Further Light and Knowledge

FLAK'ers,

I want to do a Mormon Stories series on something to the effect of: "my spouse left me because I lost my LDS faith".

If any of you are interested in participating, please email me.

mormonstories@gmail.com

Thanks so much.

I don't fall into this category but I wonder if it would also be useful to do a podcast on "we knew each other for three weeks and then got engaged and married within two months - we felt the spirit and knew the other person was the 'right' person for us because they were an RM or devoted member".

In all seriousness, I think this topic (mormon marriage and divorce) is fraught with peril.

I personally do not think it's as simple as "leaving the spouse because they left the faith". It's also not as simple as getting married young and quickly dooms one's marriage either. While in recent years, the LDS church has been better about encouraging part member marriages to stay married (despite disaffection) - there is much more that needs to be done IMO. Each couple and situation is unique.

I believe systematic change needs to happen and it does not appear to be happening currently. The systematic change needs to start with the leadership.

Many former mormons left over these policies, and continue to leave over these policies. They are not bad people. They did not leave to sin or to break up their families - although that may have been some of the consequences of their leaving. They left out of integrity for themselves.

Maybe this time this thread won't end up being seven pages long. I can hope, right?

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First, I am grateful for all the intelligent thoughtful posts you have made on the board. You are one of my heros!

I am also not a good subject for this topic, as I am a never-mo married to a former-mo for over 40 years.

What strikes me is that lasting marriages seem to have one big thing in common; there is a shared history of struggle, a common experience, and a commitment to find effective means of resolving differences without driving one another crazy. This is a lot of hard work, and all of the easy answers are wrong. Authority based religions seem to intrude into this natural process and try to replace it with a rules based set of criteria. It seems to me that a person, their spouse, and a religious authority in the same bedroom is one person too many. Mormons are not the only folks with this problem; I see a lot of Catholics and fundamentalist Christians having trouble with it too.

It's not religion per se that drives people apart; it's religion that seeks to control the development of family relations. I cannot conceive of hurting my wife or children because of a tenet of my religion, nor can I concieve of my religion asking me to do so. When a religion does so, something has gone very very wrong.

Jamie

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"Now I troll back to my little cave where we no talk about things we no understand..." Malfalda

"Ummmm. Roadkill."

Aerin,

I'm very interested in this. Let's keep talking/planning.

I agree. It would be very easy to attribute my own divorce to leaving the church - I stopped attending, and divorce followed as night follows day. But "she divorced me because I left the church," while technically accurate, is misleading. I don't blame the church for the divorce. I blame the church for the marriage.

The real problem, as aerin said, is that we should never have got married in the first place. It was an act of blind faith in the prophets. We had very little in common, and for both of us it was completely against our natures. I had never seriously dated, but I was a returned missionary and well aware of my duty. She had never intended to get married, but was a new convert in the middle of the most intense love bombing she's ever had, and "marry a RM and live happily ever after" was all she heard.

"She left me because I left the church" makes it sound like her fault. She is just as much as victim as I was - probably more so. She gave up all her old (non-member) dreams, and sold them all for the Mormon fantasy marriage, and it never happened. At least I can start again, but she is still in the church, still dreaming the impossible dream.

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I agree with everything ever posted by Hellmut, Philo and Susan D.
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I fit into the category of this as well. But I suppose you could say I left "him" because he left the church. We only knew each other two weeks when we got engaged. Marrying four months later. I never should have married him. He never should have married me.
I believe feeling the spirit is so misleading. What most of us actually felt was pure and simple hot attraction. For a minute or two. The spirit leaves and what is left is two people who can't live together.
And these marriages wouldn't be complete if by that time a child or two wasn't already in the mix.

All this drama and hurt because we felt the spirit and married that hot, spiritual giant of an RM, just like the profits want.

red shoe - I thought you were married to goldarn.

Am I missing something here? Am I completely confused (that is more than possible)????

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I see/understand where you're going on this, but:

a large part of me says:

divorce is too easy, too convenient for self-centered, selfish ppl
Isn't there more learning, more growth in adapting to your partner than insisting on your own way in so many things?

For Many (as I suppose,anyway), a healthy relationship is A Step Away from negative thoughts, negative actions.
In that respect, I suppose divorce is a cop-out, the same perhaps in some ways as marriage for TBMs/Mormons is...

I now worship & fellowship with the Mennonites now (Seattle M.C.);
there are Very Few divorces, and MUCH MORE Happiness, respect, & kindness; they are visible every time we get together, there's none of the petty judgmentalism so common in Mormon practice.
I think all those things can work FOR a marriage -or- against it (as they seem to in Morland).


you have my email, Good Luck!

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The only way to discover the limits of the possible is to go beyond them into the impossible. "Technology and the Future" Arthur C. Clarke (1917 - ; Clarke's second law)

I am married to Goldarn. But there was a life before Goldarn. A dark and dreary life before I knew he existed. I was married at 19 to an RM who turned out to be a very dishonest person. I finally got a clue when he nearly went to jail. He has also been living with his husband now for the past 15 or so years. I don't trust him at all even now. He likes to take things, especially money, although one time it was large chest of drawers. (don't ask) One time on camera he took art work from an art gallery. He gave it to me as a gift. I handed it over to the police. I have a lot of very funny stories. Now they are funny, at the time it was just pure HELL! We were married just over 3 years.

Goldarn as been fresh air and we have two terrific boys. We've been married for 18 years now.

Oh and my first DH and I have one daughter together and now we have a granddaughter.

thanks red shoe - I was just confused there for a moment. Sorry to hear that your first husband was such a jerk (or, at least, not able to be honest).

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I am bumping this thread - I suppose I could start a new thread. This is a quote from Gloria Steinem about feminism. It's not really unrelated to this topic of faith-related divorce IMO.

I know she is a controversial figure, I'm hoping to discuss her ideas about people thinking they have to get married and stay married.

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