Thanks for the responses but let me clarify for those who asked and dont have time to read my other posts and to update those who have. My wife and i have been married 23 years and have 5 kids. The the oldest is 26 and is my son from a previous relationship that my wife helped me raise. His mother wanted her freedom and gave him up to me when he was 3. I give my wife alot of credit for taking that on because she loved me although she didnt always handle having to deal him or with my ex well from time to time. He is married with 3 kids and not jw's and sees the religion as a cult and says he always felt my wife favoring our other kids. The other kids are 22, 16, 13 and 9, the youngest being my only daughter and my own little princess. She favors her mother though as my wife doesnt work and I'm out of the house 12 hours a day. She is a girly girl despite having only brothers, not a tomboy. I have 2 uncles who converted to the jws. One 35 years ago who introduced my other uncle to a jw 30 years ago and married her but didnt convert until 4 years ago. My wife got baptised 7 years ago and I think she felt emboldened when my other uncle converted. My next oldest son studied and gave his first talk about a year ago but he has stopped studying and attending meetings about 6 months ago. It was at a time when he met a Catholic girl and started dating. My wife seems to leave my other boys alone except when it is memorial time. Almost as if she is saying, "you take those 2 and I'll take these 2. Here is the crux of my main issue. I did my brst hedging the jw stuff. My kids have all participated in activities in baseball, volleyball and basketball even at the ymca. what confuses me is that my wife will allow her own relatives who are not JWto take her out to dinner for her birthday and she celebrate holidays with meas do the kids. I guess I should be grateful with that.there are many times when JW stuff comes up and it is the big elephant in the room.in order to keep as much peace as possible I have neglected my own spirituality.I was raised Catholic but have not practiced for many years because of this issue. And I know many of you have issues with the Catholic Church so I won't go into detail about God's handsbackspace or anything like that because it is it really relevant or is it. ive seen my wife change. She has become a little self righteous and at the same time more matetialistic than she use to be. I use to take ghe family on vacations and weekend trips but i have been unable to afford these things the last 3 or 4 years but i have never worked harder than i do now and ive always worked hard. Her parents and sister have become such gung ho jws that i think my wife will never allow herself to consider tatt as i have already dropped seeds but to no avail. Sorry about errors, im on my phone
marriedtoajw
JoinedPosts by marriedtoajw
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32
My wife is never going to wake up.
by marriedtoajw inwhat do you do when you believe in your heart that your spouse is never going to wake up to the tatt?
when you're sick of the cherade of pretending you can deal with the spiritual division when you dont think you can anymore.
when you're convinced that your spouse is so decieved she is lost in a desert and is fine with living by the mirage.
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32
My wife is never going to wake up.
by marriedtoajw inwhat do you do when you believe in your heart that your spouse is never going to wake up to the tatt?
when you're sick of the cherade of pretending you can deal with the spiritual division when you dont think you can anymore.
when you're convinced that your spouse is so decieved she is lost in a desert and is fine with living by the mirage.
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marriedtoajw
What do you do when you believe in your heart that your spouse is never going to wake up to the tatt? When you're sick of the cherade of pretending you can deal with the spiritual division when you dont think you can anymore. When you're convinced that your spouse is so decieved she is lost in a desert and is fine with living by the mirage. Yet the idea of breaking up the family is a concept you cant wrap your mind around but know orthers have endured. When you question your own faith because you find yourselve in this situation after years and years of hedging all the jw stuff and feel it was all for nothing. When your daughter asks your spouse "are we going in service tomorrow" as if she had said it a thoudand times but its the first time you ever heard her say itft. What do you do when you're the father of five and have worked your ass to the bone for 25 years and feel you made a huge mistake but you're so far gone it feels like youre sinking to the bottom of the ocean with with an anchor tied to your legs trapped in a life that you cant believe is your own. What do you do when you've tried so hard but believe you've been mislead by your spouse, taken advantage of, disrespected, with a kiss... what dp you do when yoi just canf fake it anymord ans you staet s a yinf things to get them to question things and they just dont get it and you dont think they ever will.
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My early exposure to jw's
by marriedtoajw ini havn't posted in months but have still lerked and read other posts, just never have time enough to do much of anything really.
in reading posts for the last few months i began to realize how much i empathize with thoughts expressed here.
i feel the need to clarify my situation because my previous posts don't really convey a complete picture regarding my experience with the jw world.
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marriedtoajw
I havn't posted in months but have still lerked and read other posts, just never have time enough to do much of anything really. In reading posts for the last few months I began to realize how much I empathize with thoughts expressed here. I feel the need to clarify my situation because my previous posts don't really convey a complete picture regarding my experience with the jw world. About 7 years ago I was not the type of person who would have ever joined any forum online or sought therapy from professionals or councel from anyone who were not my siblings. Whatever problems I've experience through my life I've always had my siblings to vent or talk to and they had me. We would support each other as best we could and we have needed each other alot. Of course we had our times too when it seemed that we would turn on each other and hurt each other with things we said or did as most other siblings tend to do. But we would put those things aside when the call came for help. We believed that family is sacred and should be cherished. We believed in forming traditions and not just with each other but with extended family too. Traditions we can pass along to our kids that would flourish developing our own family legacies. We learned this by the examples of my grandparents and watching them enjoying the fruits of their labor of taking pleasure in family gatherings of sons, daughter, nieces nephews, grand children, great grandchildren that would eventually number over 200. My siblings and I defended each other to our spouses when they had something bad to say about one of us.
Family dynamics and relationships can change over time and most people consider it just a fact of life. People get married, have kids, get jobs where schedules can be demanding, get divorced, remarried, stay single, never marry or they move away for different reasons. They meet other people and develope a kinship and choose to spend much of their time with friends. People's interests change or feel the need to grow in some way or they just get to a point in life where things get too redundant. People change their mind about things, beliefs, hobbies, associations whatever. People change...
In my situation our father passed away when us kids were between the ages of 20 - 10 and I'm the youngest. Yup, 5 older sisters and I'm the only boy and my father passes away when I was 10. This in and of itself was a tragic event but growing up without a father was hard on all of us. But consider a 10 year old boy who is raised in a household where there is no male presence at all and surrounded by women. Add to the mix a mother who has schizophrenia and is considered disabled and can't work. We found out later that it was my mothers condition was a contributing factor that supposedly caused my dad to abuse alcohol because he could deal with her personality work as much as he had to to support us kids. Needless to say, we were broke growing up but we lived in a nice neighborhood with extended family close bye. Now in some ways growing up with only women in the house helped me, at least that's what my sisters think. But it did make me more considerate to women, overly so I think because I realize now that I subconciously went out of my way to be that way. I constantly sought their approval...
In previous posts I mentioned that I became a father at 15, wont go into detail here cuz it's a long story. I met my Jw wife in high school when I was still with my sons mother but we were just friends. I mentioned in other posts that I have 1 jw uncles. The youngest in my fathers family converted to the Jw's from Catholicism in the late 1970's. He introduced a fellow jw to my Catholic uncle and they got married in 1981. I remember being a kid, before my father died. They were the life of every family gathering. They use to attend religious gatherings, or babyshowers, birthday parties, you name it. They were great at throwing banter around when gifts were being opened during those events. Yes, were a very large Catholic family with traditions that seemed to matter to everyone.
Then when my dads youngest brother and his wife converted to the jw's, he came around less and less. Then when my father died, I almost never saw him. I resented my aunt because we all know she persuaded him to start pulling away. To this day my sisters still think that he doesn't really believe in it but converted just to save his marriage. My oldest sister was at my grandparents house when my dad's youngest brother told my grandfather that he was converting. My sister said they talked for while but could only remember hearing my grandfather scolding him for converting for a woman. After that, he no longer attended family gatherings and because my other uncle married a jw, he also rarely came to anything and when he did he was alone. He and his jw wife have 2 kids that are about 12 years younger than me and I have barely seen them only a hand full of times through the years, even though my uncle didn't finally convert until 3 years ago.
Eventually my sons mother decided I wasn't exciting enough for her so she dumped me sometime after I graduated high school. One of the things I did just a couple of months after this was to call my wife, who was just a good high school friend who I han't even talked to after we graduate. I was trying to rebuild some sort of social network since I practically gave up all my friends since I focused on school, work and being a dad to my kid. A few months later, I did it again and my wife got pregnant and so we got married.
I wanted to give that backround so that you understand what's coming up. In the years that followed my wife studied off and on with the Jw due to pressure given by her mother. My sisters though the years thought of my wife as one of them. They confided in her and had conversations with her as they would any one of us. Even to the point of talking about my uncles that we missed. They would make a few derogatory statements about my uncles being weak men and letting their wives rule them. Yet my wife was an unbaptized publisher. My sisters and I never tried to convert my wife to Catholicism over the years... We accepted her for who she was. We were also very ignorant of what she was being taught. It was only after my wife's baptism 7 years ago that I researched everything there is to know about jw's. I shared what I learned with my sisters from time to time. They couldn't get their head wrapped about it. They thought I was exagerating about things. They didn't think my wife thought that way because they didn't know they are taught to be discreet, don't bring reproach on Jehovah, blah blah blah...
About two years ago, my uncle and his wife celebrated their 48th anniversary and invited my sisters and I and our families. Now mind you, for the last 20 years or so we havn't seen this uncle at all unless it was at a wedding or wedding anniversay. He did have us at his house for my grandmothers 95th birthday about 15 years or so ago. Yeah, a birthday party at a jw house for his mother. Tha'ts a whole other story. At his party he sits next to me for a moment when I happen to be alone and says. "You know I know most of the family thinks that I do whatever my wife says but do you think that maybe you talk to your sisters too much". So you see, my wife has been communicating to my uncle about things said.
I was a little shocked but I kind of knew something like that was coming. I responded by telling him that the girls and I, that's what I call my sisters "the girls", are close because we had no father and could only rely on each other through out the years. I also told him that for a time, when I was just a boy, I always thought that my uncles would be my surrogate dad but that never materialized. At that point, some one came and grabbed him and wanted to dance with him. I left shortly after and havn't spoke to him since.
My sisters and I are not nearly as close as we use to be. They still get together all the time but because I work 6 days a week to provide for my wife and kids, I have no time for anything. My sisters resent my wife and see her as equivelant to my aunts who took their uncles away. More later, maybe
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Involved with a JW woman
by jonza inokay so i'm dating a born-in jw woman, she's younger than me and has no kids.
i'm a christian man whos divorced with 2 kids.
we're in love and seriously want to be together.
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marriedtoajw
Jonza i'm at work using my phone and cant write much now but had to chime in. Read some of my posts also under my previous name Sahara. I will try to pm you soon
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Since leaving the truth, do you celebrate holidays, and does your participation in such bring you happiness?
by Stand for Pure Worship ini ask this respectfully, and do so after watching a favorite show of mine's season opener which had a new years storyline.
hollywood tends to make movies and television show episodes centered around holiday themes appear warm and blissful.
while i'm thankful to have never participated in such holidays, i can't deny my curiosity about ex-jws that do celebrate.
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marriedtoajw
"Since leaving the Truth"??? That just sounds weird, keep in mind that I've never been a JW but been married to a JW for 20 years, although she was baptized only 6 years ago... I read things on here that from time to time that capture my attention because I'm thrown off by the terminoloy used by xjw's who still use the jw lingo as if it's legitimate. "The Truth" spoken from a jw would mean the wtbts. I know what you mean but to those of us who profess to be Christian, "The Truth" means Christ who is the prosonification of the word of God... So when you say "leaving the truth", while not believing in what the wtbts teaches seems to expose the strong mind control the organization has on even exjws. I know what you mean but, I don't know, it's just strange. Christmas is worldy to you, and you are thankful to never celebrate it. Look, I know the Watchtower taught you that Christmas has pagan origins but if you are no longer a jw I assume you have managed to see ttatt so why even use the lingo. I don't just direct this to you but to any jw who still uses the lingo because it exposes the fact that you still have vestiges of the jw mindset. Might want to work on that, no judgements though...
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Ready to put the breaks on my kids attending meetings
by marriedtoajw inthose of you who have been reading any of my posts know my situation with my jw wife.
to update you a little on what's been going on, here it is.
my 22 year old son who still lives at hom has stopped studying with the jw's and has not been to meetings for a few weeks.
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marriedtoajw
Thanks jgnat, it is good advise because that feels right. Just had so little of anything going my way lately. Not that I'm necessarily playing a game or at war but in a way, it feels good watching my son make his own decisions that seem right to me instead of watching him head for a train wreck and feeling unable to help him. I know the road is long and the future is unknown but this gave me a little bit of fuel. Thank you for redirecting me to a more realistic and practical position, I get it. Well, as for the finances, I don't believe my wife has any real intention of taking any job for any extended period of time. I'm not counting on this job lasting as she implied it's just temperary to earn $ for the trip, even though it could be more. Again, not a great job but it would relieve some pressure from me. Don't think she's interested in that it seems... Actions speak louder than words. We have cut almost all unecessary expences. I would say the only thing we do that is technically unecessary is we do eat one at a restaraunt once every other month. No fast food, no video game purchases, no sport events or concerts, at least none I pay for...
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Ready to put the breaks on my kids attending meetings
by marriedtoajw inthose of you who have been reading any of my posts know my situation with my jw wife.
to update you a little on what's been going on, here it is.
my 22 year old son who still lives at hom has stopped studying with the jw's and has not been to meetings for a few weeks.
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marriedtoajw
Those of you who have been reading any of my posts know my situation with my jw wife. To update you a little on what's been going on, here it is. My 22 year old son who still lives at hom has stopped studying with the jw's and has not been to meetings for a few weeks. The jw he was studying with came to the house a couple of Sundays ago asking if he could speak to him. He was polite and I replied that he was at a friends arranging what college courses to take in the next quarter. Turns out my son has met someone, not a jw. He was introduced to a very nice girl by one of his cousing, my cousins daughter. He has also found some part time work through the help on my sister. Nothing great but it's a job with a small but much needed steady pay check. My wife seems to not mettle too much as to why he's not attending meetings with her, but then again, I'm out of the house quite a bit and so I may be unaware of any conversations they may have had.
He would never call me when we were separated or out of the house for anything, ever... He would always call my wife for just about anything when one of us are out of the house, but he's been calling me for little things here and there. This may seem like nothing but it is. He would never call me for anything unless it had to do with money he needed. He seems different. I've also been rocking the boat with my wife a little lately calling her out on her double life. Nothing major just a few little things here and there. I've gotten to the point where I need to do something different, anything as long as it's different from being the passive accomadating no rocking the boat kind of guy I've been.
As I've mentioned on another post, my wife's jw mom and dad rent a house from a jw and so does my sil and her husband, from the same jw. Seems hard times has fallen on this particular jw and he needs to sell the house my sil and bil are renting. They have to move into another jw's trailer that is parked on their own property that they normally use for vacations. They're moving by the end of the month and my inlaws want my wife to go visit them, in the next state, to just be there to help them get settled in. Now, we are broke and I don't have the money to pay for the gas just so she can drive there. In fact, I've had to borrow from family off and on over the last year. All of the sudden she decides that she will take up the offer her cousin gave her to work in a food truck to make "extra" money so she can take the trip. I looked at her and said, "you really think that this is extra money don't you? How is it that I'm working like a dog and still fall short, but the money I earn is our money and this is going to be your money to take a trip we can't afford?"
I'm really pissed, not hurt but pissed because she knows how hard I work but never does anything herself to look for work in any way. Now I find out that she's had this offer to work with her cousin that she didn't tell me about but now wants to tak advantage of it to take this trip for her?. I'm at the end of my rope with everything jw. My daugher is getting more confused too. She wants to go trick or treating but is asking questions as to why the people at the meeting says it's bad and the other kids there can't go. I've been patient long enough and I'm ready to not just take a stronger stand but to do everything I can to keep my kids out of that Hall...
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New Light's Achille's Heal
by marriedtoajw infrom time to time i hear or read xjw's talk about scripture verses that they struggled to reconcile with whatever current watchtower teaching was on a given subject.
most christians see new light as a conjured up interpretation by the watchtower to revise or sweep away any prophetic pronouncement or misinterpretation that proves to be false, the generation changes to site one example.
one night some time ago when i let my jw wife know my true feelings regarding the watchtower's claim of authority, i sited eph 4: 11-14 "and he gave some as apostles, others as prophets, others as evangelists, others as pastors and teachers,to equip the holy ones for the work of ministry, for the building up the body of christ, until we all attain to the unity of faith and knowledge of the som of god, to mature manhood, to the extent of the full stature of christ, so that we may no longer be infants, tossed by waves ans swept along by every wind of teaching arising from human tickery, from their cunning in the interests of decietful scheming".
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marriedtoajw
From time to time I hear or read xjw's talk about scripture verses that they struggled to reconcile with whatever current Watchtower teaching was on a given subject. Most christians see new light as a conjured up interpretation by the Watchtower to revise or sweep away any prophetic pronouncement or misinterpretation that proves to be false, the Generation changes to site one example. One night some time ago when I let my jw wife know my true feelings regarding the Watchtower's claim of Authority, I sited Eph 4: 11-14 "and he gave some as apostles, others as prophets, others as evangelists, others as pastors and teachers,to equip the holy ones for the work of ministry, for the building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of faith and knowledge of the Som of God, to mature manhood, to the extent of the full stature of christ, so that we may no longer be infants, tossed by waves ans swept along by every wind of teaching arising from human tickery, from their cunning in the interests of decietful scheming". I got no response and no never brought it up again. Did any of you see this verse as a jw at all and did it ever give you any trouble. Just woundering...
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How can I stop hating the JW religion?
by marriedtoajw inhaving this spiritual division between my wife and i over the years has been very draining in many ways.
so much so that i find myself more and more hating everything having to do with the wtbts especially when i just see watchtower literature.
i've kind of always felt that way but it's getting worst.
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marriedtoajw
I've know for quite a while that I needed outside professional help. I've been coping mainly by living in denial until moments of reality creep in and then I'm overwhelmed with anxiety and depression. I know I am never going to be a JW but I know she still hopes I might. She has staked her claim to her religious freedom and has chosen the WTBTS and all that it means to be a jw. After 17 years of marriage it feels like a betryal and I'm still sharing her. The way I'm thinking about things is the problem but can't seem to get passed it and don't think I can, ever... Being spiritually divided was never an option, ever...
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How can I stop hating the JW religion?
by marriedtoajw inhaving this spiritual division between my wife and i over the years has been very draining in many ways.
so much so that i find myself more and more hating everything having to do with the wtbts especially when i just see watchtower literature.
i've kind of always felt that way but it's getting worst.
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marriedtoajw
I feel like you do band on the run but I feel trapped. How can I leave and get away from this. My family is my life and everything I have ever done, worked hard for and sacrificed for is all tied up here in my family. It's like sleeping with the enemy but I don't want her to be my enemy. I want to love her but feel like I can't and she might feel the same way about me. Damn this religion!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!