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I’ve been having doubts for years, but the last 2 years it has been getting increasingly bad. Since they have started I have tried to ignore them and continue on being a TBM myself. But I’m to the point where I don’t think I can pretend anymore. I’ve pretty much accepted that I am an agnostic but (other than you guys here) no one knows but me. I’ve always been the guy people go to when people have questions or are looking for answers to doctrinal questions, so I’ve kept my own doubts to myself. A few years ago I spoke to my wife about not having a testimony of Jesus helping people through trials/making our burdens light and she took it pretty well. Since then, my beliefs in the atonement, Jesus, God, and most every other core doctrine in the Church have fell to the point that *highly* doubt that there is even a God. I want there to be more than anything in the world and wish the Church and all of it’s teachings were true, but most everything can be explained away the same way we can explain away Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy. My problems are not doctrinal in nature but that “spiritual experiences” are found in every religion, which isn’t necessarily the problem, but I’ve seen people get similar feelings of being “touched by the Spirit” in multi-level marketing schemes. This sucks because my ENTIRE identity is based on my “faith” in God and Mormonism. Every facet of my life is and has been founded on the Church. My marriage, family, friendship’s, work relationship’s, etc… are all deeply rooted in this belief. I go through periods of complete apathy one way or the other and just go through the motions of attending Church and magnifying my callings but then the realization hits that I’m just doing this all for nothing. I know what I’m doing is helping people but in my eyes I’m wasting my time. Maybe that it is not the best way to put it because even if I was full on atheist I still think I’d have a focus on missionary work and the Gospel, but if there is no God then why don’t I put more focus and time on other things? Anyway, I’ve been thinking that it is about time to let my wife know where I am at. I’ve always hoped that this was just a spiritual low in my life and that I’d bounce back, but not only is it not improving, it is getting worse. Like I said, in our house everything revolves around Gospel. My wife always gives 110% to her callings and the Church and is as true blue as you can get. She married someone with strong faith and a firm conviction and sealed for time and all eternity and is now married to someone just the opposite. I’ve heard nothing but horror stories of the reaction from the spouse when they are told that their significant other is having doubts or leaving the Church. You hear that they go through severe marital problems and even divorce, they are the outcast of the family, the ward looks down on them, etc…
My question is, how did you tell your spouse about your doubts? Did you just lay it on them or did you work it in over several months? Were there any repercussions? What impact did it have on your relationship?
It’s no use for me to say what I actually did, because it did not go well. For me marital discord is not an option, I will do anything (short of murder etc.) to promote peace in the home. At the same time there is a personal need for authenticity that is unhealthy to deny. This balance is where all the work comes in. I decided I don’t want to be lazy to any degree when facing this task. I learned that my wife (I can only offer my own experience) wants me to want a happy life in the church, if I don’t that is what crushes her. She wants me to lead with faith, what I actually believe doesn’t matter as much unless it interferes with my ability to act in good faith.
I have been helped tremendously by plugging into Givens, Bushman, and other scholarly faithful voices. I don’t expect to agree with everything anyone says, but sensing the individual intellectual freedom that some of these people assume, I realize I can make my own way. Things are much easier today than years ago, even with recent headlines. Elder Uchtdorf’s “Come Join With Us” and other references to point to make individual space attainable – the magic words are honestly saying “I am willing to lead with faith.” That is my take anyway. Plugging into the secular voices that pull at my logic do not help my family situation. That is what I have decided for me. I don’t worry that I don’t see things the way most members do. My concern is with aligning myself with truth, and love, and that puts me on the path to God – which is leading with faith in my book. I learn to express myself in Mormon terms, even if my meaning behind those terms is unique to me.
I also enjoyed John Dehlin’s interview on reconstruction. He makes some good points about trusting your heart and what feels good, even if it doesn’t make logical sense.
fisherman, It’s a tough thing and I don’t think you are the only one here. It was hard, but liberating… and it is necessary. It was so long ago for me that I don’t remember the specifics, but I will say that my wife had already started to suspect something, so it wasn’t a total shock for her. There’s a chance that the same is true for your wife.
I made one mistake in all of that and that was that I didn’t make it super clear for her. There was no problem started soft and letting it go from there, but I made the mistake of just going quiet and after a long, long time, she and I were talking about it and she expressed hope that I would be able to work it out, and I realized that I hadn’t let her know the extent of it. At some point, I should have moved beyond “struggling” or having “doubts”. I was a full-on non-believer, and I failed to communicate that with her, which left her flapping in the wind. Like I said, that doesn’t have to be part of the initial discussion, but you need to work toward helping her understand the true picture. The reason is pretty simple… golden rule. This is her marriage, too, and she deserves to be with you 100% in this.
Some thoughts that might help. It’s always good, as we continually say here, to focus on what you DO believe, not what you don’t. In your case, as an agnostic, maybe you don’t believe in God or the priesthood, restoration, scripture, etc, but there are aspects of the Gospel that you believe are good, I’m sure, as a lifestyle, if nothing else, and it’s good to get that clear in your mind and communicate it to her.
I suggest not looking for excuses (reasons you don’t believe), like the kinderhook plates, and just say you don’t believe anymore and then go on to highlights: you still love her, you need her more now than ever, you fully support her in the Church (assuming), you think the Church is good (assuming), you want to stay connected, even though you don’t believe anymore (assuming). The common thread for people whose spouse has a faith crisis is that they feel uncertain about the future of their marriage/family. For good reason. Reassure her that you are the same person as ever and that you still have the same moral core, hopes and fears as ever. Doing this is helpful for them to understand where YOU hope your life will go, and it’s easier for them to imagine what THEIR life will be like.
I do want to dispute a few things you said, not by way of argument, but to help you temper some of your thinking. In doing this, recognize that I’m a lot like you… a lot…
fisherman wrote:She married someone with strong faith and a firm conviction and sealed for time and all eternity and is now married to someone just the opposite.
Sorry for being so forward, but, no, she is not. You are not the ‘opposite’ of what you once where. I mean, maybe you are, I don’t know you, but it would be extremely unusual, and your description doesn’t sound that way to me. We are still the same people that we were, but we’ve been through a traumatic experience. Some do OK with that, others don’t adjust so well, but we are the same people. Our motivations and goals change, but not WHO we are. It’s just as important for you to understand this as it is for her to understand it. One of the issues when spouses hear all this is that they think you WILL be the opposite. Coffee? Smoking? Drinking? Tattoos? Affairs? They have no idea what to expect and that is very tough for them, and as far as anyone knows all this stuff could be on the table. Determine for yourself how you expect to live your life and then convey that to her. At first I suggest not immediately starting to drink coffee or beer, but not because they are wrong, but out of respect for your wife. Down the road, maybe you talk to her about some of these things. Honestly, I think, my wife would be OK with me getting a tattoo at this point if I really talked to her about it now, but if I did when this was first happening, she’d feel too much disorientation, based on not knowing who she was married to.fisherman wrote:even if I was full on atheist I still think I’d have a focus on missionary work and the Gospel, but if there is no God then why don’t I put more focus and time on other things?
This kind of thinking is common, because in a Faith Crisis/Transition, we lose sight of the ‘why’. But I must say that I feel better about the ‘why’ now than before my faith crisis. There is no God keeping score (IMO). So, what I do, how I treat others, where I put my priorities… that’s all me now. I’m on my own now, and that’s very empowering. If I take time to work on my calling because it helps other people, then I feel more connected with it than ever. Doing good things is not a Mormon thing. I’m an Atheist and I still like to do good. Why not put time into other things? You can. It’s all priorities. I know Atheists that are obsessed with bike riding. No problem, that’s what they have chosen. If someday, they have a faith crisis and realize there IS a God, should they have to stop riding their bikes? Of course not. Nothing is a waste of time if it is good. Even if my Atheist God doesn’t exist or if your Agnostic God forgot where he put us, or if Dark Jedi’s Deist God is vacationing in Alpha Centauri, or if shoshin’s Mormon God is helping people find their keys. We still live our lives the way we think is right, right?I was the spouse that was told. On my end, it was devastating. I had physical pain that split my brain, my face, my heart in two. I could feel the disappointment, fear, sorrow. They were not just emotions. We needed counseling to get through it. For me the hardest part wasn’t all of the historic discoveries or tidbits of past practices/doctrines. For me my connection to Mormonism was entirely different than his. It would take years to figure that out. It’s not something you understand at a young age. When we met we were both zealous for our religion. We were emotional/physical/financial leaders. We never examined what those convictions were based on – until this.
On the other hand – that personal discovery has been powerful. In it’s unseen way, amist all the pain, new roads opened. We each examined our faith and spiritual structure. We learned and are still learning what is necessary and what is not when it comes to religious spirituality.
The advice is always go slow, but slow is hard to do and some seasons of life make slow impossible. My best advise to you is to examine the what and why’s of your spiritual feelings. Take some time and read through other spiritual works. When you tell her – and you will – remember she was the bride you once chose.
fisherman wrote:My question is, how did you tell your spouse about your doubts?
After years and with tears.
For me it was the realization of the position I was putting her into. That was the hardest.
It’s trial and error. I guess I’ll be the odd one out. Because the balance can become lopsided rely quickly in dogma and orthodoxy, combining the 2 is nothing short of toxic in Any situation. The response you will get from a person will very greatly depending on how much dogma and or orthodoxy is established to the persons core, their identity. If it’s just a belief but not a part or a major part of theory identity the process isn’t to bad. If it is a part of their identity or all or most of their identity then it is all defenses up to protect that identity.
Beliefs and faith really don’t have much to do with the core of why people act that way.
They are branches but not the root or trunk. The root or trunk of dogma and orthodoxy is rooted in identity and imagination(how someone imagines themselves to be in relation to themselves and others they care about and their relation the universe.
We want to please others we care about but be authentic at the sane time without walking in egg shells(which will destroy the relationship; you can only walk on egg shells for so long before the inevitable happens).
Realize that you have no control over how someone else will respond including your wife. Likewise she needs to realize the same or otherwise manipulation will occur on either side out of “love”(ie… If you really loved me you would do or believe X).
Some information to understand what is actually going on instead of what you see on the superficial outside of the reactions of the person will help you understand better.
Quote:Anxiety and an inability to tolerate uncertainty are two of its central features that dogmatists cope with by closing their minds to conflicting views and pronouncing their “Truths” with unyielding, arrogant certainty.
In so doing, they remove all ambiguity that would otherwise stir up anxiety. An intolerance of ambiguity has been linked to an intolerance of differences, whether such narrow-mindedness pertains to cultural, social, or individual differences of beliefs and behaviors.
A different tactic — compartmentalization — allows dogmatists to simultaneously support two logically incompatible beliefs. Sealing contradictory beliefs in isolated chambers enables them, for example, to give voice to equal opportunity yet deny or reduce funding to programs that help the disadvantaged.
Quote:Darkening the portrait, dogmatic people often find it difficult to distance themselves far enough from their core beliefs and emotions to recognize their own dogmatism, much less understand the psychological and social influences that pushed them in dogmatic directions.
We can hardly imagine Billy-Bob saying something like this: “You know, I really am very narrow-minded and rigid. One of these days, I should ask myself what I’m so afraid of. What’s so wrong with being absolutely wrong? And what’s so right with being absolutely right? Why do I get so angry with people who won’t admit I’m right and they’re wrong? Maybe there’s a lot wrong with being absolutely right.”
Such close encounters with their own closed minds are too close for comfort, which brings us to the emotional features of dogmatism.
It is only within the last 25 years that psychologists have closely examined the impact of emotion on reason and concluded that when we’re anxious, frightened, or angry, we’re dumber.
As Joseph LeDoux and others note, strong emotions bombard the mid-brain and block high-road analysis and reasoning — the work of the neocortex (or new brain). When we’re emotionally threatened, it’s natural to believe that what we feel is right, is right, especially when we’re angry.
In dogmatic minds, anxiety is frequently converted to anger in order to conceal the very anxiety that generated it. The mistaken assumption here is that dictatorial bravado will mask fear and bolster one’s identity as someone who absolutely knows what he or she is talking about. Anger can be a safe place to hide.
Quote:In the final psychological analysis, dogmatism is not about the superiority of one belief system over another or one leader versus another. And it’s not about ideology per se, or what people believe.
Rather, dogmatism is about how people adopt, communicate and enact their belief systems. More importantly, it is about personal identity — fragile, brittle identity that is externally authored by influential authority figures.
This is the crux of matter. Focusing on beliefs doesn’t get to the core if the issue because it’s not, it’s the outer layer of a deeper problem.
The key here is in trying to understand yourself and your wife not to let dogma encompass you(which is really hard since biologically defenses raise automatically to protect identity and assumption world view.
Try to understand it isn’t actually related to beliefs, and the anger is actually anxiety hiding and masking itself.
By the same token, let the knowledge help you with a self check, least you become dogmatic in response to the anxiety manifesting as anger to protect identity an assumptive world view.
Establish a new personal identity together based on love that isn’t tied to the church or another set of dogma.
It should be independent of outside forces or influences for it to remain grounded and stable.
My wife doesn’t know the history, but she understands my identity isn’t tied to the church or dogma of another kind since I regulate myself to what I experienced and what is well researched independent of outside influence. But it doesn’t mean I don’t take into consideration new information presented in church or other places. In they way I help her to understand that I will always be changing, based on new information and new experiences. But that I will always love and support her independent of church, work, country, job, race, beliefs, culture. My love for her isn’t tied to those external things. It’s tied to who she is as an individual who loves and cares for others. It’s about her, all that makes her her, not about some isolated part of her. This these things to influence or affect my love and support for her. It’s stable because identity isn’t tied to one or just a few sources, it’s spread out. I let her know that. It’s part of me but only a part. Identity is spread out so when something happens to new experiences or information it doesn’t collapse because it doesn’t depend on any one source(or few sources).
Because everybody is different there’s probably no one right way. I certainly didn’t do it right, it did not go well. I would advise against dumping all at once. I think we have reached a delicate balance where she doesn’t know all my doubts and I don’t tell. fisherman wrote:My question is, how did you tell your spouse about your doubts? Did you just lay it on them or did you work it in over several months? Were there any repercussions? What impact did it have on your relationship?
I didn’t plan it, but the floodgates opened one night. We dealt pretty well with one emotional outburst, but then reality set in: things have changed and we both feel blindsided. We tread lightly for awhile. I told him a couple of times that the loneliness is just too much for me and we need to find some avenues for discussion. Since then we’ve talked a bit and we stop when he’s reached his limit.
My only advice is to keep other people out of it – like John Dehlin or Kate Kelly, for instance. We lose focus and tenderness. I learned that the hard way this weekend.
Ann – I am so sorry. My heart and prayers will go toward you and your husband today. fisherman – you have a lot of good advice here. The reason I posted how I felt was not because my experience was universal but to present some sense of what a believing spouse may feel. You don’t know this yet – but you are on a path for both of you now. This isn’t a hobby like golf, where you go with guys sometimes and she has her girls night out thing. It may not even be your fault that your here. By that I mean you weren’t looking for “stuff” it just fell in your lap. In our case we were seminary teachers. We loved our kids, our calling, we were gung-ho. And gung-ho opened the door.
Right now in the church for nearly every faith crisis individual – there is a spouse connected. I am not sure the church sees that yet. This puts you in a great spot. You get to write this chapter in your life or marriage. We don’t have a lot of doctrine, dogma or examples on it. We will teach future generations from our own experience. My biggest suggestion is – Don’t Let This Override Your Marriage. If you still love her, make her your priority. Show her, step up your home game, and if you need to vent – come over here. That’s what this is for. Fill her well with confidence in her marriage. That will go a long way to healing when the pain comes along.
I took the slow approach too. and I actually started telling my mother things first, since I thought she would take it better than my husband (still true). He has been open to some thoughts I had, and really angry about others. Overall, I found it is better not to tell him how I feel. That is really hard to do, and probably can’t last in the long run, but it always seems to end badly when I try to talk to him about things. Strangely enough, while it use to be me that was always the more religious one, now that I have had my experience of losing faith, he has stepped into my former shoes. It’s too bad in a way, because things would have been easier if he had remained less interested in religion like he use to be. My mom and my husband are the only two people who know that I am having any issues with the church. They both seem to be in denial of how serious I am about my current situation. I, like you, consider myself agnostic at this point. Neither one seems to think it will last. I don’t see what could possibly change my opinion however, so I guess in the near future things will come to a head. I tested the waters of possibly not wearing garments anymore with my husband, and that made him very angry, so I may be stuck, having to fake it at church with no easy way out. I don’t want to end our marriage, but I wonder if he would consider it if i were to live authentically to how I currently believe. I don’t know if my story helps at all, I just wanted to give another perspective. I think it depends on your spouse to how it will affect your marriage, and while some others have commented on eventual success, there are some situations that end up more like mine, with denial and having to hide your true self. Of course this probably wont last, so perhaps I will have to update my story at some point.
I don’t have time to relate my experience with this, but I have explained it in another recent thread that you can probably look up. I will say that my situation is pretty unique here since my wife and I were not married in the temple to begin with. She still expected me to “come around,” however, so we still had a kind of crisis point. Thankfully things have improved drastically. I would consider my experience an overall success—my wife even says she’s glad for my crisis of faith because it woke her up to how blindly complacent and judgmental she had been. Being able to accept each other and communicate about our feelings has been a big improvement over the strained silence we used to have. But like I said, my experience doesn’t seem to be very typical. Thank you all so very much for your advice and relating your personal experience with this. I’ve been under A LOT of stress about this but decided to begin the process. While we were driving we were having a discussion about scripture study with our children. Despite what I may think, I still want to raise my kids in the Church, have them go on missions, and live the Gospel. True or not it does bring happiness and helps you become a better person. I told her that my doubts were getting worse and scripture study may do me some good as well. I then went into it a ‘little’ bit and it didn’t even phase her. She has been realizing where I’m at (probably due to my increasing cynicism) and said she would support me. I’ll tell more later cause she just got home. My wife and I recently watched a movie called “Creation” which is about Darwin and describes some of his internal struggles and with his orthodox Christian wife. After watching the movie it put me into a funk and reminded me of my doubts. My wife knows that I discount or don’t believe some aspects of orthodox LDS doctrine, but I wouldn’t necessarily recommend my response after the show: I asked her what would happen if I left the church – her response was immediate and direct “If my assumptions about the type of person you are ever become false then I would have to leave you.” I’ve never told my wife in any sudden way. She knows my doubts and my concerns – which have grown over time – and I usually (apparently except when I’m in a funk) am a very supportive husband who tries to keep a tentative peace by not complaining too loudly.
You didn’t ask this question, but I also try to be intellectually honest with my children. I go on weekly “dates” with my older children and a few times I’ve told them that my testimony isn’t necessarily what they think it is, that there are doctrines that I don’t connect with and don’t believe (and which I specifically name and provide examples), and that they can talk to me at any time now or in the future. As far as the children are concerned, my wife tells them her point of view, I tell them my point of view and we let them decide.
fisherman wrote:True or not it does bring happiness and helps you become a better person. I told her that my doubts were getting worse and scripture study may do me some good as well. I then went into it a ‘little’ bit and it didn’t even phase her. She has been realizing where I’m at (probably due to my increasing cynicism) and said she would support me.
Hi fisherman. It sounds like you and I are having similar experiences with our spouses. My wife recently realized on her own that my beliefs have changed. She asked me to tell her everything and said she didn’t want me to keep secrets from her. So I told her a little bit to see how she would respond. She took it kind of hard for a day or two. Now she has been asking me specific questions as she thinks of them. Now that her initial shock has worn off, we have been able to have some good conversations that have brought us closer together. I think she is seeing the Church in a different light now, though I am very careful not to push my views on her.
That is great that your wife said she would support you! I look forward to hearing more about your experience.
I’m glad you let us know how you’ve been doing. I’m definitely interested to hear more about how things are going when you have time. Best of luck to you.
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