I haven’t been a regular contributor to this forum, although I’ve been an avid reader for nearly 3 years. Because of my limited contribution, I haven’t really created a bond with anyone here, so I really appreciate you taking the time to read my story despite that. The reason for my limited participation has mostly been because I didn’t want to be identified, at first because I had no desire to be outed as an “apostate,” but as that concern began recede, it dawned on me that I had posted a lot of things which I would probably only share with a few really close friends. Hence, I’m still cautious about what I post so as to not give myself away. Let me give you a brief synopsis of where I’ve been so you can understand where I’m now at in my life.
My parents were Catholics, but they converted to JWism when I was a toddler. From as far back as I can remember, all I ever wanted was to grow up so I could leave JWism behind and live my own life. I hated all things JW. I grew up with 2 older brothers and my parents were extra strict on us because they were not very active JWs, so they overcompensated by taking a hardline stance. My dad was not a deadbeat, but his job forced him to be away from home for days at a time. Even when he was home, he refused to have any part in disciplining us, so my mom basically became my dad as well. She had to wear both hats. When I was approximately 10 years old, my oldest brother embraced JWism and became something of a local superstar. People marveled at how a kid with inactive parents and virtually no family support could embrace JWism with such enthusiasm. After a few years passed, the middle brother began to rebel. He was in high school and wanted to do things typical high-schoolers do. My oldest brother had moved away by then, so my mother turned to me for support. I was 14 years old and had to grow up fast. This was tough for someone so young. As a result of the pressure and the hole I felt in my own life due to a lack of a social life, I ended up turning to JWism, just as my oldest brother had done. I was 15 years old at this point and lacked the intellectual tools to objectively scrutinize their teachings, so I was easily fooled.
This began a several-year-long period where I lived and breathed JWism. I was baptized when I was 16, and became a regular pioneer when I was 17. When I was 18, the circuit overseer invited me to move to a neighboring state and serve where the need was great, but by that point things had begun to change. The discrepancy between what I thought “Jehovah’s organization” should be like and what I actually saw around me had gotten to me. Doctrinal doubts had begun to enter my mind (although I quickly suppressed them) and my enthusiasm for JWism had all but faded. My gas tank was on empty. I turned down the CO’s offer. Not long thereafter I got involved with an attractive, but “spiritually weak” girl in my congregation. Things began to go “downhill” from there. We became sexually involved with one another, although we carefully avoided porneia as defined by the WT. Essentially we did everything we could do with our clothes off that didn’t count as sex. I lost all privileges, and after my relationship with this girl ended (she cheated on me), a new period of guilt and shame ensued. I blamed myself for my lack of faith and expected everything to go wrong in my life as punishment for my “sin.” It became something of a self-fulfilling prophecy. Eventually I was publically reproved for public drunkenness, and became a bit of a pariah in my local Hall.
When I was 23, I was ready for one last push. I started to go out with a girl who embodied all the qualities I possessed when I was a teenager. She loved all things JW, but she was humble at the same time. She was in it because she genuinely bought into it. She wasn’t one of these people who are into JWism for the opportunity it provides to acquire power and status. She didn’t care about those things. I think she saw in me a guy who really bought into JWism as well, but her parents were not happy about our involvement with one another. I had been publically reproved and, for all intents and purposes, I was damaged goods. They wanted someone better for her. Our relationship suffered because of that, although I think she really liked me and wanted to make it work. It ended up not mattering because I had my “moment of clarity” while I was with her. That precise moment, the straw that broke the camel’s back, if you will, happened while I was going out with her. I allowed myself to see that the WT was not spirit-directed, and it was the point of no return. I had to end it with her, but I couldn’t tell her why. It broke my heart, but it was for the best.
What followed was a period of intense depression and soul-searching. It’s hard to go from thinking you have all of life’s mysteries figured out to a state of spiritual nothingness. And even though I had realized that the JWs were not the truth, I could never completely shake myself of the 1% doubt in my mind telling me that perhaps I was wrong and the JWs really did have the truth after all. Time passed, but my life remained the same. Nothing of importance was happening around me because internally I was in shambles. By the time I turned 25 I decided I needed to move on with my life. I went back to school to finish my college degree. A year later I moved out of my parents’ house. A year after that, I moved to an entirely different city. It was at this point that I stumbled across JWD by chance and allowed myself to really read and analyze “apostate” positions. Once I did, I was able to shake myself from that lingering 1% doubt that was holding me back. I knew that I had been fooled, and that I needed to get the most out of life because it truly was the only life I had to live.
Once that happened, though, I had to come to grips with one thing. I had absolutely no grasp on how to romantically interact with the opposite sex in a normal manner. I grew up with no sisters, and my mom was forced to be both a mother and a father figure to us, so I never learned how women think and behave, what their emotional and psychological needs are. I never had a girlfriend when I was growing up because I wasn’t allowed to, and I didn’t want to disobey my parents on this matter because I would be too embarrassed if girls found out my parents wouldn’t let me date. So, I never learned those valuable skills. When I began dating this JW girl when I was 19, I didn’t have to chase after her. She was the one who was after me, so I didn’t learn normal relationship skills with her, either. It wouldn’t have mattered anyway. Dating within the JW world does not resemble dating in the real world in the least. The kinds of things men need to do to attract women in the real world are discouraged within the JW world. It’s basically a business decision. You look at someone’s “spiritual qualities” and decide whether they’d be a good “mate” and would help you “progress spiritually.” Love and attraction have no part in JW courtship. Plus, I wasn’t a natural at it. I would have had to have learned it the hard way.
Basically, I was clueless. So instead of going to work on that part of my life, I ignored it completely. I wasn’t up for the challenge. I was too embarrassed to take a girl home and have her realize I have virtually no sexual experience. Surely they’d expect a guy in his late 20s to have plenty of experience to draw from. Instead, I set out to develop myself professionally. Fast forward a few years. I’m now 29 years old (just a few months shy of 30). I’ve been able to fully develop several facets of my life. I have a big circle of friends around me, and a couple really close friendships. I’ve been able to do some pretty exciting things in my professional life and have been pretty successful in that regard. Unfortunately, my love life is still non-existent. A couple of recent events, however, have caused me to finally take up the challenge and attempt to fix it.
The first event happened about 2 months ago. A girl I’d knew from the past (an XJW, actually) got in contact with me and told me she had broken up with her boyfriend. It was clear she wanted to connect, so I made a date with her and drove out to meet her. Things went wonderfully at first. A few hours into it, we were locking lips. By the end of the night I invited her to a hotel, and she agreed. On the drive over, she was all over me, but when we got to the hotel room, she put on the brakes and asked me to take her home. I was dumbfounded. The next day she sent me a series of text messages where she essentially said she wanted to forget about that night and start things over again. She wanted to keep seeing me, but I was too freaked out by what happened. I had no idea what to say or how to handle that situation, so I never called her again. She eventually got back with her ex-boyfriend.
The second event happened a few weeks later. I met a girl at a professional function, but thought nothing of it. She was interesting to talk to, and I inquired into her relationship status to some of her friends (she was single), but that was it. About a week or two later, I got an instant message from her out of the blue. It was clear she was interested in me. I invited her to go out dancing with me and a group of friends, and things went well, but nothing happened between us that night. She then invited over for drinks at a bar that was close to her house a few days later. She invited me up to her apartment afterwards, and I knew it was on. I thought we were going to have sex, but she applied the brakes (said she had a bad experience with a guy she had been seeing a few months ago and wasn’t ready for it). Two days later we went out again. This time there was oral sex involved. When I left her apartment she asked me to dance a song with her in her living room, and we kissed goodbye. But things got weird after that. I started getting the cold shoulder from her, and I was not able to get her to go out with me again.
These two back-to-back situations took a toll on me emotionally. It made me have to face up to the fact that I had no idea how dating works. I was supposed to have figured all this stuff out when I was in high school, and instead here I was: a clueless 29 year old man. Had I had some experience under my belt I would have known how to carry myself in these situations, but I did not. Here were two romantic opportunities that had fallen into my lap. All I had to do was not screw them up, and yet I managed to mess up both of them. The worst part was that I had absolutely no idea what I had done to ruin them. It was at this point that I remembered a conversation I had had with a friend of mine a few years back. He recommended a book that was written by a nerdy guy who had come across a subculture of pickup artists and had joined it. He went from being clueless about relationships to being…well…a pickup artist. I didn’t have then, nor do I have now, any interest in becoming a pickup artist, but I do want to develop that much-neglected part of my life. As I was reading his story, things began to make sense. I had realized what I had done to foul these situations up, and it made me thirsty for more knowledge. I’ve been reading books on human psychology and seduction ever since. I think there is essentially 3 important aspects of a man’s life that need fulfillment: friendship, career, love. I’ve got two of those down, but I’ve neglected the third aspect basically my entire life.
I guess the point to all of this is to say that as I’ve become more and more obsessed with developing my love life and understanding human psychology, I’ve become less and less concerned with all things JW. I find myself spending less time on JWD. My pursuits in life have changed. I want to unlock this mystery, and in the process, learn normal human interactions. I’ve sometimes thought of myself as possessing a Spock-like personality, but that’s because JWism made me that way. We were taught to suppress our emotions and follow a set of rules for everything. I was able to develop healthy relationships with male friends throughout my life, but I never was able to learn how to interact with women on a romantic level, and I was hardly ever around girls growing up to be able to learn how they tick. Women tend to be more emotional than men. Having suppressed my emotions growing up was not a good thing. I realize that the clock is ticking away, and if I’m not able to crack this puzzle soon, I’ll just keep growing older while neglecting this important part of life.
I won’t make any promises or predictions about how much or how little I’ll post in the future, but I already feel myself identifying less and less with being an XJW. JWism feels more like a distant memory now than it ever has, and that can only be a good thing.