I don't really have a purpose in this thread, but wanted to share my thoughts and updates.
Fading has, at least for now, totally stabilized. My JW wife doesn't discuss JW things and, as difficult for me as it is, I haven't been discussing anything directly against JW policy. Oh, I slip in comments when she tries to judge people or groups based on her JW training- things like Gay Marriage, Medical Marijuana, pedophile news stories. If I go far enough in saying something about her religion, she falls back on "You haven't been there in years, you don't know what they are doing about that." I simply say "Tell me what they are doing." But she never does.
Those conversations are fewer and farther between, though.
The wife blew off her congregation's out-of-town District Convention. She had planned to attend a different DC in the tropics with her best friend who had moved back there, but that didn't pan out. So she attended the local (70-minute drive) English convention on a Friday and a Sunday, going with different people each day. She planned to go the next Saturday but the car group she wanted to go with was full. I do see some glimmer of hope in that. She wants to have each day be a social event hanging with old friends, but isn't so dedicated to the religion that she will drive herself by herself.
My wife is unemployed, but steadily looking for work. Thanks to my decision to find a career instead of just a job when I realized in 1995 that the end of this system was not so close, we will make it on my salary until she finds work. She does not increase her recruiting hours while she is unemployed. Her "service" is totally token- enough to turn in time every month, but not anything like serious. Her only real shortcoming is that cult training prevents her from questioning the training at all. Like a typical JW, she doesn't really know the doctrine, but she just knows it is right because of the cross, holidays, neutrality, using "Jehovah" as a name, and a few other things that make Jehovah's Witnesses special. She probably feels like the new FDS doctrine is nothing really new- typically, JW's have no idea of the implications when doctrines change. I wasn't typical, so that's part of why I am "out."
I did get my wife to accompany me to my aunt's 70th birthday party. I told her that many family members I rarely see would be there. She caved in at the last minute, with no pressure from me, because the actual birthdate had passed during the week and this was the weekend afterward. Plus, it was the same Saturday her car group for the DC was full and she had no other plans.
I was returning home from work this morning, Saturday morning, driving through Spanish neighborhoods and saw tons of the Mexican JW's out prior to 7 AM, mostly men. So I imagine they have their C.O. visit or some other push to get the elders and MS's aux. pioneering this month. They weren't spreading out but walking in large groups on a main street that really nobody but a couple of joggers and dog walkers were on. They looked like a group to simply avoid, and I saw the dog walkers doing just that. As I drove by, I looked at their faces. If they were talking to each other, the JW's smiled and laughed. The ones who were trying to be serious and service minded just seemed miserable, like they should be enjoying their day off somewhere else. But that just might be me reading into it.
JW's have definitely learned to just go through the motions of recruiting. Productivity was the big thing back in the days when they charged for literature, but hours is all that matters now. They know they are just spinning their wheels when they walk around early mornings or ring bells where virtually nobody is home and those that are home give them a "No thanks" and shut the door.