On Being Ex-Mormon & Relationships

Sometimes I feel out-of-touch with the ex-mormon community, because I was never as indoctrinated as most of those who post on the Recovery from Mormonism bulletin board or because I don't necessarily have something "mormon" to discuss.

We can never escape where we've been, or who we are or who we have been.

Most of the time, the fact that I am an ex-mormon doesn't show up in my daily life. I wake up (early!), miss taking a decent breakfast, commute to work, work, commute back home, and then do whatever it is I do that takes up the rest of the day. No one needs to be ex-mormon to do what I do every day. I hope that some day there are no more ex-mormons, because what that religion does to people is an ugly thing and I do believe it would be a good thing if someday there is no such thing as Temple Square in Salt Lake City; no theocracy in Utah and no more black-suited missionaries on the streets of the world. That world doesn't exist today, but I can hope.

Sometimes, however, the fact that I spent a critical part of my youth in Utah does appear, and I have to deal with the quirkiness of that. Most of this quirkiness deals with mormon gender roles and mormon stereotypes regarding women being dissonant with the type of person I am, the type of person my parents raised me to be. I've (possibly not single-handedly) ruined more than one relationship because of LDS-cultural expectations of women, and I've possibly alienated a lot of my LDS friends because of my opinions regarding their religion.

Please don't misunderstand me; I respect choice of religion and I respect my friends. I don't respect a religion. I don't tie the two together, which many LDS adherents seem to do.

Sometimes I have to bite my tongue when I'm with my LDS relatives when they say something like "polygamy isn't practiced today the way Joe Smith envisioned it to."

I alienate old LDS friends, too, when I say something that's culturally "not right" to them. For example, I've been chatting with an old high school friend online for the past week or so. He's recently married, and was expounding the joys of being married and telling me that I needed to get married. After getting more than slightly irritated, I said, "I'm young, I'm happy with my career and my life, why do I need to get married now rather than later?"

My friend said, "Kids". I responded, "Hmm. Kids? I only want two. Even if I got married at 30 (I'm 23 now - an old maid by LDS standards) I would have enough time."

To this my friend said nothing.

A related conversation with this same person revealed that his wife is expecting a child, and he was feeling insecure about his abilities as a father. When I asked for the due date, let's say it was about eight-and-a-half months from the wedding date. I said to my friend, "I know this is really absolutely none of my business, but the math doesn't seem right." He said, "I know, it's a honeymoon baby; we were planning to wait two years but plans change."

From this additional conversation and similar conversations with a couple other (female) LDS friends, it seems to me that birth-control/sexual education is non-existent in Utah (or at least in the school district I attended). The attitude seems to be, "we had sex, and oops! Now we're going to have a baby." It's like someone took the plus sign from 2+2=4. Hello?!? Did you *think* to use some B.C.? There's no logic or responsibility.

I definitely am not against marriage, I think marriage between the right people is a beautiful thing. I think little ones (kids) are wonderful. But I also think that I'm not ready to be a wife or a parent. I want to be the best mom I can be when I have kids, and I can't offer kids that right now. Why should I have kids if I can't give them the best person, the best mom that I can aspire to be?