- This topic is empty.
-
Posts
-
So I am trying to find my place in the church after a faith crisis that probably started 10 years or so and continues. Ultimately I believe the church is good and I think that Mormon theology is beautiful and comforting but I no longer use the language of “the church is true.” I particularly struggle with elements of the modern church and it’s treatment of liberals, women, and LGTB members. I stay because direction is important and I think we are moving forward (slowly). I also stay because I’m stubborn and believe that the church belongs to me and I’m not leaving something I love just because I don’t exactly fit the mold. The church is my home and family and it helps me be more Christ-like even if it weren’t true. My current struggle is in my marriage. After Kate Kelly was excommunicated, I expressed my disappointment to my wife who completed disagreed and we got into a big fight. The same fight happened after John Dehlin’s excommunication. It caught me off guard because she’s not your typical orthadox Mormon. She’s a convert, a democrat, and supports gay marriage so I was surprised. I guess there have been signs before. There was a time a few years back when I was reading rough stone rolling and started to talk to her about Joseph Smith’s polygamy and she didn’t want to hear anything about it. Recently I talked to her about my views of the BoM as symbolic and not historical and she just got quiet and didn’t respond. She’s made it clear that she doesn’t want to talk about it. So I’ve had to make this journey alone. I’ve been going to LDS blogs and podcasts like Mormon Stories when she’s not around like they are porn sites because she wouldn’t like it. I’ve wanted to talk to her about my spirituality and how I view the church but I’m afraid it will drive a wedge between us.
I’m also keeping most of it to myself because I feel like I have to be someone for her. I feel like she needs me to be the worthy priesthood holder who has a solid testimony and doesn’t struggle with doubts or issues with faith. She deserves a strong Mormon husband and father who knows the church is true and holds to the rod. Right now I am pretending to be that for her even though I know that’s not who I am. Except for the few moments referenced above, I don’t talk about it. I feel bad for her that she has to have a husband who struggles with testimony. I feel inadequate as a husband, father, and priesthood holder. I want to be open with her but I feel that it will only cause problems and make her afraid that I’ll leave the church and she’ll lose her Eternal family, even though I have no intention of leaving.
Has anyone struggled with similar issues in their marriage? Any suggestions?
The effect that my faith crisis has had on my marriage has definitely been the hardest thing for me to deal with too. My bishop (and the previous bishop) is completely aware of where I stand with everything, and has been very supportive and understanding. I’ve even talked about things with my father-in-law, and he has been very helpful and accepting. My bishop allowed me to baptize my son, and has signed a temple recommend for me (he keeps it in his desk drawer just waiting for my signature since I don’t feel like it’s a place I want or need to be). But, my wife was upset that I baptized my son, and feels like I’m not worthy to use the priesthood. She even went and asked another brother in the ward to give her a priesthood blessing and tried to hide it from me. I found out about it from my son. If she had just asked me if she could have our home teachers give her a blessing, I would have been completely fine with it. But it bothers me that she went and found somebody to give her the blessings and tried to keep it all a secret. I think the pressure that the church places on eternal family and worthiness to be in the celestial kingdom keeps people toeing the line who might leave otherwise. It’s like the way that Joseph Smith approached some of his lady-friends with the story that their marriage to him would ensure exaltation for their entire family. How is somebody supposed to exercise their own free agency, when the eternal state of their entire family will be affected by their decision?
I try to avoid talking about church-related topics as much as possible when I’m at home. I feel like I’ve been able to find a lot of support and understanding from everybody I’ve talked with, except my wife. I would love to talk with her about things, but she doesn’t want to hear it. And I don’t blame her for feeling that way. I know that she’s stuck in that position of worrying that my decisions are going to ruin our families eternal connection. How am I supposed to compete with that? That’s one of the many reasons that I don’t enjoy the temple. I’ve never loved it, but I’ve grown to like it less and less as time goes on. I just can’t believe that a merciful God would require people to go through those rituals in order to be allowed to be with their family forever. How many of you would turn your children away when they came home if they couldn’t show you the secret handshake and the code word when they came back?
So, I can relate to what you’re going through. Unfortunately, I don’t have any helpful suggestions. I’ve been trying to figure out how to make that work as well. Good luck!
🙂 I have had a bit of the same. My wife wants nothing to do with any of “that stuff” – even when I try to tell her I am looking at historical books written by active members. I have come to the conclusion she is scared and is afraid she may fall if she starts looking. It is a bit of what the LDS church as taught – that anything that isn’t pro/positive LDS is anti-Mormon and has the spirit of the devil. Read it and you will be in his control.
KeitherB – I don’t have any advice and it has hurt my already troubled marriage.
Keither, That has been my exact experience with my wife. It’s been a terrible journey so far. Like yours, my wife was liberal, pro gay marriage, and slightly unorthodox. But she dug in her heels hard when I expressed doubts. At first I thought it was because she thought she was losing her forever family and that she actually believed in the literal true church in a TBM way. More recently I realized that it probably has more to do with the expectation that women in the church carry with them to be perfect, to have perfect families, to be the one who steps in to make their husbands and their kids perfect. I believe this because I know she still is troubled by gay member mistreatment and is weary of Joseph Smith. She knows deep inside that the church has issues, and basically agrees with me on an intellectual level about church historicity. But emotionally, church is where she feels safe, and right now, when she feels threatened, she wants to find safer, secured harbor.
I found the following helpful, from a females perspective on another board:
“1. Although men grow up with the pressure of the priesthood, women group up with the pressure to perfect. Perfect themselves, their future, their future children, their future spouse.
2. As girls we are taught to respect and obey our parents, our Heavenly Father, and thanks to the Proclamation of the Family …our husband.
3. We are (generally speaking) pleasers and loyal supporters in large part due to the conditioning of growing up in the church.
4. We learn from Primary to Young Women to Relief Society to sustained our priesthood holders, and abide by and receive council from them. BUT we are also taught that if they are not doing the Lord’s will, it is up to us to be their strength through prayer and fasting, reading scriptures, and perfecting ourselves to help them find the way. I can recount MANY lessons that give the message to women in the church that they are not only responsible for their children’s eternal happiness, but their husband’s eternal happiness as well…because after all —isn’t that what we were created for?”
So be patient and help her feel secure with this adjustment, and hopefully, eventually, she will be at peace with it and you can move forward together.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
I am also in a similar position with my wife. We have reached a sort of detente where I simply don’t talk about it. It’s OK for me to throw out an occasional thing like we don’t know April 6 was Christ’s birthday or a fitting quote by Pres. Uchtdorf but otherwise we literally just don’t have religious discussion. It does affect our marriage, but we’ve been this way for over 10 years so we’ve learned to live with it more or less – it’s just the way things are. I do however try to be the best husband and father I can be – that has nothing to do with the church or the priesthood. There are lots of good husbands and fathers outside the church. As far as priesthood goes, maybe you need to redefine what being a good priesthood holder means for you and stop being so hard on yourself.
I was/am the spouse. My husband went down the rabbit hole first. My response, which is different than most, was to battle back using Rough Stone Rolling. It didn’t work, but it was my effort. We struggled, strained, and hit a wall of silence. The big D was looming, then he listened to Natasha Parker, and we reached out to her. It helped a lot. We had many personal decisions to make, and find we still have to make them every day. Today he is agnostic and totally inactive, me I am the lone stayer. My view has changed dramatically, but being Mormon is in me and I can’t quite close the door.
My wife preserves her inner peace by not exploring and analyzing my own attitudes toward the church. I don’t talk about it with her because it upsets her. I would suggest doing the same. I also recommend fining her emotional needs by having her do a marriagebuilders.com emotional needs questionnaire. Do everything possible to meet her non-church needs very well to compensate for lack of churchiness.
I do that and I believe it has helped my situation since my wife would rather I was a full-on believer like I used to be.
My husband is a member of FAIR and FARMS. He is an apologist. He is a bright, educated guy who publishes prolifically. We can read the same article and come to vastly different conclusions. It has made for some very interesting and heated arguments on our evening walks.
I found found certain topics are open for discussion and certain topics go too quickly into a heated debate. I love to have his input .. But his input is that of an apologist. So if I snort at his answer and roll my eyes, it doesn’t help..
So, I find faith, spiritually, charitable work, women and the priesthood, nature of God .. Those sorts of things are wonderful to discuss. We do not discuss JS and polygamy, modern prophets and when GAs do stupid things .. Unless it is McConkie.
More than anything else, through our years of marriage, we have realized that while we compliment each other, we are very different from one another. We are not mirrored reflections. I don’t expect him to meet all my conversational or intellectual needs. We both have interests that the other doesn’t share. We would respect each other less if we agreed with each other in all ways. We think so differently .. How could we reach the same conclusions?
I still attend church because it makes him happy to have me there. That is my compromise. He doesn’t expect me to participate in most church things anymore. We pay tithing on his income. Not on mine. I donate money to causes within our community. That has become my tithe offering.
We both try REALLY hard to love and respect each other’s choices. And recognize that as adults we both stay in this relationship because we want to be here with each other. So .. We make time for the relationship. Kindness and love are two very powerful things.
I have nothing profound. It’s really hard sometimes. We’ve settled in to some compromises, and in some ways our marriage has never been better because we’re so aware of this as a threat. I did tell him at one point that I was very lonely and really wanted to talk. In exchange for not just putting his fingers in his ears and saying, La, la, la, I can’t hear you, I agree to stop talking when he has reached his limit. So some conversations end very abruptly. But it’s better than it was in the beginning. All is not lost! Good luck. I appreciate the discussion here because I’m really struggling with how my faith crisis affects our marital and sexual relationship. I’m afraid I don’t have any answers, but we’ve started meeting with a counselor and I think that has helped. It is really hard to talk about anything spiritual, because we both end up being frustrated. I’m just trying to be the best husband and father I can be and be as supportive as I can for her desires to have a TBM family. Hello KeitherB, I feel for you. My wife is a wonderful person who I love very much and I’d do almost anything for her, and we’ve been married almost 20 years now. She’s as TBM as they come and very much a black and white thinker in everything, not only church. That way of thinking causes friction from time to time, and similar to what others have mentioned in their replies, we have an informal agreement to not bring up controversial topics like my faith transition. I think she tries to forget it.
It makes me lonely and I don’t feel there’s really anyone I can talk to face to face about my faith challenges – it’s almost exclusively limited to this forum. She may feel the same lonliness, I’m not sure, because there’s probably nobody she can talk about my faith transition with. Occasionally the friction is ugly but for the most part we get along very well. To be fair to my wife, she may feel “confused” by my behavior. I’m in a somewhat visible church calling and although I’m very precise publicly in my language about what I believe, to her and to most people my testimony probably sounds pretty TBM. Also when we first got married I was the more doctrinally rigid of the two of us, so it’s likely she feels I’ve change quite a lot and she’s been the steady one.
About 2 weeks ago my son said that in his biology class they were talking about evolution. I stated that to me there’s no question about the truthfulness of evolution and that we shouldn’t put religion anywhere in the evolution discussion. I also probably said something along the lines of anytime religion conflicts with science go with science. That made her very angry and she basically put me into a corner and said I needed to retract that statement and support the prophet. She apologized a little later and I said I’d be more respectful of her feelings also.
It’s not perfect but it’s probably not any worse than other sources of friction like money, time, and family priorities. I do think it’s possible for us middle wayers to get along with people on other ends of the believing spectrum – believers and non believers alike.
Hi All, Great post Keither. Boy, many of us can relate to this. I have been married 31 years!!! I was “the wife”!
😯 I had never heard about most of the stuff he talked about. I finally realized where his heart was. He didn’t go out looking for trouble with the church, he went searching for answers for a friend struggling. It was then he came across so many issues he just couldn’t close it all out. It is SHOCKING to say the least. Our son came to us with questions because he had a teacher at school that got the kids to think a bit for themselves and he was arriving at the conclusion that there were so many great religions and philosophies out there! He is right, but at the time I encouraged him to keep going to church because I would say, “there is good to glean from it.” (Of course, secretly hoping at the time that something would touch his heart and change his mind) Again, what a daunting request for someone who is standing there feeling alone with questions…..keep going to church. Wow! My husband and son both continued to go to church and support me. I am so grateful that I am now able to understand what they were feeling. Yes, I am a Mormon in my core but I have come to open my heart and mind to the flaws, lies, and uncomfortable issues with the church. I took the words “Follow the Prophet, you won’t go astray” literally but I am so much more comfortable now, that I have changed my paradigm about the leaders being perfect. Things that ultimately helped me come around were articles and podcasts from members which helped me see the imperfections, which I might add was extremely painful and devastating at first. My husband was awesome and so sweet and understanding and I began to understand him and what he had been going through as well as my son. That’s when my heart really began to swell with empathy of what he had been going through all alone. I apologized to both my hubby and my son. Ultimately, my relationship with both my husband and son has grown so much.It helped me that I have a sister and brother who are also going through their own faith journeys so I do believe it is so important to get yourself some support. Too bad their isn’t a website that TBM could go to and get a better understanding from others of what their spouse is feeling. Of course, this would probably never work because at the TBM level we feel pretty “correct” and unwillingly to view or discuss uncomfortable things.
One thing I would suggest is just working on the love and connection in your marriage that is not religious! Dates, thoughtful acts, service, etc. In our church, church becomes so intertwined in everything. It doesn’t matter when we’re TBM we hardly realize how much it is a part of every single aspect of our life. Stepping back now, I have come to realize how important people are and relationships. Why I fell in love with my hubby in the first place……not all religious answers!
🙂 KeitherB, Some thoughts, but understand, this is just my perspective, and may not match yours… I want to encourage you to be open and honest without the need to pull down your wife’s faith. I want to encourage you to understand from her perspective. Some of what I will tell you might seem blunt. All I can say is that when it comes to marriage and mental health, I will be bold.
On differences of opinion: I am an Atheist. Yet, I’m not bothered by the excommunications of KK or JD. Why? Because I see the Church as a voluntary organization –
in both directions. KK and JD both openly opposed the Church and/or its doctrines. I’m not saying I disagree with either of them, but I am far more of an apostate in terms of what I believe than KK and at least as far removed as JD… and I am still in the Church. It’s not like I’m hiding; my Bishop and SP both know all about me. So, it’s difficult for me to say that they didn’t bring this on themselves to some degree. The reason I bring this up is simply to point out that there is no right or wrong opinion regarding the excommunications… only opinion. On differences of perspective: Now, you and I might be able to have a discussion about it and never raise our voices. But that’s because we both operate from a common perspective: that the Church is not the Kingdom of God on the Earth, but rather is led by men. So, our discussions and disagreements can be cordial and illuminating. I would expect and hope that you and I could have a civil dialog about it, each trying to understand the other. But that is because we aren’t having a discussion about faith or belief. Our discussion would be about organizational behavior. It’s like two people from the same race talking about racsim. They mostly see things from the same place. But put people of two different races, two different cultures, two different lifestyles, or in your case, two different religions in a room and ask them to talk about race, culture, lifestyle, or religion, and you are now in a realm where the discussion has shifted. On the surface, it may appear that the topic is one thing, but underneath, it is something entirely different.
On pretending: You said you’d like to talk to her about your spirituality and how you view the Church but you are afraid of driving a wedge between you. I can tell you from personal experience that keeping secrets of that magnitude WILL drive a wedge. When I sank into deep depression, I eventually had to be told by a counselor (professional, not bishopric), that “family secrets are not good.” When I finally came clean, it was a tremendous burden lifted from me, and I can count that as the exact moment that I began a spiritual transition that has begun to define me by what I do believe, rather than what I don’t. In my case, I was open with my wife, though not as much as I should have been early, but it was my kids and other family members that I was hiding from. It was destructive. It caused depression due to the un-winnable conundrum. I don’t recommend it.
On what to say and what not to say: My advice is not to argue about the doctrines, the church, or the culture. Figure out what you do believe, then tell your wife that you no longer believe it all, but here are things you still do believe and the Numero Uno thing that you believe in more than anything else is the two of you. So many times, over and over, I hear on these forums and in talking to other people a constant drumbeat of people arguing with their spouse over the wives of Joseph Smith or the BofA or [insert dubious doctrine]. You said “faith crisis is affecting my marriage”. OK. Ask yourself whether your faith crisis or your marriage is more important to you. Then prioritize everything outward based on your answer. If your quest to figure it all out is more important than your marriage, I can’t help you. But if your marriage is more important than your faith crisis, then just make sure that everything you say and do is with that in mind. I have come to believe that what hurts marriages during a faith crisis is the very human desire for validation. It is so strong in us that we can’t simply say, “I have left the Church” but we have to explain it in excruciating detail in order to absolve ourselves of responsibility. “It’s the Church’s fault, not mine.” I get it. I truly do. But when we say that to a believer, we are attacking their faith. “You see, the reason I’m leaving is that what you believe in is bogus.” Instead, for me, I have found that it is most helpful to say that I’m no longer a believer, but that I support you [whoever I’m talking to] and your faith and belief. When asked, I tell them I don’t want to get into reasons why. In every case, that has put me in a situation where the other party and I are talking about faith and belief, and that is something we both understand. Also, it’s not something that is subject to opinion. I am no longer a believer. That is a fact. It’s then easy to BUILD from there. Talking about the why’s, on the other hand, results in opinion and difference of opinion; and it’s very hard to build upon what we cannot agree upon. Eventually, my wife and I have been able to talk about culture-related issues and the Church, but by avoiding doctrine, we can operate on the same side of things. My believing wife and I both want more women with a voice, acceptance of gay/lesbian people in the Church, and for people to stop reading talks from the pulpit. Those are all secondary to matters of faith.
On responsibility: I believe I have a greater responsibility for kindness, patience, and accommodation. She and I were married in the Temple on a glorious day when we expected to merge our lives together based on love, God, faith, family, hard-work, and Church. Now, many of those key elements have taken a hit. I always keep in my mind that I am the one who changed, not her. It’s nobody’s fault. I’m not a sinner for changing. There is nothing deficient in me that caused me to change, yet I did change, nevertheless. So, I will continue to support my wife’s faith for as long as we are alive. But a funny thing. Because I treat her that way, I have received it all back in kind and then some. She is kind, patient and accommodating of me.
I wish you well. It’s a tough situation; but one in which love can prevail.
On Own Now wrote:Figure out what you do believe, then tell your wife that you no longer believe it all, but here are things you still do believe and the Numero Uno thing that you believe in more than anything else is the two of you.
In disagreements I tell my wife that I want to be her “knight in shining armor.” I do this to let her know that my heart is in a good place even when my delivery is lacking.
On the flipside – when DW is really frustrating me I try to remind myself that she is a woman of good will. This helps to not make the disagreement adversarial.
At first, my husband felt very threatened my my FC. Once he realized that it didn’t really affect our relationship as a couple .. That I wasn’t looking for a way to lose the church AND a spouse, he chilled out — a little. When he realized that I was working through my thoughts and feelings in a very methodical way — I am reading, discussing, praying and trying to live an honest and true-to-my-beliefs life, he chilled out a lot more.
At the end of the day, I think most spouses just want to know how this impacts their lives. I am trying really hard to have my FC have a minimal impact on his life. It is important to me that he doesn’t feel emotionally isolated or socially embarrassed by my actions.
Losing my testimony in the Church still allows me to be kind. I can be generous. I can be involved in service. I can continue my belief in God. I can make sure my beliefs and my words align in such a way as to allow a life of integrity and honesty, while keeping drama to a minimum.
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.