I'll be going against the opinion flow here, so I've already put on my bullet-proof vest.
I feel terribly sorry for Christopher's wife, and her child. I would like to hear her side of the story, and not only the side of the man who, a few months after his marriage, is bemoaning his wedding ring in a pub/bar situation. At this stage it seems that this is all about Christopher.
I'm not sensing any attempt to take your wife's hand, Christopher, and say "Let's talk about this forever that we promised each other... in court.... very recently....."
You don't care about her child. You call it "the child" and in fact until recently called it "the baby" even though her child is much older than a baby.
With a caring partner, Christopher's wife could well be led out of the cult. But it seems she has been landed with a self-absorbed immature cad (that she married because they had sex over a two-month period and both she and he wanted to avoid DF'ing).
Jamiebowers, when the afterglow of your bar meet-up with Christopher wears off, perhaps you should meet up with his wife and step-child and get a 360 degree perspective.
Now that someone who does not have the complete picture has put their two cents in, how about we hear from the person who is actually LIVING the situation, hmm? Here's the deal. I am not and never have 'bemoaned my wedding ring'. My concerns about this marriage have EVERYTHING to do with the fact that we are dealing with people who are deceiving us for the sake of maintaining their power over the minds of innocent people. The heart of our problems has been my grave concerns about the Society's manipulations and false teachings. I very much love my wife and have repeatedly acknowledged--though maybe not to you personally, or necessarily in the context of this message board--that she is very good to me. Secondly, I have been to a bar...what, maybe three times in my entire life, and most of those times were when I was not married or even dating? So get your facts straight. I went to a bar ONCE recently, for like, 30 minutes after work, where by coincidence someone--NOT Jamie Bowers, who lives like, several hundred miles away from me--who was on this site happened to be, with a male friend of hers. And by the way, she is very happily married herself, even though that's not even really your business. There was nothing romantic or sexual or anything of the kind involved in that. I didn't even have a drink, I just met her and her friend and we chatted for a little while, then they went to the movies and I went home to my wife and daughter. As I always do. I go out every day to work to keep a roof over my family's head, and I struggle to make ends meet on one income. When I get home, I try my best to help out my wife and look after our daughter. Daughter, child, and baby, at least in my understanding of the English language, are synonyms of a sort and do not denote any particular perspective on how I feel about her. Were you there when I found out she was going to born, like a week before it happened? When I promised myself that if the father didn't want to take care of her, I would? Her father wanted her to die, did not want to SEE her after she was born. So if you think I don't care about my daughter, maybe you should see if you can find her real father and talk to him about selfishness. You are not in my marriage, so you do not know what conversations I have or have not had with my wife about the things we are going through. I choose not to discuss every detail here because it's not the place for every detail. I have probably said too much about our marriage as it is. But we have most certainly talked about some difficult things and been through a lot together. So you would be speaking about a relationship that you are grossly uninformed about. You're not "sensing" any attempt on my part to talk to my wife because you are not a freaking Jedi Knight. Wherever you are, you cannot "sense" what's going on in my marriage, in my home. Her child is not even 2 years old yet. I think that constitutes "baby" in my book. For whether or not I care about the child, I just finished discussing that issue. Do not insult me by trying to tell me how I feel about my family. This "self-absorbed immature cad" does the best he can every day for his family. This "self-absorbed immature cad" is a particularly strange one, given that he married her in the first place. Self-absorbed, immature cads don't bother marrying the woman they love. Much less waiting 5 long years to do so, as I did, in the midst of dealing with people who thought she wasn't worth marrying, my family included. I don't see any 'afterglow' around here. You have an active, almost Watchtower-reminiscent imagination about people. Get your facts straight before you speak about a situation, please. There was nothing and is nothing questionable going on, period. I don't claim to be a perfect husband. I've got to learn to communicate more with my wife and be more attentive to her. Is there something about the emotional impact of finding out you've been in a cult your entire life that is lost on you? It's hard to function with something that huge weighing on your soul. I've done the best I could with that reality, and my wife acknowledges that I've taken good care of her. Maybe YOU should meet-up with her and her daughter so that YOU can get a full perspective on the matter. I respect your apparent concern for her and our daughter. But you cannot speak on this matter because you simply don't know all that is going on. Thank you. --sd-7