What are your 3 to 5 biggest challenges when it comes to re-establishing your relationship with your LDS family members? A part two to this question is: What did you do, if anything, to address these challenges?

1) Telling Grandparents and siblings that your children are off limits. No blessings, baptisms, invitations to primary or scouting.

2) Asking family not to talk about "church activities, church gossip, spiritual experiences". This you can rename "silent visits" because family will find that if they can't talk about meetings, temple trips, baptisms coming up or done, VT/HT families, etc... They're going to discover how really shallow and boring their life is, while you get to talk about sports, camping, movies, restaurants, etc...

3) Don't listen or allow "magic" priesthood blessings for illness, comfort, etc... Don't allow prayers or accept offer to lead in prayer. Do not accept having to give blessing on food.

4) Request FB postings, messages, emails not include some "wonderful" talk or quote by a Mormon leader.

5) If the MoTab sings a good song or hymn, say so. If MoTab or any other Mormon song is played or sung at you that is wrong, horrible, idiotic, etc... say so. It's hard to be truthful and honest with family because we're taught not to be rude, but sometimes that's the only way to get it into their heads how HORRIBLE some of those "spirit filled talks" or "Heavenly Sacred Songs" really are.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/03/2015 03:02PM by dydimus.

I should be answer in a few years.

I'd say when they die or lose their (arbitrary) testimony/ belief (structure)/ [learn the truth] (about JOE's Myth, and the 'church', in general) whichever comes first.

Luck does strike though and people do wake up.

#1 is communicating - and being honest

They believe they are "SAVED" by a promising but powerless baptismal society, a lifetime promise of giving via a tithing pyrimid hoax and a theft of family and free time that promises you just that (in the "next lifetime") if you work and pay and pray and (dont PLAY) OBEY and work for it and PAY for that 'privilege', always, and defend it forever and wear your badge with a half smile.

You are only taught to worship a defunct (closed) society - a HOLY temple LIE and a lifetime of ignorance and unawareness of eternal and momentary experiences and possibilities and future potentials.

All you learn is you are powerless.

I knew I was (POWERFUL)

Found ME! - & GOoD - at the same time

SO I LEFT

Goddess Good
God is Great
Where we Goin'
Goin' be late

Maybe one day they'll wake up
And smell the coffee, or, reality.

It's never too late!

M@t

I was BIC, but always knew that it was wrong.... basically since I can remember being conscience.
My father converted to marry my mother in the late 60's & she is from a long lineage pioneer family(with every autoimmune condition possible basically due to informal inbreeding)
I started refusing to go to church at around 13. Being forced to be waterboarded(baptized for the dead) & having to wait in the hot car for all 3 of my siblings' Las Vegas temple "weddings" were the last straw for me. I Left home at 15, was emancipated at 16.

I am in my 30's, & I STILL cannot process a proper thing to say during brutally uncomfortable conversations with my parents....Ever.... & I feel wholeheartedly that my utter lack of communications skills stems from their brainwashing growing up.
The church is their whole life, & they can't talk of anything otherwise.My method has been to remain silent & never engage when it's brought up(which makes for boring, one-sided conversations) My father sends the church my address everytime I move & constantly sends me conference links & updates. They talk sh**t to my inactive brother's kids when he's out of the room....etc etc etc...

I've begun to speak up, but I'm finding the process very hard, since they freak out & my mother becomes verbally abusive anytime I even balk at any demand that I pray, etc. 2 wks ago my mother said, "I don't care if you're happy.....we're not" & hung up on me.

That tore me apart, but now I'm getting even more angry & I'm sure my reactionary words will start to come out.
My goal is to be able to say these things out loud to either of them within a year.

1. There are forms of motivation OTHER than guilt & fear. Please stop trying to use them on me.

2.Leave my brother's children alone. He does NOT need to get over his divorce & remarry someone else. He is a good person who has finally woken up & his children are innocent.They have healthy hobbies, are beautiful, & talented. They don't need to go to church. Quit pitting them against their single dad who works hard to keep food on the table.(one day this will include my children)

3.Please stop telling me that I am "a spinster & that I need to go back to school to get a real degree since it's obvious no man will ever take care of me" (I have two degrees & a loving partner already).

3. Please stop harassing me to get married every chance you get. My wonderful dreamboat of a man is the best thing that ever happened to me, his family loves & embraces me for who I am, & we don't need a piece of paper to declare our love & commitment to each other.

4.Please stop demanding that I be the better person & reconcile with my mean, abusive, manipulative other brother, with whom I haven't spoken to in over 13 years. He abused me physically & mentally growing up, & the abuse I suffered with him after he became a police officer was something no one should endure from a sibling. He hasn't given a **** about me in over a decade. Why should I care that that hate has become a cancer inside his body at such a young age. I've been barred from every family function that he has attended in 13 YEARS!

5. Please stop telling me that you're sad that I've never really been apart of the family.You could start by inviting me & my partner to any said functions that you're trying to make me feel guilty about in the first place. Phones work both ways.

6. Please stop sending me church or conference related emails. I do not open them, I delete them.


Wish me luck....

"You could start by inviting me & my partner to any said functions that you're trying to make me feel guilty about in the first place. Phones work both ways."

Leave this out. Copy your brother so that he knows you stood up for him. Then never contact them again.

If they ever change they'll come to you.

Like smirky said, cutting off toxic family can be the best decision you ever made. The only way to stop poisoning your self is to stop dipping into the stuff in the first place.

I agree... & somehow, my inherited masochistic tendencies prevail.

Any other advice on not caring would be vastly appreciated.

Finally permanently cutting off ties with my MORmON male parent / resident family enforcement agent for the MORmON church was one of the best things I ever did, secondary only to my move of quitting the damned MORmON cult. I should have done both much MUCH sooner. Just like Jesus, dying was the best thing that my MORmON male parent ever did for me. He should have done it much MUCH sooner.

Now, what were you saying about re establishing MORmON family relationships, after leaving MORmONISM ?

A person thinking that they have a need to maintain a relationship with sick utterly toxic MORmONS, family members or others, may be a huge mistake.

Intractable narcissism calls for estrangement. My challenge was learning that.

Family reunions. They always inevitably end up relating to the LDS church. It's all they can talk about- who got what calling, what cousins are going to BYU, blah,blah,blah. Eck.

After the original ickiness of me and my mom butting heads about my apostasy, and whatever- my mom continuing to invite me to come to church with her when I am there visiting. Not going to happen.

The awkwardness of telling family that they will not get my kids if anything were to happen to me. I love my family, but I will not allow my kids to be raised in the Mormon church.

gOrgone - #1 +#5: PHONES WORK BOTH WAYS, [and do they really know what families mean, besides the image of happiness and wholeness, beyond a dream of impossible perfection?]! (Certainly they - TBMs - are in fear and guilt inside anyway so they naturally project it on others)

1. There are forms of motivation OTHER than guilt & fear. ..."

5. Please stop telling me that you're sad that I've never really been apart of the family.You could start by inviting me & my partner to any said functions that you're trying to make me feel guilty about in the first place. Phones work both ways.

Wish me luck...."

Good Luck! May I recommend, instead of asking 'please', say instead, "I would rather, or it would be better if..., or I do not open the church conference emails so would you kindly stop sending them (I don't have time to recycle and I hate throwing things away, even trash), now and forever".

With KrisR - "I love my family, but I will not allow my kids to be raised in the Mormon church."

It would be better my kids not live at all than have to live in that (wicked) cultURE.

To be told those lies and be led away like that.

Nope, it ain't going to happen!

As they say, "over my dead body", whoever they are.

The first challenge was just surviving the last couple of years under my parents' roof after I realized their religion was a fraud.

My biggest chaallenge was building my own life and becoming a separate independent adult in a world of people who fought that.

I solved it by marrying too young and moving a thousand miles away.

The next challenge was rebuilding relationships with siblings after our kids grew up. They are now my best friends. I just had to wait until we all had more time.

iwhisper Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> What are your 3 to 5 biggest challenges when it
> comes to re-establishing your relationship with
> your LDS family members? A part two to this
> question is: What did you do, if anything, to
> address these challenges?

1. Mormonism
2. Mormonism
3. Mormonism

I did this - distanced myself from them all. The ones that contact me and don't bring up their Mormonism I've talked to but it always circles back to Mormonism.

My family is married to Mormonism. And when they complain about their spouse it isn't with any intent to leave them - just to vent or defend them. Like all good co-dependent relationships Mormonism and my family are together until death.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/04/2015 12:29PM by Elder Berry.

use the mormon speak in my relationship with my own daughter. She doesn't know mormonism like I do as I took her out at age 8 and she went back in her 20s. I know how to talk the language, how to reply to her questions, etc.

I won't ever give up on my relationship with my daughter no matter what. We've had some rough times, but what I do know is she is part of me and I will always be there no matter what she chooses.