Wow oomps... I know you dont know me particularly, but I was in the JWs for 13 years and I met and married my JW husband in year 3 and had our first child in year 4. I was mentally heading out the door already but was kept there by what I knew would be the destruction of my new family, and shunning by everyone I knew then. So I waited....and waited...until year 13 when I couldnt stand it any more. By then I had three kids and the discord in my soul became too loud to ignore. I knew clearly what the repercussions of my DAing myself would be, but my children were not baptized and I still had time to save THEM from becoming consumed by this cult and for that reason I was willing to do whatever was necessary in terms of sacrifice.
My JW husband was furious with me when I said I was DAing but he knew I had read Crisis and I had read some of that TO him in spite of him trying to avoid hearing it, and I was positively RABID about the lies I had been force fed for all that time. And I was angry as a trapped hornet at having "wasted" the best years of my life on the lie. But I loved my husband, and I would die for my kids and so I knew I needed to get the kids the hell out of that cult for them to have any kind of normal thriving life at all.
My husband cried and withdrew and said that since I had "left Jehovah" I was not going to be in paradise with him and that I had made a VOW to be faithful to Him. No amount of cajoling or logic could make him see that leaving the cult was not the same as leaving God and that the two were not the same entity. You see it...I see it...but they dont and wont until their hearts are open to it. He was as defensive as I was offensive in the arguments. He didnt have anything to come back at me with except stuff I already knew inside and out and in fact I knew MORE about his beliefs than he did. He couldnt counter what I was saying AGAINST the organization because they arent allowed to read or hear any of that negative stuff. So we struggled a loooong time, until one day I literally took my children to my non JW sister in laws home to get them away from him and stood OVER them and between he and them, and said no more...you are not taking our children to cult meetings any more and if you try to take them one of us is going to end up in the hospital. That was 2002. He stopped going himself as well. We live two blocks from the hall and he has been there maybe 10 times since. He was only going so he could take the kids to hurt ME and without them his reason for going disappeared. He sure as hell wasnt going for HIMSELF. And he never read any literature, never picked up any mags or studied or went in service...he was a JW when it was convenient, like on holidays or when he met one face to face. His hypocrisy is something HE has to live with but it did not go unnoticed by the kids.
In order to survive as a family, he and I had to agree to disagree on the JW thing. Where the kids were concerned, I made it clear that as their mother, HIS belief system was NOT more important or more "true" or more "accepted by God" than mine was and I WAS going to be telling and showing them my own beliefs even though I didnt have any meetings to drag them to. He of course believed that the children leaned towards my side of the equation because we were now doing holidays and birthdays and I was "bribing" them. I said "well you are the ones who are always saying you "give gifts all year long" and I havent seen ONE from you so thats no excuse at all. The fact remains that our kids see clearly how YOUR FAMILY is now SHUNNING MOMMY and the "friends" at the Kingdom Hall are telling them that their mommy is "with Satan now and will be destroyed at Armageddon. Nice huh? You think I wouldnt have anything to SAY about people doing that to my children? Nothing to SAY about how your entire family, including THEIR cousins, now SHUN mommy for no other reason other than we dont attend the same church?" His reply was..."YOU left Jehovah! What did you EXPECT would happen?? You have no one to blame but YOURSELF for how people treat you!" Rubber stamping...thats all they have.
Yeah...it was ugly. But we didnt marry each other only because we were both JWs and anyone who marries for that reason is doomed to fail.
When the rancor stopped...we talked openly about our love for each other and if we WANTED to continue to be together and we did, but there had to be some lines drawn in the sand. And we managed to make it from that time in 1997 til now because religion was taken off the table in our house. The kids saw clearly that they didnt want to be a part of this cult and eventually all decided to stop going to ANY meetings and that includes the Memorial. Even now, as he and I are getting a separation for a myriad of other reasons of irreconcilable differences, we still love each other but can no longer exist under the same roof. His way of dealing with his depression now is to run back to the meetings. He still thinks that meeting attendances has some magical healing power. He thinks his JW sister and her five kids are gonna move into this house to help pay the mortgage...but I guarantee he will be MORE miserable because NOT going to the meetings will no longer be an option to him as she and hers are rabid JWs.
On the other hand, my EXJW mother in law who was a JW for 20 years, raised her kids in it, lost her first husband because of it, then remarried a JW elder...and tried 7 years late to leave the Borg in 99. She DAd and her JW husband immediately labeled her as a spiritual endangerment and left her. She was consumed with guilt and the sorrow of losing her husband, and two JW children and grandchildren who shunned her...went back and groveled and sucked it up for a year in 02 and was reinstated in 03. But she knew too much. And her JW husband returned to her but began to make her life a living hell with his sarcasm and smirking "you cant do a damn thing about it" attitude and his disrespect for her...and his new found alliance with her adult JW children AGAINST her now...and so she DAd again in 05. She has a Downs daughter who is 35 and living with her and damned if the JW hsuband doesnt sneak that girl out to meetings against her mothers wishes and even now when faced with a court order to STOP doing so, continues to do so, telling this retarded girl that Jehovah wants her at the meetings so she can be made perfect in the New System! And so making her own mother the enemy in her life. My mother in law is divorcing him now...sent her daughter to live with her father until the JW is OUT of the house so he cant endanger her further. And she realizes she will never get back her lost JW children and grandchildren as long as the cult shuns us. But she has to get them out of her life as much as possible to survive. Even if that means a divorce, a court order against her EX and selling and moving away.
So having said all that oomps...it can be done that you can survive the marriage but that 500 pound gorilla will ALWAYS be sitting in the living room. Every time you feel the urge to PURGE on your wife, walk out. Take a walk, take a drive... but dont live a lie either. Dont pretend to believe to keep the peace or it will eat you alive and your son may misinterpret your silence as acceptance of their beliefs and may become one too.
Im moving out but I honestly think my husband and I might be able to be more civil to each other now than we were in our marriage and we will ALWAYS be the parents of our children. I wish you luck and love my friend...we DO know how tough it is.
LD