New member

Hello everyone! I have been posting over at the NOM forum for a while, but I feel like I might be a better fit over here, so I am going to give it a whirl. Here is my situation.

About 10 years ago I started seriously questioning the existance of God. I won’t get into all the gory details, but it lead to me questioning my testimony on essentially every level possible. It was a very difficult time for me. I tried to open up to my wife about my feelings and I could see how it really frightened her. I have never been one to be too open with my feelings and was raised in a family where you didn’t complain; you just sucked it up, set your feelings aside and did what you were supposed to, so that is what I did. For the next year or so I plowed ahead, begrudgingly and silently doing what I was ‘supposed to’.

About a year later we ended up moving to a new town. I saw this as my opportunity to disappear. We were in a very fast growing area, and it was pretty easy to just disappear into oblivion, and that is what we did for the first few months. I could tell it was really rough on my wife. I felt bad about doing this to her. I felt like I was dragging her down and not living up to the commitments I made to her when we were married.

I wasn’t sure what I really believed at the time. I had essentially arrived at a place where I could acknowledge that there must be some higher power in the universe which had caused it to come into existence. I felt (and always have felt) that the LDS church had much good to offer people, and since I was raised in the church and this is where my roots are, I might as well embrace them. After several months of hiding in the shadows I decided to come out. I went to find my elder’s quorum president to tell him I wanted a home teaching assignment. The ward we were in was so crazy and so big that we had two elder’s quorums (it would have been extremely easy to slide under the radar and be forgotten).

I really threw myself into hometeaching. I loved doing it. I really just tried to be a good neighbor and friend to the familes I home taught. My companion would never come with me, so I would go solo. Sometimes I would take my three year old son with me. The visits would last as long as my families would want me to stay and my lessons were never more than two or three minutes. My wife and I would go out of our way to invite our friends (I don’t even like calling them my ‘families’, because they really did become our friends) over for dinners and get togethers. It was a really amazing experience and everything I think the home teaching program is supposed to be.

After several years of this and some crazy boundary realignments I was called to be in a Branch Presidency in our stake. At this point I had lost myself so much in the work of being part of the church that all my doubts really didn’t seem to bother me any more. I was really just loving serving people, helping people and being part of something bigger than myself. It was a really neat experience and one that I will always treasure.

All of this takes us up to about 2011 now. We ended up moving again. It was very difficult going from the tight-nit branch we had been in with about 50 members to a full sized, fully functioning ward with hundreds of people. It was a little rough at first, but things started to slowly get better as we started to get to know people. Then 2013 hit…

2013 was definitely the worst year of my entire life. My wife and went through some pretty difficult struggles that I really don’t want to talk about. We went to a marriage counselor we found through LDS family services and that eventually helped tremedously. We have reconciled our problems and our marital relationship is stronger now than I ever could have possibly imagined. It has really blossomed and been solidified by the trials we went through. The complicating factor is that, as we went through these troubles my wife came out on the other side having completely lost her belief in God. She is in a very similar position now to where I was back in 2005. She is a very beautiful, loving, fantastic woman who values honesty at a very high level. As she has become aware of our churhces very troubled past it has hurt her tremedously as she feels she has been lied to her whole life. It is so painful for me to see her go through this now. I remember back to the struggles I had previously and feel tremedously for her. Additionally, now that she is going through this experience it is causing me to relive and rethink my positions and thoughts as well.

So this is where I am now. I am very firmly convinced that much of the churhes back story is a beautiful fanciful fairy tail (I hope that doesn’t offend anyone here); and at the same time I am a card carying member of the church with a fairly high level calling in my ward. My wife has been completely devistated by what she has learned about the church. She feels lied to and betrayed be the people she has trusted her whole life. She doesn’t wear her garments any more and let her temple recommnd lapse. When she does attend church, which is less and less frequently now, she comes home from church every week feeling emotionally and spiritually violated and takes all week to recover from her church attendance only to be re-violated every Sunday.

The last two years have been more than I would have thought I could bare as I have watched my wife struggle and in pain. It was so easy when it was just me. I was able to suck it up and go to work, just like I had always been taught growing up, but it isn’t just me any more. There is someone elses soul involved and I have to respect her agency.

I apologize for the long winded post here. I have 10 years of baggage that I am trying to unload, and I am really just skimming the surface here. I am hoping that I can find like minded people here that I can relate to and share my really feeling with.