(May 13, 2015 at 11:09 pm)nicanica123 Wrote: Hey all. Quick question, I can honestly say that one reason why I don't want to be a god fearing person anymore is that I just want to live life how I want to live it. I am married. I love my wife, but we were way young when we got married. If I was an absolute atheist, whatever that means, I would definitely come clean to her and probably get a divorce. Is this a bad driving force?
Hi nicanica, if it's advice you're looking for then here's my tuppence-worth: Please pay attention to the people who are advising honesty in your marriage. You say you love & respect your wife (even if you're not 'in love' with her)? You have a modicum of self-respect? Then you owe it to her & yourself, to honour those emotions with sincerity.
Your fears are leading you to many assumptions about her reactions (she'll be crushed, she won't understand my wavering belief etc.). You've been with her long enough to know her well so you may be right but here's a challenge: how much do you think she intuits about how you're feeling? If she knows you well, it may be that she 'senses' that something's wrong and is longing for you to be honest; that lack of honesty might be causing her much distress. Or it could be that she hasn't a clue about how you're feeling. In which case I'd challenge: how much can you really know about how she's feeling and how she would react? She could be hiding as much from you as you are from her. These paths of uncertainty are damaging to any long-term relationship and require honesty for the first step in changing them. Deal with your fears by confronting the situation. And remember to honour your sincerity with a good plan on how you're going to broach the subject, what you're going to say and how you're going to say it.
Try not to spend too much time dwelling on what the consequences might be because you really can't predict what's going to happen until you find out what she thinks and how she feels about your situation. You're not the only person in the relationship so don't try to deal with the problems 'for the both of you'.
As for the question of your religiosity? I assume you're in the US, yes? Then you live in a country where divorce law is not described by JW dogma. So what if JWs say you can only get divorced in there's infidelity? They don't make the rules and if push comes to shove, you can divorce for any reason you see fit. Besides, if you google, you can find many cases where JWs have granted divorce for other reasons.
There are many more factors in a relationship than sex and some couples find that infidelity (or the fantasy of) actually enhances their marriage. Please remember that many of those other factors have far more reaching consequences: withholding the truth from your wife, for example. So you don't need to 'become an atheist' in order to divorce, neither do you need to leave the JWs if you divorce for reasons other than infidelity. I'd suggest that if you think you'll be ostracised by your community if infidelity isn't the citation for your divorce, that reflects more on them and their lack-lustre definition of 'community spirit' than it does on you. As long as you maintain your integrity throughout, that is.
Sum ergo sum
