Hi Imissthedub: Welcome. I prepared a nice long comment to you, but my ISP booted me, and my comments into oblivion.
Anyway, you mentioned,
"I hope that not ever being a JW does not matter. I find the whole thing fascinating...."Never being a JW is prefectly fine ... it adds a fresh and unique perspective to the discussions. Sometimes there have been clashes in the past when some who were never JWs started making judgmental comments about how we (X-JWs) need to 'move on, get a life' etc. Or they rubbed in our faces how they saw through the Watchtower before ever joining and losing 10, 20, 30 or more years to the religion. This implied that the rest of us were idiots.
The JW religion is a mild to moderate cult. Some of its beliefs are okay ... such as the paradise earth, a variation of heaven ... but many beliefs are controlling as is the religion in its total sense. Whether raised a JW, or having joined and spent many years with it ... the religion takes it toll both mentally, emotinally, spiritually, and oftens times physically.
It takes years for X-JWs to work through this and determine what is the fault of the Watchtower and what are those issues of their own making ...
The door to these forums revolves regularly ... so eventually many long times posters fade away, while others are just joining ... so at anytime in a snapshot it may look like X-JWs are forever wading in the cesspool of broken dreams ... over the long haul ... forums like this are a healing chamber where most graduate on to a very normal life, filled with both the happy and sad.