?

What would you think if members of a certain religion were not allowed to read other religious literature?

The Mormons claim that one must study THEIR books to attain to an accurate
knowledge of the Bible. What do you think of that?

If I was examining the Mormons, do you think it would be a good idea to read books
by ex-members? To learn about them from any outside sources such as Time Magazine
or maybe websites? Is your answer the same for those examining the teachings of
Jehovah’s Witnesses?

Doesn’t the following quote from Watchtower material require that I thoroughly check out Jehovah’s Witnesses?
1983 United in Worship book chap. 20 p. 155 par. 4 Life and Blood—Do You Treat Them as Sacred?
The Scriptures show that if we are part of any organization that is bloodguilty before God, we must sever our ties
with it if we do not want to share in its sins. (Rev. 18:4, 24; Mic. 4:3) Such action deserves urgent attention.

Do prominent scholars, either secular or religious, support the WT understanding of Scripture?
Shouldn’t I examine the scholarly works which the WT quotes, both for a full understanding of
their support and also to see what else their training has taught them? Consider asking these of those studying with your wife, put them in writing if you must.
Compare them with answers that JWD readers or your own research can turn up. That last one
is really for scholarly JW's as the most of them are ignorant of scholarly opinions on JW's, but
I have a list of some of their twisted quotes from worldly sources.

TheListener

welcome heavy hearted.

You have come to the right place. there are many here who can empathize with you and share experiences. Most of all there is never a lacking for excellent advice.

Did you know when she left for you that she still believed it and would one day go back? it's important to think about that because it will help you strategize.

Has something emotional happened in her life to precipitate this return?

how much of a student is she? Does she know all the witness answers or must she look them up or call her study conductor?

i have limited time online but i am willing to help out.

BCZAR2ME

Cherish your daughter.

bczar

free2beme

First word of encouragement, now that you have left the Witnesses, you can pursue a higher education and learn to spell a bit. Just messing with you, I was just heavily distracted by your spelling on marriage and daughter. I use this tool someone turned me too here, which is from Google and it spell checks the post before you complete it and submit. I know this post might come off as a jerk, and I do not intend it to and apologize if it does. I just work in an environment in which spelling and grammar are looked at closely as it is a multi-million dollar company and I look at that first.

On the subject, only time will tell. People get really attached to their religion and will give up on anyone else that gets in the way, family or friends. It is best sometimes, to let things run a course and not throw fuel on to the fire and make it burn longer then it would have.

Odrade

You're right, it was kind of jerky. As long as we're being jerky, it also points up your poor reading comprehension skills, since he stated he was raised Catholic, not JW.
Stones, glass houses, meh.
Heavy hearted, one of the posters above me said "Cherish your daughter." I would like to second that advice. There are many roads people take to salvage a marriage damaged by the JWs, but the relationship you have with your daughter is the most important one in this situation. Little girls need to know Daddies love them unconditionally, even if mommy's religion is teaching that Daddy is a bad worldly person. Focus your energies on making sure she knows how to think critically, as you do. Lots of luck.

zagor

Well to quote Liz Taylor "Frist divorce is the hardest, every subsequent becomes easier"

Not sure if I can agree completely with that but at least it is true that when you face first divorce your whole world is being turned upside down in an instant.

I'm probably not a right person to give any advice at all. But thought if I tell you my story you can get something out of it.

I've met my ex wife at the time in my life that I can describe only as the darkest period of Dark Age. However, shortly after our wedding in fact it became quickly obvious to me that we were two completely different people. In fact, looking back now I can tell there were telltale signs of storm on the horizon even before that but I ignored them.
So I clung to the relationship and didn't want to break it that easily after all we were building our future together irrespective of under what circumstances we met. And I loved the idea of peaceful family life, partly because it was calming demons from my past and partly because I finally felt needed by somebody. So I went through motion of some 7 years trying to mend the differences and trying to be a better husband. At the end of our marriage sabbatical we got a beautiful daughter. I thought finally we were going to make everything work. But it was not to be. In fact, whatever difference were there before now they became amplified to the point that i even contemplated ending my own life, the only thing that stopped me was the thought of that child growing up without father.

Our arguments became so regular that I had option to either leave the house or to fight. In the end I chose the first.
A top of that, it was a period when I was trying to clean my life from j-dub bullshit so there was an added pressure.
After it all ended I was a complete insecure, emotional wreck, and I mean totally. You probably didn’t see a car that looked so smashed after an accident. I went through succession of short relationships but nothing worked. In fact, in process I myeslf became a freakin watchtower by rasing guard and not letting anyone come close to me on truly emotional level.

It took me some two years to come all right. Thing that helped me was my return to university study that I originally left because of j-dub f**ed up teachings. The other thing that helped me was listening to classical music, which soothed my spirits and helped me calm down and think rationally.

Thankfully I’m cured of it now in fact, in process I became 100-fold stronger person than I was ever before so I even went into some strange things to test my limits, not least of which were extreme sports. But that nagging feeling that my relationships finish almost quicker than they start is still with me and haunts me to this day. Likewise, the idea that I can’t control much of what is now happening in my daughter’s life is really bothering me particularly because through a strange twist of fate her mom is now going to JW meetings.

So what do you do after all of that? I guess one has to live in realization that not everything can be fixed instantly. And us men have that very problem, we would love to fix things. And I’m guilty of that even as we speak. But life is not a thing. It is a process. I have learned to accept that even though I don’t have much of input of what is happening in my daughter's daily life I’ve realized that she is also a person, a person that is growing and will eventually start using her own powers of judgment. She will start sooner or later asking questions and then there will be two sides that will be able to answer. And don’t underestimate kids; they are innocent but not stupid. Even on this board I see many kids who are no longer there precisely because eventually they started asking right kind of questions. Which is something that warms my heart and gives me hope.

Anyhow, that would be a short version of my story, hopefully you can get something out of it, if you want know more pm me.

Marage in trouble,