Ongoing frustration with wife

Flipping El

I've tried taking the slow, patient approach with my wife. I believe I first posted here about 13 months ago about my wife.

We've always had good communication and could talk endlessly about philosophy, neuroscience, sociology and then when I learned the TTATT, I clammed up a bit about spiritual things. I'd always been fairly liberal, suggesting other alternative ideas, but then I told my wife about the UN/NGO scandal (I ran across the Guardian story doing a talk as an MS, LOL!) and she shut down. Really badly.

She stopped going to meetings but guilted me into going. It'd always be a big "WE HAVE TO GO!" and then she couldn't go at the last minute. If I stayed, there would be big fights or silent treatment that I was ruining our marriage or our relationship with Jehovah.

I've tried doing different things like fill up our time on weekends with fun recreation or travel.

I've tried slowly brining up things or asking her questions.

She just doesn't like it. It's stressing her out and causing her health problems I think.

Recently, she's been REALLY on my case about why I'm not interested in spiritual things. I've brought up issues that are things that you can talk about JW stance vs. what the Bible says. She often says, "I don't see the issue there" or "so? Jehovah is backing Jehovah's Witnesses".

Then later she'll say "I'm kind of angry at you. I can't believe you said those things the other day.. they were upsetting to hear" (She would beg and plead with me to tell her what was on my mind about spirituality / JW issues as I said I was doing my own research).

At this point, she wants to poke at me about it every day. It seems like she wants me to make a move to just up and say "it's a cult! I'm out!" so that she'll have a reason to divorce me. She casually brings up divorce or how I'd be better without her often.

Help! Any ideas? Is this a hail mary situation? One last go at it?

The Searcher

I'll PM you in 5 minutes with something you can put to her.

WingCommander

It sounds like not only is she dealing with her own cognative disodence, but also trying to self-sabotage her marriage as the Cult has programmed her that if you aren't JW's, you will end up divorced, alone, and on drugs. So in a way, the cult has programmed into it's followers a sort of self-fullfilling prophecy as it were. To be out of the cult, happy, and with your marriage in tact and a belief in God? ERROR....does not compute. Self-destruct in 3.....2....1.....

She needs counciling, or at least to read Steve Hassaan's books...ALL of them. I'd hand her his 1st one the next time she starts in on the guilt trip and/or wanting to talk about your feelings on spirituality. Tell her to soak that up, then you'll talk.

- Wing Commander

Theredeemer

Your situation is a very difficult one.

Here is the deal. If she loves you deeply, completely and wants to spend the rest of her life with you then, although it may sadden her at first, she will learn to deal with you telling her straight up "Im out!". As long as you do not force her to stop going and she doesnt force you to go then you can manage as a couple; difficult yes but not impossible.

However, if she has lost any love for you then kiss your marriage goodbye. When love is lost, people, specially witnesses since they cant just divorce for any reason, will find any excuse to go the road of divorce. Witnesses need very special excuses and you not being a witness is one of them.

You are a human and you are entitled to express your wishes and to enjoy your life. Forcing yourself to shut your mouth or hide your true feelings, particularly in the case of religion, should not be tolerated.

Are you prepared to live the rest of your life shackled by your wife's wishes and this religion?

My advise, tell her the truth. Tell her how you feel. Do not prolong it. Say it, deal with it and move on. If you love each other and if you both truly want to spend the rest of your lives together you will work it out or at least try.

Flipping El

You guys are all awesome.

Got your PM TheSearcher. Thanks!

@WingCommander - that totally makes sense. It seems like the "personal experiences" or "warnings" in the publications end up in people's heads as an operating script. The indoctrination is real.

@Theredeemer - good points. It's hard to remember sometimes that you've got to live your own life and accept responsibility for yourself and let other's do the same for themselves. The submissive attitude we're told to have, the ideas of "waiting on Jehovah", *only* taking things to pray, not being presumtuous in our speech or actions, taking the "wise course" and learning from other's not experiencing your own mistakes, etc. There are dozens and dozens and dozens of these little behavior control concepts still on auto-pilot.

I'm having an incredibly hard time just up and saying it all to my wife. I've started a journal to let the frustration go somewhere. This morning I wrote out what I'd like to say to her. Part of me just wants to print it and leave it with her while I go away so I don't have to deal with the crying, yelling and frustrating appeals to emotion "don't you believe it's the truth though? where else would we go?" blah blah.

thanks again

Crazyguy

Ask her what proof is there in the bible that god picked one religious sect of Christianity since Paul said otherwise?

Raton

'She casually brings up divorce' That's the stage my wife is in right now. She wants a divorce but wants me to pull the trigger. Although, that was after a call she made to her mother basically asking for permission to divorce me. I am trying to hold it together myself and work on all the non JW things in our marriage, which really is most of the things. However, as WingCommander pointed out, she seems to be 'self-sabotaging' the marriage. In addition to mentioning divorce she won't talk to me most the time and when she does it's normally to get on to me about something. If my daugher wasn't around I would probably not hang in there to much longer, but she is, so I am trying to make it work. Sorry there wasn't really any advice here but you aren't alone. Good Luck and let us know how it goes.

Flipping El

@Crazyguy - good point. You mean the scripture about "some belong to Paul, others to Apollos"? Could be a good point to address. I think I've used that in relation to how focused on the Governing Body people seemed to be while I was still "in" and an MS. It really upset me to see people in awe of a random guy that worked his way up through Bethel or the circuit work and into the Governing Body... but she didn't take kindly to that usage.

That is the real issue in general with reasoning with JWs right? If you show them something in the Bible, they say "oh, we don't take that literally" or "that doesn't *actually* mean that" or "we have a new understanding". There's a lot mental gymnastics involved in skirting around the obvious answer they should say if they were honest with themselves (or just not indoctrinated), "oh wow, I've never seen that.. at first glance, yes that does actually contradict what we teach and believe."

But. Who am I to say? I always told people in service, "I'm committed to truth, not an organization, and I'm not afraid to examine anything, if something else makes more sense let's look at that but I know what i have is the truth"... and then I *did* examine it and it wasn't the truth. Probably too much effort and heartache to be committed to truth! It kind of sucks but you can't go back!

Flipping El

@Raton - So weird right?

I've been on a self-improvement kick over the past few months. I've upped my personal fitness, stopped drinking as much, tried to be more decisive, more social, more work done, actually doing the list of things around the house that need to get done instead of sticking my head in the sand.

Basically, instead of "I want to divorce you because you're making me unhappy", I get kick-back in the form of "You don't need me any more anyways" or "you probably need a better wife than me" or "I wish you had a better wife, I'll find one for you". Really bizarre stuff. I'm an exceptionally kind and gentle person (If I do say so myself!!) and I would never berate or harangue my wife for any lack of helping around, or lack of fitness or even personal moral choices. So, to me, it sounds like it's a cop-out. A "I don't want to change or be better or get out of the JWs, so you probably want a wife that does those things".

I hope that things with you and your wife work out - or at least, if you do end up getting divorced, that it ends as well as it can financially, emotionally and lets you see your daughter. By the way, I have had moderate success with improving non-JW things in the marriage after reading the book "No More Mr. Nice Guy". Here's the PDF as a preview (you can buy on Amazon too):

https://7chan.org/lit/src/Robert_Glover_-_No_More_Mr_Nice_Guy.pdf

It stung a bit but I can say that it's the only thing that has made the last few months bearable. It was like going from a 1/10 "I'm going to walk out the door and jump on a random train away from here" to an occassional 4 or 5/10 "oh, there's the wife I remember from years ago".

Londo111

"I don't see the issue there"/"so? Jehovah is backing Jehovah's Witnesses"--both are thought stopping techniques. She can file anything she hears in a nice labelled package and put it in the mental attic.

Don't make the same mistakes I and countless others have made. It's very difficult when you just learn TTATT not to spill everything you know. But this is a delicate operation, like diffusing a bomb. Pull one wrong wire and boom! You can never unpull that wire. She is on aposta-alert--sometimes the best thing to do is to leave it be until the situation defuses.

Ongoing frustration with wife

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