Posts by neverendingjourney

40

Screwed up sexually

by purrpurr in

jw
friends

i was thinking about how the borg screws up and sexually neuters their flock by telling them when single to "deaden their body" and then boom as soon as there's a ring on the finger to not be denying eachother.. do any of you know of jws who have been screwed up by these teachings?

i know 2, 1 elder came back from honeymoon having a nervous breakdown unable to cope with the cd that sex produced in his head.

and the other called up her parents while on honeymoon, crying and begging for themto come and get her, since she was so shocked that sex hurt.

neverendingjourney

As one example, my exwife told me of one of her friends that grew up having rape fantasies because she had such a strong sex drive that she wanted to be able to fulfill without guilt.

I just read this. I kind of ties in to what I was talking about above.

The wt obsession with sex says that left alone for 2 minutes a couple would be at each other.

This was a problem for me in the immediate aftermath of leaving the JWs. That was the default assumption I carried around with me. Taken a step further, if a woman puts herself in a position of being alone with you, logically that means she wants to have sex with you.

I didn't understand or have any notion that there could be such things as platonic relationships, that you could go to lunch with a female co-worker without it being sexual. It also created an idea in my mind that sex is something that happens quickly when the opportunity presents itself without the need for flirting, courtship, and the whole song and dance that precedes it.

It really screwed things up for me. I misinterpreted a lot of situations until I reset my expectations according to the standards that exist in the real world.

40

Screwed up sexually

by purrpurr in

jw
friends

i was thinking about how the borg screws up and sexually neuters their flock by telling them when single to "deaden their body" and then boom as soon as there's a ring on the finger to not be denying eachother.. do any of you know of jws who have been screwed up by these teachings?

i know 2, 1 elder came back from honeymoon having a nervous breakdown unable to cope with the cd that sex produced in his head.

and the other called up her parents while on honeymoon, crying and begging for themto come and get her, since she was so shocked that sex hurt.

neverendingjourney

I have been an exjw for almost 15 years. I left in my early/mid 20s.

There was a JW girl I knew who had a crush on me when she was 18 or so. I'm four or five years older than her. I spurned her interest because she was known as being one of the bad JWs and I wasn't interested in that at the time.

Throughout these 15 years or so, she's always made an effort to keep in touch with me although I try to keep my distance from her as much as possible because she's an incredibly damaged person and brings nothing but drama to the table. She's been in a series of abusive relationships and got pregnant at 19, a pregnancy which either ended with an abortion or a miscarriage (she's told me two different versions of that story). She carries A LOT of guilt around. She was what some exjws have taken to calling POMI, physically out, mentally in.

I tried on a few occasions to get something romantic going with her after I became an exjw, but she spurned me every time. She seemed quite pleased to get her "revenge." At some point, I just started treating her like a normal female friend, albeit one I wanted to keep at arm's length.

That's all context for the story I'm about to tell.

Two or three years ago I get a phone call from her. Like I said, I've maintained more or less constant contact with her over the past 15 years. She says she's off work and asks me what I'm doing. I tell her I'm off work too because I had just moved into a new apartment and I'm waiting for the cable guy to set up my television.

"So you don't have TV right now," she says. "No, all I have is a computer plugged into the TV, but that doesn't do me any good. I guess I can throw on some internet porn if I want to...haha" "Oh, you have porn? I want to watch porn with you. Can I come over?" She was completely serious.

At this point I'm thinking maybe something's changed and we're about to get it on. So she comes over as expected and a few minutes later I do exactly what we discussed and threw on some porn. Ok, everything is going according to plan so far. I reach over to kiss her and...she starts kicking and flailing her arms around like I'm forcing myself on her.

This IMMEDIATELY brought things to a halt for me. One, I don't get off on rape stuff. If she's not into it, it's not going to work for me either. Two, I've never been accused of rape and I'm not going to put myself in a position where she can credibly tell people I raped her.

So I get up, turn off the television, pull up a chair across from her (I was sitting next to her on the couch) and start carrying out normal conversation pretending like nothing just happened. About 10 minutes later she said she had to leave and that was the end of it. We never spoke of it again.

As time passed, I thought a lot about that incident trying to make sense of it (it really messed with my mind) and this is more or less what I think happened.

She's a normal woman with a sex drive and on some level wanted to initiate a sexual encounter. Why else would she invite herself over to watch porn with me on her suggestion? Yet, she carries so much guilt around and views sex as sinful, so she can't bring herself to properly initiate the sexual contact, so she wanted to feel like she'd been coerced into it. That way it wouldn't weigh on her conscience as much. After all, the guy forced himself on her.

That, coupled with the fact that she's been in a series of abusive relationships where, for all I know, the men she was with forced herself on her on a regular basis, may have resulted in a situation where she doesn't know sex to be anything but that. That might be normal for her. She has spoken of her first long-term boyfriend raping her and forcing himself on her, but I honestly don't know how much that's true and how much of it is a way to relieve some of the guilt she felt over the pregnancy.

In any event, I wanted absolutely no part of that. It was damn strange. It's the only time I've ever encountered anything like that. Having a woman kick and flail her arms around when I move in for a kiss is not something I have ever been involved with, either before or since.

She eventually went back to the KH and has been attending meetings more or less regularly. I expect that won't last very long, though.

20

"One drop of poison in a glass of water"

by stuckinarut2 in

time to revive this well known, and often used jw illustration!.

"if you are in desperate need of a drink of water, and the glass in front of you is 99% clean, but contains just 1% poison, would you drink it??".

how often we heard this trotted out from the platform.. recently though, i have heard many examples of still-in jws sharing their observations about things that don't seem quite right with the current activities, direction and culture of the organization.

neverendingjourney

I learned to spot this in a psychology class I attended at my local university when I was fading.

Wise old sayings and analogies are not to be relied on.

For instance:

Beware of Greeks bearing gifts.

Don't look a gift horse in the mouth.

Well, which is it?

20

"One drop of poison in a glass of water"

by stuckinarut2 in

time to revive this well known, and often used jw illustration!.

"if you are in desperate need of a drink of water, and the glass in front of you is 99% clean, but contains just 1% poison, would you drink it??".

how often we heard this trotted out from the platform.. recently though, i have heard many examples of still-in jws sharing their observations about things that don't seem quite right with the current activities, direction and culture of the organization.

neverendingjourney

It's all brainwashing bullshit.

With respect to "the world," flaws are like a drop of poison that ruins the whole thing.

With respect to "Jehovah's organization," flaws are like minor imperfections in a diamond that can only be observed under a microscope. It's still a diamond!

They been playing this game a long time.

32

Blade Runner mentioned in the Watchtower

by ThomasCovenant in

jw
friends

can anyone remember or point me to a quote in either the watchtower or awake where they spoke adversely about some of the violent scenes in the original blade runner film.

.

thanks.

neverendingjourney

Really, any movie, band, celebrity, or fad that hit big, had the WTS finding fault with it somehow.

It took me a while, but at some point after I left, it dawned on me: These are miserable people. That's certainly true in Bethel. They're miserable and they can't help but spreading their misery around.

As a child I instinctively knew that, no matter what it was, if it was popular, it was going to be labeled "bad."

I remember being around 4 years old when E.T. came out and the JW couple my parents were studying with lecturing us about the evils of the movie. My parents looked at me and said, "You see. We can't go see it. It's bad." all while wearing giant smiles on their faces.

51

Drop Off in Mentioning 1914

by steve2 in

videos from the summer jw conventions ("be courageous) show the "urgency" about the end racheted up several notches.

paranoia rules supreme!.

curiously, though, very few, if any, statements in the convention program about 1914 and the overlapping generations.

neverendingjourney

I'm pushing 40. I have a nephew who is 16 years old. If I talked to him about 1914 and the role it played in not wanting to be a JW anymore, he'd look at me like I was crazy.

It'd be the same look I would have given an "apostate" had he talked to me about 1975 when I was 16 in the mid-90s.

This stuff is cyclical.

In the:

1910s they had to deal with the fact that 1914 didn't see the conclusion of the Great Tribulation.

1920s they had to deal with the failure of 1925 as the date when Old Testament "princes" would be resurrected

1940s they had to deal with the failure of WWII to bring Armageddon and Rutherford's statement that there were only "months" left

1970s they had to deal with the failure of 1975 as the end of the sixth creative day

1990s they had to deal with the failure of the "generation" of "seventy to eighty years" being a deadline for Armageddon

There have always been two generations present at the local Kingdom Hall: those old enough to have already undergone a major prophetic failure and those young enough (or new enough) to be clinging to a new prophetic deadline that hasn't yet collapsed.

15

Random Thought on Drugs/Tobacco Being Sinful Under JW Doctrine

by neverendingjourney in

jw
friends

a friend of mine was telling me about her recent trip to peru.

she said she had trouble with the altitude in certain areas of peru but the locals offered her a tea derived from the coca leaf and that helped tremendously with her symptoms.. i began to think about how i would have handled the situation as a jw given that coca contains an alkaloid that is used to produce cocaine.

in its natural form, the content is very low and the locals use it as a stimulant similar to coffee.. however, as a jw i would have probably refused to drink it viewing it as something similar to a product derived from tobacco leaves.

neverendingjourney

About the coca leaf thing. I have been to Bolivia, and was offered coca leaf tea as a drink while eating lunch in an elders home. I questioned him about it and he likened it to taking aspirin. Coca leaves have been used by the Indians for many years, and he certainly had no problem with it.

Interesting. Maybe it's like blood fractions. A little coca is okay, but too much coca in the form of cocaine and it's no longer okay.

15

Random Thought on Drugs/Tobacco Being Sinful Under JW Doctrine

by neverendingjourney in

jw
friends

a friend of mine was telling me about her recent trip to peru.

she said she had trouble with the altitude in certain areas of peru but the locals offered her a tea derived from the coca leaf and that helped tremendously with her symptoms.. i began to think about how i would have handled the situation as a jw given that coca contains an alkaloid that is used to produce cocaine.

in its natural form, the content is very low and the locals use it as a stimulant similar to coffee.. however, as a jw i would have probably refused to drink it viewing it as something similar to a product derived from tobacco leaves.

neverendingjourney

So many JWs are overweight, live mostly sedentary lifestyles and consume far more than healthy amounts of alcohol. Prescription meds are consumed like tic tacs.

A few obese elders and regular pioneers immediately come to mind. Fat, lazy, gluttonous, but there's no real precedent in the religion to discipline JWs for gluttony (that I'm aware of). They'd lose a significant portion of their regular pioneer base if they treated gluttony the same way they do other major "sins."

I've heard that prescription opiates are a big problem in WT Land now. It's not surprising. JWs are part of the community at large and it's a huge problem in poor, rural America, where JWs are the strongest.

15

Random Thought on Drugs/Tobacco Being Sinful Under JW Doctrine

by neverendingjourney in

jw
friends

a friend of mine was telling me about her recent trip to peru.

she said she had trouble with the altitude in certain areas of peru but the locals offered her a tea derived from the coca leaf and that helped tremendously with her symptoms.. i began to think about how i would have handled the situation as a jw given that coca contains an alkaloid that is used to produce cocaine.

in its natural form, the content is very low and the locals use it as a stimulant similar to coffee.. however, as a jw i would have probably refused to drink it viewing it as something similar to a product derived from tobacco leaves.

neverendingjourney

It's my understanding that medically prescribed marijuana is OK to use -- PRESCRIBED, as in a Doctor.

I'm curious about this. If this is true, this would be a big deviation from the JW organization I used to be a part of.

15

Random Thought on Drugs/Tobacco Being Sinful Under JW Doctrine

by neverendingjourney in

jw
friends

a friend of mine was telling me about her recent trip to peru.

she said she had trouble with the altitude in certain areas of peru but the locals offered her a tea derived from the coca leaf and that helped tremendously with her symptoms.. i began to think about how i would have handled the situation as a jw given that coca contains an alkaloid that is used to produce cocaine.

in its natural form, the content is very low and the locals use it as a stimulant similar to coffee.. however, as a jw i would have probably refused to drink it viewing it as something similar to a product derived from tobacco leaves.

neverendingjourney

All based on perception. Why would a tea from tobacco leaves be considered wrong? I'm not even sure most JDrones would follow you down that path. It's just tea...

I suspect you're right, but it's because as JWs we were taught to turn off our logical thinking and accept JW doctrine unquestioningly and become unwavering advocates for JW teachings. If there hasn't been a WT article condemning it, then why worry about it?

I was not your typical JW in that regard. I wanted things to make sense. That's what eventually led me to wake up. There were far too many things that didn't add up and I couldn't keep repressing the doubts.

For example, I remember panicking about dental procedures because my gums might bleed and I might unwillingly swallow my own blood. I don't know of too many other witnesses who even gave that a second thought.