If I had it to do again, I would not play any of it their way.
SPAZnik
JoinedPosts by SPAZnik
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84
Why should I have to sign a letter saying I want to disassociate ?
by troubled mind ini don't understand why the elders want this letter so badly ....for one i don't remember signing a contract to become a jehovah's witness ,why do i need to resign ?.
also i was baptised in 1978 before the baptism questions changed , i dedicated myself to god not an organization .
my vow was to follow the direction by holy spirit as revealed to me through the bible, not the watchtower ...... if i belonged to the luthern church and quit going after three yrs they drop your name off the member list ........but if i chose to come to easter or christmas service everyonre would still talk to me i just wouldn't be a member any more .. .
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84
Why should I have to sign a letter saying I want to disassociate ?
by troubled mind ini don't understand why the elders want this letter so badly ....for one i don't remember signing a contract to become a jehovah's witness ,why do i need to resign ?.
also i was baptised in 1978 before the baptism questions changed , i dedicated myself to god not an organization .
my vow was to follow the direction by holy spirit as revealed to me through the bible, not the watchtower ...... if i belonged to the luthern church and quit going after three yrs they drop your name off the member list ........but if i chose to come to easter or christmas service everyonre would still talk to me i just wouldn't be a member any more .. .
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SPAZnik
I just told them the truth and let them make their own minds up. There are times when I wonder if I ought to have handled things differently, but most often, I'm just glad I followed my own emotions and instincts and conscience. There are pros and cons to any path chosen. Wishing you the best.
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Comment on Loneliness
by jgnat inone of the great lessons this board gave me is the cruelty of shunning by the jehovah's witnesses.
it is inhuman.
the toll it takes on a person cannot be underestimated.
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SPAZnik
"To reject the unlovely, the downtrodden, the poor as less than ourselves, less than human, subtracts from our own humanity."
Amen to that. And to your comments about prejudice being based in fear. I would agree. Every time I've ever behaved in a prejudiced fashion, I was afraid of something. (Also wounded/ignorant). It's so sad that emotional intelligence is so often lacking. It seems to indicate a certain woundedness that makes my soul ache because I've been there myself. It's frightening how just about every conflict ever in the history of humanity comes down to this. I wonder to what extent the mastery of emotional intelligence and the effective teaching of it, can truly effect peaceful resolutions.
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Comment on Loneliness
by jgnat inone of the great lessons this board gave me is the cruelty of shunning by the jehovah's witnesses.
it is inhuman.
the toll it takes on a person cannot be underestimated.
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SPAZnik
I believe that loneliness, when we embrace it, brings the gift of a sense of self.
Shunning doesn't seem to be about loneliness to me, although I can appreciate that can be one of the emotions it evokes. (I can be surrounded by people and feel lonely.) Shunning seems to me to be about SHAME. It's a political thing, a war thing, an emotionally manipulative thing, a control measure. Employed by very fearful, angry, and sometimes arrogant, and often ignorant people.
As far as I can currently see, every group does it to someone for whatever reasons they find hip or trendy at the time. Even we as individuals "draw lines" and "set boundaries", do we not? So I guess I view being shunned by the JWs as THEIR weakness, not mine, and as a measure that protects me from THEIR abuses, not them from mine, since I was not abusive to them, I was honest with them, and since I felt mainly relief upon the demise of my relationship with them. Kind of backfired in my case, I guess.
That said, I find the level of shunning to the degree that the JWs do it to be quite "up there", abusively/manipulatively speaking. It angers me that they have no qualms justifying their interference with not only my life, but my family's life. It angers me that they PRESUME to speak for GAWD!? I'm also angry that some in my family rationalize hiding behind laws, rather than having a heart. Their modes of so-called "spiritual warfare" do seem bloodthirsty and primitive, at best, to me. I mean, I've been out for nearly ten years. A life sentence is mine all because some elder had a fit of self-righteous anger in the face of my honesty. It seems a pretty steep sentence. I do not think they comprehend the meaning of the word spirit. It's a crying shame. And yes, it's abusive.
Personally, if I were a Guy on the Fly in the Sky, busily salivating for millennia at the thought of wreaking vengeance on a Day of Judgment, I'd be a mite pissed that these jokers are prematurely usurping my position. And I'd certainly off them first, for their presumptuousness in thinking that they speak for me. Then again, maybe not. Sadistic as I would have to be to let things carry on as they do and allowing people as much pain and misery as they suffer, perhaps I would just be pleased. Nah, I think I'd prefer my lab rats to be in good health when I began. What fun is it to kill a person who's half-dead already?
Anyway, to me, alone is a circumstantial state of being. Not an emotion. The emotion of Loneliness, which brings the gift of a sense of self, can occur at any time or place, regardless of outside influences. The loneliest I ever felt, in my 20s, was when I was married and surrounded by a congregation of JWs that I believed in. But I didn't know myself that well back then. Not as a human sharing my nature with an entire species, or as an individual. I am lonely whenever I find myself surrounded by "right" fighters.
I rarely feel lonely when I'm alone. But I do feel pain when I am shamed. The pain doesn't always have the desired result of those attempting to manipulate me in that inhumane way. It is pain nevertheless. And they do succeed in their sadistic methods, in causing me pain, and losing my respect as managers of anything related to human nature.
But I enjoyed the quote about connection to community, etc, and the acknowledgement that our relationship with our emotions such as loneliness and desire (for connection for instance) can be impacted by such significant life transitions as an exit from JWism by way of shunning. I would add that shunning is a pretty severe response I myself have employed when I've reached my wits end, with someone like a stalker for instance. (Quite effectively too.) Do I expect stalkers to come running back and say, oh, by the way, your shunning taught me a lesson? No. So I'm not really clear on why the JWs expect their shunning to inflict the severest pain they can, to have such a response. It must work some of the time. But on me it just helped me see that they don't give a rat's ass about me and that I'm better off alone than with them. I can't imagine shunning my own child. Anyone that does it, is either a sociopath or an emotional masochist.
Group dynamics. Can't live with them, can't live without 'em. Same with intimacy. Same with intimacy.
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When you were a loyal dub, did you ever turn down sexual advances?
by asilentone inwhen i was a loyal dub, i have turned down some gorgeous women.
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SPAZnik
Yes. Still do, but now it's for different reasons. But what I'm most sad about turning down in my dub dayz, were the decent guys that asked me out in a sincere way. It would have been a whole different life had I just broken that one rule. I now loathe groups and orgs that attempt to dictate or control who you are allowed to befriend or love or not. Total BS!
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SPAZnik
OUTLAW - Also tempting. Grrr. X-[ Mostly I want to take it out in the places that most deserve it though.
Scarred for life - Oh, I've been feeling it.
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Help please - my wife wants a divorce
by IMHO ini've read some old posts and they don't really fit my situation.. my wife just told me she wants a divorce and that's it after nearly 20 years., she doesn't want to try to work on it.. other posts talk about friends and family.
i have no family and no friends (due to a lot of traveling).. i went back to my hometown a year ago (after many years away) and even then old friends treated me as a stranger, like they've moved on.. i've had a lot of emotional / mental problems, basically a breakdown so have found it impossible to fulfill my role as a husband for many years, emotionally and physically and she said she's had enough, although she's never talked about it before.. she went out and had an unplanned one-night-stand.
i forgive me but she says she doesn't love me anymore.. we both find it very difficult to communicate our feelings.
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SPAZnik
Maybe if you forgive her for her part in helping you paralyze yourself
with her caregiving-to-make-myself-feel-better ways
and forgive yourself for your part in having played the disabled role all this time,
you will be able to brainstorm and implement creative solutions to your dilemma
and be better able to see where and how to begin healing a relationship
on the verge of death and in desperate need of life-support if it is to revive.
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56
Help please - my wife wants a divorce
by IMHO ini've read some old posts and they don't really fit my situation.. my wife just told me she wants a divorce and that's it after nearly 20 years., she doesn't want to try to work on it.. other posts talk about friends and family.
i have no family and no friends (due to a lot of traveling).. i went back to my hometown a year ago (after many years away) and even then old friends treated me as a stranger, like they've moved on.. i've had a lot of emotional / mental problems, basically a breakdown so have found it impossible to fulfill my role as a husband for many years, emotionally and physically and she said she's had enough, although she's never talked about it before.. she went out and had an unplanned one-night-stand.
i forgive me but she says she doesn't love me anymore.. we both find it very difficult to communicate our feelings.
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SPAZnik
"If you hear a voice saying 'you are not a painter',
then by all means paint ... and that voice will be silenced."
~Vincent Van Gogh
"If you hear a voice saying 'you can't stand on your own two feet',
then by all means stand on your own two feet ... and that voice will be silenced."
~Spazzie Nik Goggles
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56
Help please - my wife wants a divorce
by IMHO ini've read some old posts and they don't really fit my situation.. my wife just told me she wants a divorce and that's it after nearly 20 years., she doesn't want to try to work on it.. other posts talk about friends and family.
i have no family and no friends (due to a lot of traveling).. i went back to my hometown a year ago (after many years away) and even then old friends treated me as a stranger, like they've moved on.. i've had a lot of emotional / mental problems, basically a breakdown so have found it impossible to fulfill my role as a husband for many years, emotionally and physically and she said she's had enough, although she's never talked about it before.. she went out and had an unplanned one-night-stand.
i forgive me but she says she doesn't love me anymore.. we both find it very difficult to communicate our feelings.
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SPAZnik
It starts from the inside and then ripples out.
Good for her, I say, if she is learning to take better care of herself.
This will likely make her even stronger to care for people in a hey-a-lot-of-people-benefit-from-me-being-healthy way rather than care giving them in an oh-my-god-my-tank-is-running-out-and-my-entire-life-amounts-to-one-burdensome-toxic-relationship-i-can't-take-anymore-and-i'd-like-to-off-myself-now kind of way.
Hopefully it will help you too. But that's your choice to make.
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Help please - my wife wants a divorce
by IMHO ini've read some old posts and they don't really fit my situation.. my wife just told me she wants a divorce and that's it after nearly 20 years., she doesn't want to try to work on it.. other posts talk about friends and family.
i have no family and no friends (due to a lot of traveling).. i went back to my hometown a year ago (after many years away) and even then old friends treated me as a stranger, like they've moved on.. i've had a lot of emotional / mental problems, basically a breakdown so have found it impossible to fulfill my role as a husband for many years, emotionally and physically and she said she's had enough, although she's never talked about it before.. she went out and had an unplanned one-night-stand.
i forgive me but she says she doesn't love me anymore.. we both find it very difficult to communicate our feelings.
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SPAZnik
Oops I just realized that I missed what you said about having a few weeks to get her to reconsider, while she puts her house on the market.
To that I say action (love) speaks much much louder than words. Unless you start taking massive steps to care for yourself and get a new oxygen mask in place that will relieve her of the burden, I don't see her changing her mind. Take the action to love yourself. Gaining the respect of others starts with our own self-respect and believing we are worth every effort to care for ourselves.
All the best to you right now. Perhaps sit down with yourself and remind yourself of all the times you've been brave in your life. Then make that call you need to make.