Tell your dad to pursue his new interests, as he will meet new friends through those. There might be some latent talent he wants to revive, or an old hobby he gave away.... when he's enthusiastic about something he'll be meeting people constantly. Right now it's hard to see that because of the shock of what he'd be going through.
sass_my_frass
JoinedPosts by sass_my_frass
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9
Not "WORLDLY".. just people.
by Rayvin inmy dad ,yesterday, for the first time stopped making the distinction.
we were talking about how as a jw you are taught to only associate with jws and then after they alienated us we were thrown out with now social skills or info on how to make friends and socialize elsewhere.
dad said " i don't know where wordly....*sigh* worldy..i need to quit saying that.
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35
Two weeks 'til DA day?
by AuldSoul inif you have been following anything about my situation (likely not), i have been baptised for 20 years.
my profile (as of today) says:i have committed no immorality.
i have only stopped believing that the christian congregation of jehovah's witnesses represents the interests of god in any way.
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sass_my_frass
Why play their game? There's not any difference between DA and DF anymore, they make the same announcement. If you DA, as far as the congregation is concerned, you're no longer a JW and therefore to be shunned. You probably want to make a clean break, but why do it by their rules? Why not just quietly get on with your life elsewhere, and not cause yourself the grief of shunning?
I'm DF'd and it bloody hurts hon. I only confessed to play the card that they'll more likely consider me repentant if I tell them myself rather than waiting for Motherdarling to give them a call and dob me in. The end result was the same though... I'm now shunned. I've just recently decided not to write everybody a letter with the evidence against the organisation, because it truly achieves nothing but turning me into an apostate. None of them will read it. They'll just bin it and consider it a good excuse to treat me horribly.
You don't know that you'll be DF'd anyway; they'll need to get the goods on you first. Why not take your time, set yourself up in your new life at your own pace, and then one day if you're 'sprung', it won't be such a big deal.
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Stress-relief; corny but try it
by sass_my_frass inhi all, the goods coming from sir's appraisal of the elders school (great job, btw!
) are very upsetting... i know i'm very angry about what the leaders are being told to do, and i can see it in everybody elses comments too.
just thought i'd try an exercise to bring a bit more joy into our lives at this time..... what have you achieved since escaping the cult?
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sass_my_frass
Hi all, the goods coming from Sir's appraisal of the elders school (great job, btw!) are very upsetting... I know I'm very angry about what the Leaders are being told to do, and I can see it in everybody elses comments too. Just thought I'd try an exercise to bring a bit more joy into our lives at this time....
What have you achieved since escaping the cult? In spite of the anger, the loneliness and confusion, you must have been able to do something with your new freedom... where has it taken you so far? What do you look forward to now?
Mine: I've started a marriage that's made me happier than I knew I could be. We're planning our city house and our rural farm. I've also just started that education I didn't get into when I was a pioneering A-student. I look forward to travel plans, improving my snowsports skills, upgrading my motorbike, getting what it takes to move into a more interesting line of work, and seeing what comes after that.
But enough about me....
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So why do I feel like a hypocrite??
by Super_Becka inok, so i've been doing a lot of thinking about my relationship with my jw boyfriend, and while i haven't made any final decisions regarding what i'm going to do just yet, i can't help but feel like a hypocrite, and i feel terrible about it.. jws are so intolerant, they can't accept others who are different than they are, they try to force their beliefs and rules on others, they judge others based on wts standards and such, so how does it make me any different to judge him on his beliefs??
i never judge people based on their belief systems or lifestyles unless it hurts someone else - i grew up being taught that everyone is different, that doesn't make them bad and that we shouldn't judge others because they're different, my mother's favourite saying is "to each his own" and i follow that myself - so why am i considering breaking up with my boyfriend because his beliefs are different from mine??
i'm trying to decide whether or not to break up with him - it's not an easy decision, he's a great person and he treats me very well - but i can't help but feel like i'm no better than an intolerant jw, judging him based on his religion.
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sass_my_frass
You make a good point about prejudice, and remember that most opinions you're getting here are based upon our own prejudices; we are all rather prejudiced against all JW's because for the most part they have hurt us very deeply. That's why there is this huge community of us needing each other's support.
I want to comment on some things:
I just wish that he'd be willing to at least consider that other people believe different things and that they have different rituals and celebrations that coincide with their belief systems.
If he is not showing some sign of this, it will never, ever happen. You need to understand this; the automatic reaction he gets to christmas is one of many things that will always be in the back of his head.
He realizes that I don't believe what he does, but he refuses to talk about it, he refuses to acknowledge that I think that my celebrations are right and he doesn't want to have anything to do with them at all. He tells me that he loves me and that he loves everything about me, but he just completely blocks out this huge part of my life - I celebrate anything and everything, but he ignores that fact. I, on the other hand, am curious to know more about what he believes, even if I don't ever want to be a member of his Society, and if he did have something to celebrate, I'd be more than willing to participate in his celebrations, even if it was just to satisfy my own curiosity and make him happy. He tells me that he wants me to be happy, but he refuses to have anything to do with my special occasions, even if he is an inactive JW. He's free to believe whatever he wants to, but I think that in a relationship, there has to be compromise, and he refuses to even talk about compromising, much less actually doing something about it, and it's because of his beliefs.
This sucks, and you need to tell him. He won't know what to do about it though, because it's all he knows.
And so I can't help but think that I'm judging him based on the beliefs that he's been taught, because that's where his behaviour comes from. I'm sure that if he wasn't a JW, he wouldn't be nearly as intolerant about these things as he is.
So what? He is a JW, isn't he? You know that the second you indicate that he'd be a better person if he wasn't a JW, he will close his mind towards any opinion you have towards them, the organisation, the practices. You will be a threat to his spirituality, and if he's already weak, he's going to know that any little threat will compound into threatening his family and his very way of life.
He's patient about so many things - like dealing with a long-distance relationship with a younger girl, listening to me rant when I'm having a bad day or just talk endlessly about anything and everything, and even trying to teach me how to drive a car with a manual transmission
That's how it's supposed to work, you see. You're supposed to be a little nice to your best girl. If you took the blinkers off you'd meet a lot of men willing to do this for you, who also accept you exactly as you are, and who will make you happy.
- but he's so impatient and intolerant about my celebrations. I just don't get it. And I can't even tell him how much it hurts me that he thinks like this because he won't let me talk about anything related to my holidays.
That's the problem - he is in a cult, and he can't think for himself.
I feel so horrible about feeling this way towards him, judging him because of this, but I can't help it. My celebrations are a huge part of my life and it hurts me that he refuses to have anything to do with them, right down to even talking about them and sharing my happiness about them even though he doesn't practice them, and I find myself blaming it on his faith. So now, I feel like I'm discriminating against his faith for teaching him to be like this, and I even find myself resenting the WTS for making my sweet guy behave like this. I can't help but feel like a horrible person for thinking this way, but I do anyway. The teachings of the WTS have made him like this and it's breaking my heart.
And he will always be that way, as long as he is a witness. We can't make it any clearer for you.
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Please help me, I need advice on dating a JW!!
by Super_Becka inok, i'm new here, so please be gentle.
maybe the advice i need is somewhere else in this forum, but i really don't want to have to search for it, i really need some advice now and i don't have the time to sift through all of the other entries here.
so please bear with me and share any and all advice you have, even if you think it's not what i want to hear.
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sass_my_frass
All I need to see is his stubbornness on christmas to know that he's going to be more work than you think. You're too young for this game. Get yourself somebody who will love all of you and not want you to be something else.
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Feeling Discouraged About The Future Of My Marraige
by 24k infor those of you who may not be familiar with my story, a little history may help clarify my dilemna.
i was raised as one of jehovah's witnesses, pioneered, became a ministerial servant, married a pioneer, and then became an elder, all before the age of thirty.
a few years ago, i began to have serious doubts about the teachings and religious system established by the watchtower.
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sass_my_frass
This angle is pretty brutal but I haven't seen it on here before and thought it deserved mentioning...
We are always disgusted that the organisation doesn't care that families are split when one member of a couple joins it. We know how it affects a marriage, and we're upset because we know that a couple went into a marriage as *these* people, and now the person joining the cult is becoming *this other* person, and therefore they ought to be held accountable for the damage to their marriage and take action to limit it.
What happens in the reverse scenario though... when two witnesses marry, they're both usually of the opinion that the person they chose is suitable at least partly because they're also a witness, so it's a marriage based upon that commonality. We've seen here that when that commonality is taken away, the marriage faces difficulties. My point is that in this instance it's the person leaving the cult who is changing the marriage. Wouldn't that mean that they're the ones responsible for it's failure? Wouldn't that therefore mean that they're the ones who ought to put in the effort to keep it together, understand the changes they're forcing upon the marriage, and limit the damage?
Sorry hon, I know it's mean, and apologies to Tetra and all of you who have fought so hard to achieve the freedom you need...
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Did you hear about the congregation where.........
by enlightenedcynic ini am new to the board and am looking forward to many insightful discussions here.. a good friend of mine attends a congregation where sisters are working behind both the literature and magazine counters.
the brothers who were handling those responsibilities were removed because in the elder body's opinion, none of them were "exemplerary".police officer explained that save for the elders and a few of the ministerial servants, none of the men in the congregation were meeting the national average in field service time, so for the foreseeable future, "exemplerary".
the irony here though is that the same men who are unfit to handle the literature and magazine counters are qualified to offer opening and closing prayer for meetings and do reading for the watchtower study.
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sass_my_frass
A friend who served a three year disfellowshipping for an incident of 'sexual misconduct with a minor' (I can only hope that the kid wasn't discouraged from telling the police but, you know...) told me that he'll never get privileges again. He is sad that he'll never have privileges again. I told him to pretend that he's a sister, and that he never had any in the first place. He said that's not the point; people always 'wonder' about him. You know those people who are such a part of your life and your history that you can't bear not having them around any more, but you know that if you did you'd want to throw yourself into a brick wall every time you talk? He's one of those.
Just in case anybody is curious, yes I ached for years over talking to the kid about it, trying to talk him into seeing a counsellor or a cop, but it seemed that he did pretty okay. Well there was that period of juvenile delinquency, but he's gotten it together now. And it's not like he'd listen to me now anyway.
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What are you Thankful for this year?
by Gretchen956 ini don't know about you all, but i've been out a long time, long enough to form some traditions.
this time of the year i get reflective about what i'm thankful for in my life.
here's my list (by no means complete, in no special order, but what i can think of off the top of my head):my brother came out safe from his fire and only lost a few possessionsthat i have two brothers of my family of seven siblings that i can be close to and we can all love each other unconditionally outside the borg.that i have a partner that puts up with me!that i have two dogs and two cats that make me smile and laugh out loud every day.that i have a son that i'm good good friends with.that i have a roof over my head and food to eat.that i have transportation to where i need to go.that i have love in my life.that i have my spiritual base.that i have a job to pay my bills and a little extra.for my friends.for jwd and all you awesome posters here.that despite problems, there is still beauty in this earth.that there are still good, generous people.. sherry
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sass_my_frass
- My new hubbie, he is my sun and moon and stars.
- My disfellowshipping, it's been the best move of my life!
- This board, it's so liberating.
- My great, supportive colleagues.
- My new in-laws and family.
- Lots of new friends.
- My fun wedding and honeymoon.
- The start of an undergrad degree.
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Do you believe that Religion benefits mankind?
by jeanniebeanz in.
or is it a detriment to society?.
i'm sure this has been asked before, but since there are so many new people here i'll ask again.... j
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sass_my_frass
The pursuit of faith - yes. Guided by an organised religion - no, it does the exact opposite.
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Elder's School Notes Part 1: Quit being so materialistic, you slackers!
by sir82 inask, and ye shall receive.. i will herewith post my notes from the km06 elders school i recently attended.
i will post this in 6 parts, to give people a chance to read smaller chunks and comment on them.. a couple of introductory notes: i wrote an awful lot of stuff, and will not post everything.
for each talk, i will post 3 sections: (1) general synopsis, (2) personal thoughts & observations, (3) particularly egregious quotations.. the primary speakers, who delivered more than 1/2 of the talks, were a circuit overseer and a guest from brooklyn bethel.. to protect anonymity, we will refer to the sadly inane circuit overseer as brother sico.. and the old-timer lifelong brother from bethel, completely out of touch, as brother bethel-coot.. one more introductory comment: it seems the main points the society wanted to send to elders were:.
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sass_my_frass
"Some say the end is a long way off. Some friends are saving money for retirement, as if they were going to (chortle) retire in this system of things. Can you imagine what that would do to someone's zeal for the ministry? It would kill it."
After the chortle, was there a wave of slight amusement, or an uncomfortable shifting in seats? Just curious if the majority of the attendees were family types who have to make their own arrangements.