maksutov wrote:
Thanks for the comments. Although it has only been a few weeks, it is becoming increasingly difficult for me to truly remember what it's like to think that way. My wife is very intelligent (she scored maximum points on the Mensa IQ test), and very humble (she always blames herself for everything and never anyone else), and in most cases quite reasonable (even before I gave her the list of quotes, she said she wanted to respect my beliefs even if she didn't agree with them). So how can she fail to see the evidence when it is right in front of her? It's very difficult to deal with - I am trying very hard to keep a close relationship with her, but since our discussion last night, there has been a definite 'chill' - and it is probably mostly my own doing, as I am the one who is frustrated, not her. 

Anybody else out there with a spouse still 'in the truth'? How do you cope?
I posted this in another thread.

http://www.huffingtonpost...ef-through_b_213879.html

Does this mean that rational argumentation about religion is useless? The answer may be disappointing. Religious belief is not bound to regular standards of evidence and logic. It is not about logic but about something more intuitive and primal. Arguments with believers start from a false premise -- that the believer is bound by the rules of debate rather than being bound by the belief itself. The freethinker assumes that the believer is free to concede; but this is rarely true. At best the bits of logic or evidence put forth in an argument go into the hopper with a whole host of other factors. And yet each of us who is a former believer (we number in the millions) reached some point in our lives when we simply couldn't sustain our old certainties. Our sense of knowing either eroded over time or abruptly disappeared. So sometimes those hoppers do fill up.


Just keep that in mind.

Show her stuff when you get an opportunity. I had the same experience with my wife - I read her stuff that was absolute nonsense, she just kind of waved it off. Don't force it on her. Use patience, focus more on your relationship than her relationship with the Watchtower Society. Take her on vacation, go away for the weekend, go hiking, go camping....anything to get her away from the indoctrination sessions. Eventually, the hopper fills up. It can't help but to.

In the case of my wife, eventually the WTS and the local congregation simply hung themselves. I was the more outgoing (valuable to the WTS) one, and when I stopped going the congregation asked alot of questions about me - concern about me. BUT, they showed very little personal concern for her. She continued to get annoyed about all the questions about how I was doing...she'd come home and tell me so, saying "What about how I'm doing?"

The hopper fills up, one way or another. Tell me, did/does your wife ever get phantom illnesses on meeting nights? A few hours beforehand suddenly she is feeling sick, no real concrete illness just a general feeling of illness or lethargy....


Peter: This is how a patriot dresses Lois. Boy I never knew it would feel this good to love my country. It's like loving God or a step-parent, you never really feel them love you back but that's okay cause they got other stuff going on and you understand.