Posts by Awakened at Gilead

25

you can never have too much toilet paper

by wings in

jw
friends

that is if you have 8 females in the house.

recently i had a wonderful experience.

my step daughter and granddaughter (3 yrs old) flew in to see me from hawaii.

Awakened at Gilead

Nice post Wings... Cute grandkids...

I have a full house too.. the toilet paper doesn't last long with 6 people in the house!

60

Stay or leave your spouse after leaving JWs - Do you have regrets?

by Awakened at Gilead in

i am in a situation that many of you have faced... whether to stay with my spouse or not after having learned the falsehood of the org.. my wife is diehard witness who gets upset whenever i talk about the org negatively.

she is not happy that i am on jwd... in fact the other day she picked up the keyboard and wanted to throw it accros the room or bash me with it when she saw i was on jwd... she is also very upset about me making friends with "apostates" and worldly people, and told me never to bring them to our home!

this concerns me, since i am not going to have any friends in the org, and i need at least a few friendships...she doesn't want me to talk to the friends in the cong about my decision so that i don't share my doubts.

Awakened at Gilead

(Rarely does anybody do what YOU have done; out in three weeks).

Well, its been 3 weeks since I decided noty to be a witness. But I have been doubting some things for years, since I went to Gilead in 2003. I have mentioned these doubts to my wife some time ago, so my decision did not come as a complete surprise, as she has thought that I would go apostate for some time. Since I mentioned that I had doubts, at elast about 3 years ago, sometimes when I would be using the WT CD ROM she would ask if I was studying or if I was looking for more doubts. (which was most likely the case).

In the past 3 weeks I have read Crisis of Conscience and ISofCF. That helps to make a decision and make one's mind do a 180.

I can see that your spouse was receptive in that she wanted to read the books. My spouse is very upset that I have read them.

But we'll see what happens... Nothing is written in stone...

BTW, I liked your DA letter... very clear and logical. Perhaps someone who read it paid attention to it.

Thanks...

A@G

60

Stay or leave your spouse after leaving JWs - Do you have regrets?

by Awakened at Gilead in

i am in a situation that many of you have faced... whether to stay with my spouse or not after having learned the falsehood of the org.. my wife is diehard witness who gets upset whenever i talk about the org negatively.

she is not happy that i am on jwd... in fact the other day she picked up the keyboard and wanted to throw it accros the room or bash me with it when she saw i was on jwd... she is also very upset about me making friends with "apostates" and worldly people, and told me never to bring them to our home!

this concerns me, since i am not going to have any friends in the org, and i need at least a few friendships...she doesn't want me to talk to the friends in the cong about my decision so that i don't share my doubts.

Awakened at Gilead

Vinny,

Thanks for your post. I appreciate it. You may be right...

Just a few points...

We have been discussing separation for years now.... Being in the "truth" was keeping us together, if not I would have bolted years ago.

While I see your point about her feeling shocked at my changes, ... its traumatic to wake up one day and realize you're not in the truth that you have believed in for over 30 years... I realize that I may be going to extremes, but I want her to know that I have no intention of returning to JW-land...

We'll see what happens. We are still together, and we have been at this point before (as JWs) where we agreed on separation, and then we decided to stick things out anyway.

I'm glad that you were able to help your spouse see the light. What in particular did you do that helped her to wake up?

A@G

60

Stay or leave your spouse after leaving JWs - Do you have regrets?

by Awakened at Gilead in

i am in a situation that many of you have faced... whether to stay with my spouse or not after having learned the falsehood of the org.. my wife is diehard witness who gets upset whenever i talk about the org negatively.

she is not happy that i am on jwd... in fact the other day she picked up the keyboard and wanted to throw it accros the room or bash me with it when she saw i was on jwd... she is also very upset about me making friends with "apostates" and worldly people, and told me never to bring them to our home!

this concerns me, since i am not going to have any friends in the org, and i need at least a few friendships...she doesn't want me to talk to the friends in the cong about my decision so that i don't share my doubts.

Awakened at Gilead

Well, she says she loves me at times, and asks why I am abandoning her...

But at other times she gets the other personality... I guess Mr. flipper explains it as the cult personality when she just can't stand the changes I am going through. She doesn't see why it's not going to work out, yet I don't see how it can. She thinks, though, that if I want to leave it must be because I have another woman (I don't - really). It is for the resaons that I mention in my previous post.

A@G

60

Stay or leave your spouse after leaving JWs - Do you have regrets?

by Awakened at Gilead in

i am in a situation that many of you have faced... whether to stay with my spouse or not after having learned the falsehood of the org.. my wife is diehard witness who gets upset whenever i talk about the org negatively.

she is not happy that i am on jwd... in fact the other day she picked up the keyboard and wanted to throw it accros the room or bash me with it when she saw i was on jwd... she is also very upset about me making friends with "apostates" and worldly people, and told me never to bring them to our home!

this concerns me, since i am not going to have any friends in the org, and i need at least a few friendships...she doesn't want me to talk to the friends in the cong about my decision so that i don't share my doubts.

Awakened at Gilead

Hi everyone, thanks for all your posts...

I have been giveing this much thought, as separation already was something we were discussing before my announcement that I no longer wanted to be a JW anymore. She kind of feels that this announcement is part of my plan to buck responsibility and leave over moral issues and not my disagreement with warped JW ideology.

I have done a few things over the past few weeks so that she can see the seriousness of my decision, no turning back for me:

- I tore up my blood card in front of her the other day - that freaked her out. I told her that I would respect her view of blood and asked her to do the same. She told me that she didn't believe me that I would respect her. She then told me that if I would allow a transfusion she would kill me (I'm serious, this is what she said). I asked her again about this, and she again replied that if I were to authorize a transfusion, she would not want to live, she would be happy to die, and she would kill me. (I don't know about you, dear reader, but that kind of does it for me....)

- I am growing a beard. I have always said that I wanted to grow a beard in the new system, but now that I don't believe in the WTS new system, I might as well do it now. I've got 5 days stubble going now, but every time she sees me she has this look of despising me in her eyes, since it's an outward symbol of non-JWness. Of course, I grab a society's pub and show a pic of Jesus and reply that I am just imitating Jesus Christ.

- We have conversation where she tries to make me see the folly of my ways. Every time she mentions a Bible example, she isn't able to reason it through, and then changes the subject. Our conversations are ending in fights every day.

- I am planning on going to an xJW meetup in NYC in 2 weeks. She is not happy about this, and complains constantly about that she doesn't mind me leavng the truth but why do I have to hang out with those apostates?. She feels the same about JWD.

- I have invited her to do recreational things. There is a Hiking meetup that I am interested in joining. I love hiking, yet she has never really liked to do it. She would walk along mountain trails for the truth when she was a sp. pioneer, so now she is only willing to do it if she is out in service. I suggested, lets go to this hiking event with this meetup group, and she replied that she doesn't want to meet up with anyone that is not a JW.

Some of your statements are quite interesting (besides the ones that I commented on above):

Alpaca:

My ex and I split up. She was such a hardcore Dub with a hardcore Dub family that it would have been futile to make it work and I think both of us realized that.
The thing is, what do you talk about or do together once that rift is there. If you are socially conscious and want to be politically engaged, you know whrere that conversation is going. If you want to entertain thoughts about science, evolution, and sociology it's the same story.
I will always have love in my heart for my ex, but I am not sorry we split up.

Alex, I feel that I am in the same boat... She is really a diehard JW.

Dogpatch:

I guess one has to choose how confining of a relationship one wants to remain in for the rest of one's life. It's all in what brand of codependency you choose to live in.

Thanks Randy for that statement. I definitely think that my wife has a dependency problem, being overly dependent on me. I do not want to be in a confined relationship, where I have my set of friends and she has hers. I think that would eventually lead to the breakup of the marriage anyway, as one of us is bound to be attracted to one of our friends that we do not share with the other. I won't be going out in service or meetings with her, or hanging out with JWs recreationally. But I am trying to establish friendships both in the xJW and the non-JW world, much to her chagrin.

So, having given it much thought, I have told my wife that I plan on separating from her within about a month. (Housing here in NYC is not easy to come by)...

If any of you have had experience with the legal matters (separation, divorce) feel free to post or PM me.

A@G

BTW,