Hello Wanderer, I can come on the board here when I feel like it. There is no guilt involved. I am pretty much anonymous. My wife doesnt tell me hurry up get ready we got a board to post to tonight. I am a great procratonator and this board helps me in my practice of putting important things off. I really dont think I miss the meetings at all after all this time. But I still need pleasurable activities to fill up my waking hours. I get enough commaraderie and friendship at work.
Do You Miss Your Sense of Belonging?
by The wanderer 52 Replies latest jw friends
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OUTLAW
Wanderer..The sense of belonging in the WBTS is an illusion..Not one of yor old friends,would hesitate to betray you,on the WBT$ command..You know it,I know it,anyone who is,or has been a Jehovah`s Witness knows it.....Something to think about...OUTLAW
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sass_my_frass
This cameraderie was, as far as I could tell, a shared feeling of smugness that we're the ones who are right and, and boring and pointless as our lives are now, we're the ones who are going to live forever, so all those cool folk who reject us are just wasting their time. I have noticed something similar to this in many organisations; different details but the basics are the same - "Us vs Them". I don't miss that. I have nearly gotten sucked into it in other places, like at work when team-building means isolating our knowledge and successes from other teams, or at the gym when people of similar abilities seem to group together and form cliques. I'm becoming a lot broader in my tastes these days and don't feel the need to belong to some kind of exclusive club any more, and I really like it.
If your answer is that you do not miss some of the camaraderie of being in an organization, how do you justify your time on this discussion board talking about your past witness life?
This club here I'm in, of people whose lives have been disturbed by some kind of contact with a cult, I don't think it's unhealthy to keep talking about it until it's all been said. We here don't exclude others, we don't consider ourselves superior to others in any way, we just have a similar pain and are here to share it and lessen it. I've noticed that people recover and move on at their own pace, but in the end they do move on. We here don't try to pretend that we should all stick together for life and exclude ourselves from contact with anybody who is different.
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BabaYaga
Yes, Dear Wanderer... that was one of the things that hit me the very hardest... IN THE BEGINNING. When I first left, I had nightmares about assemblies and woke up panicked and crying in a cold sweat.
I tried to tell my best friend (who had never been a Witness) that he didn't understand, that I had just left a huge family, and he would never understand that. He just held me and said, "You may have left a huge family, but you have just joined a much, much larger one."
Wow. Talk about the right thing to say. I guess, looking back, that was my official welcome... to the human race.
Those feelings of being lost do go away, Sweet Wanderer.
Love,
Baba. -
MsMcDucket
I never did feel like I belonged. I have always been uncomfortable in crowds and in places where you have to sit still.
Edited to add: I always hated being in places where I was supposed to prove how good I was to people. I learned this from my mother's church. It seemed that the people that gave the most money (among other things) were the ones that got the great titles, not the "good" ones. Put me in a situation like that and it won't take long before I'm out.
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Lumptard
I never really felt like I belonged...neither in the organization or out. I come here for information in an effort to find facts from both sides of the argument.
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greendawn
Being part of a social network is vital for our emotional well being we need to operate in a climate of give and take. So it's important to reconnect with people that we find likeable after leaving the JWs and all the more so since they cut off all bonds and contact with ex members leaving them vulnarable to a sterile isolation. There are always decent people in society that the ex JW can form a real connection with so as to get by in life and start ticking sooner rather than later.
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Xena
I used to miss it until I built up a different social network. And this board is one aspect of it.
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J-ex-W
Sense of belonging to a family, yes...sense of belonging to JW's congregation...no. I'm past that.
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pobthespazz
What the hypercritical conditional relationships that we all had in the WTS ? You call that a sense of belonging? I think you would be better off without all that, I certainly am