by hamsterbait 9 Replies latest jw friends
Do you remember the counsel to "widen out" in our association with the witlesses?
How many of you found yourself trying to make friends with people who were just not your kind?
Spending evenings bored, or worse. Finding you had made friends with an emotionally needy leech, or people who then started to take advantage of your goodwill?
Worse still, when you objected to unacceptable treatment were you the "crybaby" for saying "ouch" when you had been smacked in the mouth?
HB
This was a huge problem for me growing up.
When i was around 10 - 12, i was among the first to get baptized, so i was considered a "good example" and probably led to resentment when the kids my age were being compared to me. As i got older, i was given more and more responsibility until i was just too busy during meetings to socialize with people.
When i was between the ages of 17-20, the problem was that it was known that i was going to college and wasn't pioneering, because of this i didn't really know that many witness youths other than the ones in my congregation.
It used to bother me because on one hand, they didn't want you to have friends outside of the troof, but the ones in the religion were either non-existent or thought they were better than you if you weren't wasting 70 hours a month of your life away.
No hamsterbait, I can't say that I ever experienced that in the JW world, but the EX-JW world is a different story
The only ones I saw widening out in my former congregations were those plain single sisters left on the shelf getting fatter and fatter as they quickly approached middle age and those dull, bored married couples where they decided not to have children until the new system, also getting fatter. LOL
When I was in School my mother made me go to meetings.
But I also hung around with friends from school and played sports in the neighborhood. And played in music groups with worldly people.
Then When I got married and was in my 20's most of my friends were witnesses, And we seemed compatable.
I doubt I could have found anyone more enjoyable in the world.
I was young and always had someone to go to dinner with, to party with on the weekend drinking, playing cards, take vacations with, go fishing with. The friends got together most weekends and played softball, football, basketball, field hockey.
But then 76 came.
And I had to drop back and punt and reacess.
Going to the hall there were always leeches who tried to get things for free. In my younger days I had a roofing business and Some tried to get my services for free.
Like come on over on Saturday and we will have a roofing party.
And these were not the ones I normally associated with they were just the leech types who used the organization for a deal.
But thats not just the witnesses, thats human nature. Some people make a hobby of getting things for free not paying for them.
Those cockroaches only wanted me to meet other men. Going directly against their own advice--it always had to be on their terms.
And they wonder why I now just plain skip the boasting sessions altogether.
"Worse still, when you objected to unacceptable treatment were you the "crybaby" for saying "ouch" when you had been smacked in the mouth?" Yep. After a few such incidents I started smacking back. They really can't take it as well as they like to dish it out.
"Widen out" - Who did, and got burned??
Our family 'got burned' in the end. Watchtower would have done better in rephrasing the term from "widening out" to "Bend Over".
Dismembered
I did and almost every time got burned out
Now I'm searching for real friends who will give me something in return.
I did and almost every time got burned out
Now I'm searching for real friends who will give me something in return.
