JustCurious

Thank you all. To address a couple points made in response to my initial posting - One thing I want to make absolutely clear - We are not at all, nor ever have been in the mindset of "poor me, these members are just unaccepting of us wherever we go". As noted in the one ignorant response above "someone with a track record of having one bad experience after another, with folks in different locations", essentially saying the problem is only with me, not the members engaged in the shunning. I don't think that many members realize that there is absolutely most I definitely a culture within the church that shuns the "one foot in" members. I'm not looking to play the victim. We did far far more of the reaching out to others. In a previous ward we were a limited "one foot in" family, and the vast majority of the members, including most of those we tried befriending were terribly shunning. There were a few truly good people that didn't judge us by only our testimonies. I could list solid examples of the most key people in the ward, but needless to say, we were shunned entirely based on our one foot in position. In our new area, it is a much smaller ward/branch, and the members do seem pretty nice. However, I can't drag my wife or kids there now after the previous experiences. But to many of the points made above, they are very valid. Why are we interested in going if we don't have a testimony? I do know there are many active church goers that go for the social life. If it were only a social life thing, yeah, there are other churches or groups, etc. Part of my thinking was morals. I don't want my kids getting into the crazy drinking, party scene, etc that seem to be somewhat acceptable in most places. If we were accepted for having no testimony in the wards, maybe that would have been a good place, but I think many of you are right - no need to devote my life to discipleship if that's what it takes to not be shunned.

I grew up very active in the church, in a very active Mormon family. Deacon, Teacher, Priest, Elder - served a mission, etc. Many years ago when I was dating my wife, prior to marriage, we took things a little too far. Not all the way, but a little too far, well short of all the way. I felt bad and confessed to my bishop. He was a good sincere man, and spoke with me a couple/few times about it. I told him my then girlfriend and I wanted to get married. He signed my recommend and I was set to see the stake president. This interview was 6 days before our temple wedding. The SP went through the normal questions. One of course was about the Law of Chastity, where he asked if I'd ever done anything..... , I told him nothing that I hadn't taken care of with my bishop. He got real curious and started asking many more questions about this in detail, peeling off those scabs of something I thought was forgiven and in the past. I was shocked as I'd already gone through a process with my bishop. He ended asking when I was getting married. I told him in 6 days. He said "Oh, I don't know about that". For the next couple/few days I was scared and humiliated by the situation, not knowing what would come of the temple wedding. It is of course very scandalous if you had a temple wedding planned, then it became a civil wedding at last moment. Everybody in the ward, etc knows what that means, even though it's none of their business. Luckily the stake president pushed the decision back to my bishop. My bishop was extremely confused by how the stake president was handling this. Luckily, we got the OK and were married in the temple. However, during my same time of being interviewed by the stake president, my then fiancé (now wife) was being interviewed by her stake president. She told me afterwards that her stake president was giving her very strange sexual advise about what she should do with her soon to be husband. My wife was bothered and felt violated, as I did as well. These experiences were some of the final straws (among many others) that helped push us finally over the edge into mostly inactivity. It's been 20 years of mostly inactivity ever since. We live outside of the Utah protective shell, and we've wanted our kids to have high morals similar to Mormons, but we don't want them exposed to closely to this kind of abuse by leaders. We tried putting "one foot in" in the local ward, but we found that to be the most shunned and outcast arrangement available with other ward members. Is there a place for a "one foot in" family in the local Mormon wards? Are there wards that accept the "one foot in" families?