Thanks for reading my post. This is a bit of a story but I have never dealt with this situation before.
I met my boyfriend when he was 22, he is 24 now , After a few months of dating my boyfriend admitted to me that he used to go to church when he was younger, when I asked him which church he said Jehovah's Witness. Personally I don't agree with their beliefs so I would have never have agreed to the relationship if I had known (he did not know I felt that way) . He had never mentioned that he did not celebrate holidays etc...
I was caring for him a lot by this point so I tried to be open minded. He told me he went from age 5 to 14. He told me he was never baptised and that the reason they decided to leave the church was because the kids (he and his 2 sisters & brother) decided they didn't want to go anymore. I asked him if he would ever go back to the church and he said maybe if he had children, because he felt it made him smarter (reading and writing skills).
Proceeding this , we had quite a few discussions and he said he didn't even believe what they taught or knew what they believed (when I read their beliefs from their website) so I asked him if he accepted blood and he said he wasn't sure. So I gave him some time to think about this, and see if he was still Jehovah's Witness. When I finally asked him for his answer he told me he was not sure if he wanted the blood, probably not. So I told him that unfortunately this relationship was not going to work. He proceeded to get upset and said he wasn't sure so he didn't want to break up over this. He said he didn't know what he believed. We were out at a park, and we sat down in the parking lot before leaving. I said well maybe if you don't believe all their teachings that maybe you really aren't Jehovah's Witness anymore. (he told me when we started dating that he was non-religious) He then admitted to me that since the last few months of his life was full of such good luck that he decided that it was Jehovah. I said maybe it was not. Then he started to walk around and think about it and he sat down and said "This feels like a huge weight has been lifted off my shoulders" He was happy to know that maybe it was not Jehovah after all and I told him maybe another religion would work better for him. I tried to tell him this was a cult, or cult like and showed him information online. He kept saying they were not a cult and that he had a happy childhood.
Months went on after this. He told me he did not want to celebrate holidays, that it wasn't Jehovah, he just didn't like them. Eventually I had him try his Birthday, Halloween and Christmas and he really enjoyed himself. He said his family had celebrated this a few times in the past but it didn't work out well. I had him phone his mother to ask if they accepted blood. She would not provide me with a direct answer. It was always another answer instead of just yes or no. She finally admitted that there were other ways to get blood, "safer options". I said is that a religious decision ( I wanted to know where she stood) and all she said was that she had problems living up to all the things the church wanted, never a yes or a no. I am not sure if she still attended church privately, however my boyfriend was not aware that she did . I do know her sister and her husband are JW, and they would come to visit so I wondered how that would work considering I thought they did not visit with people who left the church.
I always had the JW beliefs in the back of my head and I was concerned if my boyfriend and I were to ever have children what would happen to them. He kept telling me that I had to trust him that he would take blood (well he would want the imitation blood first) and that I should trust him that he is no longer a JW..... I did meet his family a few times but it was very awkward and unusual. The visits were very quiet - something felt abnormal. and I also noticed his mother almost crying when she came to visit our house for the first time. She looked very distressed. His father was very talkative but his mother did not seem to approve of me. She appeared to cry at our various meetings, as well as be very overbearing, taking him to dr's appointments (he has a few long-term health conditions)
After just over a year my boyfriend and I broke up. He told me he could not handle the stress and pressure of a relationship anymore. Before this breakup he had returned home to help out his parents remodel a rental house for one week which turned into a month. He seemed very stressed out. His mother had sent emails in the past to him telling him to come home so she could "help him". He did not seem to want this help. He felt that he needed to do this for his parents so we agreed that he would go. It seemed after he returned to the house the parents borrowed a very large sum of money from him and he started to get very stressed out. He started to tell me that I had no idea what was going on at that house. When I asked him he was trying to say something about stress from getting things done and also the answer of not being able to tell me because I would act upset. He started not telling me how long it would be before he came back to live with me, then he started telling me that I was pressuring him too much to come back. And finally it just didn't work anymore. His parents also wanted him to stay home and do yard work, when he was supposed to come back home to me.
Do you think that JW had something to do with all this? I also found his behaviour unusual sometimes as ::
he was afraid of commitment
could never make a decision it was always I don't know
Was obsessed with playing poker/the dream of a poker career
Would get upset easily
Personality would change , almost like he would even look like a different person.
he told me his sister's friends would never come to their house
he had few friends, and most of the time they appeared to turn down his invites to his house(when he lived at home)
He also started to lie towards the end of the relationship. I don't know if this has anything to do with JW
I have heard that JW can sometimes suffer from Borderline Personality Disorder. do you think that could be the case too? It seems like after he went home he wanted to end the relationship with me and he kept distancing himself, with no warning...I am doubting he went back to the church but I am wondering if his upbringing could have caused him to have problems. It just seemed so completely out of his character to suddenly leave me and I was left feeling very confused.
Thanks so much.
