As I progressed from RM to BYU graduate (unmarried) to mid 30's (still unmarried), I got increasing 'advice' (pressure) from my parents about finding a wife. At first I would tell them I was trying. Then I politely would tell them to leave it alone. I slowly grew more and more forceful in my push-back as the advice, links to church articles, 'random' calls and emails from my siblings, and even suspicious visits from missionaries and ward leaders (in a ward I'd never attended), showed up.

I resigned from the church a few years before I sent this letter to my parents. As I looked forward (with depression and despair) to another holiday season, I wrote the following letter in anticipation of yet another round of cards/letters/etc...

Sure enough, the 1st card arrived. I printed this out and mailed it off.....


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24 DEC 2014
I’m writing this, hoping you’ll leave me alone in my misery, but quite sure that you’ll send me a Christmas or birthday card. When it comes, I’ll print this out and send it to you. Maybe this response will give you the information you need to just let me go. I’m sure you’ll cry and feel bad for me and tell my brothers and sisters how much I need their help. Well, let me save you the effort - I’m not the son you wanted or raised. I’m me.
I understand that you felt you made the decisions you did in order to raise happy kids in a religion you believed was true. Now, let me tell you what it was like for me, growing up with your decisions.
One of the main ideas promoted by the religion you chose is free agency. I never felt that growing up. You controlled my every action and choice, never really letting me make a wrong choice, because you and your religion knew better. I grew up in fear. Never once have I felt the Spirit. Never once have I known that your church is true. Sure, I hoped it was, and I knew all the right things to say and what to do, but I have no belief that it’s true. Can you understand what that was like for me? All my family and people at church professing their feelings of the spirit and me with nothing? I grew up bouncing back and forth between two options – either nothing I did was worthy of the spirit, or god just didn’t care about me. I lived in fear of god and you, and my life was miserable. I was forced to endure church while the friends I had happily went about their religion free lives. I couldn’t act out in any way, because maybe this was all a test and that somehow god would love me. So I went through the motions, doing everything I could to stay busy enough that I wouldn’t have to deal with how miserable I felt. I graduated and went to college. I went on a mission. Two years of unrelenting hell where I felt like a hypocrite as I attempted to sway people to a religion I didn’t really believe in. I prayed. I fasted. I read the book of mormon. I did everything I was taught to do – that I was told would lead to a testimony. After the two years were over, I went back to school. I studied, I worked hard, I continued to try. Nothing changed. I graduated, worked, and went to church until I turned 31. Then I was pushed out of the young single adult ward I’d been attending. An unmarried failure, forced to move on to a ‘family’ ward.
Do you have any fucking idea what it’s like to grow up in a religion that is centered around family, to live here in Utah surrounded by that religion, to have all my friends marry and have families – all that and then be told that I had to attend a family ward as a single man? Growing up I heard all the snide comments people made about single men in the church – how they must’ve been doing something wrong or whatever, how they were a 'menace'. So, I stopped going to church. At 31 I finally had the guts to admit to myself that it was a waste of time. I started drinking. I started having sex (Oh yeah, I hate you for having me circumcised. Don’t you think a boy should have a say in whether or not a part of him is cut off?!? One of the women I slept with was from Europe and she was disappointed that I didn’t have a foreskin. That made me think about it – just another thing I never had a say in. You were my parents, you were supposed to protect me, not chop a part of me off just because everyone said to.) I started doing the things that made me happy, that I should have had the opportunity to do as a teenager or 20-something.
Both before I left the church, and since, I tried really hard to get married and have a family. At first, I was willing to go the religion route, pretend that everything was fine, raise a family in the church. Then, when I stopped going to church, I just wanted to find someone that wanted to have a family with me. Since college, I’ve dated 4 women that I considered as someone I’d like to marry. Sure, my expectations have changed through the years, but not my hope. You met the last one – Cheryl. I brought her to the reunion. After dating her for two years, helping her raise her three kids, loving all of them – after all that, she dumped me without any reason that I have been able to figure out. She and her kids left from having dinner with me and my friends and I never saw or talked to them again. I have never been the same since. I have gone on so many dates, tried so many dating sites, done everything I know how, but apparently something is wrong with me. If I actually get a second date, then it usually doesn’t go past a fourth date before my calls/texts aren’t returned and I get the message that she’s not interested in me – that I’m alone, again, and that I have to start over, again.
I resigned my church membership after Cheryl left me. How could a church be true, how could god be real and love me, and let me feel this way? How could I be raised to believe that if I followed the plan, that I’d get married and have a family, and that I’d be happy – and that none of that has come true? So you see, according to your religion, I'm really not your son any more – my resignation canceled my being 'sealed' to you. You only have 9 kids now.
This past year has been particularly brutal. After getting rejected, again, I realized that I can’t try anymore. As much as I want a relationship, as much as I want kids, I can’t take any more rejection. I give up – no more dates, no more looking. So, approaching my 43rd birthday, I face the rest of my life alone and in pain.
Do you have any idea what it’s like to want kids of your own and to not have them? All my friends have kids. Working for the state, I’ve done more to raise other people’s kids than some of those parents have. I’ve watched kids I’ve helped raise grow up and have kids of their own. And I’m still all alone. I get emails, and letters, and pictures, from my brothers and sisters telling me all about their families, and their kids. And I’m still all alone.
And now, if I even had the strength to go out and find a wife, how could I ever be happy? I’ve lived a life that I’ve never believed in, and even if I was somehow happy I’d always regret wasting my time up to now.
Which brings it down to three possible outcomes:
1 – Your religion and god are true. If this is true, then despite everything I was taught, somehow god doesn’t see me as worth saving. Despite trying so fucking hard to do the right thing, nothing I did was ever good enough. If this is the case, then I will happily burn in hell before I spend a second in his presence. I talked with my mission president about how I felt – he told me that of all the trials a person can face, a trial of faith is the hardest. He said that if that’s what my trial is then I must be a truly valiant spirit. Well, if my life to this point has been some trial set by god, then I failed, and I hate him for it.
2 – god exists, but either has a different religion or just really doesn’t care about us. If god does exist, but despite my efforts at being a ‘good’ person feels that it’s ok for me to be alone and miserable, then he is a cruel and petty being, and I hate him.
For either of these two options, I don’t feel any love towards a god that would let one of his ‘children’ grow up in fear and sadness. Whatever version of hell exists would be better than an existence with a cruel being that couldn’t be bothered to make the slightest difference in my life.
3 – there is no god. This is what I hope for. If there is no god, then when I die it will all end. All the fear, loneliness, anger, hate, bitterness, depression – all of it will be gone. At this point, that’s all I want.
This is what my ‘testimony’ is now – that there is no god, that the choices we make for ourselves are our own, and kids shouldn’t be forced into any religion. My life has been a disappointing waste, and when I’m gone it won’t make any difference. Whatever life I have left will be a nightmare of being alone and in pain. Thank you so much for contributing to that. As I said, I'm not your son anymore. Don't call. Don't write. Don't stop by.

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I did get another card in the mail a few weeks later, I assume for my birthday. I didn't open it, but wrote 'refused, return to sender' and put it back in the mail.

Since then they haven't tried anything else. They must have told my brothers and sisters because I haven't heard anything from them since - even the one that has been inactive for years and I thought got along with me the best.

It's a struggle living in Utah, surrounded by 'the church' and trying to move on, but at least I don't feel like I'm disappointing anyone or anything but myself now.