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Thank you all very much for your answers. I noticed that nobody mentioned doctrine. It’s interesting but then, where doctrine used to be a driving force in so many world religions those distinctions that come from doctrine seem to be getting blurred these days, so maybe its not part of the matrix. Again, thank you all!
mfree6464 wrote:
LCWalker wrote:Forgive her.
I wanted to take a moment to address this comment because this thread seems to find someone every year or two who is suffering like I was and advice like this, though well-meaning, is not helpful to those who are going through this.
I get it. If you haven’t experienced this type of challenge then forgiveness seems to be the answer. It is not. This isn’t about harboring anger over another person’s mistakes, it’s about sorrow. To use an extreme example: if a drunk driver wiped out your family you could forgive the driver’s mistake but that would not remove your sorrow. You would still mourn the terrible loss. Same thing applies here except I was never at any point angry at my wife for her “sins”. She was 16 years old and, like every human on this planet, made a mistake. I never assigned blame to her at all. Ever. I was simply heartbroken at the thought of what happened and, due to my OCD, couldn’t get it out of my head. Forgiveness does not apply to this situation though I totally understand why someone might think that it does.
What makes you think I’ve not been through something? Besides, I said more than “forgive her”. Please quote me in context.Hi McFree. I read your post and it reminded me that the same issue- a spouse’s prior physical relationships- can haunt a marriage. Especially if you thought one thing and found out it wasn’t what you thought. But may I ask you if you’ve given any thought to the fact that she cannot undo her past and, when you married her you promised for better or worse? If this is the worst, you have been one very lucky person! Forgive her. If you want to salvage the marriage, that’s all you can reasonably do. Otherwise, it will eat you alive. How do you forgive her? By realizing that maybe she was afraid to be upfront for fear of losing you. Or getting in trouble. Or maybe she just didn’t want to face her own past. Talk. Talk together. Find out where her head is and tell her where yours is.
I wish you all the best!
Why you stopped going is very important because it will still haunt you going back unless you resolve the issue. How you chose to resolve it is up to you. But one thing I do know is that leaving anything because people let you down isn’t a reason to change your religious activity. Churches are full of human beings. Human beings aren’t perfect. In fact, IMO no religious group is perfect because they’re all filled with imperfect people. There was only one who was perfect on this earth and that’s Jesus.
Back in my LDS days I would find myself using terms that, to me, seemed quite obvious and simple. For example, a friend from our neighborhood had asked me if I wanted to go shopping with her and I said I couldn’t that day because I had a meeting at the Stake Center. She asked me what kind of steak place it was. We must have verbally danced for five minutes before either one of us realized we were talking about totally different things!
