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Roy wrote:
The fourth and final stage of committed relationships is about renewal. Not exactly a renewal of the honeymoon, but a more mature, realistic, and truly loving renewal. We come to accept our spouse or our parents or the Church, and we come to accept ourselves. We allow God to run the universe, and we become more content to let go of things we cannot change. A deeper, more mature love begins to emerge…/quote]
This marriage analogy really resonates with me and I enjoyed reading the concept fleshed out. I have been married for 25 years and have deeply experienced all these stages and am now happily in stage four. It truly was worth all the time and effort we put into our marriage to get to where we are now. It gives me incentive to try and “stick things out” with my relationship with God.
That being said, I sure do miss the honeymoon stage.
Martha wrote:Roy wrote:The fourth and final stage of committed relationships is about renewal. Not exactly a renewal of the honeymoon, but a more mature, realistic, and truly loving renewal. We come to accept our spouse or our parents or the Church, and we come to accept ourselves. We allow God to run the universe, and we become more content to let go of things we cannot change. A deeper, more mature love begins to emerge…/quote]
This marriage analogy really resonates with me and I enjoyed reading the concept fleshed out. I have been married for 25 years and have deeply experienced all these stages and am now happily in stage four. It truly was worth all the time and effort we put into our marriage to get to where we are now. It gives me incentive to try and “stick things out” with my relationship with God.
That being said, I sure do miss the honeymoon stage.
I think it is possible to get back to the honeymoon stage in regards to Church, marriage and life in general. I don’t pretend to know exactly how, but I believe humans can do amazing things.
Have you ever awakened in the morning and felt like the grass was greener and the sky bluer? What changed from then to now? I doubt that the grass or sky changed color! I think what changed was how the person interpreted things.
I wan to apologize for my negative post in this thread. I didn’t mean to contaminate people with my negativity. Personally, I have been contemplating the kind of information people share and I should have described things better.
Having been spending more time on Ex-Mormon and NOM boards recently, I can completely see where OP is coming from! kristmace wrote:Having been spending more time on Ex-Mormon and NOM boards recently, I can completely see where OP is coming from!
indeed. I eventually stopped visiting NOM. To me it always felt like a stopping place on the way out (physically or mentally) where as stayLds helped me tremendously to regain a desire to believe. I even took a short break from here from a while as I no longer felt the same need for other’s opinions. I eventually came back because I love the community and wanted to contribute to the mission of stayLds.
I had that problem with exmo boards, I suppose it is partly because of the true/false dichotomy we promote. Some of what the exmos said were perfectly true, and some of it was personal experience (which I can’t prove either way)… but some of it was ridiculous.
Martha, Great analogy! Been thinking about it a lot. Couple of thoughts:
Martha wrote:I think an interesting analogy would be to marriage. After a time, we find out that our mate is not perfect (banish the thought)
Imperfection doesn’t simply belong to the spouse. IMO, for a person to make the marriage work for them, they have to allow for imperfections in the spouse, and recognize that they themselves also have imperfections. More importantly, I think in really successful relationships, both parties implicitly see the other person as perfect for them, and don’t even categorize imperfections that must be overlooked. Recognizing that most of us have less-than-ideal relationships, we still generally try to de-emphasize the things that could otherwise drive us crazy, and naturally dwell on the positive. Focusing on imperfections in the spouse, while minimizing one’s own imperfects is the simplest and most convenient way to unhappiness in marriage.Martha wrote:It can be cathartic to talk with others about the universal problems with men (or women). Misery loves company. But in the end if you want to try and make your marriage work, that interaction doesn’t really help.
Funny on this one. For many, it is second-nature to complain about their spouse, when their spouse is not present. According to stereo-types, women confide in their mom or sister about their husbands and men complain about their wives over several beers at the local pub every Friday night. As you said, it may be cathartic, but it doesn’t really help. I’d go a step further and say that it is actually counter-productive, if what you want is to make the marriage work.I think this gets to the heart of the matter in regards to analogy with the church. Complaining sometimes is fine, and can even be helpful for some people and in some situations. Doing it all the time does not help the marriage work. What I find so helpful here at StayLDS is the voicing of frustrations for the purpose of trying to find a way through or around a problem… not simply venting. It’s a bit like seeing a marriage counselor to work through problems; after all, we presumably all want to “stay LDS” in some regard, even if it is just barely… and we frequently need help to do so. In my own case, I feel better about the Church now than I did before I found this site. Thanks to all of you for helping me. I’m stuck in this marriage because my real-life spouse and family are still in it. I probably wouldn’t stay if that weren’t the case, though the point is moot, because I am in that situation, so I do stay. You all have provided an invaluable opportunity for me. The result for me, at least, has been to focus on the positives, without forgetting the negatives.
I think staying away from negative sites is crucial in the healing process. Visiting sites and listening to podcasts where the issues are rehashed over and over again in a negative wayis like trying to lose weight while regularly binging on Hostess snacks. BEWARE OF SPIRITUAL CHOCODILES! Seriously, it just won’t work. This thread reminds me of Fatherof4husbandof1. I don’t know him – his last post was before I got here. On 24 May 2012, he
wrote
Quote:A year and a half has past since I wrote this introduction post. I sit and consider what I wrote then and what I’ve learned since that time and how my life has changed. I’m sure some of you have or could perform this same exercise. Rarely does a day pass that I don’t read a book on church history, or listen to a podcast. The ramifications of my decisions have penetrated the lives of friends and family causing a ripple or a tsunami that cannot be recalled. One thing that remains the same I try to “do what is right and let the consequences follow”
Quote:I can understand someone being a cultural mormon, I don’t know if you can ever get it all out of your system. I will resign as soon as my wife will do the same.
He made only one more post after that one, and it was just to ask about where someone is from.I love the marriage analogy. My relationship is changed, has been challenging at times… But I love my marriage. We’ve chosen to make it work. Shawn wrote:I think
staying away from negative sites is crucial in the healing process. Visiting sites and listening to podcasts where the issues are rehashed over and over againin a negative wayis like trying to lose weight while regularly binging on Hostess snacks. BEWARE OF SPIRITUAL CHOCODILES!…Seriously, it just won’t work. This thread reminds me of Fatherof4husbandof1. I don’t know him – his last post was before I got here…On 25 May 2012, he…wrote:
Quote:I can understand someone being a cultural mormon, I don’t know if you can ever get it all out of your system. I will resign as soon as my wife will do the same.
He made only one more post after that one, and it was just to ask about where someone is from.I remember Fatherof4husbandof1, but even if he did end up resigning I wouldn’t say the main reason why was because of any deliberate seeking out and constantly dwelling on negativity toward the Church. The impression I got was that he was a fairly typical active member of the Church until he accidentally stumbled onto a video online that exposed him to problems related to the Book of Abraham translation and after that he was already emotionally checked out and disengaged from the Church and there was basically no going back to the way he believed in it before. If he felt more comfortable leaving the Church behind under these circumstances then what is so negative about that? To make that judgment you basically have to start with the assumption that most members should believe in almost everything the Church teaches and remain active and if not then most of the blame should be on them which I doubt.
To me a real example of unfair negativity toward the Church would be the way some bitter ex-Mormons or disaffected members say things along the lines that the Church is an evil profit-oriented corporation and the Church leaders are guilty of deliberate fraud. Even if the Church isn’t exactly what it claims to be that doesn’t necessarily mean almost everything about it is automatically bad. Then there are the militant atheists. If someone honestly doesn’t believe in God then I can respect that but when some people start acting like it is stupid for anyone else to believe in God and the world would supposedly be a better place without any religion that’s the kind of thing I get tired of listening to and one of the main reasons why I mostly stopped reading NOM, FLAK, and ex-Mormon sites more than any fear that they will influence my own beliefs for the worse.
Robert Kirby wrote:“You aren’t doing a good job obeying the Articals [sic] of Faith either. Why don’t you leave the church for once and all because you aren’t being a true member if you don’t want to have faith like the rest of us.”
Ironically, I don’t just get this zero tolerance, everybody-the-same, all-or-nothing faith logic from fellow churchgoers.
I also get it from ex-Mormons, non-Mormons, and anti-Mormons, people every bit as insistent on correlating my faith. If I don’t agree with everything at church, why would I believe anything? I should leave with them.
“I don’t understand how a liberal-thinking guy like you can actually be a Mormon.”
As brother Kirby has so recently demonstrated, there are “haters” both inside and outside the church. For some people, in some situations, resigning or the less extreme measure of inactivity could be seen as “Taking a break from the Haters.” There is no shame in this. Even though, ironically this might be exactly what the “haters” are clamoring for – for one to “pick a side” and stop being so infuriatingly hard to classify.
DA, sorry for taking so long to respond.
DevilsAdvocate wrote:I remember Fatherof4husbandof1, but even if he did end up resigning I wouldn’t say the main reason why was because of any deliberate seeking out and constantly dwelling on negativity toward the Church. The impression I got was that he was a fairly typical active member of the Church until he accidentally stumbled onto a video online that exposed him to problems related to the Book of Abraham translation and after that he was already emotionally checked out and disengaged from the Church and there was basically no going back to the way he believed in it before.
I admit I know very little about his experience. It would be better for me to speak generally regarding this topic.I think visiting sites and listening to podcasts where the issues are rehashed over and over again
in a negative waywill generally lead one further into a faith crisis and is detrimental to staying LDS. It could lead people out of the church when they otherwise could have made staying in the church work out, and I still believe staying is important and good. Rehashing the issues can distort them by making them seem bigger than they really are. It can make some people disregard the good in the church.
Shawn wrote:DA, sorry for taking so long to respond…I admit I know very little about his experience. It would be better for me to speak generally regarding this topic…I think visiting sites and listening to podcasts where the issues are rehashed over and over again
in a negative waywill generally lead one further into a faith crisis and is detrimental to staying LDS. It could lead people out of the church when they otherwise could have made staying in the church work out, and I still believe staying is important and good…Rehashing the issues can distort them by making them seem bigger than they really are. It can make some people disregard the good in the church.Maybe so but I worry about always making excuses for the Church and minimizing the most common issues people have with it almost as if the Church can never be wrong mostly being a case of prolonging the agony. Even if many individual members are content to overlook and not worry too much about these issues that just leaves them sitting there for others to have to deal with eventually down the road anyway (Luke 8:16-17, John 8:32). Maybe it is fairly common for Church members to be able to put a few issues on the shelf and try to put a positive spin on it or say that it doesn’t really matter but there’s always a chance that they will keep running into more problems until the shelf collapses completely.
That’s why I don’t believe simply disagreeing with the Church about various issues is necessarily negative; in fact I think hearing that if you don’t agree with everything the Church teaches that doesn’t mean you need to leave if you don’t want to is actually a positive and heart-warming message compared to the oppressive message that if you don’t believe some of this then it is not acceptable and you should repent of your supposed mistake. But because too many members have already been given the impression that so many of the Church’s doctrines absolutely need to be true and if not there’s almost no point to any of it anymore it’s no surprise to me that we are ending up with so many bitter ex-Mormons and disaffected members that don’t see much to like or respect about the Church because it looks like some of it is almost certainly not true the way they were led to expect.
Thank you DA. The past few days it has been pointed out to me that I tend to stay in the corner of my convictions and don’t budge, whatever those convictions are. Your response hit home in a lightening bolt way. Thank you.
DevilsAdvocate wrote:Maybe so but I worry about always making excuses for the Church and minimizing the most common issues people have with it almost as if the Church can never be wrong mostly being a case of prolonging the agony.
I see what you mean there. I have stopped making excuses, unless chalking something up to human imperfections counts as such.
I am not saying that issues should be ignored or minimized. Visiting sites and listening to podcasts where the issues are rehashed over and over again in a negative way is quite different from discussing the issues and seeking a resolution. For example, listening to and reading “exit stories” has not helped me. The last podcast I listened to got me seriously depressed. I think studying polygamy and anachronisms ceases to be useful at some point. I have found there is no resolution to some issues so I am seeking peace until more answers are available.
I’m out of time. More later.
mom3 wrote:Thank you DA. The past few days it has been pointed out to me that I tend to stay in the corner of my convictions and don’t budge, whatever those convictions are…Your response hit home in a lightening bolt way. Thank you.
Thanks mom3, I appreciate it. I try to remind myself to not get carried away with some of the criticism of the Church but at the same time I think the Church deserves at least some responsibility for the “negative” reactions of many ex-Mormons and disaffected members for setting false expectations about the overall reliability of prophets/scriptures and giving members plenty of glaring reasons to doubt their official claims. If all you ever hear about is how true all this supposedly is and that’s presented as the primary reason why it is so important, worth sacrificing so much for, etc. and then some of it starts to look like it isn’t true after all then sometimes it’s hard to look for and appreciate any remaining value and good points in the Church when that’s not what you are used to thinking about; so instead the tendency is often to mostly focus on finding and complaining about whatever else the Church is wrong about.
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