I've been wanting to tell this story for a long time. I'm going to have to do it anonymously though, and I'm going to have to be very vague about it as well.

Many years ago, I knew this guy who blamed all of his problems on the fact that he'd never served a mission. He blamed his failed marriages, the fact that he lost complete custody of his children, his inability to take responsibility, and many other problems in his life on the fact that he'd never served a mission.

Fast-forward about twenty something years. I find out that this person is having even more severe problems in his life. I find out that it's so bad that's it's completely changed his personality. When I knew him, he was a quite jovial person, despite the fact that he was irresponsible. I'd heard he'd changed into a bitter, paranoid, mean, critical, and mentally abusive jerk.

All I could think of was how he was probably still blaming his problems on his lack of mission attendance. Of course, I also think that he was always that mean person, but hid it in past times. That's why he had all those failings, not because of any breaking of Morg rules.

what's funny is I know someone (TBM) that the exact opposite happened to.

convert out of a nevermo family, went on a mission, promised before he went that his family would join the LDS faith and that he'd get married have several kids, etc.

none of that happened and now a very bitter critical person but still TBM

We see that a lot, don't we? People are told that they bring these things on themselves because of the gospel not being lived correctly. Meanwhile, if your kids aren't as awesome as the more blessed looking families you begin to resent your family for holding you back. You just can't have your blessings unless your family does everything the way they are supposed to.

Added to the family not pulling their weight is thefact that you sit in humiliating Priesthood interviews where you earnestly seek to be as forthright as possible, accepting and seeking ways to gain assurance that you are on the right path, and that you stand approved as a rigid rule follower.

Meanwhile, after getting out of yet another worthiness interview, the drivers don't give a damn about traffic rules and they are eager to flip you off for driving the speed limit and stopping for a red light in front of them. So you sit there resenting them because your Loving Heavenly Father will withdraw his blessing if you retaliate by swearing in the privacy of your own car.

And of course, you blame yourself because the burden does not seem light, the yoke is harder to bear than they tell you it is.

The fruits of the LDS gospel are resentment and selfloathing, bitterness and dreaming of a better life.

Right. Because Mormonism hasn't got any teaching whatsoever that connects your inner life to the inner lives of other people. It's all me and them. You alternate between protecting yourself against being attacked and victimized by others, being paranoid. Or, you switch sides on yourself and attack yourself with loathing, shame, and guilt, as if you ARE the other. Again, being paranoid. It's a no-win mind-fck of BS.

enough. Even those who are still mormon who know me and my story tell me, "But you did everything right and look what happened to you." There have been times that I've thought of going back and then I remember how hard I worked at being a good mormon. My parents were devastated by what happened to my life. I was their most devout child and they NEVER expected this to happen to my life. One of my best friends, every time I would rant about my experiences, she has told me, "I know why you left."

My youngest brother went inactive in his teens. A few years after my husband left me, his wife left him and he lived with me for a while. When I told him I no longer believe, he told me I had finally given him permission to let go. He was convinced that his marriage had ended because he wasn't a good mormon and I'd tell him, "What about me?" And he'd agree. He is in a long-time good marriage now. He has increased his earnings by 6 times. He and his wife and son are doing great now. (His ex gave up custody of his son to him.) My life is going much better now.

I've heard on this board many times 'Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.' I decided to stop doing the same thing. It has worked out much better.

My brother had a baby with a girl when he was 17 and she was 16. Since he had had premarital sex, he actually stated to me in his late 30s that he knew he was already damned as it had been taught so many times that to lose your chastity or whatever, he didn't think there was any hope for him. I have other siblings who "sinned" in their teens, too, and went inactive. I think all of them felt the same way--that they had already failed.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/19/2015 10:00AM by cl2.

There was a lady in my ward who was so confused about why I seemed to have an easy life, nice home, a husband who went to work, and kids who were independent and doing well.

She once said to me "I've done everything right! You've not done that, you were even excommunicated once, and you have such a nice life. It's not fair! I should be the one with your life!"

I was speechless. I couldn't believe what I was hearing. I didn't reply back, I just left the building.

Funny thing was, this lady was my neighbor. Her and her hubby came from Utah royalty. They had their house given to them by a contractor in the ward(when the hubby was bishop). They both had college degrees. I didn't have any of that. The difference was, I also didn't have 8 rebelling kids, a spouse that was constantly losing money in mlm
and refused to get a real job. She was given a job by someone in the ward, but only worked for a month. She decided that she shouldn't be working because the prophet had told her not to. She blamed all of her misery on God not being fair.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/19/2015 01:17PM by madalice.

There are so many that just expect the blessings to fall on them just because they are mormon. I like what dogzilla said, too.

I do medical transcription and the current R.S. president worked for the same company as I do. She was laid off 3 years ago I believe and hasn't been rehired. The company is owned and managed by a mormon. The stake RS president and this ward RS president are good friends with my TBM daughter. The stake RS president, of all people, told my daughter my job is coming to an end. Well, we lost a contract back the end of February and I lost half my work FOR A WHILE. I now have more work than I want. I'm sure they are all shaking their heads wondering why I still have my MT job and the RS president had to get a job outside the home that pays half.

I've always been willing to take difficult shifts that no one else wanted (like Sundays). I'm willing to do any work, not just the easiest work.

I have noticed how many of the mormons watch and wait for bad things to happen to we heathens. Still with the boyfriend living in sin after 10 years.

I actually have had some problems with my son, but the stake RS president has had the same problems with her son, as have several other neighbors. My son is doing better, so is her's. I wonder why both are doing better and not just her's?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/19/2015 01:30PM by cl2.

This belief that things should make sense and are somehow fair is what finally made me shed the shackles. Pretty much every talk is, at its core, a sermon about how God blesses us and curses us based on our behavior. The word cursing isn't used, but it's more honest than "withdrawal of blessings" or "trials".

We humans seek patterns and when we see them, we assign explanations. The stories we tell ourselves feel so real. We'd rather feel responsible than powerless. We'd rather tell ourselves stories than admit we don't know.

Immediately after my college graduation, I recall sitting at my dad's dining room table, crying because I couldn't find a job in my field within 100 miles of where I lived. There was a terrible recession going on at the time and I had blue-collar parents and no idea at all how to go about getting a job in business. My parents' advice was: Go down to the State employment office. Because that's what you do with few skills and little education: You go to the State employment office and take whatever factory gig is hiring. Only industry was dying in my town at that time and I found it difficult to even find a nonskilled labor type of job. The real answer was to relocate to a place where there were more professional jobs/industries than factories building things.

But my dad thought I couldn't find a job because I was inactive. His advice was pray, pay, and obey and I'd magically find either a husband or a job. So I burst into tears because that was utterly useless advice. Really ignorant. Six months later, I packed up or sold my few belongings and moved to Florida, where I used my PR degree to get a job in the tourism industry. I haven't been unemployed for more than about a week or so ever since.

Like CL2, I found that when I did what I was supposed to have done, I wasn't showered with blessings as promised. I could have prayed, paid, and obeyed, but that wouldn't have paid my student loans or my car loans. And, despite my heathen sinning, I did eventually get on the right track. And have not suffered (aside from being terribly underpaid for a long time, but still, never starved) either. At all. There were no "obstacles" placed in my path just BECAUSE I sinned. There were no "blessings" that magically appeared if I didn't. There's no rhyme or reason to it except that sh*t happens and how you deal with sh*t will either take you down or help you learn and grow.

The very basic premise of the church is based on blaming life's problems on not following the church. "You are broken, buy our cure." And I think that speaks to a certain desire to avoid taking personal responsibility for one's choices. If you can't get a job because god is mad at you, that's out of your control. Whup, oh well, god hates me. Guess I better repent. If your house gets repossessed because you're being punished for your sin, then A) the easy fix is to get it back by going to church and B) it's god's punishment, not my lack of responsibility in getting the house payments made.

I've learned to view the "god's punishment/blessings" attitude as one of either laziness or fear of taking responsibility for oneself.

The church manufactures problems so people will drown in them and offers them sappy platitudes, corner store wisdom and superficial social support in order to barely keep them alive.

That's an interesting point. Whenever I learn some new rhetoric, I immediately find myself picturing me using it in a debate. This one when like this:

"You left the church, and now you have to justify your decision to soothe your conscience. You try to blame all your problems on the church!"

"To be fair," I say. "You have just as much need, if not more, to explain away why someone would leave the church if it's so blameless and good and true. You think I blame all my problems on the church, but you allow the church to blame all its problems on you."

Maybe daddy wouldn't hate me if I'd been a church chump. That's a helluva way to go through life.

Don, I once thought that about my mother. I put it to the test. I went back to church. Not only that, my nevermo husband and both of my kids were baptised.

We turned into the perfect little mormon family, complete with upper level callings. We did everything right (according to mormonism).

My mother didn't change her view of me for even a minute. Her reply when my sister told her I went back? "Oh i'm sure she told a pack of lies to get in." OMG! Really? Why would anyone lie to get in? It would have been much easier to stay out.

Assholes stay assholes no matter what. After 10 years of us being upstanding mormons, my mother called me to tell me she was cutting me out of the will. Have at it lady.

My brother went on a mission and got treated like shit the moment he returned. He stuffed his garments in a dumpster and never looked back. An appeased monster is still a monster.

I could have walked on water and it wouldn't have been good enough. I had to face the real problem.

My mother has an intense dislike for me and wishes for things to go horribly wrong in my life. She's happy when I get sick. She's happy when sad things happen, or I can't do something I set out to do. She gets joy in my misery. I used to hate and despise her for that.

I realized that she will go to any extreme to place misery in my life. That was the day she was completely cut out of my life. I no longer know her. I have no illusions of ever having a good relationship with her. I have been my own best mother for at least 30 years now. I have sheltered my own children from her. She's an extremely sick person and wants to stay that way.

I have a daughter and a grandaughter. My joy in life is spending time with them. Encouraging them, teaching them things they want to know about gardening, raising kids, being a wife, having a job, going to college, or anything else they want to know about that i've been through. I adore those girls with all my heart. I can't imagine setting them up to fail. What a sick person it would be who does that.

I decided long ago to wallow in the joys in my life, whatever they may be. I refuse to spend my life trying to get the approval of people who have no interest in approving of me. Mormonism was very much that way. There are only a tiny percentage of members that are good enough to get approval. The rest spend their life groveling and being broken inside. It's flat evil what that corporation does to people.

I hope mormonism is like a plant that gets root rot and eventually the predators eat up whats left and the plant dies. It leaves behind a few sickly stems that will never thrive because they've been infested with an incurable sickness. Eventually it all rots into the ground and people barely remember it.

Just in case it revives a bit, i'm writing a journal of mylife in mormonism. I'm doing it for my grandkids and GGrandkids and beyond. I don't want them to find out I was mormon, romanticize it, and get caught up in that nightmare. I have a couple hundred relatives that would be thrilled to drag the loves of my life into mormonism. My worst fear is that i'll die before I get my story out to them.

I hate the carnage that mormonism has brought into my life. I'm going to do my best to put a stop to it forever.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/21/2015 02:15AM by madalice.

donbagley Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Maybe daddy wouldn't hate me if I'd been a church
> chump. That's a helluva way to go through life.


NOPE, he would hate you anyway, regardless of what you did. MORmONS like him can't stand those that are inferior and they hate others that might be better than them even more, and you know that.

MORmONS hate everybody and everything, especially other MORmONS, regardless of anything that MORmONS might say.

This is one way people get into The Blame Game. Mormon or not, people blame something in their life that is the reason they don't succeed, are unhappy, can't find love, and so on.
Sometimes Mormons like to try to put fear into people so they won't leave the LDS Church by recounting all kinds of horrible things that will happen to them. The big one is to claim God is going to cause something horrible to happen to one of their children. (Personally, I'm not interested in that kind of a God!)

A few examples of people I've known or now know come to mind. One blames their problems and their misery and suffering on the fact they had a father who was a functioning alcoholic, (so he was never "there" for them.), another one blames her mother who was what we call bi-polar now, another blames their problems on being abandoned as a baby by her bio father, (step father was a good man but not good enough), another one because her husband could not have children, (all she ever wanted to be was a mother who gave birth to her own children), another one on getting a terrible disease when young. A good one is to tell a single person that didn't marry or have children that they are going to die a bitter, old, person!

It's interesting to observe how people deal with their life trials: difficulties, disappointments, etc. differently.

SusieQ#1 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

> Sometimes Mormons like to try to put fear into
> people so they won't leave the LDS Church by
> recounting all kinds of horrible things that will
> happen to them. The big one is to claim God is

and this is an instance where the usage of the word "sometimes" means ALWAYS.

smirkorama Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> SusieQ#1 Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
>
> > Sometimes Mormons like to try to put fear into
> > people so they won't leave the LDS Church by
> > recounting all kinds of horrible things that
> will
> > happen to them. The big one is to claim God is
>
> and this is an instance where the usage of the
> word "sometimes" means ALWAYS.

Fortunately, in my case, "sometimes" applied. Not everyone was a total idiot !! :-)

Sure sounds like he bought into someone's shaming crap.

Thinking that your life circumstances are rewards or punishments set up by an unseen being really sets people up for disappointment and depression. Not to mention that it's rather superstitious, and not based on any verifiable information.

No matter how obedient, or hardworking, or careful, or moral you are, bad things will sometimes happen. Everybody has problems. Anyone can get sick, lose a job, get hit by a tornado, have a car accident, or get involved with someone who hurts them. When something bad happens, it is a trial, or is it a punishment? It depends on the person's belief system and perception of their worthiness. And people are often really bad at picking belief systems AND judging their own worthiness. A wise God would find a much better way of communicating so His message wouldn't be misread.

Looking to blame yourself when something bad happens just adds insult to the injury.

Crap happens in life. Of course it helps not to do stupid stuff that will MAKE you get sick, lose your job, or have a car accident. But when bad stuff DOES happen, it's better just to deal with the situation, rather than assigning some cosmic meaning or cause of it.

imaworkinonit Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Thinking that your life circumstances are rewards
> or punishments set up by an unseen being really
> sets people up for disappointment and depression.

That was true with me.

I remember my bishop trying to convince me to go on a mission by telling me how much he regretted not going on one. He seemed to be living a perfectly fine life to me, so I took his advice and tossed it into the dumpster with all the other Mormon stuff I've been force-fed since birth.

But that's how the Morg works. Blame all your problems on breaking the rules, and attribute your successes to being a Mormon. Everything comes back to Mormonism, even if it has nothing to do with Mormonism in the first place.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/21/2015 04:38AM by wanderer.

I am an ex. My parents are still TBM. I have been out for 10 years. Everytime something bad happens in my life, I see the look on their faces...the god's punishing you look. This past weekend I had a pipe break in my cabin. Hot water spewed out on the ceiling, and the mold began to grow. After 3-days I went to the cabin to see the mess, along with my TBM mother, "ohhhh" she says, "how awful these things happen to you I am so sorry..(shaking her self righteous noggin). I toyed with her to see if I could get her to say what she was thinking. I said, "Mom do you think heavenly father is punishing me for not going to church, paying my tithing, and reading the scriptures?". To my amazement she said, "Well yes, I think that is what is happening." Bwhahahahahah. Oh the mind of a TBM...bat shit crazy.

When I became an active moron for a while and was hit the first few times with this line of thinking, it freaked me out. Seriously? you think this way? I could not wrap my head around this in the least because I was not programmed to think this way. I grew up with some crazy sh*t, but this line of thinking was not one of those things.

I didn't pay my tithing and that is why my child had to have stitches? Seriously?

Years pass, I had been inactive a long time, and then had a big life changing event hit my life. I am trying to wrap my head around this event, struggling some days a lot. I hear from the grapevine that my TBM son said, "She would be so much happier if she returned to the church." (Love the gossiping)

Seriously? (again). I mean he had not talked to me about this. He did not know in the least my thoughts and feelings about the church because he never talked to me about this taboo subject, (according to him it was taboo with me).

I love to have people read my mind. They think they are so talented in this direction.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/21/2015 05:00PM by presleynfactsrock.

It's and airtight scam.

First you give the rules so all-encompassing and strict that
nobody could possibly live them all.

Next you tell them their happiness and success in life is
dependent on living them all.

The morg leaders are like the late-night infomercials that promise you too can be a millionaire by buying their step by step guide. Whether it is flipping real-estate, buying and selling stocks, or investing in some product they all promise the same thing, with the implied message that if you don't become a millionaire, it is your fault. The Big-15 say as much every conference, although the "millionaire" is the wink-wink meaning in saying you will receive "blessings."

What the infomercials don't say, is that their real income is from selling a bogus product to suckers who think they can get rich quick. It's the same as the morg, they depend on suckers to keep buying their bogus product to keep them in power.