1) Thumbing your nose at their rules and regulations, which are non-scriptural anyway. I didn't sign a piece of paper to join them, neither will I sign anything to leave them.2) Allowing your JW friends and relatives to talk to you, enabling you to retain your relationships with them, and hence, having a chance to help them leave the Borg too.
It's sad how people feel that conditional relationship is a real relationship. Blood means nothing in the end. I'd prefer a true friend who helps me unconditionally than a mother who refuses to speak to me because I do not beleive in the same god as her. STAND UP FOR YOURSELF. Slipping away is not 'thumbing your nose at their rules' but rather PLAYING INTO THEIR RULES. They are intimidating you into making any stand. They are intimidating you by holding your family hostage. They still have power over you. They don't want you to speak. They don;t want you to make a stir and show that you are finally free. They want you to shut up. Only by DA do you SEVER ALL TIES with the Jehovah's Witnesses and then they no longer have anything to do with your life. If you friends are hurt by this and refuse to speak to you..too bad! Conditional friends are not real friends. If your family stops talking to you, screw them! That's not a very healthy family relationship either, its terrible for you mentally.
You have a girlfriend..you hate her..theres no more love..but instead of being a man and severing the relationship you string her along because you dont want to hurt her.
The bottom line here is its unhealthy to leave this thing festering and unconfronted. To recover you can't just string along your family and 'friends' allowing them to beleive you still are into their bull#$@%. The ones who are helpable are the ones who already have doubts anyway. The super-brain washed JW's close their mind and hearts to any message that is critical of the JW. The rebelious ones will speak to you even if you are DA, that is what happened with me.
I understand the personal choice to remain a 'spy' but like the bible says, remove the rafter from your eye before removing the splinter in anothers eye. You need to recover and take care of yourself mentally first before going in and helping others. Recovering from a cult is no easy matter, the scars will remain your entire life. How can you help someone who is bleeding to death when you have a knife in your back?
When I DA myself I lost all my JW friends except one, who still spoke to me rebelliously. My brother wont speak to me, and neither will his fiance. My little brother still does, and so does my mom. My father I refuse to talk to because of his long history of verbally and physically abusing me and my mom. I would be a mental nutcase if I had remained, andhave to sit through the brainwahsing and read the repetitve 3rd grade level literature.Be true to yourself and live YOUR life.
I think staying in as a 'fade' only slows your recovery and does imeasurable harm to your mental health. It's like a wife staying in an abusive relationship in hopes that she might get her husband to see the light and stop beating the shit out of her. The wife in thise case needs to get out and recover from the abuse before she can ever hope to help her abusive husband. She has to remove all control he has over her.
my 2ยข.
