SIAM, well said!!!
Why Elders leave the Organization and why their Wives stay.
by stuckinamovement 72 Replies latest jw friends
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stuckinamovement
Thanks Minimus. Funny what thoughts you come up with at 3:00 in the morning. There have been a lot of good posts on this thread. I must admit that when I wrote this I was coming at it pretty one dimensionally. Thanks to those who chimed in with other angles. They are important to consider.
SIAM
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tornapart
Can't believe you elder's wives have had such a hard time. If that was me I'd have been gone! In our cong all us wives get together and support each other. Hubbies have a meeting we leave them stranded. We get the car keys, drive each other home and leave the men there. If they want to stay there they have to find their own way home. It usually works fine. Maybe it's different in the UK I don't know, or maybe I'm just in a lovely cong. Maybe that's why I'm still sticking it out. We all look out for each other. I know I have a struggle with all the beliefs etc. but sometimes when I read these sort of stories I feel as if I'm in a completely different religion as everyone else. If I'd had your problems in your congregations I'd never still be there no matter what!
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Phizzy
Dear tornapart, I was in a similar congregation, filled with people who were loving and kind, really nice people.
I know I would not have stuck it out as long I did had it not been for that. And I feel really sorry for those stuck in a crap congrgation, what on earth could be worse ?
I left despite the lovely people, because it is all a LIE, those lovely people do not realise it, so I excuse them, but I simply could not stay.
Those with wives or husbands stuck in I feel so sorry for, what a purgatory that must be, compounded by a crap congregation.
All I can say is , keep trying everything you know to free your loved ones, don't sit back and say there is nothing I can do, you must do something, or you will end your days living a lie.
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LongHairGal
LIFE IS TOO SHORT:
I feel sorry for all the garbage you tolerated as an elder's wife. Too bad your husband didn't put his foot down and put some of those people in their place - even in a nice way. All those chiseling bastards! I also feel bad about you not getting a ride or being given grief over it if you did get one. Believe me, I didn't want anything from those people except to be left alone! Glad to be done with all that nonsense!
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life is to short
tornapart and Phizzy
It has taken its toll on me and our marriage. When I got married I truly loved my husband more then life its self. He was my world, he meant everything to me, he was the reason I got up in the morning. I had came from such an abusive family and to finally think that I would have what I never had growing up meant everything to me.
The fact that he was an elder never interned my mind that it would come between us. I thought it would just be a plus to our marriage. I looked at the elders in the hall I grew up in and on the surface they looked like happy family's. At least they appeared so much better and happier then what I was living with growing up. I truly thought that with my husband being an elder we would truly have the threefold cord to strengthen us to be even stronger.
It was in the first month of our marriage that it started to go south. I was in shock when I told my husband some of the crap that was happening to me and he just said the problem had to be me as these people were NEVER mean to him like I was telling him. These were the same words my parents used on me, it was always my fault that they hurt me or that others hurt me. When one man molested me at the age of 10 my mom told me it was how I acted in front of him. She was in the room with me and I told the man over and over and over that I did not want to sit on his lap and and the man would not take no for an answer. I looked to my mom and her friend who was also in the living room to help me and they both just kept on talking and ignoring me, so finally I caved and sat on the guys lap. I hated every second but I did not know how to stop it. I got off as soon as I could. He was a friend of my mom's friend and we were at her house. I knew it was wrong but what I will never forget is my mom going off about me latter to her friend like I was just the most loose little girl that she had ever seen. I walked into the kitchen to here my mom telling her friend on the phone that I was always all over any man that came around. I truly wanted to die that day and I was ten.
So here 15 years latter I was telling my husband what was going on in the hall and how horrible I was being treated and his response was almost to the tee the same as my mom's. One time my husband looked me in the face and told me that I WAS LYING! This was right after I told him crying how one of the other elders wife's had ripped into me in front of the service group about how horrible I was in field service and she did not know why I even bothered to go out as I clearly did not have Jehovah's spirit. There were so many times he took the side of the person who was abusing me that I could and probably should write a book about this religion and how women are treated in it. One of my husband favorite sayings to me was you should have know how it would be when you married an elder.
I have been married for almost 25 years now. Many think I should leave, my husband was deleted as an elder three years ago because of the pedophiles and my being to outspoken over them. After being molested all my life as a child to see pedophiles running and touching children was more then I was willing to SHUT UP ABOUT as the other elders were demanding. I was not in enough submission to him the other elders told said. That was the finale straw for me. I was done, so very very very done with everything. I was ready to walk on the marriage.
We have went to marriage counseling and that has truly helped. My husband knows if he ever goes back to being an elder I will leave no question. But the fact is I still love him, even though so much of marriage was about the religion the part the very few part that did not have the religon in it were good. The few times I could get him way from his elder role he was and is a good person. I think the pain of what this religion did to us will be there forever. Some of the pain comes from hating myself for not being more like you tornapart and Phizzy. I wish with all of my life that I could go back and do things over. I would walk home now from the meeting. So what we lived 15 miles from the hall I could have walked it in three hours and I still would have beat my husband home and it would have in the very least helped me to be away from the meanness of the other elders wives to help clear my head. I know it would have ticked my husband off and that would have made the problem come to a head instead of festering all those years like it did.
I am reading a book on Boundaries and I now realize I never had any personal boundaries, so much was my fault. I allowed myself to be treated like crap. Some times I look at my husband and now and I feel like I have married a stranger and other times I look at him and feel so much pitty for him and other times I truly have the same love I did 25 years ago. I just need to get this all sotred out in my head.
I just wish my husband could be like you stuckinthemovement and WAKE UP to this being nothing but a freeking cult.
LITS
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OnTheWayOut
LITS,I would give you different advice if your husband were abusive, but only you can decide which path to take with that. It's great that you went to marriage counseling.
In a way, your relationship is opposite a typical elder/wife one. You saw the terrible side of it and he just trusts that it all works out. No matter what he eventually does, you have opened his eyes more to "the truth" than they ever would have been on his own.
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life is to short
Thanks OTWO
After being on this board and seeing how some congregations are truly kind to each other not just love bombing but they truly do care for each other. I guess I did get stuck in all the bad halls. I truly have never seen any kindness from the elders.
I would have loved to have just once been in a hall where there was kindness and I do not mean to say everyone in every hall was bad and horrible there were some really kind and wonderful people in every hall, ones that I truly thought were my friends, but the elder body, the core of the hall was rotten. The elders like with the pedophiles problem thought only of their position and whether they might loose their position. No thought was ever given that I could see to the pain that they inflicted on the flock as long as they stayed elders it was all that mattered. It took me years of truly being hurt to understand that most of the elders I knew could care less about me. I truly and honestly believe if I had been wounded in front of them they would just let me bleed to death as was shown to me by the fact that they let me drive my husband alone to the hospital when my husband had his heart attack at the meeting. Not only did they not offer to call the ambulance but they never even offered to drive me. That really hurt and it still does. It was like they threw ice water in my face when they did that. I could not make any excuses for them, who in the world with any heart would allow a women or any family member for that fact drive someone who could die to the hospital alone. My husband could have coded on the way, he almost died in the ER once we got there. I can just not forgive them for that anyway I look at it. Their badness overshadowed any kindness they might have been in the hall.
I wish that I had been at least one good hall with kind elders but if that had happened I might not have woken up or I might have been willing to stay and ignore the fact that this is indeed a cult. As much as this has hurts at least I know the truth that everything was just a lie and that it is truly a very bad and heartless cult.
LITS
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tornapart
I feel so sad for you LITS! I think in all my time 'in' I have only heard of two congregations that have been unloving in this way. But the stories I've heard about those were pretty awful. If you had been in a more loving congregation it could have been so much different for you. However I'm glad your husband has stepped down. My husband did at one point because we needed him as a family more than the cong. did and he knew it. I hope you'll get the chance to find a more normal family life and hopefully the counselling will help with that. Your experiences as a child must have affected you deeply and coloured your life as an adult, I'm sure counselling will help you overcome that too. All the best for you my dear.
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Open mind
Great post SIAM, and excellent reparte' to follow.
So glad my wife was a Jezebel at heart.
Neither of us ever really bought into the "headship principle" (tm), so there was a good bit of self-will there to work with when I began planting seeds.
om