Thanks for the welcome, guys and girls. I grew up in a small, backward market town near Sheffield with a 3rd gen JW family.. The congregation I was in had a bunch of elders that were the most hardline and hypocritical imaginable (I managed to bag both a public reproof and a private reproof before I was 16, without even being baptized!).
I moved to Leeds at 19 when I found a job, went to a much nicer KH, and stayed there till I was 26 (being rewarded for my good deeds with a variety of 'privileges' along the way). It all started going a bit pear shaped for me with the 1914 generation thing.
Then, when I was 26, I met someone on a night out, started seeing them and started missing meetings. I was hounded by the elders for a couple of years, then moved over to W. Yorks to get off their radar and they've left me alone.
Haven't seen any of my old witness friends for years. My immediate family are all now out, too, and we're still close.
Probably the same story as many - just a different time and place.