I have been out for about 8 years. I imagine this has been and will be a very hard time for you, it certainly was for me, but I really think it is worth it.
Telling my parents, and the period of troubles that our relationship had after was especially difficult for me. It did eventually get better though.
WARNING, the following is a bit of a trauma dump of my experience leavingthe Mormon church. I got more than a little carried away, but I thought I would share so that any one else who id having doubts, or has been through similar experiences can know that they are not alone.
To share a little of my own experience in the spirit of camaraderie, I was a mormon golden boy, raised mostly in Arizona but my family moved to happy valley during my sophomore year of high school. I was really devout, it sounds like your family is pretty similar to mine. I was Deacons, Teachers, and Priest president. I never so much as kissed a girl in high school, despite having multiple “girlfriends” because I was so afraid it would escalate into something forbidden.
I got really lucky, and during my senior year of high school, my cousin who was a huge harry potter nerd introduced me (also a fan of Harry Potter) to ‘Harry Potter and the Method of Rationality’. This was well timed, as I had been enjoying many of my science related classes my senior year and was beginning to really consider a career in chemistry or biology. That winter, after I had finished the book, I was beginning to go through the motions of preparing for a mission. The crisis point was when my bishop assigned me to give a talk on “the importance of sharing what you believe,” and while preparing for the talk, I was forced to consciously consider the question of why I believe what I believe. Everything I had been learning from methods crystalized for me. I realized the main reason I was in the church, and was planning on going on a mission, was simply because it was what was expected of me. I hadn’t really thought much about why I “believed” what I believed.
I didn’t exactly immediately drop out or anything, but I realized I was certainly not comfortable going and trying to convince other people to join the Mormon church, when I couldn’t explain why I was in it. I remember feeling extremely guilty about my doubts. I started doing additional research, and began reading Yudkowsky’s “Rationality: From A.I. to zombies.”, and Robert Caldini’s “Influence”. The more I read, the more I started to recognize patterns in fast and testimony meeting. I was able to start recognizing the absurdity of the things some people would claim in their testimonies.
I told my parents, in fearful one on one conversations, that I was having “doubts” and didn’t feel worthy to go on a mission. I remember on Sundays, sometimes I would sneak out early, rather than go to Sunday school, and started to realize how much happier and “spiritual” I felt spending my Sunday out in nature, or looking out over the valley from a favorite park.
My parents were completely shocked. I was probably the last person anyone expected out of my entire (quite extensive) extended family to doubt the church. My dad would try to talk through the logic of why he believed what he did, we would spend HOURS, one discussion I remember in particular lasted 8 hours, from 10 A.M. to 6 P.M. one Sunday afternoon, where my Dad tried to convince me that he could logically prove the church was true. The moe we argued though, the more obvious it became to me that he hadn’t really thought about it before. Heinsisted on refuting the idea of “probability” and “uncertainty”, and particularly the idea that Faith might not actually be a valid component to quality reasoning.
For me, the nail in the coffin was getting my “Patriarchal blessing.” If you are not familiar, a patriarchal blessing is a special blessing that you can request once in your life. Most people receive it in their late teen years. The patriarchal blessing is supposed to be direct from God, through a specially appointed high elder of your local Stake. The patriarchal blessing is supposed to be oracular. It is a prediction and blessing from god of things that will happen in your life. Long had I been told of the predictive power of these blessings, I had been told of my aunts and uncles who had received particular promises pertaining to the second coming, or how it had told them how to find their husband/wife.
When I was younger, I had always been very excited at the idea of getting a patriarchal blessing. Now, it was the final experiment. I decided that if the patriarchal blessing could make a useful prediction, and it came true, than I could at least give the church another chance. I didn’t need to bother with waiting to see if the predictions came true. Contrary to the expectations I was raised with, when I met the elder he did not immediately give me the blessing; instead he spent 30 minutes “getting to know me”, and “feeling the spirit”, which specifically involved talking about my interests, what I wanted to do with my life, what my hobbies were, etc. It became abundantly clear during the blessing, that anything that was even slightly specific from the blessing was derived from the conversation we just had. I had up-sold my academic interests during the discussion, and the most specific predictions I got were that I would obtain “multiple degrees”, “marry a faithful daughter of god in the temple”, and “serve a mission in a far away land. It was the straw that broke the camels back, at least in comparison to all the other doubts, concerns, and reasoning I had.
I knew my parents would not be supportive, so I planned things so that as soon as I graduated high school, I could move out on my own, start college, and be 100% independent. I did not want my parents to have a single hold over me, as I knew they would leverage it to make me feel guilty about leaving the church, and “being a bad example to my siblings” (I am the oldest of many children, if you couldn’t guess from my parents initial handling of the situation.) I moved out, took no car, no money, or any support of any kind, even if my parents offered it. I was out to prove that I did not need support of any kind, and that I could succeed without my family or the church. I did ok for myself, and for the first year my relationship with my parents was rally bad. I would go many months at a time without seeing them, despite living less than 20 miles away. Every time I did visit, it usually ended with a vehement argument between me and my dad. I was the first male on my Dad’s side of the family in living memory to not go on a mission. In fact, at (low) risk of identifying myself, my dad’s family holds the record for having the most family members out on a Mormon mission simultaneously. I have many uncles haha.
Eventually though, my parents started to recongize the boundaries. If we got in arguments, I didn’t want to visit, and despite everything.… my parents and myself started to realize that we valued having a relationship over necessarily sharing the same beliefs. It was a gradual process, but our relationship did heal.
For me, overcoming my conditioning was and still is a very painful process. I had endless shame around sex for a long time. Mormonism played a major role in the formation, and end of my first marriage. I still to this day rarely drink alcohol, only in low amounts socially, and I can’t bring myself to really enjoy weed. I do love tea, it turns out, but don’t like coffee much.
I have become a passionate student of rationality, scout mindset, all of it. I ended up going into biotechnology since I truly want to work on the problem of aging, and I see working toward the end of death as the most important thing anyone can work on. It is very probable that my mindset around this was shaped by my upbringing in a culture where surviving death was assumed.
There are many more tales I would be happy to share, but this has gone on WAY too long. If anyone wants to ask any questions, or share their own stories I would be so happy to oblige them.
Thanks for that! You’re fortunate you got out before going on a mission. I lasted only a few months before I became bored out of my mind and couldn’t do it any more.
I’m not even going to attempt to convince my parents. I know them well enough that if I prepared a good enough strategy I’d estimate a >40% chance of convincing at least one of them, but their lives and personalities are so enmeshed with the church that losing it would likely do them more harm than good at this point.
How did you approach dating after leaving? I don’t have much of a friend group now (not specifically because I left, I just drifted away from my friends from HS after a few years) so it’s really tough to meet women.
I’m sorry you were put in that position, but I really admire your willingness to leave mid-mission. I imagine the social pressure to stay was immense, and people probably talked a lot about the financial resources they were committing, etc.
I was definitely lucky I dodged a mission. A LOT of people insisted if I went on a mission, I would discover the “truth of the church”, but fortunately, I had read enough about sunk cost fallacy and the way identity affects decision-making (thank you, Robert Caldini) to recognize that the true purpose of a mission is to get people to commit resources to the belief system before they can really evaluate if they should do so.
Oh, haha, ya, I didn’t try to convince my parents either, they (particularly my dad) just insisted on arguing as thoroughly as possible about why I didn’t believe in the church/god. Exactly. It says everything about the belief system, when if you ask your parents (which I did) what evidence would convince them to leave, and they say literally no evidence would convince them. I asked, even if God appeared in front of you and said everything except baptism for the dead is true, you wouldn’t believe him? And he insists God would only do that through his prophet, so he would dismiss it as a hallucination lol.
At least for me, dating was a very rocky road after initially leaving the church. Dating in Utah was really rough, and because I was halfway through my undergraduate degree, I wasn’t yet willing to leave. There are a lot of really bad habits of thought and social interaction that the church engrains in you, around social roles and especially shame around sex. Personally, I oscillated heavily between periods of being extremely promiscuous and dating/sleeping with as many people as possible and periods of over-romanticizing and over-committing to a relationship. I think this is normal, but the absence of any sort of sex in my relationships until I was 18 kind of gave me a late start, and my conflicting habits and feelings made things a little crazy.
I did end up getting married very young, in an ill-advised relationship, where the truth is I was trying to please my parents and extended family. I had been dating her for a couple of years and had lived together for more than a year, and the truth is I had a lot of shame about that and wasn’t willing to tell my extended family because my parents were so embarrassed and thought it was such a dark and terrible secret. In the end we divorced after a very short period of time, with my only regret being that we didn’t end things much sooner.
I eventually met someone who was a much better person and who I see as a likely life partner. We have been together for three years now, and our relationship is the best I have ever had and is considerably better than my previous estimates of how fulfilling, enjoyable, and stable a relationship could be. It helps that she is much smarter than me, and we have both learned a lot of lessons the hard way.
My advice as far as dating goes is to not rush into anything. It is so easy because of the social norms in Utah, and the expectations we were raised with within mormonism to feel pressure to get into a relationship, and push that relationship to a very high level of commitment very quickly. In my opinion, the relationship will be healthier, and you are more likely to find a correct one if you tap the breaks as frequently as possible, since you are likely to tend too far in the accelerationist side of the spectrum, especially if you are new to dating. Personally I thought I did a lot of casual dating, but there is a big difference between casual hook ups and actually dating to find a partner, and I think it is important to not conflate what you are really after when you go on dates. I definitely struggled with this.
As far as actually meeting people, this is the main reason it is so important to be slow to form commitments…. I like Scott Alexander’s idea of “micromarriages” as a way to gauge how effective different activities might be at helping you find a good long term relationship. The simple advice though is too avoid dating apps altogether, unless you are just looking to hook up, in which case they are fine, but meeting people in person will still probably lead to a higher quality experience. My own experience, meeting my partner on campus by chance, may skew my perception about what the best way to meet people is, but I really feel that generally people I met in person resulted in better outcomes for my dating life.
The best method is probably to find social events/spaces where people who share your values are likely to attend. Classes can be fine, depending on where you are in Utah, but better are specific social events or clubs that might reflect your values. I am all too aware that those are limited in Utah Valley, but they do exist. Concerts, parties, and mutual friends are some off the cuff ideas for trying to network to potential dating partners. I really feel like Dating apps are a trap though… they make you feel like you are making progress, and seem convenient, but in truth the energy you invest in them is very low yield in my experience.
Sorry if that got a bit rambly.… writing on the way home from class for my masters and it is very late and I am fairly tired, but if I don’t respond now I will probably never get around to it. I sincerely wish you the best of luck, and if you want any other advice or just need someone to talk to with common experience, I am really happy to help. Just send me a DM or whatever.
I have been out for about 8 years. I imagine this has been and will be a very hard time for you, it certainly was for me, but I really think it is worth it.
Telling my parents, and the period of troubles that our relationship had after was especially difficult for me. It did eventually get better though.
WARNING, the following is a bit of a trauma dump of my experience leavingthe Mormon church. I got more than a little carried away, but I thought I would share so that any one else who id having doubts, or has been through similar experiences can know that they are not alone.
To share a little of my own experience in the spirit of camaraderie, I was a mormon golden boy, raised mostly in Arizona but my family moved to happy valley during my sophomore year of high school. I was really devout, it sounds like your family is pretty similar to mine. I was Deacons, Teachers, and Priest president. I never so much as kissed a girl in high school, despite having multiple “girlfriends” because I was so afraid it would escalate into something forbidden.
I got really lucky, and during my senior year of high school, my cousin who was a huge harry potter nerd introduced me (also a fan of Harry Potter) to ‘Harry Potter and the Method of Rationality’. This was well timed, as I had been enjoying many of my science related classes my senior year and was beginning to really consider a career in chemistry or biology. That winter, after I had finished the book, I was beginning to go through the motions of preparing for a mission. The crisis point was when my bishop assigned me to give a talk on “the importance of sharing what you believe,” and while preparing for the talk, I was forced to consciously consider the question of why I believe what I believe. Everything I had been learning from methods crystalized for me. I realized the main reason I was in the church, and was planning on going on a mission, was simply because it was what was expected of me. I hadn’t really thought much about why I “believed” what I believed.
I didn’t exactly immediately drop out or anything, but I realized I was certainly not comfortable going and trying to convince other people to join the Mormon church, when I couldn’t explain why I was in it. I remember feeling extremely guilty about my doubts. I started doing additional research, and began reading Yudkowsky’s “Rationality: From A.I. to zombies.”, and Robert Caldini’s “Influence”. The more I read, the more I started to recognize patterns in fast and testimony meeting. I was able to start recognizing the absurdity of the things some people would claim in their testimonies.
I told my parents, in fearful one on one conversations, that I was having “doubts” and didn’t feel worthy to go on a mission. I remember on Sundays, sometimes I would sneak out early, rather than go to Sunday school, and started to realize how much happier and “spiritual” I felt spending my Sunday out in nature, or looking out over the valley from a favorite park.
My parents were completely shocked. I was probably the last person anyone expected out of my entire (quite extensive) extended family to doubt the church. My dad would try to talk through the logic of why he believed what he did, we would spend HOURS, one discussion I remember in particular lasted 8 hours, from 10 A.M. to 6 P.M. one Sunday afternoon, where my Dad tried to convince me that he could logically prove the church was true. The moe we argued though, the more obvious it became to me that he hadn’t really thought about it before. Heinsisted on refuting the idea of “probability” and “uncertainty”, and particularly the idea that Faith might not actually be a valid component to quality reasoning.
For me, the nail in the coffin was getting my “Patriarchal blessing.” If you are not familiar, a patriarchal blessing is a special blessing that you can request once in your life. Most people receive it in their late teen years. The patriarchal blessing is supposed to be direct from God, through a specially appointed high elder of your local Stake. The patriarchal blessing is supposed to be oracular. It is a prediction and blessing from god of things that will happen in your life. Long had I been told of the predictive power of these blessings, I had been told of my aunts and uncles who had received particular promises pertaining to the second coming, or how it had told them how to find their husband/wife.
When I was younger, I had always been very excited at the idea of getting a patriarchal blessing. Now, it was the final experiment. I decided that if the patriarchal blessing could make a useful prediction, and it came true, than I could at least give the church another chance. I didn’t need to bother with waiting to see if the predictions came true. Contrary to the expectations I was raised with, when I met the elder he did not immediately give me the blessing; instead he spent 30 minutes “getting to know me”, and “feeling the spirit”, which specifically involved talking about my interests, what I wanted to do with my life, what my hobbies were, etc. It became abundantly clear during the blessing, that anything that was even slightly specific from the blessing was derived from the conversation we just had. I had up-sold my academic interests during the discussion, and the most specific predictions I got were that I would obtain “multiple degrees”, “marry a faithful daughter of god in the temple”, and “serve a mission in a far away land. It was the straw that broke the camels back, at least in comparison to all the other doubts, concerns, and reasoning I had.
I knew my parents would not be supportive, so I planned things so that as soon as I graduated high school, I could move out on my own, start college, and be 100% independent. I did not want my parents to have a single hold over me, as I knew they would leverage it to make me feel guilty about leaving the church, and “being a bad example to my siblings” (I am the oldest of many children, if you couldn’t guess from my parents initial handling of the situation.) I moved out, took no car, no money, or any support of any kind, even if my parents offered it. I was out to prove that I did not need support of any kind, and that I could succeed without my family or the church. I did ok for myself, and for the first year my relationship with my parents was rally bad. I would go many months at a time without seeing them, despite living less than 20 miles away. Every time I did visit, it usually ended with a vehement argument between me and my dad. I was the first male on my Dad’s side of the family in living memory to not go on a mission. In fact, at (low) risk of identifying myself, my dad’s family holds the record for having the most family members out on a Mormon mission simultaneously. I have many uncles haha.
Eventually though, my parents started to recongize the boundaries. If we got in arguments, I didn’t want to visit, and despite everything.… my parents and myself started to realize that we valued having a relationship over necessarily sharing the same beliefs. It was a gradual process, but our relationship did heal.
For me, overcoming my conditioning was and still is a very painful process. I had endless shame around sex for a long time. Mormonism played a major role in the formation, and end of my first marriage. I still to this day rarely drink alcohol, only in low amounts socially, and I can’t bring myself to really enjoy weed. I do love tea, it turns out, but don’t like coffee much.
I have become a passionate student of rationality, scout mindset, all of it. I ended up going into biotechnology since I truly want to work on the problem of aging, and I see working toward the end of death as the most important thing anyone can work on. It is very probable that my mindset around this was shaped by my upbringing in a culture where surviving death was assumed.
There are many more tales I would be happy to share, but this has gone on WAY too long. If anyone wants to ask any questions, or share their own stories I would be so happy to oblige them.
Thanks for that! You’re fortunate you got out before going on a mission. I lasted only a few months before I became bored out of my mind and couldn’t do it any more.
I’m not even going to attempt to convince my parents. I know them well enough that if I prepared a good enough strategy I’d estimate a >40% chance of convincing at least one of them, but their lives and personalities are so enmeshed with the church that losing it would likely do them more harm than good at this point.
How did you approach dating after leaving? I don’t have much of a friend group now (not specifically because I left, I just drifted away from my friends from HS after a few years) so it’s really tough to meet women.
I’m sorry you were put in that position, but I really admire your willingness to leave mid-mission. I imagine the social pressure to stay was immense, and people probably talked a lot about the financial resources they were committing, etc.
I was definitely lucky I dodged a mission. A LOT of people insisted if I went on a mission, I would discover the “truth of the church”, but fortunately, I had read enough about sunk cost fallacy and the way identity affects decision-making (thank you, Robert Caldini) to recognize that the true purpose of a mission is to get people to commit resources to the belief system before they can really evaluate if they should do so.
Oh, haha, ya, I didn’t try to convince my parents either, they (particularly my dad) just insisted on arguing as thoroughly as possible about why I didn’t believe in the church/god. Exactly. It says everything about the belief system, when if you ask your parents (which I did) what evidence would convince them to leave, and they say literally no evidence would convince them. I asked, even if God appeared in front of you and said everything except baptism for the dead is true, you wouldn’t believe him? And he insists God would only do that through his prophet, so he would dismiss it as a hallucination lol.
At least for me, dating was a very rocky road after initially leaving the church. Dating in Utah was really rough, and because I was halfway through my undergraduate degree, I wasn’t yet willing to leave. There are a lot of really bad habits of thought and social interaction that the church engrains in you, around social roles and especially shame around sex. Personally, I oscillated heavily between periods of being extremely promiscuous and dating/sleeping with as many people as possible and periods of over-romanticizing and over-committing to a relationship. I think this is normal, but the absence of any sort of sex in my relationships until I was 18 kind of gave me a late start, and my conflicting habits and feelings made things a little crazy.
I did end up getting married very young, in an ill-advised relationship, where the truth is I was trying to please my parents and extended family. I had been dating her for a couple of years and had lived together for more than a year, and the truth is I had a lot of shame about that and wasn’t willing to tell my extended family because my parents were so embarrassed and thought it was such a dark and terrible secret. In the end we divorced after a very short period of time, with my only regret being that we didn’t end things much sooner.
I eventually met someone who was a much better person and who I see as a likely life partner. We have been together for three years now, and our relationship is the best I have ever had and is considerably better than my previous estimates of how fulfilling, enjoyable, and stable a relationship could be. It helps that she is much smarter than me, and we have both learned a lot of lessons the hard way.
My advice as far as dating goes is to not rush into anything. It is so easy because of the social norms in Utah, and the expectations we were raised with within mormonism to feel pressure to get into a relationship, and push that relationship to a very high level of commitment very quickly. In my opinion, the relationship will be healthier, and you are more likely to find a correct one if you tap the breaks as frequently as possible, since you are likely to tend too far in the accelerationist side of the spectrum, especially if you are new to dating. Personally I thought I did a lot of casual dating, but there is a big difference between casual hook ups and actually dating to find a partner, and I think it is important to not conflate what you are really after when you go on dates. I definitely struggled with this.
As far as actually meeting people, this is the main reason it is so important to be slow to form commitments…. I like Scott Alexander’s idea of “micromarriages” as a way to gauge how effective different activities might be at helping you find a good long term relationship. The simple advice though is too avoid dating apps altogether, unless you are just looking to hook up, in which case they are fine, but meeting people in person will still probably lead to a higher quality experience. My own experience, meeting my partner on campus by chance, may skew my perception about what the best way to meet people is, but I really feel that generally people I met in person resulted in better outcomes for my dating life.
The best method is probably to find social events/spaces where people who share your values are likely to attend. Classes can be fine, depending on where you are in Utah, but better are specific social events or clubs that might reflect your values. I am all too aware that those are limited in Utah Valley, but they do exist. Concerts, parties, and mutual friends are some off the cuff ideas for trying to network to potential dating partners. I really feel like Dating apps are a trap though… they make you feel like you are making progress, and seem convenient, but in truth the energy you invest in them is very low yield in my experience.
Sorry if that got a bit rambly.… writing on the way home from class for my masters and it is very late and I am fairly tired, but if I don’t respond now I will probably never get around to it. I sincerely wish you the best of luck, and if you want any other advice or just need someone to talk to with common experience, I am really happy to help. Just send me a DM or whatever.