How did your family react when you made it known that you did not want to be a JW anymore?

by Yondaime 53 Replies latest jw experiences

  • Honesty
    Honesty

    Turned me into the elders who made many, many, TOO MANY visits over the course of 4 years.

    A MS and his uber spouse also visited many, many, TOO MANY times over the course of 4 years.

    When my spouse and I separated two elders started snooping around my home at night trying to catch me committing adultery.

    My sposue constantly violated an order of protection and did the same thing until one of my friends who is an officer in the local Sheriff's Department followed her as she pulled into my street.

    When I filed for divorce the BOE harssed me until I showed up at one of their fact finding meetings with a digital tape recorder.

    A month after my divorce was final I called the PO and told him that I had had enough of the cult and didn't want them to evre contact me.

    They haven't and I haven't had any contact with the few members of my family still in for over 10 years.

    The jaydubyas avoid me and run the other way when the see me in public.

    I like it that way.

  • Hidden-Window
    Hidden-Window

    bigmac: in recent years--my older son got d/f--i found him through facebook--and we now have a good relationship. in fact--for the first time---i'm spending christmas with him and his lovely new wife--who is now expecting. as you can imagine--i'm thrilled with the idea i will be able to develope a relationship with a grand hild---a first experience for me--ive been denied contact with the first 7.

    Sad story with a kind of nice ending. I am glad that you are restoring your relationship with your son. I have not experienced anything similar, but I have a couple of children and my fear of losing them is what prevents me from totally leaving at the moment. Things might change in a few years when they become adults. Thanks for sharing.

  • Max Divergent
    Max Divergent

    They were generally polite; there were a few nasty messages early on, but that tended to happened before anyhow. There's little contact, but religion might not be the only reason for that. My school-age children haven’t even heard of JWs (so far as I know). My non-JW in-laws were relieved their sister/daughter's 'Christian Phase' was over.

    (Edited to add that, in fact, I'm not sure that I've ever told my parents - although I've been out since 1998. They must have drawn an easy-to-make inference, or my wife told them. I know I've never had a conversation about why with my parents: I tried with my sister and that went badly, I did with my brother and he's out too).

  • fiddler
    fiddler

    I think my 'making it known' time came during a witch hunt that I didn't perceive until it was too late.

    When someone you love asks a question and you just give an honest answer you just don't think that it spells the end of communication...not in a normal human relationship...but in JW land, saddly, that's exactly what it means. That's what happened to me.

  • dissonance_resolved
    dissonance_resolved

    I had a careful slow fade over 1.5 years. I didn't say anything and stayed under the radar. No visits from elders or any drama. There was still a point at which my family realized, "hey, she's NOT just sick/tired/depressed/busy/working/traveling/dealing with a clogged drain/alarm didn't go off, etc., but she's really not going to the meetings at all!". They started to pressure me but I refused to discuss anything, which is the ONLY way it can be. So I'm not shunned completely- I have a tenuous relationship with my mom and hear from one of my siblings occasionally. Never had much of a relationship with dad and other sibling anyway. If I didn't have a hubby and kids, the fade would have been perfect and liveable.

    However, hubby and kids are the bigger issue- hubby is respecting my difference of opinion as long as I maintain the JW lifestyle, but that may not last as I am contemplating setting up an altar to Satan this year, ahem, I mean a Xmas tree, so that may be the lightening rod that blows up our marriage.

    Best advice gleaned from this forum- never show your cards to any JW. There's nothing to be gained, and everything to lose.

  • TableForOne
    TableForOne

    I was contacted on first call, baptised in Oct 1991, left in Jan 2014.

    None of my blood family were ever interested in becoming a JW, so they were exstatic when I finally woke up, realised I was in a cult and left.

    I had distanced myself from my family during that time, because they were 'bad association', right?

    They have ALL been very understanding.

    They have their son/brother/nephew, etc back in the fold.

    I have them all back too and I couldn't be happier.

    TF1

  • stuckinarut2
    stuckinarut2

    The reality is, no one in families or congregations REALLY want to know WHY someone leaves "the truth".

    No, they just allow the "witness rumour /slander mill" to go into overdrive and generate a mass of incorrect information that spreads like wildfire amongst the congs about the one who leaves!

    Why would they allow something like "facts" to get in the way of juicy gossip!?

  • Sail Away
    Sail Away

    When I told my husband who left the organization over 30 years before I did that I wasn’t going to be a JW anymore, he took it rather well. After the initial shock wore off, his main concern was that I was going to have to rethink everything I had ever believed to be true and decide for myself whether or not I still wanted to hold on to that belief. He handed me The God Delusion, by Richard Dawkins.

    My (DF’d) son said, “Whoa, I didn’t see that one comin!”

    My (DA’d by her actions) daughter seemed to be nonplussed by my announcement.

    My uber-JW in-laws have clearly surmised that I have left. They live over 500 miles away. On our last visit over two years ago, my MIL asked if I was still going to meetings. I opened my eyes wide, looked her straight in the face and asked, “Why would you ask such a thing?” and walked away. We won’t be visiting again anytime soon. They have made it abundantly clear that they are "all set, everything is taken care of (hubby is written out of the will) and communication would be nice, but is not necessary."

    Last fall I stopped writing to my MIL which I had done as my “duty” as “a good Christian wife” for 35 years. I told my hubby—his mother was his problem. I was tired of her “death threats” (attempts to re-assimilate hubby through thinly veiled threats of death and destruction at The Big A). She hasn’t written to me in a year, and I don’t miss her hate speech.

    In addition to being JWs my in-laws are racist. In the last phone conversation with my husband, my FIL was so concerned that my daughter had married an Irishman who will, of course, end up a good-for-nothing drunk that he forgot to ask his name. My MIL wrote a note to my husband requesting the name. We ignored it.

    My husband will call his father (his mother won’t speak to him) about once a year to check on them, usually when there is a major weather event in their area. Seven feet of snow in Buffalo qualifies. They are in their late '80s. My FIL will talk for five minutes or less. Clearly, he was snowed in and had nowhere pressing to be, but five minutes was it! He didn't even ask about our daughter who is pregnant with his great-grand child. Neither one has ever initiated a phone call in all these years. I was always the go between for them and their "apostate" son. Not so much anymore.

    After five straight months of nearly daily contact from local JWs when I first walked away, all contact stopped abruptly right after their SAD which I didn’t attend. Weird, but I welcome the silence. If we cross paths in town, they are always pleasant-- "We miss you at the meetings." Whatever.

    Three close JW “friends” asked why I left. I simply told them it was a matter of conscience and that the elders are fully informed. I told the elders that I wouldn’t be a hypocrite and attend meetings that teach I should shun my son when that wasn’t going to happen and that I couldn’t bear to hear them say my family was going to die at Armageddon one more time. I played the mental health card. My husband is a “known apostate” who they could never get the goods on. They don’t even give him the once-yearly visit. My neighbor reported to me that she watched the last time JWs were in the neighborhood, and they didn’t even bother to go to our door. Yes!

    Sail Away

  • talesin
    talesin

    It's good to read the happy and the sad.

    This has been a good thread (to me), and thanks to the OP for starting it. Very healing for me.

    xx

    tal

  • talesin
    talesin

    bigmac - keep on keepin' on (haha, I am ye olde hippie). xx

    Aside from this pic, which of course is legend, and spoke to a generation, I think you would enjoy the work of Robert Crumb.

    tal

Share this

Google+
Pinterest
Reddit