Thank you all for your condolences. You just don't know how much your words mean to me...Thanks....
What if the husband is the practicing Christian and the wife is not? The Bible gives direction for such situations. It says: "If any brother has an unbelieving wife, and yet she is agreeable to dwelling with him, let him not leave her." (1 Corinthians 7:12) It also admonishes husbands: "Keep on loving your wives." - Collosians 3:19.
This has been what he has been saying to me ever since I have proposed divorce. I don't think I was clear about that on my first post. We have had problems since day one of our marriage long before JWs came into the picture. Our involvement with them has only placed more strain on our already troubled relationship. You really have to know the history of our marriage to appreciate our current situation in its entirety. I am older than he. We married when he was 18 and I was 24 (now we're 25 and 31). He was (still is), as expected, very immature. From the beginning, he has always been a very controlling and insecure person. When we were first married he placed an ultimatum on me to choose between my friends or him. He had packed his things into his car and was prepared to leave if I said I wanted to still see my friends and be married to him. He was completely unwilling to compromise. This was ONE month into our marriage. Six months later, I lost my job and he encouraged me to stay home with my son (not his) for a while. I thought this was so kind. Then I got pregnant. So, I stayed home throughout the pregnancy. About 3 mos after I had my daughter, I decided it was time to go back to work. My husband begged me not to. He could support us on his income, the kids needed me more at home, blah blah blah. But it wasn't the money, and it wasn't that I wanted to get away from the kids, I just needed a job. I thought I was going nuts.
Then my mom came to me and offered to watch the kids so I could go back to college. I would've been commuting to a college that was about 45 mins away. I was thrilled. My husband got really depressed and started this whole, "you're going to go down there and meet guys," "how will I know what you're doing all day long," yada, yada. At any rate, I felt sorry for him. I had been a previous relationship where my partner was an extreme narcissist and thought he was god's gift to the world. He was forever flinging in my face the fact that he was so beautiful, and I was undeserving of him (and really I was but not in the same way he thought). He viciously flirted with women with me around and successfully made me feel thoroughly worthless. At any rate, I remembered the feelings of insecurity and loneliness I had while involved with this person, and did not wish to make anyone feel this way. So, I did not go to college. I did, however, get a job. A part time job that I worked around my husband's schooling (yes, he did get to go to college and I encouraged him every step of the way) and his job. Mine was a second shift job. I went to work when he got in from his job and was off the nights he had school. He would call me constantly at work and want to talk for long periods of time. I usually had to just put him on hold and leave him there until he finally hung up and called back. On my 30 minute break, he would expect me to come home and cook dinner for him and the kids. I usually didn't get to take my break until 9:00 pm. I'd get home and the kids would be filthy (diapers not changed), unfed, and the house a mess and it way past their bedtime. I finally started cooking food before I left and leaving it in the fridge to be warmed. He wouldn't warm it. He'd still wait for me to come home on my break and feed them. And the kids were still not being bathed, changed, or put to bed at a decent hour. Needless to say, I quit the job, and he won.
There is much more involved and many more instances of these kinds of things occuring but I would be here typing all day if I were to go into any more detail. Fast forward, to the JWs. I believed it was the truth. I followed along with it for several years without any serious commitment to their rules, but wholeheartedly believed that their doctrine was spot on. The last year that I was in the truth, though unbaptized, I stopped engaging in the "worldly celebrations" in which I had always participated. My family was devasted. Little did I know that it would be the last opportunity for me to share Christmas, thanksgiving, father's day with my papa (granddad). May of last year he past away. I had gotten out of my direct involvement with the witnesses around February of 2002. Around December of 2001, was when I had found out about the UN thing, the pedophile thing, and found an abundance of other information about them of which I had not been previously aware....but my husband had been and apparently did not care about or care to tell me about. It seems now that I've left the truth that it has only served to drive him more into their arms. My mother tells me, it's because it fulfills his purposes. If I had stayed in, imagine the dominance he would've had over me and the kids. Dominance supported by his church, his bible, and his God. I cringe to think of how things would be if I had continued going. So, now...I feel like I'm just fighting to keep the few things left in my life that he hasn't stripped away from me. Once I saw that he was completely unwilling to listen to any kind of reasoning except that which they threw his way, I knew there was no hope.
I left him last year but wound up coming back because I couldn't find a job. At this point in my life, I am completely dependent on him, and I hate it. I know that it is not entirely his fault that I am here, but I can't help but feel like I have somehow been somewhat duped into this predicament. I mean, I could've choosen my friends over him, I could've told him to screw-off when he begged me not to go back to college...but I didn't. Jobs are scarce and are exceptionally hard to find when you haven't worked in several years. And finding decent and reasonably priced childcare is even more scarce. And honestly, I am terrified to leave them here with him (like what I did before when I worked) because he doesn't watch them or take care of their needs. I have been going back to school online and have one more class to take before being a certified medical receptionist. I should complete this by Sept of this year. I couldn't go anywhere else for schooling because now we make more money than we did when he went to school and we no longer qualify for enough financial aid to help pay for school expenses. And he is not going to pay a penny to help me go to school. Student loans are out of the question. So, I decided to go to an inexpensive tech school and get a certification, hoping that would help me get a decent job somewhere besides mcdonalds or burger king (not that anything is wrong with that, but let's face it, it's next to impossible to support yourself and 2 kids on that kind of income). So, during all this time, yes I have been bitter and withdrawn from him. I am angry because he has never been there for me, and it almost seems as though his only role in my life has been that of seeking out anything that brings me joy and stomping it out, and deliberately doing things to make me unhappy. I have been wanting a divorce for a while, but haven't had the resources to do so. It was just shocking to me that he went from quoting scriptures as to why he would not even consider instigating divorce, to now suggesting it.
The prpblem is that lately, the dubs ARE encouraging those with unbelieving mates to divorce on ground of "Spiritual endangerment." So jgnat is correct that if you want to stay, make it clear to the elders NOW that you wish to remain married despite your differences in beliefs. Another problem is that saying you "will support his beliefs" gives the JWs the impression that you will allow him to exercise headship over you and especially over the children (as soon as he is baptized, he becomes responsible for their everlasting life until they are of an age to decide for themselves to serve the true God, Jehovah, or not), which includes enforcing lots of things like meeting attendance, service, and non-celebration of holidays on which you two have been compromising thus far. He will be pushed and prodded to do things "Jehovah's way," which means the organization's way, which sure as hell isn't the way things have gone thus far.
This is basically what my friend told me and at first I thought he was all wrong. And now, just a couple of weeks before my husband's baptism, he is doing this. I think it killed him to wait until now. Honestly, I think he was ready to lay it on me the weekend my dad died, but then my dad died and he decided to wait.
To be brutally honest, I wonder if another witness recently came up single, or a new sister moved into the hall. Now that he will be baptised, he's actually got a chance with one of them.
To be honest, I had thought the same thing. There is another lady that attends the hall that he talks about a lot. She is a single mother with twin girls the same age as our daughter. She isn't baptized though, but she does attend meetings pretty regularly. Maybe nothing to it...but I would be a complete liar if I said this thought hasn't crossed my mind.
I know, and have known for sometime, that something needs to be done. I know the kids will eventually, if they haven't already, pick up on the tension between us. I just wasn't ready for him to spring this on me so soon after my dad's death. I just didn't expect it right now. Looks like I may be forced to choose something quicker than I had planned.
Thank you all for your responses and advice.
Sadie
