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My wife and I had another marathon discussion last night on the status of her belief (or lack thereof). Here is a recap… About a year ago, after going through some tough trials, my wife was unsure of her belief in God. She turned to the internet to find similar people that struggled to go to church, and how they could make it “work”. In doing this she found out a lot of information about the church that has now lead her to believe that it is a fraud. Her church attendance started to really slow down about six months ago. Then right before Christmas she told me she was officially ‘taking a break’ from coming to church. I have been doing my best to take all the kids (the whole quiver-full) to church by myself since then.
I have posted a little bit here. I am
verynuanced “believer”. I put the word believer in quotation marks because I don’t really believe much. I basically view all of the gospel as symbolic. I don’t believe that much of the first part of the bible actually happened. I don’t believe the BoM is factual. But the LDS church is my tribe. This is where all of my people are. It’s where I feel comfortable. It is my identity. Anyway, last night, my wife told me she wants to resign her membership from the church. She said she feels like she is just giving me some false hope that she’ll ever come back and she just wants to rip the band-aid off. This completely crushed me. I feel like I have been “white-knuckling” life for the last six to nine months, and I don’t know how much longer I can hang on. Everything has been turned completely upside down. I am not even sure which way is up. I am completely lost.
azguy, I’m glad you came here for support. Although I think this is the opposite of the experience of most people here, I know there are some who feel more active than their spouse, and I also know that it’s something most everyone here can understand to some degree or another.
I feel tough for the both of you and hope you can find a way through it together. FC is something that affects families in different ways, but I suspect that is challenging most of the time. I encourage you to seek out ways to tackle this as a couple, not as two independent people with different views. Remember that the most important belief that either of you has is the belief in each other.
Beyond that, I would recommend seeing a marriage counselor if you struggle to come to terms with it together. There’s nothing like a professional to help, when the world seems so replete with self-diagnosis and amateur experts. I’m afraid when it comes to guidance on marriage relationships, the people at StayLDS are no more qualified than the average person in line at the DMV.
On the issue of your wife’s desire to resign, let me just say that I understand it. I’ve thought about it occasionally. Although I don’t entertain the idea often or for long, my most recent struggle with it was as recently as November of this last year. I know that for me at least, the idea of resigning is sometimes appealing because it seems like a deliberate step in a positive direction after years of trying to make it work where I am already standing. If anyone wants to resign, I think they have to have that option or they will feel trapped. If she is going to resign, it might be worth having a discussion about where life will go from here for both of you and the kids. When I had my FC, my wife was very uncertain about what lay ahead, and it turns out that I was too, I just wasn’t thinking about it as much. For me, I was thinking about the past and my wife was thinking about the future. Talking about it helped to solidify that I really did plan on still being the kind of person I was raised to be, even if I no longer believed in the divinely appointed commission of the Church that raised me that way.
I wish you both well.
I’m sorry you are having to deal with this. Your pain is obvious. I’ll do my best to attempt to mourn with you as you mourn. I haven’t figured out why some of us can “hold on” with nuanced beliefs or just not believing it all while others feel they have to make the break. I don’t believe much about the church but I do believe in the core gospel principles – even as taught by the church (it does a pretty god job of that actually). And while I don’t need much social interaction and couldn’t care less about most activities, the church is my tribe in that I do have friends there and feel comfortable there. I think a major issue some people have is not being able to separate the church and the gospel because they see it as all the same. I think that many who leave are in that situation. But it’s not all the same.
I have struggled with my belief in God in the past, and can’t really define my testimony at this point except I believe this didn’t all start spontaneously. “Be still and know that I am God” somehow speaks to me.
May you and your wife find peace.
My husband has mentioned resigning and pulling off the band aid to me more than once. He can’t understand my nuanced place or strange loyalty. To be honest I can’t fully articulate it myself. At moments I think it’s because of extended family connections, other times it’s because this is my tribe, and I want to influence it in a small way, then other times I seriously feel like “this is where your supposed to be.” Not because it’s the one true, but its part of the make up of my life. For us we try to discuss what resigning would accomplish. I am not trying to talk him out of it I just think some decisions deserve serious consideration. I think I understand what it means to someone else, to be disconnected, to not have a sense of the churches mess rubbing off on them by distant association. Also loyalty.
I have no answers. I don’t know either of you. I only wanted to let you know that the same conversations happen in other homes. And take On Owns advice find a counselor, even if she does resign you both need sounding boards.
On Own Now wrote:
Beyond that, I would recommend seeing a marriage counselor if you struggle to come to terms with it together. There’s nothing like a professional to help, when the world seems so replete with self-diagnosis and amateur experts. I’m afraid when it comes to guidance on marriage relationships, the people at StayLDS are no more qualified than the average person in line at the DMV.We have an appointment with our counselor tonight. I just needed to vent a bit. This place is a lot more supportive for this kind of message than the other board in post on. Thank you all so much for your kind words.
Good luck and best wishes. Let us know how it goes… if you want to of course. azguy – I hope you have a good talk today. All I can say is that I’m very thankful to know that my husband loves me and will stay with me, period, even if I resign. Thanks everyone. I just got done talking to our therapist. My wife is talking to him now. It really helped. We are planning on just relaxing tonight. No heavy discussions… Just Chinese take out and a red box movie… 🙂 I am looking forward to it.Nothing to say right now but I’m sending virtual hugs your way. I know it isn’t easy. I hope your therapist is helpful and a good one. I think you need 2 things in a marriage…trust and commitment.
If you have those, you can love her and support her no matter what her beliefs. If you are a nuanced non-literal believer, than you may be able to accept her as is, church as your tribe does not require one thing or another from good individuals. What works for you doesn’t have to work for others, it is just what you feel right about. But God is greater than church.
I hope you can love her and she love you, in your differences but see more of your common good things you like. I think it may be tricky, but many couples can make this work, and they do.
Show you love her by helping her write her resignation letter. Do something to show her you love her more than any outside organization and that you respect her even more for being a strong independent thinker, a great quality in a woman. Look at her needs, why she feels the need to resign, and focus on her first.
That’s my advice.
Good luck.
My answer would be to convince her not to resign with a few of these items…I don’t know your wife, but these things might help 1. You want her to keep her church membership so at least her options are open.
2. But, you will not maintain false hope of anything. You will live your marriage without expectations of what she does in the church, other than keep her name on the records of the church.
3. Help her see that resignation does nothing except make it harder to come back. I tends to reduce visits if you are single or live with non-members, but if she is living with active or semi-active people, then it has vedry little effect.
4. Help her see how our lives change dramatically — often not due to our own force of will. Help her see the value of keeping her options open in case she ever wants to come back again. She may not think she will ever again, but I think we can all remember times when we swore we would never think or do X, and then life changed us somehow, and we did excatly the thing we said we would never do.
5. Help her see this would be meaningful to you, underscoring the fact that you will not look at it as a source of false hope.
Those are my two cents, and worth every penny.
Azguy: I have struggled with resigning myself. I like the statement it makes, and I like the idea of having this struggle over. At first look, resignation would do that.
Resignation at second glance would accomplish none of that. It would confuse my minor child and it would upset my extended family. It would be like poking a stick in the family hive. Such action is amusing for the person with the stick who anticipates the damage and is ready to run away. It is hard on the bees, and creates real damage to the hive. That damage takes a lot of effort to repair.
As a family member, I am part of the hive. I would have to be there working on repairing the damage. It is easier to not cause the damage in the first place.
Socially, it is easier being a wife who is “less active” than it would be to be listed as a non-member spouse. For a few years, everyone would know I resigned, then ward boundaries or people change, no one remembers, and the missionaries start showing up to convert the non-member spouse. Yuck.
IMHO, partial or full inactivity is easier on every level than resignation. But another person could have an equally strong argument for why resignation would be better.
Having to wrangle a bunch of young children is tough, but it is for 3 hours, once a week, and I’ll bet if you talked to the YW president, she could easily get some YW to come sit with your kids and help out. So often, a husband has church obligations that leave his wife doing the wrangling of children and no one considers that a problem. As a father doing the wrangling, you have the culture on your side. People will help a father who would never consider offering help to a mother. Use that cultural bias. It will make your Sunday experience easier.
Second thought — As a mom of young children, this 3 hour window might be the only break your wife ever gets. Do you think this is about wanting to leave the church due to the religious doctrine or do you think she is exhausted and overwhelmed by motherhood and the cultural expectations of the religion? Those are two very different things.
SilentDawning wrote:2. But, you will not maintain false hope of anything. You will live your marriage without expectations of what she does in the church, other than keep her name on the records of the church.
For a number of years after my faith crisis, DW kept insisting that I might change back to full belief in the church. She would say things like, “You did not foresee the change of your faith crisis – so how do you know that you won’t have an equally as unforeseen return to faith?”
It bothered me mostly because I felt invalidated. If my spouse is patiently waiting for me to change then it implies that they do not accept, value, or love the present me.
We had some very heated discussions over the subject. Eventually, (after 3-4 years) things simmered down and we were finally able to better hear each other. I explained that my past faith had been brittle because it was based on expectations that did not conform to reality. When a tragic event shattered my expectations, my assumptive world collapsed. This process was very painful. In rebuilding my assumptive world I have been careful to do so in a way that would not be so easily shattered (IOW much more flexible expectations) so as not to set myself up for another collapse. Therefor it would be very difficult to have an event happen that so challenged my view of the world as to throw everything into chaos yet again.
One event that could do that would be some sort of heavenly visitation (or NDE) telling me that the church is true. If this were to happen then some of my new expectations about God not intervening would of necessity fall by the wayside. In the sense that this could happen, I must agree that it is possible (even though highly unlikely) that my previous faith and worldview might return.
I share this only because I know what it means to be hurt by someone expecting for you to change.
You mention that you have been “white-knuckling” it for the last 6-8 months. What does that mean? Are you comfortable with your wife being inactive forever or were you hoping that it was just a phase? Because you have been able to live and function as an active non-literal believing Mormon, is it possible that you expected that your spouse might be able to do the same?
I am glad that you and your spouse are seeing a professional. That resource is invaluable.
I can only share thoughts that come to mind. Focus on Love, that strategy rarely goes wrong.
If you lose your life (with the above in mind) you may find it.
The first will be last. (what will our instincts have us place first?)
Love is divine.
Jesus taught us to love even our “enemies”, is the mother of your children worth more?
Surrender to love, our lives are not what we wish them to be – but they can be much more.
Don’t act to make a point,
besomething deeper. Hi everyone, I am here to give a quick update. Our lives over the last several months have felt like an epic roller coaster. I even made a previous post about “emotional roller coasters”. We had a really great weekend. The mrs. and I got to spend time together on Friday and Saturday nights. We took our kids to an amusement park on Saturday. It was LOADS of fun. From Friday evening to Saturday evening there wasn’t any discussion of religion, or alcohol (one of our stinking points right now). We just had good family fun.
Then Sunday morning came. I was a little nervous about this day. Mrs. AZgal was going with our neighborhs to a non-denominational church. I was super nervous about this. She went to church with the neighbors while I took our kids to church. When I got home, we sat down and talked about how the other church service was. The pastor at the church gave a sermon on prayer. Coincidentally I happened to teach a Sunday School lesson on prayer (we covered the book of Enos). We talked about all the parallels between the pastors sermon and my lesson and how even though he was preaching from the Bible, and I was teaching from the BoM, the broader points made in the lesson were the same. I could see that this experience of attending the other church helped to soften her heart a little bit. She talked to me about how her biggest problem with the LDS church right now is the betrayal she feels from church leadership about church history. I validated all of her concerns and thoughts and let her know I would be there for her no matter what she chooses to do. It was a really great discussion.
One last side note:
There was one part of the pastors sermon that really got my wife spun up, and it has to do with the doctrine of the trinity. Mrs. AZgal has never been very much of a scriptorian, or gospel scholar, but the whole concept of the trinity drives her nuts. She can’t stand the LDS concept of the Godhead and she can’t stand the generic Christian concept of the trinity. The part of the sermon that got her really worked up was when the Pastor talked about how “…even Jesus prays to ‘The Heavenly Father’…”, so we can to. She just couldn’t stand how they think that HF and Jesus are the same person, but Jesus prays to HF. So is he praying to himself???
It was just a comical end to the conversation we had. I reminded her that Mormons believe they are two separate beings, so it would make sense for Jesus to pray to HF. She smiled and we laughed about it. Things are looking up right now. I am hoping we can find a way to lengthen the peaks of our emotional roller coasters and shorten the valleys. How funny is it that we spent Saturday riding roller coasters at an amusement park.
😆
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