I resigned my membership five years ago. It’s been an interesting five years. I was the first one out in my family. My wife and five kids remained devout believers, along with all of our extended family on both sides. My relationship with my in-laws is strained but cordial. My relationship with my siblings and parents is great; they were all very supportive and loving, and still are. About three years ago, my youngest brother left the church and ended up marrying another exMormon.

I was worried about the effect my leaving would have on my kids. Turns out I had nothing to worry about. My relationship with each of them is as good as ever. Three of them are still true believers. One is a little on the fence but still attends each week. My oldest, who just graduated from high school, is completely out. He and I are on the same page spiritually now—we’re both agnostic, and we have a special bond now and enjoy discussing the mysteries of life and the universe.

My relationship with my wife is complicated. My leaving the Church was very hard on her. For the first couple of years, our marriage was very rocky, and we discussed divorce several times. We ultimately decided to not discuss religion at all, and our relationship improved somewhat. Things are OK now. We get along well, but our relationship isn’t what it used to be. The Church is still the most important thing in her life, but for the most part, we pretend that it doesn’t exist. So we have a big hole in our relationship. We don’t talk about religion at all. We also don’t talk much about politics or social issues since we feel differently about most of them.

Interesting how I have a close relationship with my kids and extended family who are stanch believers, but I don’t with my wife. I think a marriage relationship is different. Spouses should be able to share everything with each other and confide in each other, and the fact that we can’t impairs our relationship. When I left the church, some people told me that a marriage between a devout believer and an exmo never really gets better. That’s been true to a degree. Our marriage is certainly better than it was during the first couple of years, but we’ve reached a plateau in terms of level of marital bliss that I don’t think we’ll ever rise above.

I received an email from a friend a few weeks ago. He was my Elders Quorum president when I left the Church. He and I had been friends for a while, and he was very supportive of me and my family when I left and while we struggled. He told me in his email a few weeks ago that he was having issues with his faith and wanted to talk. Since then we’ve talked several times. His teenage son came to him several weeks earlier and said that he no longer believed in the Church. My friend decided to do some research to help his son, and ended up coming to the conclusion that the Church is a big hoax. He’s having significant difficulties in his marriage—his wife still believes and doesn’t want to hear any of it. They’re in the same position my wife and I were shortly after I left the Church. It’s not a fun position to be in.

Last week he asked if we could get together for lunch, and asked if a couple other guys could join us. These two other guys are also in the same ward and are also no longer believers, but are married to devout Mormons. We had a good time talking about the difficulties of being married to a TBM, the craziness that is the Mormon Church, regrets about how much time and money we wasted on the Church, and the complex transition we’d all been through from true believer to complete apostate.

I used to visit RfM on a daily basis and posted frequently. It had been a while since I’d been here, but my discussions with my fellow exmo friends got me thinking about RfM again, and I thought I’d post an update.

Here are some posts I made a while ago about the struggle I had getting my children’s bishop to stop asking my kids about masturbation:

http://exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,925488
http://exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,896790

Here is a post about the emotional affair my wife had with a member of the Church after I left:

http://exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,1448778

Here are a couple of posts about meetings I had with general authorities:

http://exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,1776705
http://exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,1058776,1058853#msg-1058853

And here’s my original RfM post announcing my resignation.

http://exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,762474

Sad that your relationship with your wife has suffered.

I am glad that you're getting along so well with your kids, friends, and other family members.

Good luck with all of this and thank you so much for the update.

Take care.

Thanks for the update. I remember reading your posts. Sorry your wife hasn't come around. Maybe someday.

I resigned 5 years ago too, with my wife and kid. Thankfully, or I may have been in your boat. Doesn't sound fun.

Officially resigned 13 years ago. Sure glad I didn't have family or close relatives that I needed approval from.

Thanks so much for the update. :) I'm glad that your relationships with your kids are going well. Perhaps you can keep meeting up with your (closeted?) exmo buddies for support.

Thank you for posting your update. I don't get on too often & didn't see the story about your wife when it was first posted. All I can think is WOW!! You are a serious trooper to have stuck through all of that.

I had a good friend (male) that I communicated with online off & on. He began to message me quite often.. when I realized that I felt like I would need to hide it from my husband I told him strait out that I needed to step away from messaging any longer out of respect to my spouse. I completely get the temptation to confide in someone else especially when you are in a rocky marriage. If I had been a TBM in her shoes I honestly don't know what I would have done. It's amazing how skewed TBM thinking can be & how many things you can justify to yourself in that mindset. I'm sorry you were on the opposite end of emotional cheating & were hurt by it.

I'm in very much the same boat with family relationships & the relationship with my husband. I won't hijack your thread will the details but I sure wish there was a way to get rid of the elephant in the room! It does help to know I'm not alone when someone else is dealing with a similar situation. Thanks again for posting.