Posts by rubadubdub

46

Re: Will you attend the Memorial this year? Why? Why not?

by check in

jw
friends

you all had some interesting thoughts on that jw memorial thread.

some of you mentioned that you are going so that you can set some sort of example.

i gather that some of you believe that by going and eating, you are somehow showing them they can (or should) do it too.. that really confuses me.

rubadubdub

No way in Kingdom Hell!

Why? Because I went in 2012 to appease my one and only remaining dub friend, and seeing all the next generation dubs dressed up like little cinderellas and miniature corporate men in suits and ties made me want to vomit.

28

Belated Intro to Rubadubdub. My hubby lurked on JWN for the first time last night!

by rubadubdub in

i'm so excited-my hubby who faded over 30 years ago finally lurked here on jwn!.

i've been posting on a few threads here and there for a while now, but have not officially introduced myself.

i have told bits and pieces of my story already.

rubadubdub

Problemaddict, I am open to any suggestons. I offered to send my son a copy of Crisis of Conscience, and he declined. I told him about jwfacts.org. His peers that left or were kicked out around the same time as he was were to him the stereotypical "mentally diseased apostates." All sex, drugs, tattoos, piercings and heavy metal. My son does have an amazing tattoo though!

Clarity, We have to hold on to the hope that at some time things will reach a tipping point. It's only a matter of time. 2014 is fast approaching. I wonder how many will throw in the towel.

28

Belated Intro to Rubadubdub. My hubby lurked on JWN for the first time last night!

by rubadubdub in

i'm so excited-my hubby who faded over 30 years ago finally lurked here on jwn!.

i've been posting on a few threads here and there for a while now, but have not officially introduced myself.

i have told bits and pieces of my story already.

rubadubdub

Wow, Lisa Rose! We did live parralel lives! And yes, I also tried to hang in there and make it work. After all one of the ultimate hooks they have in you is the guilt trip-- you have to stay and be the shining light. How will your family ever know to come back to Jehovah if you leave too? Glad to hear you are thriving. Starting life over at age 52 was huge for me. I have one dub friend who I love dearly. We still have lunch about once a month, and I am fully aware that I need to be very careful about what I say. She has to believe the Lie, because she wants to see her brother in paradise. I don't see her giving up that hope. We live in a very small community, and I don't want to deal with the shunning. I am not DF'd and I will not DA. I am pleasant when I see dubs in town. So far, I have not been shunned. I won't hang my head in shame should that happen, but I'd rather not deal with it. My husband is approaching retirement age, and we will not be retiring here!

Mouthy! Big Hugs! Never give up hope. I was an all-in dub until my moment of clarity. I struggled with doctrinal issues for decades. I even wrote to Bethel about them and knew their responses were crap. I so wish I had saved those letters! My first reaction to the over-lapping generation doctrinal change was, "That's Crap!". Also, I witnessed gross mistreatment of people and destruction of people's lives, including my own son's before I woke up.

28

Belated Intro to Rubadubdub. My hubby lurked on JWN for the first time last night!

by rubadubdub in

i'm so excited-my hubby who faded over 30 years ago finally lurked here on jwn!.

i've been posting on a few threads here and there for a while now, but have not officially introduced myself.

i have told bits and pieces of my story already.

rubadubdub

Thanks Giordano! I will direct hubby to the ex-Bethelite stories. Maybe he will share some of his own. He didn't quite fit the mold shall we say!

Glander, yes, it was a rollar coaster ride to be sure. One of the reasons I delayed my intro was because I didn't quite know what to say. I was in a very different place, caught in the machine and overwhelmed as you said, for my first year out. Those stories are posted on the Yuku forum under Rubadubdub as well.

On The Way Out, yup life outside the nutshell is great-- now "I'm not crazy, I'm just a little unwell"! That's my story, and I'm stickin' to it!

28

Belated Intro to Rubadubdub. My hubby lurked on JWN for the first time last night!

by rubadubdub in

i'm so excited-my hubby who faded over 30 years ago finally lurked here on jwn!.

i've been posting on a few threads here and there for a while now, but have not officially introduced myself.

i have told bits and pieces of my story already.

rubadubdub

Thanks for your warm welcomes!

Gone for Good, my daughter taught for one year in Honduras, and is now in her second year teaching in Guatemala City. Hubby and I just did a Skype sailing lesson for her students. Her kids were so cute and funny! I celebrated my first Christmas out in Guate-- super heros (adult and children alike) dancing in the public squares, what a hoot! Santa on a fire engine! Absolutely loved the people and the countryside, especially Lake Atitlan.

28

Belated Intro to Rubadubdub. My hubby lurked on JWN for the first time last night!

by rubadubdub in

i'm so excited-my hubby who faded over 30 years ago finally lurked here on jwn!.

i've been posting on a few threads here and there for a while now, but have not officially introduced myself.

i have told bits and pieces of my story already.

rubadubdub

I'm so excited-my hubby who faded over 30 years ago finally lurked here on JWN!

I've been posting on a few threads here and there for a while now, but have not officially introduced myself. I have told bits and pieces of my story already. In a nutshell (Ha, that's where I used to live!), I have been told that I am a second generation dub, because I have no pre-cult identity. I was raised by as a Christian Scientist until my grandmother died and started studying with the witnesses at age nine when my father accepted a study for our family. My entire family stopped studying within two years, but I stayed in.

I was there for the pre-1975 buildup and wrote letters for the Malawi persecution scare. I was baptized at age 16 in 1975. I had nightmares as a teen about being persecuted in concentration camps. My first book study book was in Babylon the Great Has Fallen, followed by Then is Finished the Mystery of God. When I think back on my indoctrination it seems so horrifying compared to the dumbed down version of The Lie today.

I passed up opportunities to go to college on full scholarships and went to seldom-worked territory to pioneer out of high school, believing I would never have a family of my own in this system, since Armageddon was so close. EVERY decision I made in my life was based on this Lie until I walked away on July 3, 2011 which was the last day of my District Convention.

I was sucked in because my father was a raging, dry alcoholic who was also a serial liar and cheater. My mom is and was always mentally ill. I grew up in chaos. I wanted what the dubs appeared to have-a normal, happy family life. It was that simple. No Christmas?-sign me up! Too much fighting over money and bill collectors in January anyway. Funny thing is that in the end, the dubs drove me to the brink of insanity and nearly destroyed my own family, and that's what woke me up after 42 years in the cult.

My hubby walked away over thirty years ago. I felt betrayed and abandoned. He said I was free to raise the children as I wished, but he was done. He had issues with the "This Generation" doctrine being based on one scripture only, ritual "study" which bored him out of his mind and bogus dub science. (BTW hubby was an ex-Bethelite pre-1975 and left on "The Mayflower" for all you oldies who remember that.)

Our daughter was 2 ½ and our son was an infant when hubby left. I carried on living the life of a "sister with an unbelieving mate" (C.O. told me to view him that way). Both kids were baptized. Even while I was still in, and I mean uber-dub in, I still wanted my kids to have the opportunity to go to college if they wanted, because I resented my lost opportunity. Our daughter walked away officially when she was 17. An elder asked her on the telephone if she would accept a shepherding call, and she "respectfully declined". That was 15 years ago. She went to college and now teaches in Central America. She loves her life, and I love her. She opened her heart to me and let me back into her life when I walked away. Both of my children have expressed that they always knew that I did everything out of love for them.

Our son was DF'd six years ago, because he acted out when his dub wife left him and had a baby with a former "worldly" boyfriend while she was still married to our son. They married way too young à la dub style; and she had stage 4 cancer, but that's another whole can of worms. He tried to commit suicide and survived. He is doing much better now, but is still struggling emotionally. He loves his job, has a great boss and is a sailboat rigger and manages his company's second rigging shop. (By the way I really don't care if I'm outed here by giving too much personal detail. Let the chips fall where they may.)

So my moment of clarity came in an instant. I was sitting at a Tuesday night Service Meeting in Mid-May of 2011. They were droning on about how we had to do more in the ministry, because so many lives were at stake, and I thought, "If one more person tells me my kids are going to die. . ." From mid-May through the end of June I became a couch dweller. Hubby was used to that, because I suffered from severe, recurrent clinical depression and PTSD for most of my dub life. What he didn't know was I was thinking about leaving the Lie and wanted it to be my decision alone. I didn't want anyone else involved in my decision. I was in a state of extreme cognitive dissonance even before I knew what that meant. I had an out-patient hospitalization earlier that year, because I was going insane trying to live in two different worlds-loving my now "marked", and clearly "apostate" husband, my "DA'd by her actions" daughter and my "DF'd" son and believing they were all going to die at Armageddon at any minute. I knew I was supposed to be shunning my son, but I couldn't and wouldn't do it.

I went to my D.C., because I had promised my son's now ex-MIL that I would take her. I was an outsider looking in and saw it how it for what it was. It reminded me of the Stepford Wives. I was still not going to meetings or out in service, but had previously signed up to serve the C.O.'s lunch in mid-August. I was still in "Let your yes mean yes mode", so I served the lunch, but didn't go to any of the meetings or in the ministry the week of his visit. The C.O. personally wrote me a thank you note for the lunch, and "encouraged" me to be sure to come to the meetings and out in the ministry during his next visit, so he could get to know me better. Lol! He was a substitute C.O. anyway-nice try! After he left, I typed "Ex Jehovah's Witnesses" into Google, and the rest is history.

When my husband walked away, he never did any research. He just went about living his life. When I left, I started calling him on his dub thinking and behaviors. That didn't go so well at first. When he pulled the headship card, I threw down the bullsh*t card. Little by little I shared what I was learning on the Yuku forum and here on JWN. I have to tell you I was shocked when my husband said last night, "You know, all these years I kind of thought the witnesses had it mostly right, and that they were pretty benign." WTF! This from my avowed atheist husband? He said he had found a subreddit forum which shows the organization is having a lot of trouble with young people leaving (ya think?), and there is an ex-jw haven to help teens who need a place to stay when they get kicked out of their JW homes. He wanted to know which forums I have been on, so I showed him, and he lurked here on JWN! So 18 months after my exit and over 30 years after his, he is finally on the road to de-programming!

Even though my children have not learned TTATT, I feel fairly confident that they will never return. My daughter is happy with her life and is educated and has critical thinking skills. My son recently shared with me that he tried to go back after he was DF'd, because he found himself in a very dangerous and scary situation and just wanted to feel "safe". He approached an elder who had acted as an older brother to him and "was treated like a piece of sh*t". I begged my son that if he ever considered going back again to please speak to me and do online research first. He said he didn't see that happening, but he promised me he would talk to me first.

My dub-in-laws continue to shun my husband and children, but don't know I have jumped the mother ship. They are 89 years old and have vowed to leave every penny of their considerable wealth to the WTB$. My hubby wants me to continue to fog them and leave them happy in their delusion. They live like luddites about 500 miles away, so there is no way they can find out my status. Our only contact is by the obligatory once-monthly letter at this point.

So there you have it. Got sucked in wanting a perfect family, the dubs nearly destroyed our now perfect little family, but I go out in time!

8

Moronic GB Mnemonic

by rubadubdub in

jw
friends

.

rubadubdub

Thanks for clarifying that Rip!

And Carla, "no hierarchy blah, blah....." Exactly! Except I was on the lowest rung of the dub ladder for 30 years after my husband walked away-- sister married to an "unbelieving mate" who was later marked (for swearing and spiking the ball in a very competitive volley ball game at a "get-together") and then viewed as a "mentally diseased apostate" (They never got the goods on him.) I think the only one who might come in at about the same rank would be a single parent sister. Male single parents were given so much support and "encouragement" from the congregation.

8