Hey all. I posted a couple of weeks ago about how I no longer believe in this cult but my wife is a very strong believer. We also have a child on the way and I do not want my daughter to be part of this cult. My wife does not yet know how I feel and think it's time I talked to her.

I received lot's of help from people on how to proceed on talking to my wife. Something I heard from several posters was on how women in the church usually don't look too favorably on polygamy and I should start there. I just purchased a book mentioned several times on this board "In Sacred Loneliness: The Plural Wives of Joseph Smith"

The author is LDS and will mention it to her. I will start with that Emma Smith was not asked for her permission for these marriages.

What more could I mention? I thank everyone for the tremendous help I have had so far. If my wife chooses to stay LDS then I will have to respect that. But, she should know the true side before making a choice.. and hope she will respect my choice.

Btw, this is "Adam" Thought I'd finally join.

True name is Mike.. figured Adam was supposed to be the angel Michael.. right? :P

This book was really painful to read. Especially the parts about henry jacobs and helen mar kimball. I think if my tbm dh read this he might leave, but he won't do it

This is the book that did it for my wife. She was irate when I brought it in the house until I convinced her it was written by a mormon with a temple recommend. She didn't want to touch it or look at it but I knew she would if I wasn't around.

Best of luck to you.

Some really important points to make with your wife when she is ready to listen or when you feel it is appropriate.

In the D&C under the instructions given by God, plural marriage had specific rules and if these rules were not followed, the man not following them would be considered to be committing adultery and of course immediately lose the priestood. This would be of great significance because Joseph was a prophet.
Can a prophet lose the priestood? Look no further than David, Solomon and others in the Bible.

The rules outlined in D&C for plural marriage were:

a. The first wife must consent to the marriage.
b. The new wife must be a virgin
c. The new wife could not be the wife of another man.

If a man commits adultery, he must immediately repent and never do it again.

Joseph failed on all of these points. He continually hid his marriages from Emma and in a few cases held cermonies after the original ceremony once Emma consented! At least 7 wives had children, so they clearly could not be virgins. A number of wives also had husbands to whom they were married to who were still living when Joseph married them.

To my knowledge, Jospeh never repented. In fact there are a number of cases where he even denies he practiced plural marriage! The church's official position is that his only wife is Emma, but how then do you explain the geneological record? The church's geneological record.

It doesn't matter if Joseph had sex with his wives or not.
The fact that he entered into a plural marriage with them is all that matters. These were adultorous relationships on his part BECAUSE HE DID NOT FOLLOW GOD'S RULES. Legally, he was a bigamist and perhaps more. Bigamy has ALWAYS been illegal in the United States. It was in NY. It was in Ohio. It was in IL. Why would God command the Saints to engage in an illegal and unlawful practice, then later take it away BECAUSE IT WAS ILLEGAL AND UNLAWFUL??? God isn't stupid and this is stupid.

These points neatly avoid all the unsavory aspects that go with plural marriage and the predation thereof. Your wife should be able to fill in the blanks from there.

It had a major impact on my wife, who is a BYU graduate and former missonary. She considered it revisionist history and was very upset at the deceit. How is JS any different from other more modern indivduals,like David Koresh and Elizabeth Smart's abductor?

Good luck.

If she's not willing to slog through it all you may want to point her to a few of the women's bios for her to read. In fact, you may want to read the book first yourself. It's a time commitment but you could help her better if you knew the stuff. Just a thought.

ISL was one of the big catalysts in the dsimantling of my testimony. Good luck

"Forget this is Joseph Smith for a second. What if another religious leader (or the President of the US or a corporate leader or just some guy) was doing these things. What would you think? Would you think God had told him to marry other men's and 14 yer old daughters???? OK. Now apply that same logic to Joseph."

Still TBM but troubled. Problem is her DH is increasingly narrow minded. Too many years on high council etc.

I found it hard to read more than one chapter at a time in ISL, and I've read polygamy stuff for fifty years. Quite an emotional experience. I sat next to the author at a Mormon history conference dinner a couple of years ago. He is a great guy, very modest and unassuming. His MIL thinks he is wonderful too. He's no anti-Mormon, although he's been accused of that.

I checked out a few books about polygamy from the library, including this one, and left them laying around for my wife. No pressures, no debates. Long story short, two years after I had left, she followed. The nonsense about the realities of polygamy are so heinous to her, she's now more opposed to the religion than I am. LOL

She may ask what you're reading or take a peak on her own.

Have you read it?

It's something you might want to share little by little.
If she doesn't know how you feel yet, you don't want to shock her.

K

If Todd Compton's book doesn't pique her interest for any number of reasons, you might try something like "Mormon Enigma, Emma Hale Smith". It was written by two active LDS women back in the mid 1980's, but is still the definitive biography of Emma.

Women tend to identify better with Emma's plight as they follow her and Joseph through the entire early Mormon history. It shows Joseph's duplicity very plainly, and even though I don't think Emma was totally innocent of some of the shenanigans, she was truly duped with regards to polygamy.

Compton's book is very difficult to get into unless you have a better understanding of the history behind polygamy. Mormon Enigma will lay that foundation for you and your wife.

When these topics come up in our home I always ask my TBM wife why God condemns David and Solomon for plural marriages in the BOM, then uses them as the basis for modern plural marriage in the D$C. She has no answer. Other TBMs have used the "modern revelation" tact as a response.

I gave ISL to my TBM wife to read. She read the whole thing and is still somehow fine with the whole polygamy thing... including the way joseph practiced. She says as long as God says it's okay... then it's okay. If god didn't say it was okay... it doesn't mean that all the other stuff smith said isn't true. Makes me want to scream... UGH!

My uber-tbm x-wife had exactly the same reaction.

Brainwashed to the core.

Maybe you should read it together so you can discuss it.

If you tell your wife about your doubts she will shut down and stop listening to you. At least, I've read of that happening many, many times on this board.

Just a thought.

I bet it goes over like a lead balloon.

Thanks for the tips! No, I haven't read it yet. My wife also doesn't know how I feel. I told her that I have doubts about "some things" in the church but she says that in time the spirit will show me the way.

The book is on order and should get here, hopefully, in 5-8 days. I had to use the debit card so she knows I bought a book. I told her it is for her. I love her so very much and hope this may go well.. even if it takes a long time. As said, we're also having a daughter and do not want to see her brought up in this church.

Edit: I told her I got a book for her, just not the title. I mentioned it was written by an LDS author.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/21/2010 09:37PM by mike.

One more thing I'd like to mention: Thank you to everyone personally that has replied. i appreciate your feedback so very much.

It's hard to type much of the time and I can't get back to everyone personally. Thank you again for your help!! =)



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/21/2010 09:40PM by mike.

Don't act judgmental about the book when it comes. Tell her you got it because the topic puzzles you and you would like to know a woman's perspective. Here is the kind of stuff my husband said to me that eventually snapped me out of it:

Ask, "What if I was JS and you were Emma. Tell me what you would really think. Tell me why so many Mormon women are OK with sharing a man. I love you so much I would not share you. I feel uncomfortable with the way women are treated in the church sometimes (like having to veil your face and depend on men for the Priesthood). I want to know why you are so comfortable with being subjugated by males."

Needless to say, this started me thinking. Then I started reading more and more- I hit the Charles Larsen Papyrus topic next. Then Fawn Brodie's No Man Knows My History. Little by little I began to smell something fishy about JS.

Get her to read with you a little bit at a time and stop and discuss things. When she hears herself defending some of that crap out loud while looking at your puzzled face, just maybe she will start to think.

Quite a book. It blew my mind. The BIGGEST lesson I learned from it is that polygamy is about LACK OF INTIMACY. Lack of intimacy between husband and wife(s), lack of intimacy between wives because they were in competituion, lack of intimacy between mothers and children because they had more than one mommy, and no relationship whatsoever with their fathers.

BUT the most mind blowing thing (that also blew my mind in the Gerald Lund series some years back) was all the speaking in tongues by the women. One women would sing in tongues and another would translate it. Huh? So one knew what the other was speaking? AND the women were giving blessings to each other ALL THE TIME (don't hear of that nowadays--probably could be ex'd for it).

A lot of the most well known women (Zina Huntington, Eliza R. Snow) liked polygamy because it gave them notoriety. They were the elite in the church. I was appalled by some of the things they did and said.

Another one to read is "Devil's Gate"--but it isn't written by a mormon. SL Cabbie is the one who referenced it about 6 months ago.

If ISL doesn't blow her mind, then she may be hopeless.

One of the other things to notice about the book are the description of subtle differences in doctrine and practice from what we have today.

The women that were endowed evidently held priesthood, even if they were not within the "office of the priesthood" infrastructure in the church. They gave anointings and blessings, and often times their officiating in these was preferred over men giving the same (giving healing blessings to men). BY started shutting this down when they reached the Deseret territory. (On a side note, even as late as the 1950s it was not unheard of to hear women give blessings using the priesthood authority of their husband, or their father if they were not married. i.e. endowment: They were a "priestess" to their husband)

Also notice how charismatic the church was back then. Lots of speaking in tongues and having the interpretations, etc.

I think that topic is a terrific way to help a Mormon take a critical look at their own beliefs. I know it was the final straw for me, but it was the first straw for my husband. Other stuff about the church and its history didn't bug him until he found out about Joseph Smith's secret 'wives'.

My husband was born and raised in Utah and had no idea about Joseph Smith's plural wifery business. He had been taught in seminary that polygamy started with Brigham Young and that the purpose for the institution had to do with a dearth of worthy men. When I told him about Nauvoo polygamy, he was disturbed and angry that the church denied the practice publicly while acting in secret.

When I told him about the "polyandry" he felt like I had yanked the carpet out from under his feet. He tried to find an explanation for it, but everything he read just sounded like bad excuses.

It took a while because I didn't push things, but he eventually came to his own conclusion that Joseph Smith wasn't a prophet and the church couldn't be what it claimed.

My husband learned the truth before me, and polygamy pulled the plug on the whole scam for me. He first approached me with the Adam-God BY theory, which just confused me.

Then, he told me about Fanny Alger who was 16 at the time she was employed by the Smiths. I naturally researched to see if the info about the JS liaison was correct. It was. But, here's the kicker.

I had a beautiful 16-year-old daughter at the time, who is the light of my life. I was as dyed-in-the-wool Mormon BIC 6th generation pioneer ancestry as you get, but I took one long look at her, and within a 5-minute period I flipped on a dime. I went from 100% believer to 180 degree-opposite direction nonbeliever in that timeframe.

My heart and my head told me that if JS were around today, I wouldn't let him anywhere NEAR her. I, of course, knew then he was a con artist and nowhere near a prophet or representative of god. And, since we're told that TSCC's truthfulness is rooted in JS, the whole thing quickly came tumbling down.

For the first time in decades, I saw things clearly and many of my negative experiences in TSCC finally made sense. Believe me, I was as brainwashed as they come! It was my love for my daughter that shook me hard enough to knock some sense into me.

Well, that otta do it! That is the very book that took me out!

Thank you again everyone. I will do my best and bring up a little here and there.

This is some really good feedback!!

I got my husband out of the church, but it took years. I've never totally believed in all the mormon beliefs even though I was born and raised in it and married in the temple. I had problems with the first vision and polygamy. I would ask my husband about different things I saw happening in the church (I would actually complain alot). I didn't like how over the last year or so they were asking for volunteers for church cleanup & D&I volunteers. I posed questions to him a lot - like Joseph Smith says this but how does that work kind of questions. Just to get him thinking outside of the box. When I found out the truth about mormonism, I had a hard time telling him and he just said "Well, the church is true". I broke down and cried and then he finally gave in and said "I will look into it". That was all it took. When his testimony of Joseph Smith was shattered, the mormon walls came tumbling down.

Just a question, and I mean this in all sincerity. How come Todd Compton is still a member? I haven't read ISL and do not know the contents of the book. But it sounds like many of you are saying that it opens your eyes. How come Todd Compton is still a member and mormon apologist? I would be interested to know.

Honestly, I don't know either. There are apologists and historians that know enough that it ought to raise flags. Don't they read what they are actually writing? Seems like they don't want to extrapolate their findings. They dance around the topics going through impressive mental gymnastics to make it fit.

I'm guessing these people simply have a vested emotional interest in making it work. They are too invested and can't bear to face the expense of a bad investment that size. They cannot fathom having to deal with the concept that they were duped.

So they consider themselves "honest historians" who tell it like it was but tend to put an apologetic spin on it to explain why God operated like that.

{Scratching my head}

To the above, good question.

On note, this is adam...

The book came in the other day and we are reading it together. We were only in the Introduction part, not even the Prologue, and she said the book sounded very anti mormon.

I read her the sources and explained to her the author is lds and holds a temple recommend. I also told her that he is telling it from the perspective of the women in the book.

I hope this may help to open her mind some.

Happy New Year and thank you so much for all your help to everyone :)

Sounds like your wife is super programmed to sense and reject anything that might not be "faith promoting." It's a hard wall to break through.