The hall lets out about 9:15, wife is usually home by 9:30. It's 9:52 and no one home yet.... How many congradulations and plans for get togethers are going on now I wonder???
marriedtoajw
JoinedPosts by marriedtoajw
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59
Son is giving first talk, conflicted
by marriedtoajw inmy son is still studying with the jw's and is giving his first talk this tuesday.
he's 22 and still living in my home.
my other two boys 12 and 15 are here as well but don't study cuz wifee knows how i feel.
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59
Son is giving first talk, conflicted
by marriedtoajw inmy son is still studying with the jw's and is giving his first talk this tuesday.
he's 22 and still living in my home.
my other two boys 12 and 15 are here as well but don't study cuz wifee knows how i feel.
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marriedtoajw
K guys, it's Tuesday night and I didn't go to the talk. I had to work and couldn't get off without problems. I've been counciled at work for tardiness. I and unscheduled absences last month. I commute 50 miles and with traffic I've been late too often last month also. It's 9:30 and I got home at about 9:15 and the house is empty. All my inlaws that came in from out of state for the talk, my wife and all my kids are at the hall. My two boys ages 15 and 12 almost never go to the hall but with everyone here and my older son's first talk I'm sure they were pressured to go while I was at work. Here at am at my desk at home with utter silence. It's time's like this I look around and say, "this can't be happening". I know it's a bad feeling in the moment but sometimes, I wonder if I'm doing the right thing. If there is a God or not, this doesn't look good for me either way. This can't be right. This isn't the way my life was suppose to be. I've worked way way too hard for things to be thif f*&^$% up. I know it's a cult. I know how they're being decieved, but my wife seems to love this stuff now, especially when she has the support of her parents, sister and bro in law here. And you know, just this last Wednesday whe went to her cousin's mothers birthday party dinner!!! I feel like I'm about to blow holding in my frustration!!!!!!!!!! I can just picture everyojne at the hall going goo goo gah gah over my son and how much progress my wife has made in helping my son become a JW. I'm just seeing here in complete lonliness......
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59
Son is giving first talk, conflicted
by marriedtoajw inmy son is still studying with the jw's and is giving his first talk this tuesday.
he's 22 and still living in my home.
my other two boys 12 and 15 are here as well but don't study cuz wifee knows how i feel.
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marriedtoajw
lamallcool, it's almost impossible for me to look for her. I'm out of the house from 9am-9pm every day. I work 50 miles away and it takes about an hour and a half to get to work and an hour back. I work many Saturdays too. By end of that I'm exhausted. I had a job lined up for her about a year ago through a very close childhood family friend in a position of authority who could have given my wife this job on her say so doing very similar work she did 12 years ago. This family friend is so close that she knows about our problems and so I think she got skiddish going out on a limb considering what happend on that job long ago so the job some how went to someone else, which I understand.
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59
Son is giving first talk, conflicted
by marriedtoajw inmy son is still studying with the jw's and is giving his first talk this tuesday.
he's 22 and still living in my home.
my other two boys 12 and 15 are here as well but don't study cuz wifee knows how i feel.
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marriedtoajw
Thank you so much for the encouragement Bob. Sometimes I get so bumbed out by what's happening. My father died when I was 10 and I made it almost my identity to be the best dad I can, which is why I've worked so hard. I make a decent income by today's standards but with 4 kids and a wife, mortgage etc. with no one else working makes my stress level go through the roof. Especially when I feel as if I'm being ganged up on. My wife, son, 8 year old daughter, fil, mil, sil and bil are all at the meeting right now...
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59
Son is giving first talk, conflicted
by marriedtoajw inmy son is still studying with the jw's and is giving his first talk this tuesday.
he's 22 and still living in my home.
my other two boys 12 and 15 are here as well but don't study cuz wifee knows how i feel.
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marriedtoajw
I hear what you're saying Biblestudent. See here's the thing. About five years ago, my wife got really gung ho with the JW's once my now 22 year old son heard a converstation about the JWs I had with my sister when the word "cult" came up. You see I have two uncles who converted years ago to the JW's as well so we were talking about how they changed afterward. My son told my wife about it and from then on, she has gone full steam ahead. She was baptized about 3 months or so after this incident. She knows what I really think only because I let it slip. She had a job about 12 years ago while our 3rd son was born. She didn't get home til after 7 and rarely went to meetings in those days but she saw our son bonding with me. He prefered to be with me.
Even at 3 - 6months old he didn't want to be held by her. Once he saw me enter a room, he wanted me to hold him. Next thing you know, my son was about 6 months old when he developed asthma problems and had to be hospitalized. My wife suppossedly got a leave of absence from work to stay home with our son. About two weeks later she gets a termination letter from work for not showing up. She tried to tell me that she thought everything was worked out to go on loa but I know how it works and there would be no doubt. She would have got phone calls before she recieved a termination letter for job abandondment. She did it on purpose to stay home with our son and has never got a job since. She did home day care for a few years but it was always spiratic and up and down. She acts as if she has no skills and can't go to school to learn skills. Yet she wanst to be a JW who can teach the Bible to others??? We are broke right now and have been fighting foreclosure for months. Had to turn off the internet and cell phones for just a couple of months and rarely had gas money. She said these were the reasons she couldn't look for work. It's all been up and running for months now and still, no looking for work.
I've had conversations with her about how I need her help and that we will probably lose the house without something changing. My kids keep asking her why she wont look for a job and can you believe it, I step in and defend her by saying how tough the job market is even though she hasn't lifted a finger to look for anything.
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59
Son is giving first talk, conflicted
by marriedtoajw inmy son is still studying with the jw's and is giving his first talk this tuesday.
he's 22 and still living in my home.
my other two boys 12 and 15 are here as well but don't study cuz wifee knows how i feel.
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marriedtoajw
Finkelstein, I havn't tried to show him anything because of what truthseeker just said. I get this all the time in asking for advice which is why I feel helpless. I know a lot of the lies, false pronouncements, corruption and doctrinal flip flops but what good is knowing it when they just want to beleive what they "want" to believe. It's a pretty picture that the WT paints, especially of a paradise earth. Never mind the bible doesn't mention a "paradise earth"once. Never mind that the WTBTS has made false prophecies while claiming to be a prophet in some publications. The fact that the bible warns against following false prophets and false teachers just as much as it heeds people to hold on to the faith, illudes JW's to test what they have been taught. I can see how it doesn't matter what I say or what I show them, as long as they "feel" special and beleive in a spiritual authority that encourages boasting in the face of other religions while knowing their place as to not questions anything. How can I possibly have any hope? Would I be better off phsychologically than to just give up on it and try to save myself as some others on this board has advised me? I can see more and more that this is probably my only realistic course.
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59
Son is giving first talk, conflicted
by marriedtoajw inmy son is still studying with the jw's and is giving his first talk this tuesday.
he's 22 and still living in my home.
my other two boys 12 and 15 are here as well but don't study cuz wifee knows how i feel.
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marriedtoajw
The crux of my problem is this. My inlaws have indoctrinated my son behind my back. They and the JW's have loved bombed my son and treat him like a prince. He does not respect me because I failed to teach him myself even though I have always had to work 60 hours a week for at least 15 years to provide which tended to give me very little time, while my wife, who almost has never worked, had plenty of time to do things or teach things behind my back as well. I've been ganged up on and manipulated. My son is naive and doesn't know what has really happened. He just thinks I didn't care and I'm sure they must have told him how as the spiritual head, it was my responsibility to teach him and didn't which makes me look like I never took spirituality seriously, thus lead by satan. Again, as I've said on other posts, I was trying to keep peace which has obviously backfired.
Now, my other boys are caught in the middle of this too. My inlaws and wifee just do what they're told. They don't investigate anything on their own. My son is following this pattern. He will not research on his own either. I know that if I wanted to I could hold my own if not give them plenty of problems if we actually sat down and talked about my problems with the Watchtower, but we haven't and I can't see that ever happening.
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59
Son is giving first talk, conflicted
by marriedtoajw inmy son is still studying with the jw's and is giving his first talk this tuesday.
he's 22 and still living in my home.
my other two boys 12 and 15 are here as well but don't study cuz wifee knows how i feel.
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marriedtoajw
My son is still studying with the JW's and is giving his first talk this Tuesday. He's 22 and still living in my home. My other two boys 12 and 15 are here as well but don't study cuz wifee knows how I feel. My wife's JW family came from another state to support him in his talk. I was the last one to know about it and was told my inlaws were coming just to visit. Now I know why they're visiting . Conflicted if I should go. I'm not ok with any of this...
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6
Biding her time to strike.
by marriedtoajw ini tell you, it truely amazes me how ignorant i allowed myself to be in regards to the teachings of this religion when my wife and i married over 20 years ago.
i still can't get over it and forgive myself believing her when she told me after we got married that the jw religion wasn't for her.
perhaps because i am now immersed in the consequences of putting myself through this willful ignorance because of a suspicion i had that finding out ttatt is a rabbit hole that would only lead to more questions than answers in the long term.
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marriedtoajw
Bandontherun please explain... No idea what your're saying about wunderbar jw?
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6
Biding her time to strike.
by marriedtoajw ini tell you, it truely amazes me how ignorant i allowed myself to be in regards to the teachings of this religion when my wife and i married over 20 years ago.
i still can't get over it and forgive myself believing her when she told me after we got married that the jw religion wasn't for her.
perhaps because i am now immersed in the consequences of putting myself through this willful ignorance because of a suspicion i had that finding out ttatt is a rabbit hole that would only lead to more questions than answers in the long term.
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marriedtoajw
I tell you, it truely amazes me how ignorant I allowed myself to be in regards to the teachings of this religion when my wife and I married over 20 years ago. I still can't get over it and forgive myself believing her when she told me after we got married that the JW religion wasn't for her. Perhaps because I am now immersed in the consequences of putting myself through this willful ignorance because of a suspicion I had that finding out TTATT is a rabbit hole that would only lead to more questions than answers in the long term. All of a sudden she starts with the bible study through the guilt trip of her mother. I took the easy approach in thinking I could just wait and hope for my wife to see TTATT eventually. It's a classic kicking the can down the road scenerio. I thought, "I know what I could tell her". As a Catholic, I believed that the belief of Jesus being an angel was an obvious joke that anyone who truely loved God could see eventually. Door knockers passing out magazines for a quarter is a joke of a religion, isn't it? WELL ISN'T IT!!! Their brainwashed right? Hello, honey are you listening to me!!! Haha, how ignoramous of me.
She says to me, "The Trinity, Hell and having an invisible soul is a joke, isn't it? Gahenah and Hades isn't hell and neither is sheoul blah blah blah. The Pope blesses armies to kill people doesn't he? DOESN'T HE!!! The word Trinity isn't even in the bible and this is a God that you believe in!!!" Stopped me dead in my tracks... Not because I didn't know these issues were more complicated than she made them out to be but in that moment, I had no answer because I was shocked. Yet, did I really know my faith? Not well enough obviously. It drew a line in the sand that all of the sudden became very defined. We were really far apart spiritually. "Oh, my God, what do I do now? She's falling for it"?
Being raised in a nominal Catholic home, I didn't know how to respond. Not many more discussions about religion after that. I remember thinking that we still have to give this thing a shot, but it probably wont work. We had no business getting married at 19 but we did and I was going all in and give it my best shot. The lines were drawn and neither one of us was gonna give in. We both sat there on a fence biding our time. Yet we still had to live and I still had to create a home and make a living. In her mind I believe now that all she had to do was make her life as simple as possible and bide her time and that's what she did. I did try to understand Christianity better. Maybe I was wrong so I studied intensely off and on for years. I studied the five points of Calvinism, Lutheranism and Arminian positions. Even studied Christian sects like Seventh Day Adventists, Mormanism and of course Jehovah witnesses. I was all over the place. All for what, so that I can be a good bible ping pong player!
Times were good at times, when religion was left out. Her bible study would stop and then start, stop and start, sometimes years in between. Left me feeling she's coming around. Then, oh no she's not. Then well maybe because she stopped studying again and stopped going to meetings. Then she starts again. Confused the heck out of me and would never talk. I blame most of my silence in not challenging her more often on the belief that she was skiddish and I could scare her off with the wrong words said. So I studied more. Four kids later, distrust sets in. We both have pulled away. She's done and so am I and the kids are caught in the middle. No more biding time, no more sitting on the fence. Yet, her religion is not the same today as it was 20 years ago. Doesn't she know this? Doesn't she know of all the flip flops. Yup she knows and doesn't care cuz it's the Truth.
She's pulling the kids in more and more, slowly. Takes them to a meeting here and there but never back to back. The oldest is still all in and she's working on the others. I don't go to any meetings and she asked me today if I wanted to go. First time she's asked me in about 4 years. Not a doubt in my mind she's getting all kinds of advice. Who is this woman? She played me like a fiddle and here I am for the first time, at home alone while she took them all to meeting. Can you tell? I've thought a lot about the advice I've gotten here but to be honest, none of it has helped much. She's determined, I can see it now more than ever. Everything I do seems to be the wrong move. I'm on this board a lot and read your stories that breaks my heart and yet I feel powerless to do anything in my own situation without causing pain and serious conflict. Have I really done the right thing in hedging all the JW stuff or do I let it all go. Let them all go to meetings. Encourage them, while not going myself? Really??? That can't be right can it???
I know too much now and I've seen disasterous familial breakdown in my wifes family and I do believe much of it is a result of members of her family giving up on ever being acceptable to God. They were JW's for a time but gave up years ago. My wife's gung ho JW mother doesn't speak to her own sisters. One is on drugs, another is psychotic, seriously, and another has been in an abusing marriage for 30 years. One brother died of drug addictions, another brother is constantly in jail and does everything he can to be back in jail when he gets. He is also married to a psychotic woman with 5 kids, some of whom are in foster care because no one can afford to care for them and the other brother is a known child molester and has molested kids in my wifes family years ago and he still lives with my wifes JW grandmother. I mean come on!!! Nooooo, but the religion has nothing to do with it. In fact, they probably all believe that if they all just go back to Jehovah, everything would be great.