Let’s talk about maintaining, rebuilding, or finding new friendships after stepping away from Church activity. Church is social. Put enough people in the same place every week, mix them around in callings and classes, and some of them will become friends.
I’m going to throw out some thoughts and then ask questions and let the discussion take the spotlight.
Situational friendships are a thing. You talk to some people at Church only because you’re in the same space with them. If you stop attending the ward, you stop being friends, whether you leave the ward because the ward boundaries changed or because you lost your testimony. Situational friendships aren’t bad, but they also aren’t very deep or long lasting. If the only time you ever talked to someone was at Church, and the only thing you ever talked about was Church stuff, then the friendship will likely end when you quit Church.
Deeper friendships can start at Church. You meet someone in the ward, and then you start getting together outside of Church activities. You talk fairly often about non-Church topics. You invite them over; you visit their house. What about these friendships when you quit Church?
Do you expect this deeper friend to ask you why you left Church? How do you expect that conversation to go?
I’ve heard comments from people who were disappointed that no one asked them why they stopped attending Church. I’ve been on the other side of that, and I can tell you why I didn’t ask the question. I was a visiting teacher to a sister who went from active RM to completely inactive, and in the two years I visited her, I never asked her why she quit Church and she never volunteered the information. I didn’t want an awkward conversation. I didn’t want to listen to her vent. I was nuanced enough to know that platitudes weren’t going to help. The ward was offering me a lot of support at the time, and I didn’t want to listen to someone say negative things about something that was really important to me.
When I quit attending Church, a few people asked me about the reasons I quit, and it was not a good experience. I’d had a sobfest in the bishop’s office and said some really personal things about difficult family situations. So when people showed up and asked enough about my reasons for leaving that I could tell that the bishop had told those people what I’d said to him in that interview, I was miffed (horrified and humiliated). I didn’t want my reasons for leaving to be discussed in ward council. I didn’t want my first “deep” conversation with a random person from the ward to be so freaking personal.
I’ve managed to hang on to some very faithful lifelong friends. There were some awkward missionary efforts. After I turned down an invitation or two, one friend stopped offering. She never asked me outright why I left, and I mentioned a few nonspecific issues and then we dropped it. We’ve got basically the same friendship we had before, but we never talk about Church.
With another friend, we had a real conversation. She knew enough about me to know some of the personal reasons why I left. She asked what I thought of Christ. I knew she didn’t want to hear anything that would challenge her own faith, and I wanted to respect that. So I straight out asked her if we could still be friends even though I was an apostate. She gave me a relieved smile and said yes. Our friendship got past that awkwardness, and we never talk about Church.
Many other friendships ended, ones that were more casual. I still wave and say hi to neighbors. I smile politely when they invite me to Church stuff and say ‘no thank you.’ I still go to movies with my neighbor, even after I turned down her invitation to Stake Women’s Conference.
In writing this post, I realized what got the best results for me in maintaining friendships. I reached out. I told people I still wanted to spend time with them, and we didn’t have to talk about Church. All my Church angst goes here, on Wheat and Tares, and I don’t expect my friends to listen to my issues with Church. I talk to very few people in real life about Church.
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Questions for those who have quit attending Church:
- Did you expect people to ask why you stopped attending Church? Do you think that conversation would have allowed you to maintain friendships?
- Did you have friendships with people at Church that went beyond Church? Did those friendships end too?
- Did you ask someone to still be friends?
- What have you done to find non-Church friends? Has it worked?
- Are you more or less lonely than when you attended Church?
- Tell your story. What hurt, what helped, what happened.
Questions for those who are still attending Church:
- What are your ward friendships like? Entirely Church-focused? Or have some of those Church acquaintances become friends in other contexts too?
- Have you ever asked someone why they quit attending Church? Why or why not?
- Are you lonely at Church? Or do you enjoy the social interaction in your ward?
- Do you have a friend in the ward who you could call when you have a bad day or need help? Is it a ministering brother/sister or someone else?
Wheat & Tares 
I had changed wards a few years before I left. My ward wasn’t friendly so I didn’t make any friends there. When I left I was writing letters to sisters for (then) visiting teaching and when my quarterly report came up, via email I let the RS president know I wasn’t going to write any more letters (what a waste of time) and didn’t plan on attending anymore. I’ll give her credit, she responded back appropriately and asked if we could meet to discuss why I was leaving. She promised she wouldn’t try and convince me of anything, but wanted to understand why “so many people were leaving”. I didn’t choose to respond, which was poor form on my part. That said, I had 2 reasons. One – I’d been in the ward for about 2 – 3 years before she was called as RS president and she’d never said one word to me beforehand. She introduced herself to me when she became president. I wasn’t new and at that point we were a branch (to grow the area!) so it’s not like there were 300 people and she never noticed me. The second reason was she and her family were so TBM and this was a new phase for me, I didn’t want to ruin things for them if it was working for them (which it seemed it was, but how would I know!?)
I did have a friend from the previous ward and we have kept in biannual contact. She doesn’t appear to be interested in knowing why I left, so I haven’t felt compelled to enlighten her. Recently I informed a Christmas card friend (she had moved out of state) from that same ward that I’d left via messenger in a convo we were having there. She seemed ok with it, but time will tell. She did not ask why and I didn’t volunteer, especially after her comment that she finds the people lacking, but she can’t leave as the church is “true”. Again, if it’s working for her, I’m not out to dismantle her life.
I live in the DC metro area and have for decades. It’s easier to find friends here when everyone you meet and interact with isn’t a member. I would think it’s much more challenging in heavily LDS areas if you’ve left the church.
Your question asking if I’m more or less lonely – I’m much less lonely. Church was the loneliest place I ever found myself. With a non-member spouse after my children were grown, I’d go to church alone and would walk out after sacrament meeting on many a week without a single person saying a single word to me. There was one woman I had known for 20 years through various wards, but we only spoke if I approached her. There was one kind woman who would make an effort to say hello if she walked by me, which I was pitifully grateful for. Not a soul reached out when I stopped attending – which I was both grateful for and offended by at the same time. It’s been a process.
I have always felt more myself with nonmembers anyway, then I got burned by a couple of relationships at church. They point blank rejected me because of differences in how we approached church after them swearing “sisters forever”. One couldn’t accept that I didn’t worship priesthood leaders at every level as perfect and the other couldn’t understand any nuance of testimony of BoM. So, then I stopped letting anyone from church get close. My bishop still knew enough to know why I left, but he was probably my closest friend at church at that point. Then two years of “but I thought we were a bit more than just visiting teachers” happened and then we moved. I have gotten a couple of Facebook friend requests from that old ward, but why would I want to be “friends” on Facebook with someone who wasn’t even friends before we moved away?
I am open to friendship, in this new ward, but they have to meet me at least 50/50. Our LDS neighbors are downright unfriendly, and since they are friendly to each other, I have to assume it is my inactivity. I don’t often discuss church when the ministering couple or sisters visit. But I am not at all angry or hostile when they bring things up. Our home and visit ministers may be treating me like a project, so until they are unassigned, I just assume it is assigned.
So, as far as keeping friends when one leaves the church, I can’t even keep Mormon friends when I am still in the church.
Thank you Janey 🙂
My thoughts:
“Sometimes it’s the constant desire to “fix things” that keeps breaking them in the first place. Sometimes the most useful thing you can do… is nothing. Coincidentally, this is usually also the hardest thing to do.” -Mark Manson
The constant culture of overseeing projects to fix people or being a fixit project yourself in the church never yielded any long lasting friendships for me. I’ve been on both sides of the fence and found it all disturbing for mental and spiritual health. The leadership can gloss and whitewash that term all they want, but it is what it is. After leaving the church, there are a couple of people I keep in contact with that I respect. Yes, my family is a project for them. No, they do not want to see all the evidence against the church. But they are for the most part genuine and friendly and would help me out if needed and I would do the same for them.
You’ve probably all seen this quote I dig from Dr. Seuss: “Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind.”
I was raised in the church and speak fluent church lingo. Around COVID, I stopped taking my family to church and have had limited church activity. My spouse is casually connected to the local church community through Sunday attendance.
At social functions, I have taken to staying that my activity level/faith situation as “It’s Complicated” and that “I am a Christmas and Easter Mormon” when I talk to people in the church community (Yes, I know we don’t use that terminology – I don’t care. It works for me in a humorous way). I get a variety of specific, noticeable reactions. The people who seem to be masking uncomfortableness with my comment, I generally drift away from and consider it a “no harm, no foul” situation.
The people who are sincere about wanting to be included in our lives as friends collaborate on a relationship with those boundaries as the foundation.
I make it a point to have a conversation around the topic, “Here’s what I would prefer that you say to others socially about my faith transition should it come up”. I want to empower those who talk about my faith transition (because people are always going to talk) with a narrative framework that is more informative and less speculative. Mostly the narrative I want to go around (as much as possible) is that I didn’t make any hasty, thoughtless decisions during my faith transition, and that I am open to having conversations about that transition that will include boundaries to protect both their feelings and my feelings.
Our more orthodox Mormon ‘friends’ have taken the typical LDS passive-aggressive approach. A couple we shared theater season tickets with for 10+ years cancelled, I was replaced in the weekly golf foursome, etc. All this because we simply became less active – no resignation or outspoken anti-Mormon rhetoric, just taking a break from many years of unquestioning service.
Ultimately, the stake RSP confronted us at the auxiliary LDS Temple (Costco – still had that recommend), parked her cart in front of us and demanded to know why a former bishop and his wife had become less active. We politely responded that we had simply stepped back for the time being and did not harbor any ill feelings toward our more active neighbors.
She then went on a diatribe about how many ‘uninformed’ members were disregarding their temple covenants and leaving the church. She was still ranting about anti-Mormon lies when we politely wished her well and walked away.
It has been revealing to discover who our true friends are. Fortunately, we have developed more substantive friendships with both less active and non-Mormon neighbors. It refreshing to be able to speak freely without worrying about saying anything that could be interpreted as contrary to the covenant path.
A timely post for me, as I’ve been thinking about no longer attending my ward and what that might mean as far as my social circle. So, as someone who still (barely) has their foot in the door, I’d say that the few friendships I have at church are based much less on the gospel and much more on common interests. I’ve one friend who loves music as much as I do, so we go to concerts occasionally, have lunch fairly regularly, etc. There is a couple in the ward and both of them are also intellectuals, so we get along quite well, and over the years they’ve become very dear friends. I have a few more casual acquaintances, but in a Mormon context, I don’t consider us real friends unless we can have lots of frank talks about religion, belief, where we both are on the true believer spectrum, etc. That’s a conversation I don’t feel that I can have with most people in my ward, so I don’t really have any other close friends at church. As someone above also noted, I find friendships easier with nonmembers, simply because religion never comes up, unless it’s a random topic of conversation. I think it’s been easier for me to get closer to nonmembers precisely because being part of a church community is actually a much more fraught social situation than talking to nonmembers. I would hope that if I do make the decision to step away, that I’d keep the few friends I have in the ward, but it’s hard to know. As Ambrose Bierce famously said, “friendship is a ship that can hold two people in fair weather, but only one in foul.”
So I guess I’m a bit lonely at church, but frankly, I no longer have the energy to do the long, complex friendship dance that church relationships require. And it would never occur to me to ask someone I didn’t know EXTREMELY well why they stopped attending. It’s none of my business and frankly, I couldn’t care less. I’ve discovered that, for me at least, community and friendship doesn’t come from shared belief, but rather from shared passions/enthusiasms. I’d be much more likely to be friends with someone who loves country music, or Shakespeare than with someone who attends my church. YMMV
This is something I have thought a lot about in the last few years. I don’t have any clear answers for how to do maintain or cultivate friendships with members post church. But I have some observations:
1. Very few people ask why – more people talked to my wife than to me. There more more women that called and met up with Leila to get the story from her than anyone did with me. What we learned from those conversations is that even very active, leaders in the women’s organizations carry a lot of doubts and questions and most of the people that talked to Leila were either very nuanced in their faith, or did not believe any longer, but stayed in for family and community. My close male friends from college talked to me one time about it one time. My very best friend continues to be I would say my best friend, but there are a stack of issues that we just don’t or can’t talk about any more.
2. Members don’t have time for you unless you are a project or one of the active members of the ward. The church keeps people busy. Casual friends basically don’t have time to maintain ties. There is a lot to be said for regular casual conversations at church and activities. But if you are all the way in with teen age kids – my age group, then you have seminary every day (5-10 hrs a week with travel time – we lived 30 minutes from the chapel), weekly youth activities (3hrs), weekend activities (1-5 hrs), callings – (2-20 hrs), and church (2-3 hrs). Total commitment is like a part time job.
3. Reactivation project status – we hear once and a while that we are discussed at church meetings for potential reactivation. New youth leaders once and a while reach out to the kids or us or bring by a plate of cookies. Effort is not sustained because we are kindly, but firmly resistant to reactivation. Missionaries reach out on facebook whenever there are changes. If there was a chance for us to be reactivated no doubt there would be many more plates of cookies and people inviting us. I came to church one day to play my violin along with my friend’s composition for the church choir. Immediately ward members assumed we were coming back and sent assignments for us to bring food for the memorial day picnic and signed us up for cleaning the church.
4. My gay children feel much more shunned than we do. None of her former church friends have anything to say or do with her now. She got engaged and only a very few members that follow her on social medias even congratulated her on her engagement announcement. I think they just don’t know what to say and so say nothing.
5. The church as a whole doesn’t need members that leave because of a faith crisis. They don’t want to resolve your concerns, the leadership message continues to be that the church has the whole and perfect truth and leadership role, but doesn’t want to engage with or deal with any of the issues of the past. As Oaks says the church never apologizes or repents. The church doesn’t need the money even any more.
Rereading my comment. My apologies for awkward wording. . . need to proofread myself better.
The only people that I expected would ask was our best friends and our immediate family members (ie parents and siblings). I didn’t expect anyone else to ask. None of these people asked either. I wish they would, just so I could feel seen. I don’t need them to follow my path but it would be nice for the people I care the most about to want to better understand me. Oh well.
Our best friends talk church stuff to us all the time. Talk about their callings, their kids activities, ward gossip with the people we knew, etc. But I’m not allowed to say anything, only to listen. This rule has never of course been vocalized but the few times I’ve chimed in I was told they don’t need my input. Again, oh well.
My oldest brother (who is nine years my senior) left the church as a teenager. It wasn’t until I left that I truly saw how completely insensitive and oblivious we were to him. Similar to my experience with my friends, we would talk church all the time in front of him and expect him to listen silently. It really was rude. I’ve apologized to him. I really do need one of those T-shirts “I’m sorry for the things I said as a Mormon.”
We’ve managed to make a few friends outside of the church. Simple things like showing up at the park after school and socializing with the other parents was actually an easy way to start. I’ve been with my company for 19 years so taking the next step to socialize outside of work with a few coworkers and clients has also come naturally, especially if you join in all the happy hours I missed out earlier in my career. I suppose one could also join an interest group or frequent their local watering hole to make new friends as well.
It’s a different kind of lonely. I overall see less people now but I was also in the camp of going to church and feeling invisible. I think for me the current version of lonely has been better.
Mormons make great friends. It’s the Latter-day Saints you have to worry about.
I am sorry that so many of you have felt invisible in church. I am afraid that recent changes have made church less social and less friendly. I certainly feel it.
I took last year off. I no longer believe, but attend to accompany my husband. But last year, our church didn’t start until 1 p.m. I did not attend simply because I suffer from anxiety and afternoons are my “reset” and “quiet” times. No church for me. My husband faithfully attended. Alone.
Fast forward to the 2023 Ward Christmas party. I went. Took a pie. Fully participated. And I was greeted by a few RS sisters who were eager to make me feel welcomed. One told me how nice it was to see me and it probably wouldn’t hurt me if I showed up to church once in a while. 😅
Now church is at 9. I go every week. Same few friends (acquaintances?) who have seemed genuinely glad to see me and I them.
I have a few thoughts. First of all, though, I’m always mystified by people who have left and felt bummed or offended that nobody asked why they left. To me, unless the relationship is truly a friendship and not just a church-acquaintance, questions about religious belief are rude, and setting boundaries is a valuable part of deconstruction. I suppose that in those cases, they are unhappy that nobody they thought were friends were actual friends; they were just church friends, which is generally a shallow relationship. Even worse are those marriages that discover that it wasn’t a true marriage, just a church-marriage. It seems that when Hinckley said that any believing man could marry any believing woman and make it work, the only thing binding them was the shared belief, not love or regard or affection. And the other aspect to people asking why you left is that it is too often tinged with the notion that they are going to persuade you otherwise, when in reality, it’s far more likely to backfire.
Most of my friends who’ve left are kind of relieved to talk to others who have left. Those who’ve stayed, but who are either nuanced or were inactive for a long time in their own lives tend to be pretty accepting of everyone regardless of church attendance and belief. As adults, I just think maintaining friendships is really hard, and finding new social circles is also hard, particularly with how polarized everyone is politically now. I literally do not want to be friends with most of the Mormons I’ve met since Trump was president; my friendships that pre-date that time frame are *mostly* capable of surviving, even if I disagree with their politics (although most, but not all, of the people I am still close friends with are closer to my political views). Politics is another one of those things that it’s rude to bring up publicly, IMO, and I don’t.
The problem with church members nowadays is that so many are so completely wrapped up in their worldview (anti-LGBT, QAnon conspiracy theories, anti-woke, etc.) and they feel totally free to speak their minds, assuming that anyone else they meet through a church connection is going to agree with their terrible views. I feel like I’m standing in a swimming pool while someone is peeing directly on me, and they are making the wrong assumption that we are all friends here, we are all peeing in this pool, but I am NOT peeing in the pool. A few times, I’ve heard some of them talking off to the side about their views, and then when I walk up, they try to downplay the things they are saying so I won’t be offended. It’s not that I’m offended; it’s that they often are spreading misinformation, but they revel in it because it fuels the outrage they share. I’m the party pooper when I debunk the nonsense. It is literally the glue holding some of their friendship together.
I was born an Utah Mormon but have lived all over the country, with 34 years in the NYC area. There were other UT transplants in the area. We developed deep friendships that are still strong now that many of us have returned to UT. My grandmother was a progressive UT Mormon who inoculated me to historical issues but my marriage to a TBM kept me active and service to others became the priority.
My wife died of cancer shortly after our return to UT. I became close to ward members who gave service in our time of need. When it was time, as a widower to date again, I had a difficult time. I was not comfortable with exmos and TBMs were not comfortable with me. I eventually found someone to “reactivate” and marry. Member know I am on the fringe but we still have friends in the ward and my east coast friends. We ran into another “fringe” couple from the ward at Sunstone. They are happy to have support in their faith crisis. I could nuance a temple recommend interview but the bishop knows I find alternate charities for my tithing contributions.
The friends that my wife and I cultivated in church in our old ward in Holladay, UT that we’ve maintained were pretty much mostly liberal people (more socially liberal, not necessarily politically). As I’ve caught up with some of them, I’ve found that they have either left or are PIMO.
We have a friendship group in our ward now. We all have kids the same age. I attend church but don’t take callings. My wife is a more liberal believer. Our friendship group includes another couple where the father is a former member who doesn’t attend church. We all see each other equally. We don’t really talk about the controversial issues in the church, although we’ll talk about some aspects of it.
We are rare exceptions. But the truth of it is that we have simply always gravitated toward liberal, or at least liberal libertarian (as opposed to conservative libertarian), kinds of folks in the church. We haven’t really made strong friendships with conservative church-goers. Things just don’t click between my wife and me and them, and they haven’t for years.
I’ve struggled with how I feel about this topic for the past 8 years since my wife and I and are children left the church.
Janey, the reasons you shared for not asking a friend why they left the church when you were on the other side of things really resonates with me. I get it. Highly socially intelligent, nuanced people have very good reasons to not wade into that conversation. And Angela C is right: it’s not any one’s business.
And yet…
It hurts when no one reaches out and wants to understand why you are not around anymore. You give 50 years of your life to a community, to your friends and their children, to an organization. You invest years of service and and material amounts of money. You give so much time to the church that your professional career is compromised over the decades.
And you just stop showing up one day and no one asks why. That is a terrible feeling for me. It all meant nothing…
It reminds me of years ago when someone left our company who was extremely talented and hard working. The company let him walk out the door without really finding out why he was leaving. Huge mistake, many of us felt, to not find out more and try to keep him.
And yet…
I know if anyone had asked, those conversations were not going to lead to warm fuzzy positive discussions. They knew it and I know it now.
So I’m glad I haven’t had to go through that.
But even my TBM father hasn’t asked. It has been a long 8 years.
It hurts.
Gavin – I get it. Everyone wants to be understood. You know when someone who is concerned about you will say that they love you? Sometimes I want to reply that I want them to understand me, not love me. Ask the hard questions and understand why I did what I did. I would rather be understood than loved. Love feels like a way to both pity someone and hold them at a distance, and it doesn’t feel good. I wanted to be understood.
Yeah, I wrote about why I didn’t ask why a friend left the Church. The truth was that I “loved” her, the way you’re supposed to love everyone. But we weren’t particularly close in any other way. I was her visiting teacher. We had few life experiences in common, and frankly, she needed more than I could give. I didn’t want to understand her; I wanted to keep her at a distance.
And that’s the pain. It’s a distance. We want (I want) the emotional closeness of being understood; having someone who wants to understand. The general purpose compassion and love that speakers declare from the pulpit isn’t close and understanding.
Chadwick’s comment that he’s lonely in a different way now really resonated with me too. I’m not around people as often. Instead of weekly church chats in the hallway, I meet a friend for lunch every couple of months. I have fewer masks in my friendships now, but I also have fewer friends. And honestly, I have masks and shallow friendships now too. My work friends don’t know much about my family life, or my mental health struggles. I like my work friends the same way I liked Church friends. Keep it to safe topics. Some work friends have crossed the line into real friends and we can talk about anything and everything. We get together for lunch once in a while, though, and I wish I could see them every week.
40 years in my ward. 20 years very active in three bishoprics, and Gospel Doctrine teacher but my girls whom I taught to be independent thinkers were being pushed out of the church by their “active” friends because my girls wanted education and a career, probably following me rather than their bipolar mother. After 20 years when they went off to college and were successful but left the church people didn’t want to hear about my daughters because they weren’t married in the temple yet but focusing on a career. After 30 years my girls graduated from college and had very successful careers and one who came out as gay there was even more reason for people to not really want to hear about my girls, who I was very proud of. I started to attend church more sporadically and was called to task by the stake president for not being a full tithe payer. I said I contributed money to other charities and organizations but he dismissed that. I asked him if he knew where tithing went and he couldn’t answer and I said I wanted to know where my contributions were going. At 35 years, I got divorced and ended up sitting all alone in church, no one on the bench with me or on the benches in front or behind me, a dot in the congregation. Now at 40 years, I don’t go, no one has even come by to ask why, I got remarried and she has had similar experiences compounded by being a single mother for a while and all the social slights that go with that. Her youngest even went on a mission but the leaders didn’t talk to her about it but insisted on talking to me even though I told them it was her son and she wanted to be informed about his progress first. It bothered both of us about their disrespect for motherhood vs. their instance of talking to the priesthood in spite of our wishes. BTW, my daughters have married, have children, are very successful in their careers, have wonderful children who are at the top of their classes, and are active, inquisitive, creative, and fun. My gay daughter married a wonderful woman who never thought she’d also be a mother and they are wonderful with the kids. The girls that pushed my daughter away from the church have good “Mormon” lives, one being the wife of the current bishop (she won’t look at me or acknowledge me in the store or community) and the others, who have moved away, in similar positions. They eventually got their educations but not after 4 or 5 kids. For the most part, their kids are good kids but I worry about a couple who are a little artsy or creative or see things a little more progressively. Bottom line, life is complicated. It’s not success vs. failure like many of us have been taught to believe but it’s many degrees in between.
Angela C – what surprised me about why no one asked why it still smarts is that the church was the center of what I thought were genuine and real relationships and during 45 years no one shied away from asking me and talking about our testimonies in the church. No one was embarrassed talking about religion when we agreed with each other. And no one avoids talking about religion when Mormons are trying to convert other people. Mormons talk about religion all the time!
Plus I thought people actually cared and it showed that they did not.
Even family members that were trying to talk me out of leaving wouldnt talk about my concerns. Just bore testimony and asked me if I ever felt the spirit. When I tried to explain why they interrupted me and bore their testimony again and told me my concerns were from satan. It was a not great day for both of us.
Gavin: I do think it hurts to realize that you spent 50 years of your life sacrificing for something, for a community in a way, that literally did not care if you were there or not. That does hurt, but I have a hard time associating that hurt with the individuals specifically. If they aren’t friendly to former members, that’s because they are not free to be friendly. They are enslaved by coercive and exclusive ideas. They are the victim too.
Brad G: I know what you mean about Mormons talking about religion all the time, but I have always found that to be rude, including between members. It’s awkward as arse, as the Brits would say. It’s just bad manners. I have always changed the subject or deflected with humor when that happens. I just do not like it at all. One of the toughest parts of my mission was talking about religion all the live long day, so I didn’t talk about it with other missionaries much at all. Can’t we just be normal people and talk about our actual interests? If someone’s actual interests are just saying what they think they are supposed to say, they aren’t interesting.
Thanks Janey and Angela for the follow-up thoughts. I realize I didn’t really answer the actual questions of the post. In brief, we lost most of our friendships. No one was mean or said anything (see my original comment). We just kind of stopped being invited to things. And honestly, at the time we felt so stressed/overly triggered by all things church related (the first year of actually not attending after being a 100% attending member for life was a real mind- @#$!, even though my wife and I had been de-constructing for 10 years prior while active), we wouldn’t have been good friends had people reached out.
Except:
There was one couple at church that we had known for years and we had done things together often outside of church settings – that couple and my wife and I somehow kept the friendship going to this day. And it is as strong as ever now. They are still very active in the church and very believing.
It was SO awkward that first year with this couple. But there was an unspoken commitment among the four of us to keep going out to dinner even though those first conversations were so stilted and painful. I would have loved to be able to process with them why we stopped going (see first comment) but they clearly did not want to discuss (thank you again Janey for naming some reasons I hadn’t thought about before as to why they wouldn’t want to discuss). But it was kind of like we all understood we just had to keep getting together despite feeling so weird because the friendship meant so much to us.
I just wanted to share that in case it helps anyone going through this on either side. It is not comfortable at first but don’t let the real friends go. Time solves a lot of awkwardness and pain.
Janey talked about wanting to be understood rather than loved. But, umm, love should have had quote marks around it, because what your average Mormon means when they say they love their ward members is not love.” It is they love the feeling of community and love feeling like a righteous part of that community and that part of being righteous is reactivation, missionary, and callings, and other service. What it doesn’t mean is that they give a shit about individuals they are “serving.” I could give you five thousand examples from my own life, but I am sure you all have your own. The home teachers who ask the widow with the leaky roof, and other obvious things she needs, and they ask, “is there anything we can do?” What they mean is “is there any easy way you can help us feel righteous.”
Oh, have I gotten cynical.
Friends of ours left back in 2019 (our pew buddies for over 10 years), and I feel like they have mostly navigated friendships pretty well, or maybe I should say about as well as anyone could have. We have since moved, and every once in a while I’ll get a text from them. We went to a school production back at the HS my kids graduated from, and their daughter was performing. There were quite a few of their ward friends there to see her and cheer her on. (Their kids are incredibly talented–I expect to see them on Broadway or in films one day). When they left, she just told people at a RS get together, “Look we’re not coming to church anymore. We just don’t believe it. But we still love all of you, and we are ready to stay friends.” I’ve seen which people continued to be friends with them and which ones didn’t, and it’s pretty much how I expected it to go. There are a few people I thought would be a little more open-minded than they were, and they are the ones I think less of as a result of their judgmental attitudes about this family. These guys, IMO, did everything right in trying to make it easier for people stay friends. But I do think that the judgmental attitudes reveal a certain insecurity about their own beliefs.
What’s intriguing to me is how little I actually talk about the church with believing people outside the church. I can’t remember the last time I’ve talked about believing or anything doctrine-related with my family members or believing friends. Of course, at church people will talk about the church in the right context and in the prescribed way. It is like people have made up their minds, don’t want to be bothered, definitely don’t want to hear disbelieving counterpoints, and are just surrendered to their lives in the church. It is easier for them to continue just going through the motions than to challenge anything in anyway.
Another interesting thing I’ve found is that once an individual simply takes an interest in what critics have to say and is willing to hear them out, it is likely that they’ll leave the church or stop believing. The proverbial Mormon shelf is pretty fragile and will come crumbling down once a few more things are added. It is only intellectual Mormons who have a reputation as a believer who will hear out critics and find ways to perform mental gymnastics around their narratives. But the average church-goer doesn’t want to know about and refuses to even casually glance at critical information, let alone entertain the possibility that it’s true.
However, bringing a believer to the discussion table is challenging. Trying to engage will most likely lead them to defensiveness and backlashing, and an eventual shutting down. Hence I don’t try to have a conversation about the church with believing friends. But I think a part of them does not dare try to have a conversation with me because then that opens the door to discussion, and they fear they won’t be able to handle the cognitive dissonance that might come as a result of it. They fear that defensiveness might result in one side or the other and that that defensiveness will break down the bonds of friendship.
I’m still active. I don’t socialize at church much, because I’m an introvert and because I have little in common with most people in my ward. One of my best friends quit a decade ago. I don’t need to ask why because we both get it, and have simply made different choices with how we handle our issues with church. I don’t generally ask others about non attendance because I feel I don’t have the right relationship to do so. “Assigned friendships” are usually too casual for that, in my opinion. Church does feel a bit lonely, but I’m not there for the social life.
Amen, Angela C. Your post eloquently describes my feelings and position.
I think it’s important to bring up the hubris of missionaries and some friends or leaders who insist on hearing why you are inactive. They don’t really care why you drown, but just want to avoid the same pit falls. In correlated mormonism, there is a doctrinal answer for everything and some people feel they have the answer that you, in your haste and erroneous ways, simply need to be enlightened about. At first, they are there to re-educate you. But then, if you don’t move, they have a morbid infatuation – a need to know what brought you down, so they can compare themselves and continue to stand firmly on the dogmatic high-ground. This always means reducing your problems or issues the way the brethren do in conference. You are (in their eyes) lightweight, the “offended”, the one who can’t persevere, chaff, goats, foolish, deceived by intellectualism, led astray by feminism or liberalism etc. If you are needing an empathetic shoulder or therapist- your reactivation committee is not positioned to be that for you.
Also, I found that on life’s journey, you can’t simply describe where you are or pull someone through to your place, anymore than you can successfully rip open a butterfly’s cocoon so your caterpillar friend can fly around with you. It dies if you do that. Many ex-mos be post-mos try to rip open the cocoons of others with disturbing information or perspectives from different paradigms. Sometimes they do so out of a sincere desire to be understood, sometimes it’s just to shock and hurt. Either way, it’s spiritually violent and abusive. Again, like ripping open a cocoon or trying to force a baby to run when it can’t crawl yet.
Let others go through Fowler’s stages of belief or evolve naturally. Sometimes that means letting them stay in their lane without you. It’s impossible to be on a hero’s journey and continually relate to the community you leave behind. Some people are able to stay in church and patiently serve or shepherd, and some people need to strike out alone. Whether you feel a need to stay away or help/be a friend to the community that rejected you probably is more of an indicator of where you are on your journey than anything else. And- don’t try to force it- the individual stage is important and a place of great growth.
If you haven’t read Jonathan Livingston Seagull, it’s a truly enlightened description of individual growth, the loss of community, and the slow regaining of true friends- based on each other’s desires to grow and help one another. Highly recommend the book. (It’s super short, but beautiful.)
I don’t have the answers, but I listen to the podcast “At last she said it” with Susan and Cynthia.It proves that there are some miraculous church friendships that are able to go the distance in an uncorrelated journey. I’m in awe and have holy envy of their friendship. They are able to talk about faith struggles, evolving beliefs, inactivity and activity, problems at church, etc. without correcting one another. Their conversations are what I think most of us on this thread crave. They are able to wrestle with concepts- always extracting more wisdom (or at least more compassion and understanding) in the process. I just finished listening to episode 55 on finding and connecting with such friends. I don’t know that the formulas always work- they might not know how precious their unique friendship is. But, it’s worth believing that a relatable friend like Cynthia or Susan is out there for each of us. Most of the time, it’s lonely.
Thank you, Mortimer. I appreciate and want to think more about “it’s impossible to be on a hero’s journey and continually relate to the community you leave behind.” I’m not feeling the hero at all, but I definitely find it harder and harder to even understand the community I spent a lifetime among.
My problem is that I want some in that community to at least a) understand me (which I realize is just as hard for them to do as it is for me to understand them) or hopefully b) come along with me (which I realize isn’t reality: it truly is the “hero” or “individual’s” journey when it comes to this)
Thanks again for the comment. Helpful.
The movie “Encanto” is all about this theme:
“…it’s impossible to be on a hero’s journey and continually relate to the community you leave behind…”
The only way it works for Mirabelle is that the majority of the main characters experience character growth that gives them access to ways to support Mirabelle. Had Mirabelle been thrown out of her household, not found her uncle, not had an imposter complex that biased her against making prideful decisions, had either of her sisters not had their own enlightenment, and her grandmother not already accepting Mirabelle of who she was as a person and who she became – the story would have been a tragedy.