billsmith

I could not agree more. I still feel like heaving when I think of the cash I have given the friends of scouting reps from our ward who never told me where the money was going. In fact - I was blown away by the salaries these guys get. What a racket. personally I think the Church could start its own program and save a lot of money.

has anyone else quit WOW since Cataclysm came out? I used to love that game but with the expansion came boredom and I said audios.

Lol

I love the fact that you can be totally anonymous on this site and therefore share stuff you otherwise could not. Funny how much easier it is to be honest this way So here is my experience. I proposed to my wife and she accepted. Then, 5 minutes later, she told me she had something to tell me - that she had an abortion. I was a bit taken aback, but I told her that everyone makes mistakes and that it didn't change how I felt about her. She wanted to be married in the temple so what was the problem? Well, slowly but surely I have discovered lots of other nifty tidbits. For example, she has had about 60 partners before I came along. She has had threesomes, done "swapping" with her ex boyfriends, etc etc. I decided that since she had put all that behind her that we could go forward though. I lost my virginity to her on our wedding night. Clear sailing right? Well kinda. What she carried with her into the marriage was a bit of a pornography problem. I still remember finding the hardcore tapes under the bed one day. One had a picture with about 9 men standing around one girl... ewwwww. She has overcome that issue for the most part. She has the occasional relapse but it isn't common. I really don't worry about that too much because I know she is trying to quit completely. All that said, I concur with the earlier post about the ramifications to her because of her rather unorthodox past. She deals with a tremendous amount of remorse for her past lifestyle and feels like she will never be truly accepted by her relief society sisters. (None of them know about her past but she feels like they are able to "just tell" anyway). She suffers from depression. I'm not sure if that is a result of her past, or whether her past was largely due to her depression. I won't, of course, discount the possibility that it is just me. Whatever the reason, my point is that people can have a very difficult time letting go of their past. I have to make it clear that she is a great gal in a lot of respects and that I wouldn't trade her for the world. Actually sometimes there are a few advantages. (My wife is an unbelievable sex partner for example. I know I don't have much to compare it to but I'm pretty sure that her talent and creativity in the bedroom would not be quite so pronounced if she had not had a bit of experience before she settled into the whole monogamy thing. I guess my point is that if people can move past that stuff then there is happiness to be had, but tell your brother that life ain't gonna be roses. I'm kinda happy but I have to admit I get pretty drained by her depression and sometimes feel like I haven't got a lot left. An inspired bishop gave me a Sunday calling so I don't slack on attending church. That three hours is such a vital recharge. thankfully she has been better for the last few months. I keep hoping that one day she will be a lot better. God knows I'm not anywhere close to perfect and I'm glad she puts up with all of my crapola. What gets me through is the fact that all this mortal stuff is temporary, and I know that she loves me. Who really cares how hard things get in this life. We will be on to the next one in the blink of an eye and a billion years from now all our drama here will seem pretty trivial. Personally I think we stress way too much about whether or not we will have the WJCE. (Ward and June Cleaver Experience). I know that every little Molly and Peter dream of growing up and marrying the ideal guy or gal and living the perfect lifestyle. Unfortunately I think that a lot of us wind up pretending to our neighbors that we are living that lifestyle and wondering why life isn't like the brochure we got in Young Mens / Womens.

A return missionary from my ward just gave his homecoming talk in church a few weeks ago and announced that he is gay. I remember thinking to myself - "now there is a brave kid. He must realize that a lot of people in the ward are going to react badly to that." Funny thing was, no one did. (Even the notorious gossipers). Since he made his announcement I have never heard a ward member say anything unkind to or about him. Quite to the contrary, everyone has treated him with a great amount of love and acceptance. I learned through that that church members as a whole have adjusted their sensibilities with regard to this issue in recent times. No longer is it okay for my Uncle to say "those f****s disgust me". he can't expect a laugh and appreciative nod for that kind of talk anymore. The Elders quorum will never discuss / acknowledge that reality one Sunday morning, but a new day is definitely here. The question I have is: What will happen as a result of this shift in attitude? Will members be on the ball enough to understand that the healthy shift is towards accepting / loving individuals regardless of their personal weaknesses? or will a significant number of members take the perilous step of accepting the lifestyle?

Thanks sensibility - I appreciate having learned a lot more about this from the woman's point of view. I would like to apologize to those of you that are going through this. I realize my way of dealing with things might not be that normal. I have no right to judge how another person deals with it. To be honest it is kinda weird having a wife with this issue. (yeah I actually did jump on this site for a reason). As I have read the other posts here I have come to realize that it is not at all the same thing. I'm the guy. I'm not in the same vulnerable position that a wife is in many times. Since I am the priesthood holder my family doesn't miss out on father's blessings, etc. If it was the husband then the family would miss out on those kinds of things. It doesn't really matter that he might have a lot of other good qualities. Thank you for helping me see that more clearly. Maybe some of my other posts were subconsciously laced with a bit of bravado because that is how I protect myself. I believe what I said but If my comments have been hurtful to anyone I'm sorry. I promise they were not meant in that spirit.

There is righteous anger / sorrow which is both justified and useful. There is also the kind of vengeful grudge that is destructive to all involved. Righteous sorrow is not selfish. It's not "look at what you did to me you evil b*st*rd!! Righteous sorrow is "Oh my sweet wife that I love - how could you have done this to yourself? I am sad because you are destroying your spirit." Huge difference there Righteous anger is what Christ did in the temple. He, I am sure, was not concerned for himself. He was sad for the poor choices of his brothers and sisters. When he knocked over the tables and drove the people out he was not in his heart saying: oh you horrible people - look at how badly you have hurt me! His anger was based on what those people were doing to themselves. He was grieving for them. I would humbly suggest that if I am looking at my wife's sin and dwelling on what that sin is doing to me then I am not being very Christlike. he commanded us to forgive each other. You can't forgive someone and hold on to your anger and resentment at the same time. So many times we fall into that terrible trap of self righteousness that we can't see ourselves or our spouses for who they really are. It is a trap that is difficult to get out of because our pride gets involved. I don't want to accept that I am just as imperfect as she is. Deep down inside I know I am not perfect but I don't want to accept that. because that would mean i wasn't any better than her. So I lie to myself. I tell myself that my wife is a monster. She is the most horrible of people. She has done something which is destroying my life. etc etc. By horriblizing my wife I can deceive myself. I can truly believe that I am perfect. Unfortunately for me - I am causing myself so much pain. It is a product of the great mental energy expenditure involved in continuously lying to myself about who my spouse is that is causing the pain in the first place. The thing is, I can stop the pain by admitting to myself that #1 I am not all good and #2 my spouse is not all bad. We are just two children of God trying to make it back to our Heavenly Father. If I can summon the humility to let go of the self deception and see my spouse as a human being and not a monster - I can let go of the pain. As a spouse I have to ask myself if my pain is due to her actions or mine. Are my feelings towards my wife selfless or selfish. If I am really hurting for her then I am justified. If I am hurting for me I'm not. I know that is an incredibly difficult thing to come to accept. It takes enormous amounts of humility. But I guarantee that by being honest with yourself the destructive hurt will go away.

More companies are now encouraging power napping during the day - 3% actually have "nap rooms".

Isn't it the legal rule that if you find money you have to give it to the police? They hold it for a certain amount of time in case someone comes looking for it. Then if it isn't claimed it is legally yours. I would do that because what if it belonged to another party and that party came looking for it. Then you would be sued for giving it to the old owner's kids. Sad - but that is the way the world is today. After it was pronounced legally yours - then you could safely give it away.

Thank goodness our salvation is between us and the Lord - not us and the Bible. I love the fact that Bishops have the ability to handle each situation differently and to encourage individual members to decide things for themselves. It is the same for Tithing and the Word of Wisdom. K here is a weird one to think about: You pay your mortgage on a home right? When you start out almost 90% of that payment is interest. By the time you pay off a 30 year mortgage you will have paid 3 times what your house was worth. So it could be argued that you are actually in the hole several thousand dollars which is money that should be deducted from your "Gross Pay".

I remember a situation that my father had as a bishop. Someone had received an expensive car for free from a game show or something - I don't really remember. The person only made 30k a year and the tithing on the car would have been about 5k. He wanted to know if he had to take out a loan or sell the car to pay his tithing. My father asked the man how much a car would have cost him if he went out and bought something he could afford. The man told him he would have bought a Corolla worth about 13k. My father told him to pay tithing on the 13k.

LOL so did I!! I actually played a DPS Warrior and a Druid for about 2 years and then Cataclysm came out and I just got really bored for some reason and quit.

This was one of the most scholarly and intelligent explanations I've ever read. Thanks!

Sensibility: Thanks for your comments. If you thought the whole facebook thing was completely serious then I apologize. Dare I suspect you use it? :-) jk I do find it interesting that we as men and women do experience things so differently. When boys bully people its usually through physical intimidation. When women do it it is through words. I love that episode of Seinfeld where Elaine says that her friends would just tease someone until they developed an eating disorder. My daughter was crushed at school last week when her circle of "friends" got together and said some unkind things about her while she was sick for a few days. Who is to say whether looking at a picture or writing a paragraph is worse. For me as a man/dad I think little girls can be really mean to each other just by speaking. I find it fascinating that someone can use language as that powerful a weapon. For a woman - used to being in the trenches with that her whole life - maybe she can take it better than a man so she sees less harm in it. I don't know. If my wife said on facebook that mine was the smallest she had ever had but that she didn't care because I was such a wonderful man...ouch. but I can take that two ways. I can say wow my wife really loves me and isn't it swell that she thinks I'm so great. or I can think: "wow, my wife is a crewel heartless wench." Do I decide to be mortified and resentful or do I feel good about the fact that everything else I do is positive? Its my choice how I let it effect me. I think one of the pervasive things I hear is that the most painful thing is the lying. So I'll take it as an example of how you can decide to see it differently. A man has told his wife that knowing she reads twilight and then falls asleep Imagining herself with Edward or Jacob or both bothers him. So the woman lies and says that she was reading second Nephi while he was alone on his business trip. Is she trying to hurt her husband or spare him hurt? Spare him hurt of course. So he can actually look at it in a positive way. His wife tried her best to keep him from knowing something that would hurt him. That means she loves me and cares about me. He knows that she likes to read about men with superhuman strength and an eternal adoration of her heart and soul. Heck Edward just drinks blood so he probably doesn't fart in bed either. He also knows that she will come back to reality in the morning. She knows he gets a huge rush by looking at women. She should also know that he doesn't really think he is going to get together with any of those women. In fact, I would say that men rarely take it as far as women do. for men they don't really even fantasize about being with those girls. they don't need that to accomplish the task at hand. Nature gave them this natural reaction to seeing the female form. Stimuli in = pleasure out. I would have to say that VERY few men stick around to see how the movie ends once they.. ahem...pop. Is it possible for a woman to see pornography as being much like her vibrator? Is it her fault that it does something for her that her man can't do? No. Is it his? No. Should she be using one while her husband isn't there? I have no desire to be a judge there. But should her man feel hurt inside because she does? I can see it hurting his pride if he lets it. But he doesn't have to, and I would think that most women have no desire to make their husbands feel inadequate because they use one. I think they would hope that he would understand that she still loves him - your awesome honey I love you and adore you and want to spend eternity with you...its just that...HOT D*MN...any way Mr. Rabbit could come along for the ride?

I can't tell you how much I appreciate your responses. Until someone bothers to explain why they are hurt it is just this ethereal concept that can't be easily addressed. I remember when I discovered that my mother had been seeing another man. My father knew about it but at the time us kids were too young to understand what was going on. When I was 13 our whole family was at my grandparent's house on vacation and I was camped out on the downstairs couch. For some unfathomable reason my mom found it necessary to call one of her good friends and discuss it all years after it happened. She thought I was asleep. It gutted me. I laid there with my heart pounding not knowing what to think. the next day I called her a cheater in front of my aunt and uncle. they all just looked at me funny but no one seemed to even know what I was talking about. I talked to my aunt later and told her why I said what I did. The next thing I knew I was whisked off to the car by my mother who told me that she was sorry I heard her conversation. She also told me that I should never talk about that again to anyone. Her desire to keep the whole thing hushed up was to her much more important than - oh I don't know - finding a way to help your son work through the trauma of what he was feeling. I get the feeling from your excellent comments above that the experience I had was somewhat similar to what some of you have gone through. Doesn't it suck being in a church community where you have to hide your sins from everyone for fear of being judged or ridiculed by your ward members? I gotta say I really feel you there.

Okay fair enough. Please know that I'm not trying to make fun of your feelings. If I have come across as uncaring then I sincerely apologize. I tell you what - I'll share an experience from my past and you can tell me if I still don't qualify to potentially understand what you have experienced. When I was 7 years old I was sexually abused by a man in my apartment building. Pretty much anything you can imagine went on. I still remember it well. I know that that kind of thing has really messed some people up inside. Maybe that qualifies me to understand the "nightmare" of which you speak. Although I guess he was just a friendly acquaintance of our family and not a committed partner. But when I think back on it I don't demonize the guy at all. I actually wonder what happened to him that made him do what he did to me. I don't really pity him nor do I condone his actions. For some reason I don't wind myself up about it either. I feel about it the same way I would feel about a kid knocking an ice cream cone out of my hand. The guy was a punk and needs to shape up. So when it comes to my wife, I can't imagine a scenario where she would do something on her own and in private that would cause me to demonize her and decide that my life was destroyed. Certainly not because she liked looking at Taylor Lautner's Abs. Now I could better understand the word "nightmare" if a husband involved a wife against her will in some way. Like if he fired up the computer at dinner time while you were trying to eat. If he wanted her to dress up like someone in one of the videos he watched when she did not want to...etc, etc. That kind of thing effects another person and depending on the severity I can see it being rather serious. If, however, a husband treats his wife with kindness and respect and does his web surfing in private...? Your right I guess I don't get it. Please don't read into what I said that I am condoning pornography. It is a sin. It makes it a lot more difficult if not impossible to feel the spirit. It might lead to bigger sins. I agree wholeheartedly with those facts. I also absolutely and unequivocally agree that he needs to stop. I only wish that his wife would see him for who he really is. An imperfect son of God just trying his best to get through this thing called life. Pure and simple. A porn addict is the same as a kleptomaniac, a no good layabout, someone prone to anger, a self righteous person, a smoker, someone with same gender attraction. I believe that every person I know has weaknesses. I also believe that a human being has the ability to choose how they react to someone's weaknesses. I don't have to like it and I understand a natural feeling of disgust towards the behavior. It is interesting that the majority of porn addicts say they are also disgusted by it. they need their rush and unfortunately the pictures are what bring it. A great many would almost certainly trade those degrading images for pictures of fruit if they could get the same effect from produce. (Well I guess a few probably can) but my point is that I absolutely have control over how I choose to address it. I have control over how I see my spouse. More than one General Authority has suggested that we get tougher skin. That we stop being offended. I've even heard it suggested that when you see someone doing something wrong that you should make up a reason for what they did in your mind that allows you to see them positively. I've tried that and it actually works. I was amazed at how differently I felt about what happened when I forced myself out of the trap of demonizing the individual.

Ugggh. I just realized how very hypocritical that last post was. I started this whole thing out by saying how much people "really bug me when they..." pathetic. In the immortal words of John Cleese: "Sorry everyone, sorry."

I agree that it can be. It is always to some level inaccurate. Unfortunately its very difficult to avoid when trying to make a point. Actually that last comment is the exact kind of judging that I have been expressing frustration with. Is the prophet trying to demean women when he says women are better nurturers than men are? Of course not. My mom says the word "Shag" all the time. I've never once thought of her as one to use foul language. Generally speaking someone from Britain would disagree. My point is that generally speaking people decide to be offended by things people say and do. We have the power to do the opposite. We can choose to not be offended. Generally speaking.

I understand your comment. I was, however, trying to make a somewhat serious point. I get really bugged when people always mention how "hurt" or "Betrayed" they feel because their spouse watches porn. Think about the levels of intimacy involved in looking at a picture vs having a real intimate conversation with a real person. Women have an almost obsessive need to talk to different people about very private stuff. No woman can honestly say for example that they have not talked about their sex life with a close friend. The majority should admit to discussing personal stuff with SEVERAL people. It's just how they are wired. So do I have the right as a husband to decide what her motivations were? I could say she violated the sanctity of our relationship by having discussed something personal with other people. What? Am I not enough for her? Why doesn't she just talk to me? Why does she need to make these intimate connections with other people? I feel so hurt and betrayed... Oh wait. No I don't. I realize that that's just how women are wired. They have to satisfy some feminine urge to talk everything out with people besides their spouses. If I confronted my wife and told her that if she spoke with anyone else EVER about our relationship that I would leave her. What is the first thing she would do? She would call one of her friends to discuss it. Or give herself a tumor sitting in a chair trying to keep herself from doing it. I of course think that I have absolutely no right to assign her the label of "betrayer" just because she has that need. I let her tell me if she is trying to hurt me by "going to others to talk about things. If she tells me that she still loves me but just has a need to talk to other people then I believe her and try to be understanding. So men have other hardwired tendencies. I feel that that is no reason for them to be labeled. They are just doing what men do. there is a reason why the church is obsessively telling the priesthood bearers to stop looking at porn. It is because so many are. I'm not saying that it is right. I agree wholeheartedly that it is damaging to the spirit. All I'm saying is that a woman is guilty of objectifying men if she decides she can just decide what their motivations are. That is just as demeaning as men objectifying women.

Oh wait - pornography. I was talking about facebook. ;-)

I am experiencing the same kind of betrayal and hurt right now. My marriage is in serious trouble because of her selfishness. I didn't know about her addiction when we got married but soon afterward I found evidence on her computer. She forgot to close her browser and the site she had up horrified me to be honest. What I don't understand is why I'm not enough for her? Why does she have to go seeking this stuff online? I confronted her about it and she blew it off like it was nothing. She said that I was always busy at work and that many times I don't make myself available to her! I personally believe a marriage is about intimacy and the way she insists on logging on to these sites to get what she needs hurts me deeply. Don't get me wrong, we do it together almost every day and I have even tried to do the "phone thing" while I'm at work. I can't always do that though and no matter how much I try she can't stop logging on. Am I wrong in thinking that I should be enough for her?