Follow up question for: Re: Would You Stay As A Witness, Even Though You ..

XBEHERE

Ok many good comments came from Minimus' question so I have one:

How long did you stay in once you realized the truth?

pennycandy

About six months of meetings, and another year to research before the official fade. I REALLLLLLY wanted to be sure.

talesin

Within several months, I found the guts to tell my parents and leave home.

Dragonlady76

I realized it was not the truth at 9 years of age, I left at age 17. I would have left sooner, but I did not have a choice then.

Dragonlady76

Odrade

Hard question to answer, We had already unintentionally "faded" before we stumbled on information that showed up the falsities.

When I got my hands on CoC, we were literally in-route to the District Convention in Tacoma. I read part in the car, some in the hotel room. We skipped Friday's program, then Saturday's. Largely because I just couldn't wrap my head around going and listening, after all I had learned. I'm relatively certain that, had I pushed to go, we would have gone.

Finally by Sunday's program, we decided we better put in an appearance so there would be someone to report back to the folks that we had been seen. We showed up about mid-morning, made it through the gawd-awful drama and following "talk about the drama in case anyone in the audience was too thick to get the point," Walked around the Dome for about 20 minutes during the noon intermission, then booked. I think we went to IKEA.

We've never been back since, convention, memorial, meeting, nada.

I sometimes wonder how I would have reacted had I read CoC while still an attending JW. I strongly suspect I would have DA'd right on the spot. When I get angry, I tend to act first, deal with the fallout later. For us, it was fortunate that we were not attending when I discovered all of this. It took many months for me to get over my anger to the point that I didn't want to write a letter and tell someone off. It has allowed us to maintain reasonable (though strained) contact with family, and we have mostly fallen off everyone else's radar.

In answer, once I found out, it was over immediately. I would not have had the foresight to exit on a slow fade.

GetBusyLiving

I had doubts for over ten years, as soon as I objectively looked at the facts though I quit entirely and disassociated. Took ten years of my life to get the courage to read "apostate" stuff.

GBL

Shania

Officially still in but doing slow fade due to family----it is hard when you see people you thought were real only to find out they are fake but they don't know it until your eyes are opened to the soceitys controling ways.-----I find I need to stay in touch with the teachings by way of mags. and new OM book . It helps me to be alert to what is being taught so I can subtlly talk with my family to reason with them about why the organizations does this or that.

the_classicist

Well, its hard to put an actual date on it. Of course, when I faded around 13-14, I went from JW to atheist rather easily. I always had trouble believing it because I could never really believe in something that keeps putting me to sleep. I never picked the doctrines too much at first, I instead noticed how their studies, especially the Q&A format, weren't really questions testing knowledge, just reinforcement. I was also pissed whenever I saw "avoid independent thinking".

Es

I started realising in 1998, stopped goin to meetings in 2002.

es

Follow up question for: Re: Would You Stay As A Witness, Even Though You ..

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