They usually get frustrated with the lack of desirable dating prospects in their religion, so are tempted by someone they meet through work or whatever and have a relationship and get married. They may even leave the religion because of it, but soon feel guilty and go back. You can't be disfellowshipped for marrying outside of the religion, but you can be for having sex outside of marriage, which is pretty common when it's a non JW relationship. But even if you are disfellowshipped, you can go back and get reinstated if you act like you are sorry and are willing to sit at the Kingdom Hall like a pariah for a year with no one talking to you. At that point you are married and there is nothing they can do about it.
LisaRose
JoinedPosts by LisaRose
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In The Name of Love, Need Your Opinion
by thankyou ini'm non-jw.. been following this forum.
most of you folks have been through hell, but are still loving souls.
i'm reeeally impressed and glad to be here.. my question is at the end of this.
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The money question...
by Tornintwo ini am intrigued to know if there is truly any evidence of financial irregularities in the jehovah's witness organisation or if any one or group are raking off funds or benefitting financially...?.
whilst i disagree wholeheartedly with most of their teachings and practices, dogmatism, legalism and superiority complex, i don't honestly think there's anyone making millions at the top.
yes you could say that the gb are comfortably off, don't have to pay bills etc but they do actually get up in the morning and 'work', they aren't going off in private jets to tropical islands or driving bentleys.
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LisaRose
You bring up a good point, but the problem is that this organization is completely opaque when it comes to financials, so impossible to say where the money is going. If the Watchtower is being completely honest and above board with the money, why are they so secretive? As the saying goes, follow the money.
The Watchtower always made a big deal about the fact that their leaders live just like everyone else at Bethel, and that could be true, but it could just be misdirection and they could also have private estates somewhere, you just don't know. The reality is that people in power that have access to large sums of of money will figure out some way to personally benefit from that money more often than not, and they have certainly shown a pattern of lies and deceit in everything else, so why should the money be any different?
Their recent behavior is highly suspect. They sold a lot of very valuable property and yet only a few years later are cancelling building projects, cutting down on magazine printing and getting rid of people. They have always used the preaching work and magazine publishing as proof they are the only religion doing God's will, so after all this time why are they suddenly doing an about face? Something is going on and you know somehow money is a big part of it.
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Still feel weird about things....
by FeelingFree inso i'm loving the fact that my little one gets to be a "normal" child and take part in everything at school.
however i still have that stupid niggling in the back of my head that she shouldn't be doing it and it's wrong etc.
at the moment she is rehearsing for the nativity play and keeps singing the songs at home (she is going to be an angel!
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LisaRose
This is normal and goes to prove how effective mind control is. Even when you know intellectually that there is no reason to be afraid, a part of your brain is not convinced. We all have a primitive part of our brain that controls the fight or flight syndrome. It responds very quickly in the event of a perceived threat. It's like when you suddenly see a rubber snake. The primitive part of your brain sees something alarming and your adrenaline starts flowing, your heart speeds up and you start moving. After a few seconds your normal, logical brain kicks in and says, wait a minute, that's not real, but it's a bit too late.
I believe this mechanism is responsible for most road rage incidents, and also is a factor in OCD type behavior. I also speculate it is what's in play when you are afraid to do things that were once considered forbidden by the cult. Your logical brain knows it's nonsense, but your primitive brain is still reacting to the JW conditioning and saying "Danger! Danger! Don't do that!". It really brings home how effective mind control can be. It will eventually go away since you aren't going to meetings anymore, but I bet you could speed up the process by deliberately doing things that were forbidden by the JWs. Start with little things, like listening to Christmas music, watch a Christmas movie, go to a party, etc. Gradually you will associate Christmas with pleasant memories, not JW paranoia.
When people have OCD type disorders they can be managed by gradually but consistently exposing people to what they fear, while helping people to manage the anxiety that is aroused by their OCD. Hoarding is an OCD type behavior, I saw an example where a young man had the idea that getting rid of the dog hair on his stairs would somehow hurt his dog. He knew that was not logical, but the OCD over rode his logical brain and caused severe anxiety, he couldn't get rid of the idea. With help he was able to retrain his brain to overcome the fear.
I think this one reason why people struggle with leaving the religion. They think they can just leave and move on, but they get all these uncomfortable feelings when trying to live a normal life. If they haven't learned the ttatt, they incorrectly interpret this anxiety as being God's way of telling them they should go back, the primitive part of the brain is connected with emotion also, the emotions take over. They are being manipulated months and even after years of leaving. It is also why trying to get someone to see ttatt doesn't work. Their fear of apostasy is aroused and they shut down and can't take in what you are saying. -
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New and Needing Friends
by Sawaveh ini'm just going to say my name is sawaveh.
i'm looking for some jw friend's.
i live in wa, moses lake, usa.
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LisaRose
Are you serious? I was a JW for thirty years, twenty eight of those years married to an idiot that I couldn't leave because I was a JW. The man as the head of the house thing totally doesn't work in that situation, although God knows I tried to make it work. I am happily married now to a man who treats me as his equal, he doesn't need the ego gratification of thinking he is better than me. We have been happily married fifteen years.
They just had a thread of a governing body member saying that women don't have a brain as big as a man so they can never be equal to a man. This is nonsense, brain size has nothing to do with intelligence. Why would you want to be in an organization where you will always be treated as less than? This is a religion that deep down hates women.
And they are a cult, educate yourself about cults, howcultswork.com. the JWs meet every criteria, controlling your time, controlling your relationships, claiming to be the only path to salvation, not allowing you to question authority, etc.
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An elder bought my son a suit
by Clambake ini guess being two months old and coming to the kh in his onesee was kind of offensive .
how rude of me.
i am thinking about returning to him.
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LisaRose
Don't give the idiot the satisfaction of knowing he got to you. If your child goes to the meeting make sure he is in his comfiest sleeper or onesie. Give the suit to whoever else has the next baby in the congregation, he will then know you didn't appreciate the gift without your saying anything. Sometimes the slow burn is best. -
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New and Needing Friends
by Sawaveh ini'm just going to say my name is sawaveh.
i'm looking for some jw friend's.
i live in wa, moses lake, usa.
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LisaRose
Sweetie, we are former Jehovah's Witnesses, we used to believe but we found out the Watchtower lied about many things. I can tell you that you cannot be a Jehovah's Witness if you do not go to the Kingdom Hall and attend two meetings a week, 2 hours each meeting, and go out in the door to door work for ten hours each month. You must give up Christmas, birthdays, all you non,JW friends, voting, higher education, and thinking for yourself.
You could call the Kingdom Hall and they would send someone to study the bible with you, but be aware this is a cult, they believe all of mankind will die soon at Armageddon, except for them. They practice shunning if you become a JW but later decide to leave, all your family and friends will not talk to you if you choose to vote or celebrate Christmas, or say you don't believe the men who are in charge are being directed by God. I think you would be better off going with a more mainstream religion.
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I think I was off the day they taught ...
by Simon indoes anyone else have those things that everyone else seems to know ... except you?
it's like you were off the day it was taught in school and you don't know that you don't know about it.
but everyone else does.. i have a couple .... first, days of the month.
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LisaRose
My head is still filled with a lot of useless facts, but I can't remember if I took my medication five minutes ago. I once won a Trival pursuit game because I knew who won the democratic primary in 1968 in New Hampshire. While that was fun, when am I ever going to need that information again? I would be glad to trade all that trivia knowledge for my short term memory. -
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LisaRose
If you asked a hundred scientists who work in palentology they would all disagree, but sure, believe the one scientist that doesn't even work in that field, because denial works for you. -
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Cracked under pressure
by breezy ina big problem i have always had when talking about anything related to jw teachings, is that i get aggravated and frustrated when logical black and white concepts/scriptures are not seen/interpreted in a logical way.
it really frustrates me having to hear '' oh no this does not apply here '' in every scripture that i bring to my parents attention.
starting from when i was 16 to about 20, my frustrations would lead to these anger fits.
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LisaRose
It's understandable that you are frustrated, but It might help if you can think of it in a different way. Your parents might not have read your research because they are brushing you off, they may just be scared that you are right and they are not ready to accept that right now.A cult member will do a lot of things to avoid uncomfortable truths.
Apologize to you parents, and accept and love them as they are. The fact is they may never wake up, and if they do, it will be in their own time, at their own pace, just as you left when you were ready. Peace comes with acceptance of things as they are, not how we want them to be.
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JW sisters reaction to the cutbacks
by umbertoecho ini had gone away for a rest and came back to pick my animals up.
(yes we share one common thing.
the love of animals).
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LisaRose
I think people always had pride in the organization, how efficient it was, how organized. They may not have understood why things were done a certain way, but they trusted that the GB knew what they were doing and were under Jehovah's direction, and that the work that was so important would always get done. It must be quite a shock to be confronted with obvious signs that they might not actually know what they are doing. One or two things could be ignored, but there are so many signs of trouble it's getting harder and harder to pretend that everything is fine.