beastie wrote:I was reading about LDS divorce rates for another thread and was reminded that the divorce rate in "mixed" marriages (between LDS and nonLDS) is 40%. Forty percent. I imagine the divorce rate between believing Mormon and apostate is even higher.
When one is a believing Mormon, Mormonism almost completely defines one's life. Certainly we were taught that shared religious conviction was THE most important criteria to look for in a future spouse. When I was at BYU, SWK made statements that implied that if the couple shared a devotion to the church, other differences were irrelevant, and they could have "great happiness". That only works if your life completely revolves around the church. But if that stops....then what do you have?
My heart breaks for you, runtu, and others in the same position. The one good thing about my marital situation when I left the church is that I didn't have a marriage worth saving in the first place, so that wasn't even a factor in my decision.
I think LDS couples who end up married well - not just sharing faith, but compatibility and the ability to enjoy one another - are lucky indeed. I really do not believe the LDS culture is particularly good at helping its youngsters marry well.
Mixed marriages that survive the loss of faith usually have to have some sort of strong bond outside the faith.
I'm a young single guy. My experience with knowing couples where one member had left the Church was a huge catalyst in making me see the need to be honest with myself about my testimony. Once I realized that by lying to myself now I would soon bring heartache to a future spouse and (potentially) children, I couldn't keep up the internal dishonesty any longer.
I don't envy any of you whose spouses believe differently than you, on either side of the line.
I wish I could have seen that reality was approaching instead of swallowing my doubts. Now I have a complex situation where life is off balance because my wife is still mired in a way of life that severely limits her experience and consequently my own.
And crawling on the planet's face Some insects called the human race Lost in time And lost in space...and meaning
Mercury wrote: Now I have a complex situation where life is off balance because my wife is still mired in a way of life that severely limits her experience and consequently my own.
LDS see you as the one who is severely limited, and that you're limiting your wife's choices.
It's perspective. Yours has changed; hers hasn't. It takes a great deal of love and respect, both of the other and the family, in order to keep such a marriage intact. If your objective is to maintain your marriage, you're obviously doing something right. So is she.
Yesterday a good friend and fellow apostate invited me to have lunch with him, so I went by his house to pick him up. His wife greeted me at the door, and it was obvious that, not only was she not expecting me, but she didn’t know who I was. After a few minutes of awkwardness, my friend explained that we knew each other through a message board where people in various states of participation in the LDS church talk about life and the universe.
She decided to come with us to lunch, but she was clearly upset about the turn of events, and at one point she was in tears, lamenting the changes she had seen in her husband. I felt terrible that I had been the cause of such a situation, but we had an enjoyable lunch anyway, though we avoided any subject likely to raise criticism of Mormonism. We talked about our families, careers, and even our missions to South America. It was very pleasant.
Back at the office, I was listening to my iPod, and an old song from The Police came on:
Take the space between us. Fill it up some way.
I sat there almost in tears thinking of the huge spaces between me and my wife and my friend and his wife, all because we discovered that the LDS church isn’t true after all. I don’t think I had realized before just how much Mormonism was the common ground between us, the glue holding our relationship together. You probably couldn’t find two people more different than my wife and me, but we shared a commitment to Mormonism that bridged every gap and made the differences seem trivial.
With the loss of that common ground, my marriage has been very difficult indeed. Sometimes it seems like there isn’t anything but space between us, but in a way, losing that obvious connecting thread has been good for us because it has forced us to dig deeper and find the real bonds of love and commitment and friendship between us. Ironically, our marriage is built on more solid ground after losing my faith.
But every so often the space becomes magnified, and we have moments like my friend did yesterday when the differences between us become all too clear and almost too painful to admit. But those moments pass, and we muddle along.
I still feel bad that I was involved in creating such an awkward and painful moment, but I think my friend and his wife will be all right. And so will my wife and I.
Utterly disgusting, how naked evil can manifest itself as gentle, bittersweet regrets bathed in the most nauseating, flaccid self exculpatory rationalization imaginable.
The quiet, sensitive Runtu finally unsheathes his velvet claws.
Nothing is going to startle us more when we pass through the veil to the other side than to realize how well we know our Father [in Heaven] and how familiar his face is to us
- President Ezra Taft Benson
I am so old that I can remember when most of the people promoting race hate were white.
LDS see you as the one who is severely limited, and that you're limiting your wife's choices.
And we do notice that this is phrased as if coming from one...outside the LDS Church.
Freudian slip?
Nothing is going to startle us more when we pass through the veil to the other side than to realize how well we know our Father [in Heaven] and how familiar his face is to us
- President Ezra Taft Benson
I am so old that I can remember when most of the people promoting race hate were white.
Droopy wrote:Utterly disgusting, how naked evil can manifest itself as gentle, bittersweet regrets bathed in the most nauseating, flaccid self exculpatory rationalization imaginable.
The quiet, sensitive Runtu finally unsheathes his velvet claws.
What are you talking about, and why dig claws back into Runtu? It's not that I completely agree with Runtu. I think marriage is strongest when built on the solid foundation which the restored gospel of Jesus Christ can provide. However, if one partner in the marriage falters, I don't think that means the marriage should necessarily be dissolved. The gospel of Jesus Christ clearly explains the importance of the family including the importance of strengthenin each other.
That's General Leo. He could be my friend if he weren't my enemy. eritis sicut dii I support NCMO
Droopy wrote:The quiet, sensitive Runtu finally unsheathes his velvet claws.
I think you got this wrong, Cog. Runtu's "velvet claws" is simply, no more nor less, than assessing what he believed, and how he came to different conclusions through his studies. One might as well say that Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake for unleashing his "velvet claws", but five hundred years after his burning, what he taught then is now accepted by kindergarten children.
Another of my hobby horses. The Church apologised for its actions against Galileo, but it has never apologised for burning Giordano Bruno at the stake. The reason it apologised to Galileo is because he was a popular figure in the public imagination, and doing this would bring the Church kudos. Bruno is a lesser known figure, but he wasn't confined to house arrest, he was stripped naked and unceremoniously burned in public, because he refused to recant to the Pope.
I guess he was just showing his "velvet claws", and the Church never forgave him for it.
Coggins wrote:Utterly disgusting, how naked evil can manifest itself as gentle, bittersweet regrets bathed in the most nauseating, flaccid self exculpatory rationalization imaginable.
The quiet, sensitive Runtu finally unsheathes his velvet claws.
Runtu,
It occurred to me that this little shallow man sees you and I as less than our value as human beings. He truly believes that we are broken. Yet rather than summoning a physician, he would go out of his way to mock our empathy for those that suffer around us because of the courageous decisions we believe we have made.
There appears to be a conditional and selective love in this man's heart in every post I have ever read from him. He does not resemble anything I was taught and that I attempted to emulate as a Latter Day Saint. I muse how we are both products of the same religion.
Droopy wrote:Utterly disgusting, how naked evil can manifest itself as gentle, bittersweet regrets bathed in the most nauseating, flaccid self exculpatory rationalization imaginable.
The quiet, sensitive Runtu finally unsheathes his velvet claws.
My mother and father were married for nearly 25 years, shared the same church yet approched righteousness altogether differently. My mother was a religeous fanatic and my father was more of a pick and choose, name dropping card carrier.
I came to the conclusion that in a healthy relationship, it is the ideals that we value and share in a relationship that bond us together.
It still doesn't provide enough balm for some that believe the apostate spouse will be separated from the family at death. What wicked expressions by blind guides. Particularly when those that claim to have returned express the opposite (refering to the NDE'r).