Change in religious beliefs and being / becoming poly

By the Way ...

With respect to my June 5 post, I added some more information about my exodus from the Mormon church in my latest blog entry. I don't mean to hijack this thread, but check that out if you're interested.
 
Exmormon and wanting poly

I’m an exmormon. I left the Mormon Church when I was just 18 against the approval of my family. It was hard to do and the effect on my life was significant. It was very hard to repair the relationship with my family and I still feel that I am dealing with the effects of my decision.

I left the Mormon Church because I had disputes over doctrines and policies. Basically, there are things that are taught in Mormonism that are claimed to be true, but are absolutely bogus. The Book of Mormon, for instance, is a completely made up story supposedly about ancient Native Americans. But there are many things about it that certainly make it a production of the 19th century. So, I lost my belief as a teenager and have been out since.
My experience leaving the Mormon Church rocked the foundation of all my beliefs. I tend to think outside the social norms. I eat a mostly vegetarian diet for the health benefits. I prefer not to watch TV and emphasize self-improvement in my life. I think it’s only natural that I want to explore the polyamorous lifestyle. I’ve undergone a lot of heartache in my life, not so much with romantic relationships but with my own birth family… all over simple religion.

I think what I want most is the honesty in a poly relationship. The need to try and change who I am will not be so prevalent. I feel that I will be accepted more readily by others and I can explore more people who have a better grasp of who I am as a person. I feel that I need this kind of relationship to truly excel in life. I also like the practicality of it, having many people committed to each other living in the same house-hold, working toward a common interest.

I may have left Mormonism, but I have developed a new spirituality. When I love others, I see myself as one with them. There is no reason that I could not experience this with more than one person. And I would certainly allow my partners to experience the same. I have seen how monogamous relationships can cause problems in people’s lives and want something better.
I think that polyamory is a natural result of my spirituality. I think that polyamory could be very beneficial for people and is something that good people ought to explore for stability in life.
 
Re:
"My experience leaving the Mormon Church rocked the foundation of all my beliefs."

Ah, you too ...
 
It doesn't surprise me that there are many exmormon polyamorists. Good Mormons seek higher truth. These good Mormons sometimes find higher truth outside the Mormon faith, even coming to believe that the whole religion is false and choose to courageously change their lives to support the truth. Isn't that what Polyamory is about? Society can't dictate what will make you happy. Creative solutions outside social norms should be considered and experimented with.

I'm not a polyamorist, but I am infatuated with the idea. I think I've always understood love in this way as long as I can remember. I feel sad because I've never really been in love before. All my life, the lovers I have experienced have just been emotional vampires, preying for that part of you they want and forcing you to change into someone you are not, ransoming your individuality and freedom for the sake of a romantic fantasy which doesn't exist. Your girlfriend doesn't love you. Your wife doesn't love you. They love the fantasy about who they think you ought to be. That's the real flaw with monogamy. To accept another is to accept all their weaknesses and make them real and in the process sacrificing the hope of working a better situation by seeking strengths in others.
 
In my observation of various Latter-day Saints, I've come to the conclusion that there's two main schools of thought in that church. One school seeks a comfortable norm, a reliable routine from week to week and year to year. The other school holds dear the notion that we're here for no less a purpose than to rise up closer to the spiritual maturity of Heavenly Father Himself. That school tries and tries to reach an ever higher ideal, and it's that school whose spiritual adventures come with real risks -- such as the risk of "losing" the church itself one day.

Re: emotional vampires ... gods I'll bet we've all encountered them at one time or another in our lives. The mere name of them says it all. They charm and hypnotize us with their seeming good intentions, then proceed to sting us in a vital vulnerable spot on our soul and suck the life out of us. Once an emotional vampire enters your life it's almost impossible to escape their clutches.
 
I'm just sick and tired of people trying to force me to be someone im not. I think this is the singlemost reason people are unhappy in traditional marriages. No-one is 100 percent the person you would like them to be. With monogamy, your best bet is to find a person who meets most of your needs, try your best to meet thier needs, and live with their faults and weaknesses. Polyamory is the natural result of the philosophy of being open with sharing who you are, including your faults and weaknesses, and wanting to be supportive and help each other. Im tired of vampires, who's reflection of themselves is invisible to error, who think they are the best thing to happen to each and every person they are ever in a relationship with but are in fact just leaching out of them their livelihood for short term survival. We should all admit to ourselves that we have weaknesses. There are times when our weaknesses make relationships unhappy. We shouldn't bring each other down by requiring exclusivity. It's just not right. But its so engrained in our culture that to imagine anything different is unthinkable, even angering to most. I suppose this is because most people are insecure of their own inadequecies. They want to feel that it's possible to make someone completely happy. Love, it seems, is a transe that fools you into living with each others faults until the transe wears off and you just wind up hating each other. Quit sucking the life out of me fanger!

I question everything these days. And i see more truth than ever before. I feel so unhappy that the others that i have in my life dont see the same way, including my Mormon family. I'm so sad because for once i see that Ive never been loved and the people who I have felt love for have excluded their love in order to adhere to the universally accepted, mostly destructive "one lover at a time" rule.

Polyamory just makes sense. I feel that monogamy is just as much a lie as the truth claims of Mormonism.
 
I was married for 17 years. I am monogamous. I was happy to see my (now-ex) husband enjoy his pursuits, even if I didn't share them. He was open to share them with friends, etc. I actively encouraged this.

He did end up becoming more of the "why can't you be what I want you to be" type, but only after we had children. He had the notion that you need to sacrifice yourself and your identity for the sake of the children. I didn't. Big disconnect.

Just a data point. I'm not trying to invalidate your experiences, but monogamy isn't the big, nasty, controlling beast some people think it is. He and I were both free to be our own selves until his notion of what parenting was differed from mine. Before children? We were individuals AND a couple. And we were happy with that. We didn't expect to fulfill 100% of each others' needs, and we never tried. I had friends I spent time with, doing things he didn't like to do, and vice versa. This was NOT seen as abnormal by our (mono) friends by any stretch of the imagination, BTW.

Sorry... as someone who is monogamous by nature, it raises my hackles when I see monogamy bashed as controlling or a "lie" (*). The relationship is as controlling as the people in it... go look at any number of the advice threads on this board for evidence of that in poly relationships as well.

I'm sorry you've dealt with emotional vampires in the past. I'd caution you, though, to remember they're not just limited to monogamy.

(*) Now, the cake... The cake is a damned lie.
 
Okay, well people always have different experiences. One person at a time may be enough for some. But you have to admit that there are a lot of monogamous people who could work out issues in their lives and relationships if they were open to others.

Ive never understood monogamy. Even in high school and college, I never had a girlfriend because I thought it was messed up. The politics and drama seemed to make those involved miserable.

Really, you want a relationship in which your partner brigs something important to the relationship and stays comitted to the mutual benefit of all involved, but also allows enough personal freedom to enjoy thier own pursuits. If you have a person that fulfills the important things in your life and allows freedom for growth, then maybe it wouldn't be so bad. I just think that there are many times that a working, practical relationship can be sacrificed simply because there are serious emotional needs that aren't met. It's sad.
 
Well... like I said, I don't want to discount your experience and your feelings. Just wanted to provide another data point, so we don't paint all folks of <x> type with the same brush. There are, honestly, a lot of people (period) who could benefit from opening their minds a bit, regardless of whether or not they're open to other folks, relationship-wise.

If you have a person that fulfills the important things in your life and allows freedom for growth, then maybe it wouldn't be so bad. I just think that there are many times that a working, practical relationship can be sacrificed simply because there are serious emotional needs that aren't met. It's sad.

I agree, and I think many folks let things deteriorate past the point of no return by ignoring them. I know that I and my ex-husband did.

I find it kind of funny in retrospect, because he and I had a quasi-poly relationship before we split, anyway... he just didn't want to work things out with *me*, and tossed the "well, what kind of wife would let her husband get close to another woman, anyway?!" out at me as a weapon. Ouch.

He was open to others. He just didn't want to work on any emotional needs in *our* relationship.

Not to hijack with my own whining or pull out the pity-party card. Just thinking that there are a lot of people - poly or mono - who haven't quite worked out all their issues yet... or who have been done with a relationship for a while, but just don't want to admit it (either to their partner or to themselves... and it's much more difficult to admit when you have kids).

Still, I'm sorry you've dealt with feeling you haven't really been loved for yourself. I will never, EVER again choose to be in a relationship with someone who wants me to change... or just, y'know, stop wanting this... or that... or, well, why would I want to do that? Just... ugh. I hope you find someone who respects and loves you for YOU. You (and all of us) deserve that much.

I'll defer back to the topic now... ;)
 
I don't think that monogamy per se is a bad thing ... but it's a bad thing for a society to innundate its denizens with messages and pressures that teach, "You *have* to be monogamous. Anything else would be sinful, shameful, and/or unhealthy." If someone can be free of that kind of psychological coercion, and still *want* monogamy for themselves, then that's 100% okay as far as I am concerned.

People get together on the basis of whether it's a mutually beneficial relationship. As long as the benefits are genuine, then the relationship is good. This is true of poly/poly, poly/mono, and mono/mono relationships, and I have known people who were happy in any one of those three models. I've also known people who were deeply unhappy in any one of those three models. It depends on a lot of things. The relationship model merely plays into a very complex equation.

Everything in relationships, to my mind, is about informed consent. If there is informed consent, then there is personal freedom. There is autonomy. Going back to the OP, one's relationship with one's church is also all about informed consent. One is free to choose as long as one knows what one is choosing -- as long as, in this case, the church in question, does not practice deceit. Where there is deceit, there you can expect to find vampirism.
 
In my educated opinion, having studied the history of Abrahamic religions for 15 years now, I'd have to say monogamy is closely tied to patriarchy, and to clinging to "Old Testament" rules about how men can have multiple wives, but women can only have one husband. This was called a law of God, but in actuality it was deemed important to determine inheritance, and to breed up as many Israelites as possible, to be as "great" as possible, to prevent being swallowed up by huge empires such as Egypt, Babylon, Persia, Greece and Rome.

In those Empires, which were great, wealthy, militaristic, breeding huge families was not as important, so homosexuality was more common. Breeding was limited by such things as herbal and barrier birth control, abortion, and "exposing" newborns, to kill them if not aborted.

I am not in favor of exposing infants. But I am in favor of birth control, abortion when needed, encouraging gay people to live with the partners of their choice, adoption, etc.

In the early centuries of the Current Era, only one wife, for men, instead of several, became common, based on one line in a pseudo-Pauline "letter" that said a bishop should have only one wife, so to be more dedicated to his flock. Later, many Christian, Jewish and Muslim people adopted this, but surely it was economic. One wife and her offspring cost much less than multiple wives and all their kids. Breeding just for the sake of populating the earth with "people like us" became less important.

There is no reason for monogamy in our over-populated Western culture. Clinging to that rule because a 2000+ year old book says to is... just stupid.
 
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I've heard many times the phrase, "don't throw out the baby with the bath water" referring to distinguishing between our relationship with Christ's Spirit, (love, forgiveness, undying protection) and our relationship with His followers.

I now think of it as removing a tumor that has been nourished by a religion that has taught me to do something less than forgive and love my enemies and has never educated me how to put money in it's proper place of subservience.

Hating enemies and loving money is self destruction removing our focus from where it belongs. Loving ourselves and others equally.

Being sexual is an important part of our biochemistry that causes our body to produce hormones that keep us healthy.

Masturbation and touching ourselves is an important part of our overall responsibility to take care of ourselves so others don't have to do it for us.

When two people feel comfortable enough with each other to give and receive sexual pleasure it is a miracle.

When two people have compersion for each other rather than jealousy it is divine.


I have to say I agree with you. I do not go to church anymore (the building) but I have a close relationship with Jesus everyday...all day. I am trying to get a handle on what polyamory would be or look like for me. I have spoken to no one about this because I am in a monogamous marriage. So it is really nice for me to find like minded people who feel that love in the form of polyamory works for them. I just can't get over the fact that so many people are against polyamory. I mean completely closed minded about it. I guess I really need to work on getting over what other people think.


Our spirit is our life. We received life as a gift from a genius creator who loves us.

We share our life with others who would accept our gift of love for them.

We are wise to put boundaries on how we receive and give love to each other but causing anyone to be ashamed of their need to love and be loved is pure evil.

I am very happy to be in a relationship that allows us to love each other and others in the most thoughtful ways possible.

I avoid people who would crush my spirit or my wife's spirit. I don't let them inside of my head.

I guess avoiding people who don't love is my religion. Searching for people who do love is my mission.

I like this too.

Re (from OP):


Leaving the church, and transitioning into a poly life, were two processes that both sprang from one composite process: the process that centered around me hitting bottom and for the first time ever questioning *everything* (not just the "everything" I always used to flatter myself I was questioning). One of the effects of this composite process was that I finally shrugged off all of the programming and conditioning I'd been brought (and shored) up with. Everything I'd ever been taught about God, sex, love, marriage, family, friends, or any other teaching great or small, was now launched into space and where it would all land was completely unknown.

Chronologically, I left the church before I stumbled into a polyamorous situation. But those two processes could have happened in reverse order. I suppose their given order made things easier because there was no church standing in my way, saying, "NO YOU MAY NOT BE POLYAMOROUS," at the moment when I realized I wanted to live polyamorously. That part of the corridor of change had already been swept clean.

Maybe it's like this for anyone who starts out as a faithful Latter-day Saint, but the whole course of my life can be handily diagrammed using the church as a central reference point. All my obedience has been obedience to the church; all my rebellion has been rebellion against the church. It's a little oversimplified to say it that way but it's basically true. To this very day, the church is never far from my mind. I think of it often, the good and the bad. I observe where my perspectives lie in comparison to those of the church. I cut myself off from the church but I could never forget the church. I still pull out my Scriptures oh, about once a month (give or take).

The truth is, we never do literally question everything, eh?

---

Consent is what I see as the ruling principle over my moral compass today. Complicated scenarios can be drawn up but the core/starter idea is that if two people both consent to their arrangement and/or relationship with each other, then they're doing nothing wrong. I often think it's that simple where others might think it's not that simple. [shrug] Admittedly, you can't please everyone.

Re (from loveboston):




That brings this to mind:


And in the meantime, I do the best I can with whatever knowledge and reason I can muster.


Excellent thoughts. Going to re-read this a few times!

I think the issue of being non-monogamous with people and remaining married to Christ do intersect.

I am extremely picky about who I choose to touch and who I allow to touch me emotionally and physically.

Maintaining a relationship with my wife and with her friendships together with my friendships is a daily process that is only accomplished if we act as equals with our responsibility to love and care for each other as much as we love and care for ourselves.

I am even more guarded about who I allow to touch me spiritually than who I allow to touch me emotionally and physically.

As it should be.

Jesus is love. The question isn’t does He love us the question is do we respond to His love.

I am deeply troubled by anyone who would suggest that they know how Jesus intends on loving anyone. I am disturbed by anyone who would pretend to know anything about this interaction with anyone but themselves.

As for me I choose to only look for love from those who I am able to be completely open with, spiritually, emotionally and physically.

For their sake as well as my own.

Do I need to say this again....a big yes here....for me at least.

I'm just sick and tired of people trying to force me to be someone im not. I think this is the singlemost reason people are unhappy in traditional marriages. No-one is 100 percent the person you would like them to be. With monogamy, your best bet is to find a person who meets most of your needs, try your best to meet thier needs, and live with their faults and weaknesses. Polyamory is the natural result of the philosophy of being open with sharing who you are, including your faults and weaknesses, and wanting to be supportive and help each other. Im tired of vampires, who's reflection of themselves is invisible to error, who think they are the best thing to happen to each and every person they are ever in a relationship with but are in fact just leaching out of them their livelihood for short term survival. We should all admit to ourselves that we have weaknesses. There are times when our weaknesses make relationships unhappy. We shouldn't bring each other down by requiring exclusivity. It's just not right. But its so engrained in our culture that to imagine anything different is unthinkable, even angering to most. I suppose this is because most people are insecure of their own inadequecies. They want to feel that it's possible to make someone completely happy. Love, it seems, is a transe that fools you into living with each others faults until the transe wears off and you just wind up hating each other. Quit sucking the life out of me fanger!

I question everything these days. And i see more truth than ever before. I feel so unhappy that the others that i have in my life dont see the same way, including my Mormon family. I'm so sad because for once i see that Ive never been loved and the people who I have felt love for have excluded their love in order to adhere to the universally accepted, mostly destructive "one lover at a time" rule.

Polyamory just makes sense. I feel that monogamy is just as much a lie as the truth claims of Mormonism.

I am monogamous and for me I have been able to grow a lot as a person by learning to work together with someone who is different and similar to me. For that reason, I love being married. However, I also agree that no one can be everything to someone else. I am at the point in my thoughts that I think polyamory might be a good solution.


Thanks everyone for you excellent views, honesty and feedback. I am learning a lot. I hope to be able to share this one day with my husband. :)
 
I've decided that the evangelical church is a political movement using Jesus as it's cover.

Loving money and hating enemies is the norm.


Learning to love is my highest priority. I have found more discussion, guidance and support from visiting this forum than I have ever experienced at any church meeting I've attended.

Agree fully with this. I have been on the receiving end of that.

And agree 100% that this forum helped me far more than any church.
 
Im tired of vampires, who's reflection of themselves is invisible to error, who think they are the best thing to happen to each and every person they are ever in a relationship with but are in fact just leaching out of them their livelihood for short term survival. ...love, it seems, is a transe that fools you... until the transe wears off and you just wind up hating each other. Quit sucking the life out of me fanger!

This. And I have to strongly agree with YAH, poly people can be psychic vampires too. I think I just got out of the clutches of one.
 
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