Ask the Mormon

In My Humble Opinion
301

Here goes… You are quite inquisitive.

I tried to hash it out with him but he always seems to divert the conversation to religion. Looks like I need to try again because I still haven’t gotten a straight answer. As you can tell I am quite frustrated.

Not too personal at all… I am very open to questions. It is reciprocated. In fact he started all this, but I will say it isn’t as much reciprocated as it should be. For that reason I have started making him instigate the oral part or nothing for him. I think he is catching on. On another topic he is very physical and intimate and always instigates everything… If he has a couple beers in him. If completely sober I seem to always be the one to instigate and it certainly isn’t as passionate. That really bugs me and I have brought it up. We have a very long discussion that needs to be had… Long time coming but we live in different towns… Better yet different time zones and are both so busy. Just hard to find a time when we both can sit down and talk. Pretty sure we both are avoiding it.

The temple marriage question… He said because she cheated on him while they were married and was excommunicated they are not “sealed” to each other anymore. You are saying that is not the case? I may not be mormon but I sure as hell don’t like being lied to… And I sure as hell don’t want him sealed to that bitch no matter what.

302

How many wives have you fucked?

303

Who are you talking to?

304

I don’t know how to report this to a moderator.

305

Just to clarify, Clueless, I don’t think he lied to you about the sealing. It’s a little complicated is all. Sealings (in Mormon belief) are in force ONLY if both parties are “righteous” and faithful. If she cheated on him and was excommunicated then the sealing obviously isn’t in effect. However, it is my understanding that the sealing is technically still on the books, if only because it is such a onerous process to officially cancel it.

In fact, it is my understanding that you can’t cancel a sealing (except in extraordinary circumstances) unless it is necessary to free up a woman so she can be sealed to a new spouse. (As a relic of polygamy, Mormon men can be sealed to an unlimited number of women; women can only be sealed to a single man, which means things get complicated nowadays with the higher divorce rates.)

So for all intents and purposes, he’s really not sealed to his ex.

306

This is out of line. Don’t post in here again if you’re going to ask things like this.

307

Like ancient Israelites traveling to America by submarine? Like them being killed off by the bad dark skinned native americans? Like the Garden of Eden being in Missouri?

That’s their schtick. I’ve always thought it curious since its right out of that South Park episode:

Anyway I started a great debates thread about it and the straightdope consensus was that the happiness is a false front and Mormon women lead the world in anti-depressant consumption:

So I recommend you convert him away rather than you join the church. He doesn’t sound that faithful to begin with.

308

He drinks beer too? WTF?

309

Should this thread still even be open? Besides being an almost decade-old zombie thread, the original poster isn’t alive anymore, I believe.

310

I had the same reaction. This guy is the worst Mormon ever.

Ideally, they should peel off the new posts into a new thread and lock the old part. I don’t know how hard that is to do for the moderators, though.

311

I’m beginning to take the OP’s username quite literally! :wink:
Really, Clueless7272, I’ve went back over your newer portion of the thread and I feel you would be wise to proceed with great caution.
Being in love makes one very vulnerable.

312

:confused: I chose the name wisely. Hard to believe I am so successful in the real world when I am this ignorant in my personal life. I know…

313

What problems do you have with the theology?

Are Mormons taught to say “it makes me a better person” and use that as evidence for the faith rather than debating any particular beliefs? I ask because my brother converted to Mormonism to marry a girl and that’s exactly the reason he gave. The marriage didn’t end well though.

314

Reading along, no experience relevant to the religion thing, but when I was younger I fell in love with a man with emotional problems. Because I sympathized with him I catered to his quirks because I felt I was helping and showing tolerance. Wasn’t long before his quirks grew to obsessions and I realized how much I had been enabling his behavior. Enabling him to use me. Don’t let yourself be used by way of showing empathy for his spiritual struggles.

315

Whoa, wait a second, he drinks beer? Okay, that is really weird. (My dad drinks non-alcoholic beer, but that’s a little different.) I… don’t know what to say about that, except that it sort of upends everything I thought you were saying about him.

Erdosain, I certainly know of cases where the temple sealing was formally broken (instigated by the woman, I admit) and not because the woman wanted to get remarried, because they were bound and determined no longer to be temple-married to that SOB (their words). My understanding is that it takes a lot of time and energy to petition for it to be broken, but it’s easier in cases of infidelity (one couple) or addiction/abuse (another couple). I know that you are correct about breaking the sealing when it’s a case of one member of the marriage dying, that it only happens in one gender but not the other, but I can’t help thinking you might be mistaken about what happens in the case of divorce. I can ask one of the friends in question if I see her. Whether this particular guy has gone to the trouble of breaking it formally is a question, of course, and I agree with you that it’s the case that due to the cheating the sealing is no longer in effect.

As for your question about evading the truth, well, I guess after this thread I might have to admit to oral sex in Clueless’s situation :slight_smile: Before this thread, well, I mean, what I’m trying to say is that yeah, I did have that distinction in my mind, even though I clearly should not have (and you are right that Mormon theology does not draw such a line). Hey, although it’s a really, really terrible defense to use, Bill Clinton was confused about that too… Anyway, on a more serious note, if my hypothetical boyfriend were to bring this up, my response would probably be, “Huh, you have a point,” and then we wouldn’t have oral sex any more either. But then again, the fact that he drinks beer makes me second-guess everything I thought I might know about him…

Ha, my response may be colored by the fact that I really, really love my calling right now (they finally gave me one in music, which suits my skills and interests). But also because it’s through my calling (and visiting teaching, yeah – I actually asked to be a VT when I moved into this ward, go figure, although I suck at it) that I really interact with the ward community. I hear it can be very different for men, though.

316

Oh, I could go on all day with problems I have with the theology. It looks to me like it was made up by someone who was intent on fixing a lot of first-order problems he saw with Christian theology without a) really understanding Christian theology, or b) thinking about second-order problems caused by the first-order fixes. (For example: the Trinity is three separate people, plain and simple. Great! This fixes the first-order problem of the Christian Trinity being this weirdo three-in-one what-does-that-even-mean thing. To second order… wait, are you now telling me there are three gods? Where did the second and third gods come from? Why do we treat them as equal to the first one? And then stuff is made up to deal with that, and so on.)

I could ignore all that, though, if it weren’t for the fact that when I read the Book of Mormon I absolutely get the unshakable sense that I am reading a document that was planned and authored in the 1800’s rather than in the 00’s. If there’s anything I trust about myself, it’s my literary sense. And it points me in one specific way. (It’s really ironic: Mormons are taught that reading the BoM bolsters faith because the Spirit will tell you that it is true, but in my case the Spirit seems to just tell me that it was written in the 1800’s, and the less I read it the happier I am.)

…sort of? I mean, a Mormon might well say that as evidence for the faith, and there’s a long history of Christian apologetics in that way – C.S. Lewis does it in, I think, Mere Christianity.

In my case, I say it to explain why it’s such a big part of my life despite the issues I have above. And why I’m not really interested in debating particular beliefs (in which I would probably agree with you, anyway).

Maybe you’ll say I’ve drunk the kool-aid, and maybe I have, but I really am happier. Because of the doubts above I left for a while, and now that I’m back things are much better. I’m female and have a child, though, so that probably influences things a LOT – all my other friends who are moms of small children who aren’t part of a church feel isolated socially and struggle with that a lot, and that hasn’t been a problem for me at all. When you can find me a group that works together to put on events and gives each other baby showers and brings me meals when I’ve had a baby and helps us move and where we help other people move and puts on classes when different people in the group have different interests… then we can talk about maybe my moving away from this into something different.

The other part is that I’m in California, which is mostly non-Mormons (so the Mormons around here tend to be a little less insular) but which has enough Mormons that they don’t go completely insane. I grew up in the South, which has practically no Mormons, so the ones who are there are a little insane, and I would never be Mormon in Utah, which has so many Mormons that they’re insane in the other direction. Yeah, I can totally see anti-depressants being a big thing in Utah.

(I don’t tend to hang out in GD, so I didn’t see your thread there.)

317

Well, I have to admit that I admire you, raspberry hunter, for being able to enjoy the positive aspects of Mormonism while minimizing some of the bad ones. It would be a much better church if there were a couple million more like you and a couple million less like I used to be (very black and white thinker types). Unfortunately, I think the Mormon church deliberately makes things hard for people like you.

This thread has put me in a somewhat awkward position: I don’t think it’s necessary or healthy to reveal one’s intimate sexual details to a church leader for him to pass judgment on. I think being intentionally vague or even deceptive is a pretty reasonable response to an unreasonable situation. But. I’m holding this guy to a different standard because he’s using his supposed religiousity as an explanation for his behavior in a relationship. Once he says, “Well, you like X and I like X, but I can’t do X because my religion forbids it!” he has to be able to explain why he’s comfortable doing Y and Z. You can’t just say you’re keeping kosher to avoid eating your mother-in-law’s pork roast and eat a couple bacon cheeseburgers on the way home.

318

Erdosain… My point from the beginning. Again why I am so confused. I will tell you today I told him we need to take a break. This goes deeper than just the sex topic. It also goes into the fact that he is still trying to heal from his divorce, is busy with work, and takes care of the kids. The basis of our relationship revolves around his schedule. We live in different towns and let’s just say I need more attention (I really am not needy). Not a good feeling when you have something on your mind but he never has time to talk about it (or not a priority).

Thank you all for putting it into perspective for me. Enjoy your Sunday!

319

I wish you well, how ever it goes.
George

320

So we’re about 50 posts past being ‘dezombified’; therefore, I’ll consider this active, especially because I have two questions if anyone would like to answer them.

  1. My second cousin converted & married a Mormon in a Temple ceremony. His own mother was not allowed to witness his marriage ceremony as she isn’t a Mormon. I would think a parent of the groom should have more rights than a friend or a distant relative. This also seems a bit counter productive to me; interested in becoming one of us, why don’t you come watch us in action; oh wait, you can’t because you’re not one of us yet. Can you say “Catch-22”? Why is this?
  2. I worked with a guy who tithed, but then had to take charity from the church to make ends meet, approximately equal to what he gave. He said you couldn’t get unless you gave, but if he didn’t give he wouldn’t have needed to get. I get giving when you can afford to but why do it when you can’t only to turnaround & essentially take your own money right back?