Trust in a Religiously Divided Household
Mood:  hug me
Topic: Backgrounder
I polled a group of Unbelieving Mates, or UBM's on their feelings on trust in their marriage. From the poll results it is clear that intimacy, trust, and honesty go together. Each is impacted by the others in dozens of ways. Any can be improved or weakened by action or inaction, each of these principles of relationships require effort to achieve and maintain. It is clear too, that if communication and intimacy had broken down before a partner changes faiths, it makes it doubly hard afterward to salvage the tatters. All human relationships involve trust to varying degrees. Marriage is probably one of the ultimate expressions of trust because both of you are vulnerable on so many fronts (physical, emotional, financial ). Before making a major life change (like changing religious beliefs), think of your spouse.

Trust means:
- You've got their back.
- Trust can be like money, it can lost but can be earned back. The earning it is hard once it is lost.
- When you trust someone, you can rely on them and have confidence in the decisions they will make. I think it’s closely related to predictability.
- Marriage is completely betting the farm on another person. Not just yours, but all your progeny as well.

Want to be trusted?

-Say what you mean and mean what you say.
- Stay trustworthy, even when it hurts, especially through the tough times.

Here are some more comments:
Trust is a very big issue in the divided religious household. I have had 3 major surgeries and some illnesses since my husband and I have been married. I had to trust him that he would follow my instructions against his religious beliefs. That's a big thing. But in the same regard, I have to do the same if he's ever in that situation. And we were in that situation this summer. I watched him say no to blood products while having surgery. While I completely disagree with this, its his life and his decision to make.

I just asked my wife if she trusts me. She said "not entirely." I asked "why?". She said, "Because I know you are going through some sort of midlife crisis these days, and I don't know really what to expect from you..." I had to laugh because she is such a straight shooter, and because I can only imagine how she must see me in her ultra-moral and boring JW life, where I am the evil atheist who is screwing up his life and throwing caution to the wind and has a purposeless existence. Which is all true, I may add. But ya, I can see what she means. I have had a lot of surprises for her in the last year. Probably coming out of the closet as an atheist that had been praying to a non-existent Jehovah, and closing in a non-existent Jesus' name, and commenting at the book study about stuff that I thought was total BS for months and months, was a blow to her trust in me. It seems silly to me, but it's obviously not to her.

The biggest break of trust in our marriage happened when he realized that I wasn't going to be a JW anymore. For a while it really shook his trust in me. He thought that everything about me had changed. In fact, he told me that he didn't know me anymore, that I wasn't the person he had married anymore. That hurt, because I was the same person, still a good wife and mother... believing that the WTBTS is not God's mouthpiece on earth does not make me a bad person!! Once he realized that my ‘apostate’ activities were a betrayal to the WTS and not to him personally, or to our marriage, the trust he had in me before all this slowly returned.
I have never lied to him or misled him or hidden anything important from him - until now, leaving the [Watchtower Society]. And he knows that I hide some things now, but he also knows the reasons why. And I honestly think that if he didn't trust me so much, he would give me a much harder time about my clandestine activities than he does.

The big thing where we are lacking is that she joined [the Watchtower Society] after I asked her to put it off. I only wanted a little time to understand the implications of her baptism. I also thought it was reasonable to ask her to look at the facts, with me, with a fresh set of eyes. I felt that, as her husband, this was a completely reasonable request. I would never have joined if she came to me that way. But the effects of mind control are deep and profound. She made a profound change in our life without my consent. To me, there is no "us". There is only "her". Even if she left the [Watchtower Society] tomorrow, I would still be looking for her next catastrophic choice.