Leaving the church rocked my once-amazing marriage. Life after Mormonism was especially hard for my (now ex) wife.

I tried hard to help her, and to keep my marriage intact. I read counseling books, relationship manuals, sex manuals, seduction manuals, asked advice from friends, strangers, and relatives alike, lined us up with a series of counselors, researched depression and various forms of therapy, initiated activities and date nights and adventures, tried to really up my game as a husband and dad...all sorts of things. I wanted my ex to once again feel stable and settled, and to be who I had always thought she was. I wanted us all to make it together.

But in retrospect, I made a mistake. I mention it now in hopes that others can learn from what I did wrong.

The mistake I believe I made was in valuing temporary peace over long-term peace. Certain behaviours and attitudes persisted between us which were just totally incompatible with happy, healthy union; but rather than confront them fully, with my wife, I often tip-toed around them in order to avoid triggering blow-ups. So, often, I would either keep silent, or try to be as meek, and even circuitous, as I could, while addressing things, in order to keep things calm. So, the problems remained.

And because they remained, something began to happen to me: I began to split, emotionally and psychologically. Half of me yearned for what I had once had, and would have done anything for my beautiful, but lost and troubled, queen. But, more and more, after failing so many times, the other half began to give up, and even began to yearn to find someone else - someone who I could make happy, who got me, who enjoyed life in the way I did, etc.

And I would sometimes find myself driving around, obsessed with trying to figure out how to get my wife back, while at the same time wondering if that would be the day I would find the woman I perhaps should have been with all along - the woman with whom things would be easy, and fun, and with whom there could be the intense connection I craved. I felt like I was turning into someone I had never been before - someone who was in two different places at the same time, or like two different people jammed into the same body.

What I now believe I should have done was to stop, and *throw down* - even if that meant triggering another blow-up. Fully confront the issues with her - not in a mean way, but in a way that was focused, positive, and motivated by love and genuine concern. "This is what I see - I want to know what you see - Neither of us is happy, and I want us to work together to change that - Will you? - What can I do as a husband? Here is what I need from you...etc."

But I didn't do that - at least not at all that directly. I just...tried to keep the family going, tried to limit the blow-ups. I kept date nights going, adventures, notes, flowers...but the problems remained, because I never did fully jam a stick in the spokes, and stop the spinning long enough to be able to fix it.

And guess what happened?

I grew lonelier, and lonelier, and lonelier. And then, one night, it happened. I met a hottie who I really clicked with. There was a group of people there; but she and I chatted. A lot. We laughed. We got each other. She seemed to get me more in two minutes than the woman I had married fifteen years earlier, and who I lived with. For me, who always appreciated, even craved, a beautiful feminine presence in my life, and which I had lacked for a long time, the experience was like a shot of some mind-blowing drug.

And as with a forest in a long, hot, dry summer, just one simple spark was enough to make me explode into flames (of infatuation). A blaze of hormones consumed me. I couldn't stop thinking about her. I wondered how to see her again. It was terrible, thrilling, dangerous, weird, addictive, and bad, all at the same time.

Luckily, I managed to get possession of myself before anything happened. But I wonder if something might have, if, during those early throes of madness, we had found ourselves in different circumstances. Maybe then, my willpower would have broken, and I would have just gone berserk and made hot raging insane lion love to the only woman in years I had felt any connection with (she did seem open to that).

And that was the problem. By valuing "not dealing with a meltdown" more than I valued "being honest with myself and her, and confronting and hopefully eliminating problems once and for all", I not only allowed problems to remain, but allowed myself to get into an emotional state in which I could easily have ended up doing something terrible. I think I should have manned up much earlier, before it ever got that far, and just said, "hey...I love you, but we are completely broken, and we need to either both dive in to fixing it, or call this for what it is - sadly, over - and move on".

I'm not suggesting being a jerk - only being honest, and brave, and aware that when you don't fully confront and solve problems as they arise, you usually get them back with interest. Those are things I wasn't - or not enough.

Now, my marriage is over. Maybe, in the moment we realized Joseph Smith was no more a "prophet" than L. Ron Hubbard or the local taxi driver, it was destined to fail, no matter what. I don't know. What I do know is that tip-toeing around issues didn't help any, and it got me in a position where, given a few changes of circumstances, I might have done something I would regret far more than not fully confronting the problems which plagued us.

I hope the wives and husbands reading this, who might be in a similar situation, will be more vigilant, and brave, and honest with your spouse, than I was. Maybe your marriage can be saved, and you and your spouse can be happier than ever.

Best wishes,

Dr. Love



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 07/03/2014 03:38PM by Tal Bachman.

I don't want to intrude on your privacy, but I still am not sure what you are communicating and would like to understand better to learn from your experience. Could you get more specific? Did leaving the church cause her to look at you differently? Or did you look at her differently? Were old problems magnified or did new ones crop up?

It caused her to look at everything very differently (including me), and propensities which had been contained by fear of eternal repercussions were no longer contained.

If my post is too vague, I can just delete it. I wanted to help people, but I didn't want to embarrass, or say anything negative about, my ex. Maybe that's making the post unintelligible (?)



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/03/2014 05:23AM by Tal Bachman.

No, don't delete it, others will likely understand. I do know what you mean though about avoidance and conflict aversion actually resulting in death in a way. It's like people who drive too slowly on the highway trying to be safe, and actually causing collisions with that tactic.

Better to wake up and shake up when trouble presents itself in a marriage. My spouse and I are currently sleepwalking by mutual consent for a bit, but internal dynamics have got to be faced once the external factors clear up. Otherwise, what's the point other than security? Those of us who pulled the trigger on the church have demonstrated that security is not our #1 priority.

(Always thinking about that line in Annie Hall about how relationships are like sharks.)

Tal, I think you may have a good insight here. I can understand why you didn't wish to get confrontational, but I can also see the value of honestly facing each others' feelings and issues.

I am one who is slow on the uptake in understanding the dynamics of social problems. I am an Asperger's case. But I have learned to cope with this reality by being persistent in analyzing and peeling the onion, until those things that are obvious quickly to most people finally resolve for me, and I "get it".

So in dealing with leaving Moism, while DW has chosen to stay in, I slowly came to understand the dynamics, and when I got it, I would then be willing to face it, and to try to communicate with DW about it. Yes, this has been stressful at times, to put it mildly. But we have also been able to come to mutual understandings, and to make accommodations that have saved our marriage (so far). I also worked on myself, changing as much as possible to become a more understanding and compassionate, a more tolerant, person, which is a skill set I always need to improve.

I hope we stay together, but I also understand that life may yet take us in different directions. If so, I will try to see the good in that. But I won't stop trying to heal us both, as I do love her so much, something I know you understand all too well.

Thanks for sharing, you are always so honest in your thoughts and expressions.

That was a beautiful and perceptive post, Tal. I think some degree of abstraction was necessary to protect your ex and yourself, and you handle that kind of thing very well. I don't care if anyone else thinks it was vague. If I ever get married, I'll print out this post and put it on the refrigerator. Maybe then I'll think twice about snacking.

Once again, I'm sorry that your marriage broke up and limited your time with the kids. Sudden freedom acts on different people in wildly different ways.

I think you're being too hard on yourself. You assume that you could have fixed what was broken. Maybe not. More likely her schizophrenic religion led her down that path.

I sometimes joke that TSCC literally drives people crazy, but it's no laughing matter. The cult turns the ego against itself and creates an autoimmune disorder of the soul. I feel bad for you. The same thing happened to my wife.

Great post Tal, please leave it up.

I can understand how losing the church can alter the world we see ourselves in and therefore lead us to question the fit of all of the past decisions we've made with the new world and rules ahead of us.

I think it's an often unforeseen consequence of the collapse of mormonism. If it does go pop, utah may experience a glut of divorces and subsequent antisocial blow outs as a result.

The church does not provide an authentic life. But as a believer, we don't see it that way. Once people find their way out of the Mormon Maze, what is there left to see?

We have to find our own authentic life without someone telling us what to think. In the process of getting out, we essentially become a new person, and then is when we can produce an authentic person.

Unfortunately, without the church's filter, many of us are confronted with confusion on the path we should take.

I have been curious about what happened to Tal's marriage because I know that he loved her so much, and that he would have tried anything to make it work. Fortunately for us, here, Tal presents some helpful guides on choosing a new path..one that doesn't just put new "blinders" on our eyes...blinders that would have the effect of ignoring the realities of life.

Here we go round on our beautiful "pale blue dot." Make the best of this rare and beautiful opportunity as the universe becomes aware of its own existence.

I've never had a spouse, but in leaving the Church, I lost life-long friendships that I thought were solid. I never dreamed that anything would change at all, just because I'd left the Church. How wrong I was.

Maybe even if both spouses leave the Church, it will turn out that without the Church in your lives, you'll discover that you never really had as much in common as you thought you did.

I think that the Church brings together couples and friendships which might not otherwise happen without that corporation being the foundation and common factor between you.

So many people post on this forum thinking that if they can just de-convert their spouse as well, that everything will be just fine. But maybe that's not the case.

If it was the Church that brought you together, you may find that without it, the entire foundation falls apart. Maybe you were not quite as compatible as you thought you were. You just came together because of similar goals in life and a church which was the centre of your lives.

Once that is gone, you can find yourselves on shaky ground, even if you both leave the Church.

Yes, Greyfort, the old paradigm of 'Bow your head and say yes' no longer suited Tal's wife. Most women leaving Mormonism wake up to the fact that they have been treated poorly by the church, and often, by extension, they have been treated poorly for years by their husbands. Marriages that are already in crisis do not have much of a chance of surviving a foundational shift. Tal, of course, can only explain things from his point of view. Most of you here have never heard his wife's perspective.



Edited 5 time(s). Last edit at 07/03/2014 10:21AM by braindead.

Thank you for sharing your story, Tal. It always made me sad . . . best wishes. You offer good advice.

;o)

what my therapist has talked to me about. I try to avoid conflict and every now and then my daughter and I will go the rounds, which we are right now. It can bring me to my knees every time it happens. She is TBM, but I think mothers and daughters tend to have problems anyway.

After one particularly bad argument, my therapist told me that if you value a relationship, you confront the issues, that you can never be close to someone if you don't.

I'm still working on it, but being that she is my daughter, I won't divorce her. It is too bad that marriages can't hang in there long enough to figure it out, too.

Hi Tal, a quick context question if I may: did your ex also leave the church or did she stay?

In my case my DW hasn't, but she questions what we have in common now that we don't have the church in common, and I can see that in either case that commonality is gone.

There are so many parallels here to my own life that it's a bit bizarre. Orrrr, it's just a lot more common than I thought.

Thanks for the post Tal. It was a good reminder of what I need to work on in my current relationship. Through counseling I recognized in my first marriage we let small things grate on us but both of us ignored the big issues we should have been discussing. Me leaving the church was the final straw for her.

Leaving mormonism is such a dangerous and impredictable process...

Please do NOT ever delete this post.
This was so beautifully written and I was so moved.

Your experience was almost the same as mine with my ex TBM husband.

The phrase "like two different people jammed into the same body" hit me hard.

I often said, I felt like a fractured soul that resided in a warm body hired for a job as a spouse. Any warm body would have sufficed as long as I played my part.

I could relate when you met someone that you felt that connection with and were teetering on the edge of temptation. I have been there! I was treated with such tenderness and kindness by someone who I had an attraction with and as he leaned in for a kiss, I was painfully torn and blurted out I was married. Unhappily married, but very married. It made me realize, like you how I was starving for emotional and physical intimacy. I was painfully lonely and my spouse wanted no connection, only the facade of happy, Mormon family.

From what you share, you have deep feelings for your former partner and tried handle the closure of the relationship with much grace. I hope you and your former spouse both find peaceful paths.

Please keep this post up. It IS helpful.

RMM

When reading heart breaking posts like these, I often feel that it would be a mistake for me to ever get married. While longing for a deep and honest connection with a man, I see so many miserable and failed marriages around me. The OP admits to having an affair, and alludes that his wife did as well. True love may only be an illusion.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/03/2014 12:36PM by Sapphire.

Hi Sapphire. If everybody thought they couldn't take the plunge because of the high divorce rate around them, bridal boutiques would be empty, instead of crammed to the gills with excited females. Hope does, indeed, spring eternal and people always think that for them it will be different. When you feel that you are deeply in love you can't imagine ever not having the same feelings and so you buy the rings and exchange the vows and you mean it on the day, and then life happens. Maybe those who advocate that marriage should be a renewable contract, both parties having to re-up every five yrs, have a point.

I'd like to point out that I don't see anywhere in his post where Tal said he had an affair, nor did he indicate that his wife did. Unless some oblique comment went over my head, which is possible.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/03/2014 01:11PM by Nightingale.

Hi Nightingale. We must not be reading the same post. He goes on about his obsession over another woman. If he didn't actually have sex with this woman, certainly there was a physical relationship, and it sounds like he went up to that point. He also said that his wife lost the fear of eternal repercussions. There are only a few things in the church that carry the fear of eternal repercussions, maybe I'm jumping to conclusions, but infidelity is the most obvious thing a man or woman can do.



Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 07/03/2014 01:57PM by Sapphire.

I don't think you read the whole post, he didn't have an affair, he had an epiphany.

My ex is a narcissist. When I was married, I had no idea about narcissism, it wasn't until after my divorce of a 20 yr marriage. I used to have to pick my battles to let her know when she crossed the line. I would have to let a lot of things slide, but periodically let her know she crossed a line and then all hell would break loose. She always needed me to see her side of the story, but she wasn't interested in my side. She wasnt' into 50 50, her was or the highway.

Mormons make for terrible spouses. They have black and white thinking. Black and white thinking doesn't work in a partnership like a marriage. Mormons are also immature, obsess over stupid little things, are repressed, do not know how to have fun, the whole have a shit load of kids on a single income causes enormous stress. All the "mormon" requirements are a huge stressfull time consuming burden. Jesus said his yoke is light, the yoke of mormonism is anything but light.

"Mormons make for terrible spouses. They have black and white thinking. Black and white thinking doesn't work in a partnership like a marriage. Mormons are also immature, obsess over stupid little things, are repressed, do not know how to have fun, the whole have a @#$%& load of kids on a single income causes enormous stress."

In the name of honesty, I have a problem with statements like the above. To me, the criticism is a broad generalization which clearly isn't always true. The criticism itself reflects black and white thinking.

Some Mormons are great spouses and have satisfying and fulfilling marriages -- just like anybody else. Not all Mormons are immature and obsess over little things. And is it fair to say that Mormons do not know how to have fun? That is highly subjective.

Even though we are all disaffected with the LDS cult, I still feel that we have an obligation to be honest in our assertions.

Sapphire - True love is not an illusion, and I did fall infatuated with another woman in those depths of loneliness. But there was no physical intimacy or even sexual chit-chat. It was more my imagination - it exploded. Thankfully, the feeling passed soon enough.

My point was that I'd allowed myself to get to a place of such loneliness, that sexual intimacy might have happened given a few changes in circumstances. Not sure, but possible, I think.



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 07/03/2014 02:09PM by Tal Bachman.

Thank you for the explanation, Tal. Your writing was so descriptive of sexual desire that it was not a far leap in my mind to an affair. I hope I didn't offend you. I have fantasies too, especially with all those well muscled rugby players! ;)

I still hope for true love, sometimes I think I have the Disney Princess syndrome.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 07/03/2014 03:52PM by Sapphire.

This is why I don't believe the stereotype that if a married person has an affair, they'll always be a cheater. I've know many people like yourself who found themselves in a very lonely place and made bad choices.

Thank you, Tal. This is something that is highly relevant and useful to me right now. No worries - I don't misinterpret this as advice to just go get divorced now. I see your meaning: that it is better to deal with problems head-on and learn sooner rather than later if differences are reconcilable.

As an albeit intelligent person with a low emotional IQ, I struggle to identify problems and root causes in my relationship, but I can tell they're there. This is where marriage counseling (if she's willing) or individual counseling (if she isn't) will be helpful.

Fascinating that while my disaffection from religion has opened me to the possibility of divorce (it was completely off the table in my mind previously), it has also increased love and empathy for my wife. That is due in part to enlightenment regarding the human experience and condition and in part to an increase in spousal communication. And whether we stay together or separate, it will be in love.

Regards.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 07/03/2014 02:24PM by Good Clean Fun.

What you said here is where I am:

"And because they remained, something began to happen to me: I began to split, emotionally and psychologically. Half of me yearned for what I had once had, and would have done anything for my beautiful, but lost and troubled, queen. But, more and more, after failing so many times, the other half began to give up, and even began to yearn to find someone else - someone who I could make happy, who got me, who enjoyed life in the way I did, etc."

I was going to write you a letter the other day and openly ask you what you would suggest I do regarding this. Been married over 40 years. It's a sad state now. I suppose there are still divorces even after so many years.

We really like reading your Dr. Love posts. Very insightful and helpful, thank you.

Sapphire - Nice to meet another rugby fan on here!

Also, I know what you mean about feeling pessimistic about marriage. There are indeed many unsatisfied couples.

But I also know some really happy couples. They are best friends as well as lovers and partners. I think it takes integrity, honesty, respect, a combination of submission and dominance, and natural compatibility and mutual passions/interests.

Let me know what you're looking for (in a private message, if you prefer). Maybe I can hook you up with someone suitable (?). (I know a lot of people).

Good luck.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/03/2014 05:09PM by Tal Bachman.