bittersweet:
No, you think I am stupid, you think I am brainwashed.
And there ya go, a perfect example of how our emotions can so easily, even automatically, overrule our brains. Now, you think your hubby is a smart man, and I daresay he too thinks he is a smart man. But what's at play here? His mind? No, it's his heart, the sense of insufficiency and rejection. If he'd been the first one to visit an exJW site, he wouldn't feel threatened in that way. But since it was you first, now his sense of self-worth is at stake; and it has absolutely nothing to do with his intelligence. In fact, even against his own better judgment, that little voice in the back of his mind, he's likely to dig in his heels (I can speak with some authority on this, being of the male gender myself ).
waiting:
Many good thoughts, but this one especially caught my eye:
She wanted to believe.
Another big factor, especially if we've invested many years in the WTS. I daresay the same unspoken considerations were working with RayF; raised a JW, one of the "anointed," missionary, uncle was a prominent GBer. The scales are tipped so heavily to the side of accomplishment and commitment that we just can't bear the thought that we were carrying the football toward the wrong goal. So we "convince" ourselves that we must be right, or, at the very least, we convince ourselves that the alternative (that we were wrong) is just too much to bear. And there goes the brain, right out the window. I think Ray would say this about himself, and I know I can say it about myself: I would never have voluntarily DAd. I would have continued to more-or-less compromise my intellectual principles, if only for the sake of salvaging something from a lifetime of work and conviction.
gumby:
continue to put quarters in their ass-kickin machines blaming themselves
Very good picture. And we have it within our power simply to put those quarters back into our pocket, and move on. Let the "blame machine" rust away out there in the back yard, where it belongs.
sphere:
But I don’t seem to have any trouble “understanding” it now
Interesting how that works, eh? Like fighting a tide: the tide always wins, one way or the other. When we finally let go and flow with the tide, life suddenly gets so much easier. Now, a JW (as well as many fundamentalist Christians) would point to Scriptures about "the fine fight" and say that "going with the flow" is a surrender. But exactly what is the "fight" we have? It's a fight for faith, not for an organization. But faith is a very personal, and very ambiguous, goal, with "unknown" rewards; an organization is tangible and offers a very real payoff. So, again, our brain says "This doesn't make any sense" but our emotions say "Yeah, but this feels soooo good, let's stay here."
Maverick & drwatson, I'm not Mensa...not weird enough
Craig
