Hello everyone,
After lurking around here for about a month, I thought it's appropriate to introduce myself to such fine group of people.
I was never a JW. Been married to a baptized mate for over 15 years. My wife was never technically all in, more of a fader, rarely went to meetings, the occasional memorial, a convention once or twice. I accompanied her to most events. Things started getting more "serious" a couple of years ago when the occasional knock on the door caught her at a really low point emotionally after losing a close family member and a good friend in a very short period of time. Then the knock on the door and the tract must had been a "sign from Jehovah".
We started going back to the hall, a bible study was arranged for her to be brought up to speed and I, not having any particular spiritual background, tagged along, thinking that I may benefit from some spiritual direction. A bible study was arranged for me too with a young elder (this oxymoron should have been my first clue to the path of dissonance) and there was a fairly uneventful year of regular” bible" studies, going to the Sunday meetings, Circuit Assemblies, Convention, etc...
During that time, I was silently beating my head against the table about the garbage thrown at me. I am very analytical by nature and if 2+2 ain't 4, there is no way I can accept that and move on. Yet, I kept thinking that maybe I don't get it just yet and need to "study" more to get the big picture. In the mean time, I started getting the questions of "what my spiritual goals are", the urgency to set such and the commitment to follow through with them. My wife was also being coerced to start FS again and the whole nine yards.
Something felt wrong...
All I had to do is look up JW on my trusted Wikipedia for the can of worms to get opened....I lived half of my adult life under Communist regime in the former Eastern Block and let me tell you - the resemblance between the old communist tricks and the WT methodology is so striking, that I feel fully competent to share experiences, give advice and be an authority in JW matters, even though I had never been one. It was like eerily strung déjà-vu moments and experiences I had long forgotten about.
Now I had to break it to my wife somehow without jeopardizing the marriage and her standing with he WT. We had an unusually open and easy discussion, given the sensitivity of the matter, and I was happy to find out she had mostly the same doubts but never voiced them. She wants to remain in good standing because of her (utterly delusional) sister and a good friend still very much in.
I made an easy call to my "bible study" elder conductor and told him that I am suspending the studies until I sit down and read the entire bible on my own so I know what the heck am I "studying". Man, I wish I recorded that call. Only now in retrospect I see all the manipulation and loaded language he threw at me. He was content, but audibly furious about the turn of events. That was 4 months ago; have not heard from him since. I hope I spooked him or maybe he really bought into the idea that I was somehow possessed by demons and Satan is using me to stumble him. Whatever.
My wife is playing along, deflecting/ignoring calls from "concerned" sisters, enjoying again her weekends and (hopefully) slowly fading away form the Borg...
Looks like the self imposed "imminent danger" has passed, but I am preparing silently in the background to fend off any future attempts for the "Friends" to guilt her back in. Reading here some of the first hand accounts of family division (and outright devastation), it will be over my dead (and unressurectable ) body I allow this to happen without a fight.
In the short time I’ve been a part of this community, all of you have given me reassurance of the evil nature of the Borg, insight and so many ideas of how to fight back, if that becomes necessary. I am looking forward to learning a lot more.
Thanks for reading my (so far) happy ending rant and I hope to contribute here as well, if with nothing else, at least with the real life experience that people who were once in and have gone back, can still be pulled out of the "jaws of death".
-Yan