The dream is to be able to walk away and have a "normal" life, never think of it again. I had someone in my life I was in love with to the point of totally walking away from everything that had to do with JWD, witnesses, any of it. For a year I never came here, and rarely even thought about the religion. There were negative aspects of who I was as a person recovering from the experience that remained even though I had stopped talking about it or talking with people who had been through the same things, and the strain on the relationship shifted to those parts of me that had not been repaired yet, primarily the communication aspects.
For some of us, our families are gone, and we have given up any hope of ever knowing them again. I don't know what I would do if the opportunity to know my family again were to present itself, but I do know that I would never have given up on that relationship for it. On the other hand, I would have tried to keep both, which would have been difficult to say the least, especially for her.
It is difficult to maintain a balance at times, as we come out of this. It isn't so much that we were tortured, discriminated against, or anything like that. We were taught to live life as if the world will end tomorrow. Most of us found out this was not the case at a late point in life, and have to struggle to understand reality that most people take for granted, and catch up in many areas. Success is measured as in how little of our future we lose trying to make sense of our past.
With the love you have for each other, I would be hard pressed to say who else would have a better chance of getting through this intact. What you see, the things that don't make sense, it is a result of what the group does to people, and something he is working through...and you inspire him to try harder.
Sometimes we get caught up in our little Ex-JW world, and need to be smacked in the face like this to remind us that there is a whole world out there we can miss out on if we aren't careful. Thank you for posting this, it reminded me of what is most important. If involved, I am certain I would rather never see my friend again than think I contributed to the end of something like this that is so important to him, his life with you.
There isn't a lot more I can say, since there is no way to know all of the story from just one side, and no one has the intelligence to judge either party much less the relationship based solely on the information given here.
Good luck to you both.
WLG
P.S. I'm pretty shocked at the judgement passed on him by some here...you guys, of all people, should be slow to send someone up the river. Who ever starts a thread asking for help because things are so freakin wonderful? Just because she didn't list all the good things, it doesn't mean they aren't present.