If you're the social one, you have a huge advantage. Just start making non-cult friends. It'll show your wife how wrong the cult is about worldly people and help her see a way out if there's already a social group outside of the cult waiting for her. Obviously it's not just that easy, but you're going to need non-cult friendships sooner or later no matter what happens.
OneEyedJoe
JoinedPosts by OneEyedJoe
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69
Thinking of Going Full Disclosure With Wife. Sorta
by freemindfade insoliciting any and all opinions.
as some of you may know, wife is full in pioneer.
my fade has gone from us fighting.
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69
The 1995 Generation Change
by sloppyjoe2 ini was just a teenager and have a vivid memory of sitting in a chair doing a microphone for the sunday meeting.
everyone was commenting that it didn't mean the end was far off, and it didn't change the condition of the dead, or the 144,000, or the trinity so we should still remain faithful.
this is my first memory as a kid being just a teen that i ever had a single doubt.
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OneEyedJoe
I was 9 when it was changed, I think, so I didn't notice it at the time...but the strange thing is that even well after that, in my area the generation of 1914 was still often talked about as if they never changed the 1995 teaching. I think this happened from the platform, but it definitely happened in comments (i.e. "those born in 1914 are really old now...") without being corrected from the platform. I guess a lot of people either missed it altogether or just couldn't accept it. They definitely didn't do nearly as much to push that change as they have the overlapping generation nonsense.
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How to get JWs to talk about disfellowship?
by datto ini have heard a lot about disfellowship from forums, blogs & youtube clips.
and all of them are real experiences from ex-jw.
however i have never physically met an ex-jw before.
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OneEyedJoe
I also strongly suggest that you look into Steven Hassan's books on cult mind control. This will help you avoid some of the common mistakes that people make when a loved one is first entering a cult. The first thing cultists typically do is prime the potential recruit to expect family members to object and/or call it a cult because Satan is using them to test their faith. If you do that, you'll only drive them further in. It looks like you've done a good job thus far, but it would probably help to understand fully the psychological mechanisms at play here.
Good luck, sir.
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How to get JWs to talk about disfellowship?
by datto ini have heard a lot about disfellowship from forums, blogs & youtube clips.
and all of them are real experiences from ex-jw.
however i have never physically met an ex-jw before.
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OneEyedJoe
You might get a little better help if you relate some of your situation and what you're after. If you ask why people are disfellowshipped you'll probably get "unrepentant sin" as the answer, or sometimes a more specific answer being something to do with fornication, since the cult does a lot to sell this as the default reason for being DFed.
It also depends on who you ask and how much they know and how honest they are with themselves and with you. Most elders are probably aware on some level that being DFed isn't exclusively about unrepentant sin, and unrepentant sin doesn't always result in being DFed. But they're not likely to tell you that.
As for where to start, that really depends on where you want to end up. Like I said, if you're comfortable giving more information, you'll likely get more useful advice.
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69
Thinking of Going Full Disclosure With Wife. Sorta
by freemindfade insoliciting any and all opinions.
as some of you may know, wife is full in pioneer.
my fade has gone from us fighting.
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OneEyedJoe
It seems to be a common flaw in JWs that they can't separate arguing against how a point is made and what point is made. I have the same problem when I question the use of misquotes and lies in their argument against evolution. Although I agree with evolution, that has no bearing on my problem with their use of deliberate deception to argue against it. When I've brought this up with my wife and father in law, they both automatically assume that I'm arguing for the fact of evolution. They just cant separate it in their minds - though to be fair once you weed out all the deceptive arguments against evolution, it does become the clear winner in the debate.
Because of that, pointing out the failed logic and deceptive statements from the WT puts you at an immediate disadvantage. I think the only topic I've discovered that I can attack this way is on their ban of higher education, since there's nothing morally wrong about going to college and no doctrine hangs on the ban. Everything else puts you on the side of immoral or godless people in their minds and immediately poisons anything you might say.
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Thinking of Going Full Disclosure With Wife. Sorta
by freemindfade insoliciting any and all opinions.
as some of you may know, wife is full in pioneer.
my fade has gone from us fighting.
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OneEyedJoe
Like the others have said - it's totally up to you where you go, but I'll offer you a data point:
I regret not coming clean to my wife much more early on after my discovery of TTATT. I think it's probably important to take a few days or maybe weeks to really let it sink in, but it seems I entirely lack the skillset required to wake someone up if their connection to the cult is social and emotional. I had been in because of all the "proof" (which towards the end I realized the only thing holding me in was that they got lucky with 1914) and the proof that it was a cult was plenty to do the trick for me. So because of my inability in that respect, the year I spent trying to plant seeds was entirely fruitless and only damaged our marriage. When I "came out" to her at the end, it didn't go any better than it would've from day 1, and in a lot of ways it went worse precisely because I'd waited so long. I think if I had been open from the beginning I could've made it a somewhat more collaborative process of discovering whether it's the truth and even if I hadn't won her over that way, I think our marriage would currently be in a somewhat better place. Furthermore, since that happened I haven't had to sit through a single meeting, which is definitely a nice payoff. It's amazing how much more like yourself you begin to feel after being away from the mental stress of sitting at cult meetings.
It sounds like you've already eased into it and your wife is learning to come to terms with it in her own way. Not sure what your relationship is like, but in my case my wife was holding a lot of fear and distress inside and the uncertainty about my fate was eating away at her. At least now that she knows I'm destined for death at armageddon she can try to deal with it instead of being in limbo. It's possible that your wife might be doing the same, and releasing her from that, while initially painful, would be a kindness if that's the case. Since there doesn't seem to be any great risk of your wife leaving you, making the first move and being open and honest may actually serve you well.
Again, all this is said without any warranty, and is coming from someone that probably handled everything with his wife about as poorly as possible, so do with it what you will. I wish you the best of luck in whatever you choose to do.
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What started me on the path to waking up about the lies the WT teaches?
by oppostate init was a simple question: isn't jesus my "mediator" if i put faith in him like the scriptures say?
the research to that answer, from the w79 4/1 p. 31, was mind blowing.
how dare they deny me a belief firmly stated in the scriptures?
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OneEyedJoe
The overlapping generation got me started and the misquotes in the creation book solidified my doubts. -
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Vacation Time! Going To A Regional?
by millie210 inthis is the first year i have not been at a summer assembly.. the friends here locally just got back from the regional in our area.. they mostly took their vacation time from work to attend.. while they were gone i had an epiphany...... why is it that the rank and file take their summer vacation time to attend an assembly (we have all heard this hammered in from the platform) whereas the governing body attend as part of their "work".. it cant be as simple as "well, they are giving talks" because there are many brothers that give talks from the rank and file also who have used up precious vacation hours and drug their entire family there plus give their parts.. or what about other brothers and sisters who volunteer and clean at the assembly.
on vacation.. so the pubs.
travel at their own expense, pay for their own rooms and food, and give parts and it is supposed to be viewed as their vacation.. the gb and c.o.s travel to the same assembly and stay in provided for accomadations, give a talk or two and they are "working".. what is that about?.
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OneEyedJoe
To be fair, the life of a GB member is pretty much a non-stop vacation of living on manicured grounds (that they neither mow nor pay for) with all their needs met and plenty of trips to scenic locations world-wide. In comparison, trudging through 3 days of a convention is definitely hard work. -
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Why Child Baptisms Are Invalid Using WT Logic
by JW_Rogue inwhen i was baptized as a child i remember quite well that there were six steps that one must take before getting baptized.
i recently looked up some articles on this subject on jw.org and the latest article says there are 9 steps.
they now include field service and going to the meetings as steps.
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OneEyedJoe
No, you've got it all wrong getting Married is no big deal but getting a driver's license is a very important decision.
If they'd let kids wait until they were 16, it would be a vast improvement. Most of the baptisms that I've seen lately have been well under that age, some as young as 7. It seems that 16 is being put forth as the MAXIMUM age that a child should reach before getting baptized.
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Why Child Baptisms Are Invalid Using WT Logic
by JW_Rogue inwhen i was baptized as a child i remember quite well that there were six steps that one must take before getting baptized.
i recently looked up some articles on this subject on jw.org and the latest article says there are 9 steps.
they now include field service and going to the meetings as steps.
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OneEyedJoe
Using their logic on birthdays (they're evil because people died in both biblical accounts of birthdays) no one should be baptized at any age below 30 because that's the only known age of someone that was baptized.