by shamus100 45 Replies latest jw friends
my fade was unplanned,
but sudden and persistent....
definitely there was an initial onslaught
which was largely ignored ( yay for caller ID)
and eventually it waned to an occasional
or incidental expression of concern....
there are a few, very few, who i dont mind
engaging in conversation if i see them in
the course of a day, but mostly i avoid
the r & f as i am not interested in stepford moments
My daughter and I just walked out at the public talk. After my parents died I just disappeared. That was at least 11 years ago. Definition of a cult. Try leaving!!
I think the "friends" are a bit afraid of me. I get no phone calls from them.
They do cross my path (really, I cross theirs) from time to time because
the wife is a JW. They say how they miss me. I say I have the same
phone number, or that I am fine and happy. They assume I must be
miserable.
It's amazing that as miserable as I must be, they don't reach out to help.
Don't get me wrong, I don't want them to reach out. Still, you would think.
I know I was as guilty as they are in the past. That should be a red flag to
any lurkers.
Outside of family and two or three friend, no one has noticed I'm gone.
Okay -
Where is the love bombing? Is there anyone on this board who actually had people that really gave one sh** about you leaving?
Wow - I shouldn't have moved away after all, worrying about some supposed 'lovebombing' episode!
I get the impression that people look foward to gossip and news of people leaving and annouincements. I guess it depends if it is a samll cong and members are related. But in cities and in large congs, no one truly cares. At first people are surprised and for a while there may be a an effoort but soon to die out and people will forget you faster than when a monkey scratches his ear.
It is funny when you think about it that after knowing and socializing with people for so many years they wil brush you off as if they never knew you and friendship bonds that seemed so deep are shown to be shallow electroplated. RElationship is conditional.
no one noticed, no one gave a damn. And I grew up in that congregation, knew those folks from childhood. It is a religion that teaches people it's OK not to love, it's a religion that teaches you it is OK to just cut people out of your life.
Hi Fisherman,
You are right, I think - people do want there to at least be some gossip, some talk, anything when they leave. After giving you're whole life to that bullshit religion, shouldn't there be something?
Hortensia,
Your whole life in the same congregation - yet nobody cared? Strange, strange people.
Still nobody that got love-bombed, eh?
Noone ever exclusively called me or visited me. If they did call, it was usually for my JW mother and I happened to answer the phone. "We miss you at the meetings!" No you don't, liar. You didn't care when I WAS there!
The only person who actually called on me was the elder who studied me. He came to the door and told me he loved me. YUCK!
Oh yeah, and there was the one guy I ran into on the bus. "We used to cover these areas, remember? Remember all the good times we had in Service? We should do that again!" Yeah, fat chance.
Both of those guys are dead now, so they don't miss me anymore.
One or two tried to keep in touch. We had moved to a different congregation territory and different circuit, so that made it difficult for anyone to determine how Inactive™ we were for about a year, when finally we didn't show up at the District Convention™.
In the meantime, apart from those two who attempted to keep in touch, nobody gave a damn about us. Not even my folks. We've not set foot in a Kingdom Hall™ in over a decade, and not once have they bothered to ask why. They shun us just the same.
