(I'm just looking to get my millions of feelings out. This is really long and if you read to the end I thank you in advance! If nothing else, it was a major catharsis to write all this down.)

I understand that convert retention is appalling because people find out that the church is really weird, the church is not true, or they don't manage to integrate socially into the ward... and I can testify to all three of those factors.

I'm a not married (but now not single) woman in my mid thirties, a convert of six years, and I've never really felt at home in the church although I thought I had a pretty strong testimony, at least initially. I really have tried over a long period of time to make it work and make my spiritual home in the church. I'm now at the point where I can admit that this is never going to work.

At first, Mormons fall over themselves to be all "I love you!" (ugh, I hate the FAKENESS of that! No you don't! We don't know each other!) and make you feel at home, but then that tapers off after you've been in the church a while and you realise that when you're a single woman in your late twenties/early thirties, it really sucks being a Mormon.

I was kind of okay with my outsider status until one night when the YW (I was a leader at the time) did an activity where people wrote compliments for people on paper hearts and they were hung up for all to see. How many everyone got and exactly what they said was clearly visible.

The other leaders (who are regular F&T criers who overuse the word "blessed", you all know the type) got told by the YW they were wonderful and such an inspiration. I got a few generic things from girls who were clearly trying to be nice. It felt horrible that everyone could see this clear comparison.

I couldn't believe someone thought such an activity, essentially a public popularity contest, was in any way a good idea. When I told my family and friends, they thought this was strange behaviour. Stupid and petty as it may sound, I found this activity alienating and it made me start to resent the church and the lack of boundaries it has.

Meanwhile, more and more of the stuff in church was starting to make me feel uneasy: the homophobia of Prop 8, the gross patriarchal emphasis on teaching the YW to be a wife and a mother in Zion, the lack of Jesus in any service. I went to an EASTER service where there was hardly any mention of Jesus! I didn't mention any of this, but it seethed under the surface.

When I went to the temple a few people from the ward cared about that and went but I got the feeling it was more because it was a free trip to the temple (it's a while away from us) than because they cared about me personally. When the temple guy asked my escort if we were mother and daughter or friends, she replied neither, that we do a calling together. That felt crappy.

Constantly being reminded I was single and not married felt crappy. When I got a boyfriend, being reminded he wasn't LDS and we couldn't be together for eternity made me feel crappy. Not being included in anything made me feel crappy. I tried being friendly, and showing an interest in others, but things did not improve for me.

(Meanwhile, a lady from Utah with a massive family and who can't get past saying "Joseph Smith" on a podium without crying joins our ward and gets an instant circle of friends, as do a young couple expecting a baby. I began definitively at that point to realise there's a type of person that gets on in Mormonism, and it's not a person like me.)

Still, I wasn't in the church as a popularity contest... what matters is it's true, right? Well, yes -- but that only holds water if it's *actually* true. The temple freaked me out. I scratched myself to bits in my itchy garments and shuddered at the memory of veiling my face for weeks after.

I started reading stuff online then. I read about the origins of the BoM and the BoA and Egyptology, the wives of JS and BY, the racism, the face in a hat, baptising Holocaust victims, the ERA, all that stuff and more. I felt, and still feel, sick about all that. That I unknowingly supported all this for years!

Yet still I was frightened to leave. I had spikes of panic that it would have major eternal consequences for me. I got depressed about the church. I still am. It's made me feel like a massive failure and it's based on lies! I started out in the church with healthy self-esteem and six years later, that's all messed up. I wondered why I couldn't make friends there. I still wonder that.

I wondered why I was still getting dressed up to go to a charade every week. In addition to feeling the loneliest I have ever felt in my entire life I felt depressed by the doctrine, depressed by the conformity, haunted by the temple, and depressed by my garments. Yet still, niggling away against all reason... what if it were true and I'd be throwing eternity away?

Recently it all came to a head. I woke up two Sundays ago and immediately started crying because I just couldn't face going to another Sunday at the ward, sitting alone in a pew, and listening to what I know in my heart is nonsense.

I should mention that it's only at church I feel excluded. I have good friends, my family love me, and I'm well liked at work.

I suffer from a mental health issue (which has never manifested itself at church) which is medication controlled but recently I have been experiencing pretty severe depression. I told a cross section of people in my life I was becoming depressed -- friends, family, work.

I decided at the same time to use this as an opportunity to buy myself some time away from the church by contacting some folk from church and saying my mental health has been very bad (they know I have a condition), that I am depressed, that I'm not coping and and I may not be at church for a while.

I haven't heard much back, except from two people: one lovely lady who is nice to everyone and asked if she could help me at all. The second person is on the verge of leaving the church, and she also said if I needed anything I could count on her. Everybody else has not replied. I should say at this point that friends, family and health professionals actually are helping me with my depression.

Last Sunday, I went to a service at the church I grew up in. My mum and my friends took me. I was not harassed into going back, I wanted to go. In this church, which is fairly liberal and is the biggest denomination in my country, all the kids come onto the stage at the end and take the microphone to tell us what they learned in Sunday School, then they sing a children's song which the congregation join in with.

This week, the children's song was one I sang a lot in church when I was growing up. Each verse talks about a good attribute that Jesus has (hey, who is this Jesus guy this entire worship service has been about? Shouldn't it be about tithing or coffee? What is this madness?!), and ends with "and His banner over me is love".

As I looked over at my mum, friends and a congregation of people wearing jeans and t-shirts who were genuinely happy to be in a church that clearly wasn't using fear and rules and bigotry and patriarchy to hold them there, I felt true fellowship and love in a worship service for the first time in years.

I don't know how I got so lost. I have no idea how I got from the pure "His banner over me is love" of my childhood to putting a weird green apron on in a creepy building thirty years later. I can't even explain it. What was I thinking?!

I'm researching leaving the church now. I'm afraid. I'm also exhilarated. Thank you for reading.

Best of luck finding a place where you can be happy, and thanks for sharing you story.

If the church was what it claimed to be, we wouldn't be here.

If the church wasn't what it actually is, we wouldn't have so many regrets.

A lot of this resonates with ne, but most especially the parts about how the regular 'criers' and podium speakers are seen as so spiritual, 'strong in the gospel', and are therefore popular. It's all so ridiculous and fake!

Welcome back to the real world! I wish you well on your journey from here on!

We all wanted the best for ourselves, our families, and the world when we were active. We thought that what we were doing in the church was eternally significant. The fact that we learned the truth and stepped away from the falsehoods of the church is something to be proud about.

Some groups define themselves by excluding certain people, other groups by including certain people. The church, from the beginnings of its history, has been an exclusive organization, and they are now finally learning the cost of that.

Best wishes on resumption of a normal life.

I think you have a good insight that if you wish to attend church, it should be with a church that makes you feel welcomed, comfortable, and uplifted. I'll never forget walking into an Episcopal cathedral and seeing a female priest at the front of the church, welcoming the hundreds of people pouring in to the Sunday service. She was a model of grace, dignity, and religious power. For the first time in my life, I saw myself in a spiritual leader. It made me realize what had been lacking before.

If you wish to resign from the LDS church, complete directions for how to do so are here:

http://www.exmormon.org/remove.htm

If you hit any bumps in the road with your resignation, we can help you. Best wishes!

That was indeed worth reading to the end. THANK YOU!

This should be required reading for all church leaders who are putting so much effort into reconversion.

"He lifts me up to his banqueting table his banner over me is love, his baaannneer over meeeeeee is loooooove. "
Did the kids do the little hand motions?

I know how you feel. I was raised in a church like that before I became an LDS convert. If God is real, and Jesus the Son of the most High, then the Mormon church is not their church. You have nothing to fear leaving it. As I used to say, Jesus plus nothing equals everything. Think of Jesus as their church mascot.



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 12/17/2013 06:16PM by snuckafoodberry.

Enjoy your family. Congrats on getting out of the LDS church.

Thank you for sharing this. I no longer believe in any religion, but if I did....mormonism would be at the bottom of the list. It may be uncomfortable for a whiel, but do not fear leaving.

Best of luck to you.

Very enjoyable read,it sounds like you know what you have to do.

Out of interest how did you actually join the church?
Did the missionaries knock on your door?

I bumped into them on the street. Ugh. If only I could do that day over...

"public popularity contest"

The whole thing is a contest...I was like you toward the end, but I spent 40 years in that god forsaken church. I was depressed. That church sucks the life out of you. I never fit in that paradigm. I hated the criers - all the crying - so fake. I never got it. It was easy for me to leave when I got on the internet and found out about the true order of Joseph Smith. He was a con artist, a womanizer, a pedophile, and a criminal. The evidence was there the entire time. That church excells in manipulating your fears and emotions. Their pros at it. It's a cult, you just don't realize it when your in it. Don't go back...please don't go back. It was that chruch that was depressing you. Your Sunday's will be filled with productive things now.

My wife and I could cut and paste most of what you have written for our own posting. I especially relate to the mental health issue, and the fact that I did not have depression until I joined the church. Now I have left, it is improving remarkably. My wife also had the same experiences with the social/cultural aspects of the church, so you are not alone on that score either.

This forum is great at supporting people and for finding well researched information about he church.

Good luck.

I am amazed at how clearly you are thinking in the midst of a depression. I cannot do it if I go into a depression, my mind sort of stalls. I am SO impressed with how you have it all sorted out in your head. I really understand all you are going through. I don't want to give you advice, you are doing so beautifully by yourself. I just want to let you know you have my total support and understanding. Keep up the good work!

I didn't like it there and for many of the same reasons. I hope you can find a better spiritual home. You deserve it.

I read it through. Thanks for sharing your feelings.

Thanks, everyone, for your replies. It's... interesting to me that all the people that the church says have their priorities wrong are the people who are the kindest and the most willing to help their fellow humans!

You were targeted by someone in the cult and then you were love-bombed in order to manipulate you into joining.
That's why they were falling all over themselves in the beginning.

It's an all to familiar pattern in Mormonism.

So is the depression, it's your feelings telling you to move on.

Mark Mormonism off as a learning experience and go back to your family and your REAL friends.
This cult seeks to exploit people.

Read it all the way through!
Reassuring that someone else sees it.
Thanks.

OBTW this cult makes people sick.
Further away you get, the better you will feel.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/17/2013 09:07PM by zenjamin.

Further reasons why retention rates are bad.1. Missionaries only give you milk.You discover the problems and weird doctrine later. 2. You are asked to make a committment before you know anything about the church. Other churches he's have you taken a year long class and let you decidemwithout pressure. The Morg wants a commitment by the second discussion.

Indeed.

Your second point also struck me about the temple. How on earth can I know if I want to leave and not participate in something if I have no idea what I'm about to participate in?

And, of course, the ideal time for the church to ask it and get nobody leaving is when people are in a room chock full of desperation and peer pressure.

Some people have been asked to commit to baptism before actually attending church. Yes, that is an informed decision. Not!

There is absolutely no way at all that the LDS Church is "true," so have so fear about that.

They should be the ones fearing the people learning the truth, as we have been and we're leaving.

Fear kept me in far too long, but from the moment I left, my self-esteem began to heal. I'd no idea how damaging the Church had been to my psyche until after I left.

The difference in how I felt was staggering. If I'd left the true church, then I shouldn't have felt light, relieved, happy and free after I left it. But that is how I felt.

So don't fear leaving. Just take your life back and rejoin the rest of the world. Your childhood church sounds lovely.

Does anyone know the purpose of women veiling their faces in the temple? I don't know and so it doesn't bother me particularly. However, I would be humiliated by the totality of the stupid outfits (undies, dress, veil with bow, apron and looking at those Pillsbury Dough Boy hats) if I had to go to the temple.

I am also an unmarried female but a nevermo.

How does your experience as an unmarried woman in the church compare with other converts and especially with other unmarried converts (male or female?) Anyone know?

"How does your experience as an unmarried woman in the church compare with other converts and especially with other unmarried converts (male or female?) Anyone know?"

I would be curious to know this too. My inability to socially integrate in that ward is completely mystifying to me because I've never experienced anything like it anywhere else. Never before or since have I ever had any significant problems socially.

Anecdotally... when I was a YW leader, we were in our lesson and one of the girls said she found a new male convert "creepy" and one of the other leaders agreed with her and went on at length about how gross and creepy he was! I didn't find him creepy, he just seemed like a lonely and awkward guy to me.

I don't know if I just got an extremely clique-y ward by the luck of the draw, but I do know for sure that it sucks in general to be an unmarried woman and LDS. You are constantly reminded of that fact.

I joined the Church just after my 17th birthday and I'm now a never-married woman in my 50s.

I think the Church just really doesn't know what to do with us. You go to Relief Society to learn to be a better wife and mother and it doesn't apply to you.

There are always children to teach, children to baptize and sons and daughters to send out on missions.

For those who don't fit the eternal Mormon mold, you just can't fit in, no matter how hard you try.

The Singles tend to stick together. We all sat in the same row and they were always trying to get us to mingle with the rest of the ward. But there we were, the single ladies and the widows, all together, every Sunday.

We just felt comfortable sticking together.

Those wonderful ladies are the only thing I miss about the Church.

I'm the OP of this thread.

Just a heads up that since I like the support and advice I've been given so far on this board, I'm going to register permanently with this username.

I plan to resign and I'm figuring I will probably need more support with that before too long.

Very insightful story. Mirrors my experience very closely. Mormonism makes you feel there's something wrong with you. Relationships are superficial and lack honesty and make you feel invisible. Many of the people you notice crying and carrying on at church are desperate for attention and they learn early that the way to be noticed is to put on a show about their faithfulness and sensitiviy to the "spirit." They're desperate in their own way.

Be happy in your life with the world that will open up to you now that you are returning to normal society.

The most important thing is to do what you feel is right for yourself and for your own peace-of-mind. When you do that, you can't go wrong.

It's only when I go against my best judgments that I seem to go wrong.

They don't even know how to hang onto the people who really want the system to work. They don't need better ads. They need therapy.