@Pams girl, there is far more honesty and genuine care, thought and expression on this website than there is in the Jehovah's Witnesses. This website has a few dogmatic pains in the butt as well, but that's just life. My wife and I were fortunate enough to stumble on to another couple who were ex-JWs ... and then another, and then another and we often meet up to share our thoughts and common experiences ... and just vent. It has made a huge difference in reclaiming our lives. I'm so very glad you found us here.
Question for those converted to JW as adults
by DaleRivers 35 Replies latest jw friends
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Pams girl
MrMonroe
So glad your wife made the journey with you, and you have found many new friends, this is freedom indeed!
Paula x
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DaleRivers
Thank-you all for the interesting replies.
Phizzy:I agree that the emotional appeal draws most adult converts. Whether it's the love
bombing, being witnessed to when emotionally vulnerable, or following a loved one
into the cult. It would almost have to be that because adults would have life experience and
education ( perhaps a college degree, gasp!) that would allow them to see that the doctrines
do not hold up well to intellectual scrutiny. Especially now that so much is available on-line, people
can easily read about the tarnished history and screw-ball former beliefs as garyneal pointed out.
Pam's girl: Reading this forum and others like it also helped me a great deal. I faded about a dozen
years ago and would have nagging doubts about whether or not I did the right thing, after
learning TTATT, those doubts are gone.
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cultBgone
Dale, not so fast about those with college degrees. I've always been a weird mix of emotional and logical, yet felt somehow "less-than" because I never could understand the bible. My older sister was a JW and always seems to have it all together, so she made the religion appear both attractive and legitimate. I had no use for the religion until I had children...lived thousands of miles from family, had no guidance but saw the blatant hypocrisy in the various mainstream religious families who lived around me. Comparing them to the jws, the jws actually looked less hypocritical (because I didn't know all the dirt back then).
Sadly, I ended up getting baptized and raising my kids in the "religion". One had the smarts to get out after a really bad marriage to an elder's son. The other is a diehard dub. Sigh....
Oh, and my sister told me repeatedly that my babies would die at armageddon if I wasn't baptized....THAT was the real catalyst.
Looking back, it's hard to believe I fell for it, but I adored my big sis and the love-bombing made me feel like part of a big family, which I desparately needed as a single mom.
The cultic tactics work on emotions, for sure.
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DaleRivers
Cultbgone you'll notice I did qualify my statements with an 'almost' AND a 'perhaps'
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JeffT
I was baptized in 1973, a few months after I graduated from college. My first college roommate's mother was a JW. Later he became one and studied with me informally before I started a formal study. There were a number of factors in my conversion. I was in a bad place in my life and the JW's provided some structure and friendship. The fact that they did not believe in hell or the trinity interested me, along with the no war position. The 1975 hype tied in nicely with my world view - the world was going to hell in a handbasket, Richard Nixon proved all politicians were crooks, we were destroying the environment etc.
Shortly before baptism I met my wife, and the sealed the deal. She was also a convert, pulled in by family. We left together in 1989.