Hello, and welcome to the board,
As I read your post, you sound a lot like me when I met my JW wife back in 2002. I knew very little about them back then and the web did not have as much information as it does now. Not that I was looking, at least not in 2002. Personally, if I had known then what I know now, I doubt I would be married to her today. Not that our marraige has been bad, in fact, we've had a pretty good marraige in spite of our problems with most of them not really related to the religion. In fact, her JW parents and the elder at the Kingdom Hall she attends were very helpful and nice to us over the years. I just think that if I even had a clue about some of the things they taught concerning 1914, the fact that they think only they have the truth, and that all other churches are influenced by Satan, I think our relationship would not have lasted the questioning I am giving her now.
Personally, I think you would be better off setting him free and looking for someone else who beliefs are closer to your own. However, I've been with someone who I really loved (or so I thought) in spite of her abrasiveness towards me and what I believed. This, even though I was very tolerant of her beliefs while I disagreed with them. I'm not speaking of my wife in this instance but another woman who I met in the spring of 1999 and almost married during the summer. She was Catholic (in name only) and dabbled in the occult. My wife, in contrast, was a very warm, sincere individual who had a love for God and the Bible. Frankly, I felt as if I had found the woman of my dreams (and I still do though our love has been tempered). So in some way, I can understand why you may feel like you really want to work it out with this man. Though I still think it will be better if you didn't for reasons that I am about to illustrate.
Shortly after my wife and I moved in together and just before she and I married, I took her to a church that I was thinking of attending. I recall her looking at the windows of it where it had the glass images of Jesus and saying, "My mom said that these things were idols." When I asked how so? She said that people in churches worship these images. (UM, NO WE DON'T!) I tried to explain to her nicely how we do no such thing but she would not comprehend. Then the holidays came, she had been celebrating them with me before we move in together and got married. However, I would remember every year her saying that, "God is going to kill me!" I would ask her why and she would say, "Because I am doing something he hates, I am enjoying Christmas." To say how dumbfounded I was was an understatement. I mean, I knew Jehovah's Witnesses did not celebrate the holidays but I did not know that they took such a morbid attitude about celebrating them. I just thought they were like a friend of mine who was a witness at the time I met my wife (she's out of it now ) and that she would just give gifts to her son but call them friendship gifts and not put up a tree or hang decorations.
I was taught for many years prior to getting involved with my JW wife that the religion is false and, depending on who was telling me about them, they were a cult. However, I wanted to find out for myself so I agreed to have "Bible study" sessions with them from 2003 to about 2007. They seemed like they really knew their Bible and they were able to answer so many of my questions "from the Bible." Still, though, I knew something wasn't quite right because the broad generalizations that they made of Christendom's churches just did not seem to fit my personal experiences with the Christian community. Plus there were a few things that they taught that did not seem to make since. Their 1914 teaching was one in particular that I could not seem to accept because I was always taught that Jesus said that no one would know the day of his coming, except the Father alone. Still though, I did not give much thought to the religion and was actually beginning to accept some of their theology. It was okay because I was taking part in things she thought highly of and she was taking part in things I thought highly of (holiday celebrations). She was even attending church with me.
Fast forward to today, after my wife threw a big birthday party for our daughter, she decided that she no longer wanted to celebrate the holidays and birthdays anymore. It gave her no pleasure anymore so she felt like it was no longer worth it. Plus she wanted to rid herself of the guilt and wanted to 'get back in God's good graces.' At the same time, she also decided that she no longer wanted to attend church with me, saying that she was tired of being confused and wanted to just stick with what she felt was the truth. I felt like a part of me died when she made that choice and I began to wonder if she did indeed have the truth, and if she did, I was going to die. To say I was depressed was an understatement, I remember crying in the bathroom at work because I was torn between the life I was satisfied with and wanting to know if indeed I understood what the true religion really was. I remember telling my wife that perhaps she was right and maybe I too should become a JW. They certainly know how to present their religion as a true religion, they've done their homework when it came to how to counter questions from Christians in general and show Bible verses to back up their claims.
However, after a deep prayer with God and a reading of the Bible, I began to see that something wasn't right. You asked about the 144,000, so did I and when I read it in the Bible alone, I could not make the connection with the 144,000 JEWS in the Bible with the 144,000 "annointed Christians" that the Watchtower speaks about. Upon further research, I learned that the 144,000 could either be taken wholly figurative or wholly literal. The Watchtower takes the number literally and the people figuratively (spiritual Israel a.k.a. JW's) which is an error. Even though the witnesses believe they are the only true Christians (which is also not true), if they applied the wholly figurative interpretation of the 144,000 to themselves, then all witnesses would be partaking at the memorials. This is currently not the case as they interpret the scripture errorneously.
Some other things you may want to consider if you decide to continue in a relationship with this man.
Their blood doctrine in wrong, murderous, and very hypocritical. See my post concerning the blood doctrine debate I had with my wife. Your potential husband will consider himself the head of the household. If heaven forbid something should happen to one of your children that will require a blood transfusion, he will insist that your child does not take any blood. EVEN IF YOUR CHILD DIES AS A RESULT. He may say that he will respect your wishes, but he will be under pressure from the Society to CONFORM to their teachings.
As others may have pointed out (or not), he will insist that as the head that your children should be required to go to all Kingdom Hall meetings. While my wife allows (and even encourages) my daughter to participate in sports, I have a strong suspicion that once she makes her "goal" to become baptized in the name of the Father, the Son, and the spirit directed organization, (see this also) she will probably come under pressure to bring my daughter to more meetings and sacrifice her extra-currcular activities.
He will also want to read books that discourage participating in holidays with your children. These books also teach the children about Armaghedon and teach that all non-witnesses (a.k.a. you) will not survive it into the new system.
And he will probably dismiss all of your own beliefs and questioning as your personal opinions and may even label them in a negative way.
In short, he may be a wonderful man. I can certainly say that my wife is wonderful. But I would seriously heed that scripture concerning becoming unevenly yoked.
