Were You a TBM the First Time You Visited RFM?
Ex-Cultmember Jan. 2014
If so, what was your experience like? Was it the cause of your exit out of the church or were there other websites like mormonthink which got you to stop believing?
Did you read a lot or just got scared or offended and left? I would think rfm would not be good reading for a TBM unless they were open to spending a lot of time here.
Did you post as a believer? If so, what did you say?
What posts did you read that you remember?
Tupperwhere
Re: Were You a TBM the First Time You Visited RFM?
I came here in 1996. There was no mormonthink or anything else at the time. I think I posted, but I'm not sure. I was reading about all the history and doctrine at the time and a search found this website. I wouldn't say I was a believer at the time, but I wasn't an exmo quite yet either. It was reading other members exit stories that really helped me the most. I don't remember much about the actual board.
Bite Me
Re: Were You a TBM the First Time You Visited RFM?
Yes, I lurked. It was like watching a train wreck and I said to myself, "Wow, these people have issues!"
Little did I know...
Pagag
Re: Were You a TBM the First Time You Visited RFM?
I started lurking in 2001. I was still TBM. I thought it was an interesting site. I've never had a problem with criticism. I posted some on the NOM site I think doesn't exist now. I considered myself liberal. I knew I was never moving up the ranks because I believe abortion was a woman's choice, death penalty was not something government should be able to do at the same time I thought Mormonism was a god send to me personally.
I've always had a hard time with authority and the more arbitrary the worse for me and in Mormonism it is the worse. I could have been Jack Mo back then but I believed and bent (to authority) for the wife and kids.
I never could reconcile the level of obedience "required" to be a good Mormon. I basically believed in eventual my godhood because being subservient to pricks would make the CK not heaven but Hell much like after life polygamy never appealed to me. After life sex sounded good.
Then in 2003 or 2002 my eldest sister sent my The Genealogy of Brigham Young since we are his descendents. I read in their that our his wife and our ancestor Zina was married to Joseph Smith Jr. I was like "Huh?" So, having thought Moron history was boring, I started digging.
WOW. RfM became more and more important and I started posting more and more.
kolobian
Re: Were You a TBM the First Time You Visited RFM?
I was done when I first came here. My intention was to lurk but that obviously only lasted about 30 seconds.
I've been addicted ever since because every now and then we get those heated discussions that really open my eyes. Anytime you get Human, Henry Bemis, Hello, or Richard Foxe actively posting on a thread you know you have something to print off and soak up for later.
Plus you have Raptor, Anagrammy, BlueOrchid, and all the rest who come out of nowhere with the greatest insights into our shared experiences in living through and getting out of kolobianism.
I'm glad I found this place..
cl2
No--I had been inactive for AT LEAST 10 years
I had gone inactive as my gay husband was cheating and was ex. sec. There was no way in hell that I was going to church authorities again and I wasn't going to have my marriage fall apart in front of the entire ward. I had also been told my husband was going to be called as one of the next bishops by the bishop.
I had lost my beliefs at least a year before I came to RfM. I have an exmo therapist. I talked to him a lot about leaving the lds church, but I was having issues with wearing garments. I didn't dare not wear them. He referred me here. To me, everything I read here was just icing on the cake.
Actually, as a TBM and even before I lost my beliefs, I would have NEVER dared come to a place like this. I'm always shocked by the TBMs who do come here.
i'mtheQ
Re: Were You a TBM the First Time You Visited RFM?
Yes. And my initial reaction was "I can't believe these people could lose their testimony over something as trivial as horses in the BOM". But I was interested enough to keep reading. In particular I remember reading one of the exit stories, this guy listened to some church music and felt "the chills" which strengthened his testimony of the church. Then he watched an olympic hockey game and felt the same chills and suddenly had a testimony of hockey. Really made me start to think...
Tupperwhere
Re: Were You a TBM the First Time You Visited RFM?
the exit stories are very valuable because you suddenly realize that the people who wrote them are a lot like you. They grew up Mormon, they held callings, they aren't crazy! So then leaving TSCC suddenly seems to not be so crazy as well. There were only a few exit stories when I first started here. I remember checking back over and over to see if there were new ones because it confirmed that I wasn't the only one having those thoughts.
allegro
Re: Were You a TBM the First Time You Visited RFM?
I began lurking in about 2004. Deconstructor, Randy, Susie Q#1, Cheryl, and Deenie the Single Adult really helped me to see the real light. Deenie's experiences were at times similar to mine. I really looked at the resources listed in some of the posts and through a long process including therapy, I made my decision to leave.
allegro
Re: Were You a TBM the First Time You Visited RFM?
Oh, one more thing, I realized that if I needed therapy and all the hard emotional work it was taking to separate myself from a church, how "True", or caring and loving could it really be? It is not.
NormaRae
Re: Were You a TBM the First Time You Visited RFM?
I was a TDM (True Doubting Mormon). I really hated the church, realized the doctrines had screwed me up and by association, my children. But I still believed the foundational stories of Mormonism, so believed I had to keep enduring and hoped I'd be blessed for that. I was sure that many things in the church were not the way God wanted them and they had just evolved into what they are, but that God would reward me for trying to overlook them.
My daughter had left the church and told me about this web site. As soon as I found out about the different versions of the first vision, the house of cards started coming down pretty quickly. I read them for myself and even went to the Orem Library to check out some things from their vast Mormon history collection to make sure it wasn't just a bunch of anti-mormon BS I was reading. I did that with a number of other stuff I started reading. I read the Nauvoo Expositor. Then I searched real hard to find the church's answer. The apologetics are actually what sealed the deal for me. I was like, "That's all you got?"
The other day I read the church's response to the different versions of the first vision, wondering if those essays had been available to me then, on official church web site, if it would have been enough to satisfy me. I think it would have if I hadn't read the original ones myself. Because when you do, there is absolutely no way to come to the conclusion that they are complementary. They. Are. Not.
Once I knew the church was not what it claimed to be, I just had to deal with how long I play along for my son. I was a single mother of a 16-year-old boy and living in Provo. We had some great Young Men's leaders in our ward who had really taken him under their wing. He was the Priest quorum leader and had some really good friends. So it took me about 6 months, until he had gone to his dad's for the summer, to decide to resign my membership. I would have kept attending for my son if he'd wanted me to. But he was overjoyed that he didn't have to be involved in the church anynore. Who knew.
sherlock
Re: Were You a TBM the First Time You Visited RFM?
For a couple of minutes ;-)
closer2fine
Re: Were You a TBM the First Time You Visited RFM?
I somehow found one of these sites when I was totally tbm..... I only read a few things. Decided these were angry and deluded people, who were completely lacking the "spirit". I think I dropped a drive by post, calling them all to repentance, then got the hell out of dodge, resolving never to go anywhere so anti again.
Yes I've learned an important lesson on perspective.
hayduke
Re: Were You a TBM the First Time You Visited RFM?
I was still a member of record but hadn't been to church services in near 20 years. I found rfm in researching resignation. Been here nearly every day ever since. Thanks for being here, guys!
stbleaving
Re: Were You a TBM the First Time You Visited RFM?
I was a brand-new, not yet resigned exmo when I found RfM while searching for info on how to resign. I found some great support here.
adoylelb
Re: Were You a TBM the First Time You Visited RFM?
I was also a TDM(True Doubting Mormon) and a hormonal convert who had tried to go to church in an attempt to appease my ex-husband. I didn't post on this board before I filed for divorce, and shortly before the divorce was final, thanks to this site, I found out I could resign, so that's what I did.
I was careful when I was with my ex-husband in that I never looked at this site on his computer as it would have been really bad if he went through the computer history or installed a keylogger. I once caught him trying to figure out my e-mail password to get into that account, so I learned then to be careful about what I did on his computer. It was shortly after I caught him trying to hack into my e-mail that I filed for divorce.
lovelilith
Re: Were You a TBM the First Time You Visited RFM?
Nope. I was terrified of all you hell-bent crazies and would never have dared read this forum as a TBM. Now I know better and I'm one of you and my TBM friends are terrified of me. Hehehe.
cynthus
Re: Were You a TBM the First Time You Visited RFM?
Nope - already ex-mo
madalice
Re: Were You a TBM the First Time You Visited RFM?
I had gone to church that morning. I came home feeling very depressed. I was getting nothing out of church except some very undeserved grief. The meeting that day felt so dead. I looked around the room and realized that I had nothing in common with anyone. I had been in that ward for 10 years.
I came home and typed in how do I stay mormon? John Dehlin came up and I listened to his podcast. I then went on to MormonThink to look into some of the things he had talked about. One of them was the book of Abraham. While reading about that, it hit me like a ton of bricks. This church is a load of crap! I was simultaneously happy, furious, relieved, stunned, every emotion seemed to hit me at once. I was surprised that I felt a huge weight lift off of me.It was the only time in 50 years that I had a spiritual experience that I KNEW for sure if the church was true or not. NOT!
I spent the rest of the day and night reading MormonThink and Rfm.
My first post was titled "how to breathe easier" I had just cut my temple clothes into tiny little pieces. That was July 2011
catnip
I think I started lurking about a year before you did.
I remember all the posters you mention from the good old days.
I was wavering in my beliefs by then. During the Hinckley years, the incessant demands for total conformity and "obedience" were really getting to me. I had been freaked out rather than inspired by the temple, and felt SO validated to read that others felt the same way. That's why I came here and that's why I've stayed.
The constant nattering in church about how to dress, ear-piercings, tattoos, footwear, etc, etc, etc - I kept wondering: "And this has WHAT to do with spiritual growth??"
Kathy Worthington's guiding hand was still around back then - RIP, beautiful soul - and I used her resignation letter sample as a model for my own.
I'm not sure how I would have fared if not for the support from the group. I was feeling very rebellious about a system that I gradually realized was a crock of falsehood, but my DH was a TBM and at first, it was pretty rocky going when I began to voice my doubts.
DH's former sister-in-law called me, and my first thought was "OMG, she's been appointed as RS pres, and she wants me to serve with her - and I CAN'T." Fortunately, I was wrong. She was calling to tell me that she had just resigned, because she knew that I was harboring doubt myself. I followed her out within a matter of days.
nickname
Re: Were You a TBM the First Time You Visited RFM?
Not really. I did stumble upon this site a few times during my research which eventually lead me out, but I was too scared to stick around and actually read much of anything, seeing as it was an "evil" "anti-Mormon" information source. At the time, I was trying to be very careful to only get information from church-approved or very neutral sources.
However, that little bit of exposure did at least let me know that there was a place here for me once I finally did figure things out.
Ctus
Re: Were You a TBM the First Time You Visited RFM?
I was stuck in a self defeating loop for a very long time. I spent years not believing but feeling it was my fault. I finally started researching the issues that bothered me to try and resolve them. I guess I resolved them. 8 years and counting.
rationalist01
Re: Were You a TBM the First Time You Visited RFM?
I'd been on my way out for a while before I decided to explore the net for exmo resources. I found RFM about the same time I researched JS's polygamy and said to myself "This religion is a fraud!" I spent some time onf PostMormon too, but RFM has the tone I like. I am not respectful or tolerant of Mormonism anymore...
cludgie
Re: Were You a TBM the First Time You Visited RFM?
I was an active member, hardly TBM. I had already begun drinking and such.
kingsolomonsmines
I was "born again" on RfM. It wasn't pretty but it was real.
Absolutely TBM in early 1996. I had read the BoM with my wife and two young kids that morning. I was looking for material for my Elders Quorumn lesson that Sunday. It was about 10 am at work. (I later apologized to and thanked my nonMo boss for that time.)
When I saw the Yahoo search "Recovery from Mprmonism," I snorted and thought (condescendingly), "that's weird."
There were around 24 stories at that time and nothing else. I read the first couple and scoffed at their lack of faith and propensity to sin.
Yet somehow the genie was out of the bottle. I read very word on RfM that day and got zero work done.
As I left work into the darkness that evening around 6pm, I walked to my car bawling like a baby.
My real life had just begun...
Stray Mutt
Re: Were You a TBM the First Time You Visited RFM?
I had left the church about 20 years before, pre-internet. I was researching church-state separation issues when, somehow, following links brought me to RFM. "Oh, cool. It's nice we sons of perdition can have a place to chat." I stuck around to help others and because the forum got a lot of action compared to some others I frequented regarding other topics. I hadn't officially resigned, so I did that.
Dorothy
Re: Were You a TBM the First Time You Visited RFM?
Kolobian, add yourself to the list of RFM rock stars.
blueorchid
Re: Were You a TBM the First Time You Visited RFM?
It had been 38 years since I had realized the church was false when I found this place so I was not TBM.
In those 38 years I had known none of the shocking "anti" facts until just a year before I found RFM. I finally read No Man Knows My History. The pleasure of discovering the church's true history here was so exhilarating. So freeing.
But the best part was realizing there were others, countless others that understood all the pain, the fear, and the crushing self-doubt that so many of us had been through. If misery loves company, strong survivors do even more perhaps.
With all the "doors wide open" posts I read here, something has changed. I no longer have the horrific devil nightmares I used to have. I was good before RFM. But now I'm better. RFM made me a true EXMO!
oncewasblind
Re: Were You a TBM the First Time You Visited RFM?
1997 the year I returned from my mission was my first time. I remember stumbling upon this website reading a few stories now and again. But 2008 was the year everything came crashing down. Thank God almighty for RFM!
angela
Re: Were You a TBM the First Time You Visited RFM?
No. I had left long before RfM existed
sizterh
Re: Were You a TBM the First Time You Visited RFM?
I was not TBM but I was still brainwashed. I had left the church ten years prior. Did not think it was true but deep down was brainwashed. Read some things on here. Was amazed at the info. Saved it to the computer because I was afraid the info would disappear (hahaha) and the church would be able to suck me back.
Thanks CA Girl! I checked my other computer where it was saved and recognized your name.
After I found RFM I was able to resign. I know longer BELIEVED the church was false, I KNEW it.
notinthislifetime
Re: Were You a TBM the First Time You Visited RFM?
I started reading here in Rfm's beginning. I can't remember how I found it. It just blew my mind that there were other people thinking like I did. I was naive enough to think I was one of the very few to be disillusioned.
I really didn't know much about the history of the church. I just hated the overbearing control they wanted to have of my life. It blew my mind again to learn all about the disturbing church history.
"Recovery from Mormonism - www.exmormon.org"