by Mizalisa 34 Replies latest jw friends
Welcome Mizalisa. If you did get to meet his JW family/friends, (which you definitely won't!) the atmosphere would be colder than that faced by King Penguins in Antartica. You would be viewed as a piece of pond-life who is in Satan's system - not in "God's organisation."
You are extremely privileged and benefitted by the advice given to you - take it and run!
Have a good life without a cult's influence.
Not so fast guys. I would think yes, she would be viewed as worldly however I think she would also be love bombed as a potential newbie to the cult. There would be tons of family and friends get togethers since she wouldn't be baptized they would be counting tons of the their time on her. Now that I would be afraid of. Fake friendships and fake love. You would only be loved by your boyfriend or his family and friends while you put the cult first in your life.
What does that mean? Weekly meetings at their hall, you would have to go out in service door to door, help build halls so they would be sold and then you would have to rebuild more halls, sit back and be told constantly not to have anything to do with worldly people such as yourself, your friends and family, don't listen to apostates when they try to tell you the dangers of this cult like protecting pedophiles, don't get an education, and so much more,,,,
Your life will be hell
Ok so he’s a little older than I first envisioned. As others have said you need to establish whether he is still a real believer or not. Going to conventions doesn’t actually mean he believes as he will be expected to attend and may be what we call P.I.M.O. Physically in mentally out. Interestingly this years convention featured a boy “tempted” by the world to work for a film company but of course put jehovah first, gave it all up to become a pioneer (spend 70 hours a month working for Watchtower). All Watchtower material uses emotional blackmail and because they don’t want their members to get an education or spend time doing anything they love 1. Because they might wake up and 2. Because they want members to spend time working for the benefit of the cult, the pressure on young ones to conform and reject worldly pursuits is huge. Watchtowers uses behavioural control, information control, thought control and emotional control as do all high control groups who place what we call “undue influence” on their members. Stephen Hassan developed this B.i.T.E. Model as a way of understanding how to recognise a cult and Watchtower ticks all the boxes and then some. His book understanding cult mind control is well worth reading.
By the way there are quite a few talented exjw writers and even screen writers, has he explored any of their work do you know? A fantastic film is called Apostasy and there is a new book by Amber Socorah called “Leaving the witness”. Amber also works for website Quillian
The main website people go to learn the truth about Watchtower is called jwfacts.com and I urge you to check it out to learn as much as you can about what you are dealing with. Another excellent resource is exjwreddit and you tubers “The John Cedars channel”and “stop the shunning” and “exjw critical thinkers” and “exjw fifth” with “Kim and mikey “ who keep us up to date with JW news.
Does he also know about the child abuse scandal currently sweeping the JW community? Much like the Catholic Church Watchtower has been covering up child abuse on an industrial scale but the chickens are finally coming home to roost for Watchtower. The Australian royal commission into institutional child abuse and the Montana case are two good places to start. JW survey blog has some excellent articles by John Redwood on the subject. Watchtower orders elders not to report abuse because they place their reputation above the suffering of kids. They also expect two witnesses to any sin before they will take any action which of course never happens with child abuse.
There is so much more he should know but I would start with jwfacts.com and a book by ex governing body member Ray Franz called “ Crises of Conscience”. Once he has a chance to see the truth about “The truth” he can then decide if he wishes to give his life to a publishing company or not and whether he wishes to allow his indoctrinated family to blackmail him into a life of survitude.
Or....on the other hand if he prefers an amazing career as a screen writer and the unconditional love of a good and talented woman and her family. Oh, and genuine friends who won’t dessert you if they don’t believe exactly the same things as you do.🤨👍🏼
Oh heck no ones asked the most important question yet! Is he baptised? Because that will make a huge difference as to how he will be treated.....
Three years stringing along says much. You have a life to be lived...he needs to come clean and if he truly does not want to be in the religion he needs to get real and honest about it. He sounds conflicted and that is not a good thing. Do think this relationship through carefully.....wishing you the best.
I'm sorry, but I hung up at "32 years". You can give him an ultimatum: Either move out of your parents place or forget about me. He's old enough and in the worst scenario, he could find a room to rent elsewhere. If he is unable to do this, he has some serious mental issues. We are not talking about a 20ish year old boy here. We are talking about a 30 something man. At that age, he needs to stand up and take actions.
Writing and making it into movies can happen even at that age, but it certainly won't happen if he stays home where he is brought down to his knees and told that his dreems are futile.
By the way, when moving out, he doesn't, nor should he, tell his parents about you. That is a seperate battle perhaps for later. For now, he needs to fade, distance himself from them without getting disfellowshipped.
Might sound harsh, but you don't have to accept it, its just an opinion. In the end, its your life and his and you choose to do what you want with it.
Mizalisa when you met your boyfriend you had no inkling of how irrational the crazy cult of Jehovah's Witnesses is. Of course it was not your fault just unfortunate.
Certainly the conflicts that you are now aware of are worthy of a film script and indeed there are such. The British film Apostasy 2018 by Daniel Kokotiljo got rave reviews and if you saw it would give a vivid insider's view into some of the conflicts JW carry with them.
Three points to consider:
1/ Your boyfriend has no money to be independent-- perhaps for a year or two?
2/ He has no family support with you or his writing in mind. In fact his family, given the chance will want to obstruct his life choices and then they will shun him when he leaves.
3/ An ex-JW, UNLESS he fully understands the scale of mind control he has been under, and has a genuine grasp of the errors of the JW organisation-- even some years later on when under stress, he may want to return to the fold and possibly try and bring his partner with him.
As a suggestion you could ask him to post here as you have done, in his case it would be a matter of his loyalty to you. If he refuses because he has been told this is being unfaithful to the cult, then it is fair to say that he is still subject to their brain washing.
All the same sorry to hear your predicament but a lot of us on this forum suffer from the draconian rules of the JW cult practised by our family members even if we have left many years ago.
.............Stephan's suggestion is good, for your boyfriend to leave home would be a good indicator that he has initiative and wants to be with you and possibly that he wants to leave behind his old life.
And last suggestion: try another boyfriend-- JWs are always trouble!
I don't know if he's baptized or not. He has recently told me that while he finds some parts of the religion (cult) problematic, he believes much of the teaching and will never give it up entirely. This was new. In the past he'd said he wasn't "one of them" at all.
He now says there's no way we could ever be a normal couple, but rather than break up he wants to continue in secret. I said no and broke things off for good yesterday. He was one of only two men I've ever loved, so this is quite painful.
I am so grateful for the wisdom and support here. Thank you all.
@newsheep
Yes! After that convention he started spewing weirdness about how all the pedophilia charges are fake, something like that. I remember sitting there at my kitchen table listening to him and thinking this sounds crazy,like he'd been brainwashed against credible victims.
That was actually the moment I realized he was too far gone.
Commiserations, Mizalisa, but a very wise move, all the same.
I am a never-JW myself. I married someone who was completely out at the time. After kids came along, she got herself baptised.
You have dodged a bullet.
