Am I having relationship conflict? Sure. I have relationships, so conflict happens. Nothing particularly different or worse/bad is happening in any of my core relationships. Don’t think this is about me, specifically.
It _is_, of course, about me, because this is my space to work through ideas and try to understand … stuff.
I was raised in a JW family (my grandfather had converted before my father was born, back in the 1920s or so, even before they’d settled on the JW name). My younger sister left in her teens. I left when I was 25, which is unusually late for someone to leave while young, and unusually early for someone to leave after a long period of time in the cult. If you are thinking, is it really a cult? They refer to being a member as being “In the Truth” and they call the people in charge “The Governing Body” and the group as a whole as “The Organization”. I think that makes it _fairly clear_. It’s a cult.
Once I left, I did not bounce back. Again, this is very unusual for any long term member with extensive family still in the cult. You don’t get to keep those family relationships when you exit. The only relationship they will have with you is attempts to get you to return. This is not an exaggeration. There is plenty of readily accessible JW material (you can go to their website) that describes that this is the policy, and how it is implemented. Again, it’s a cult. Again, it makes it hard to leave and stay gone. Humans generally want to maintain connections to their friends and family of long-standing, so ending that all at once is hard. And anyone who has been in for a long time does not have strong relationships with outsiders _because the group also bans that_. It’s a cult.
While I was a member, I was told over and over and over again in my interactions with outsiders (generally answering their questions about the cult I was then a member of) that I was the most reasonable JW / person in a cult that they had ever met. I never quite knew what to make of this? Until recently, I would have assumed that fundamentally this was a result of my autism. And it may well be. However, I got to thinking about structures for managing relationship conflict last night, and I now think there is something else entirely going on. Probably autism related — because ME! But it isn’t inherent to the autism.
While I was a sincere member (because for a long time, I was — the last five years, not so much, but for a long time I was a sincere member), I maintained an independent conscience. Not as a child, of course, but, let’s call it high school on. On specific issues where I felt the Organization’s position was completely unsupportable by scripture, I actually would argue with men holding positions within The Organization. (I didn’t lose, and if you have any understanding of cults, this is all by itself somewhat incredible and difficult to believe. Also, it is true. They were very afraid of me by the end of this process, a fact which I did not fully appreciate for a few years, but have realized for a long time now.)
I did not go out of my way to say, “I’m a JW” or anything like that. However, I did state things that I could or could not do, as they came up. “I do not celebrate Christmas” wasn’t a thing I volunteered, but provided by way of explaining my non-participation in a holiday party. I was happy to explain _why_ JW’s don’t celebrate Christmas (still willing to do that!) _when asked_. When the other person wanted to drop it, I fucking dropped it. This is probably why people thought I was reasonable. It was because I could provide the complete basis for the belief / proscription / requirement, on demand, in a coherent format, and then stop. That is _not_ the easiest thing in the world to learn how to do.
Evangelicals _in general_ including JWs typically lack the _and then stop_ capability. Honestly, they’re usually pretty shitty on the “complete basis for …” part, and rarely good at the “in a coherent format”. They generally _don’t_ give the actual basis for their belief, which is that they are a member of a family / group that requires them to believe the thing. They frequently don’t realize that the actual basis for their belief is their group membership. When you are arguing about a belief or value that a person is required to hold to maintain membership in good standing in the group that contains all of the people that are important to them, you are not arguing about the belief or the value. You are actually arguing about whether or not the person is willing to break with everyone they care about over an idea. And they probably aren’t, no matter how reprehensible or risible the idea is. Interestingly, this is exactly what slows people down in terms of _joining_ a cult in a lapse of judgment. The cult makes it clear they are going to have to give up all their important relationships — and the important relationships will often make it clear that if they join the cult, that connection is over. It’s tough to get someone with satisfying relationships to make that leap.
Flip side, someone who _does not_ have satisfying relationships is pretty easy to get to sign up by offering them the appearance and possibly even the reality of satisfying relationships. Join us, and you’ll have structured, free activities to fill your non-work hours, a sense of meaning, the satisfaction of looking forward to 99% of humanity being offed sometime in the next little bit by god so you can enjoy living forever on a paradise earth (nothing like a little genocidal fantasy revenge to take the edge off of loneliness and shame!).
As much as I would like to say that I left because I disapprove of genocide, even as a fantasy (I do! Now. I didn’t then. My bad.), that’s not why I left. I _left_ because The Organization asserted that it was influenced by Jehovah, sort of nudged along in a management sense, to get the bad humans out of The Organization, and the door-to-door ministry would ensure that we would present the opportunity to everyone thus making it possible for any good humans not in The Organization to find their way to Eternal Life in Paradise on Earth. Any mere human organization couldn’t offer this, and the world was all under Satan’s influence, so being In the Truth was the only safe place, and even if there seemed to be someone bad, that’d all be found out in good time, don’t worry about it. I left because it was really impossible to believe this. Remember: my grandfather converted, and I read. A Lot. It was really clear that The Organization was largely composed of criminals, and most people who were not cult members were basically decent human beings. And largely is not some sort of 51% of the people broke the speed limit occasionally. The list of _people I knew_ committing felonies and remaining in good standing was kind of astonishing. There was an even longer list of people I knew committing felonies and going to prison for them (and I don’t mean COs who didn’t want to serve when drafted during Viet Nam), who were in good standing despite internal reports of what they had done, and they were only booted out after it became a public legal matter.
Some years ago, I tried to read a book that was written by a Law Professor colleague of a family member. The book was about private law, and what public law can maybe learn from it. It’s a terrible book, which was really apparent when the events surrounding the Great Organic Peanut shortage were described in a way that asserted that kosher regulation in that situation was helpful, when in fact, that is the opposite of true. Kosher failures were present, documented and being discussed but no meaningful action to mitigate the problems was taken and no removal of certification occurred. Remember: people _died_ from the PCA nonsense. Private law is not great. Public law has issues, for sure. But we are not going to be fixing those issues by reference to retrograde religious organizations.
Once I was out, I did what I could to exploit loopholes in communication and contact to maintain family relationships. Functionally, I was responsive to requests for assistance and very proactive in offering assistance in dealing with transportation to medical appointments and similar (my mother never got a driver’s license. There was some implausible story about her hitting a dog, but I think this is really because she was undocumented). I did finally end this limited contact after repeated abuse that led me to go No Contact with my mother, and to set fairly clear terms for any ongoing contact with my father. The abuse was not physical in nature. When I stopped being a JW, I knew — because I had seen it all happen with my younger sister’s exit from The Organization — that my mother would remove all evidence of my existence from the walls of the house. I had not, however, anticipated how far she was prepared to take that. She squirreled away everything, and sorted through it repeatedly over the years, so once I left, she started going through her extensive stash and asking me to come over and “pick up my things”. “My things” included my baby book, and various childhood art projects, which I was mostly happy to have back. But they also included her copies of the candid photos from my first wedding (I’d long since destroyed mine), and _every single Happy Anniversary Card_ I’d given my parents that was not also signed by either of my older siblings.
Fine, but she handed them to my younger sibling, who was visiting with her then husband and stepchildren, and asked her to hand them off to me. I really feel like if you are going to hand a bomb of that nature to someone, you shouldn’t be _that_ surprised to have it lobbed right back at you. The grenade tossed back down the hall is an absolute cliche of war movies.
Remarkably, once I was No Contact with my mother, I kinda felt like I might want to have children of my own. Go figure.
I tell this long story for a variety of reasons. First, I probably _ought_ to write it down somewhere; it’s probably interesting and might help other people make sense of things they have experienced or watched someone else go through or heard about or whatever. Second, and more relevantly, this is a _very high degree of relationship conflict_.
There are higher degrees! Nobody died (well, fortunately, my mother did eventually die, but that’s totally unrelated to this story. She is out of her misery, and so are the rest of us). Nobody had to go to the hospital. The police were not involved. But for number of involved persons, and the length of time that this particular relationship conflict has extended over — there are updates that I haven’t included; this is a many-decades long conflict, and when I say I know The Organization is (or at least was — maybe they’ve forgotten!) afraid of me, I’m not precisely exaggerating. I’m not proud of everything I did at the height of the conflict, but I’m not exactly ashamed either.
(ETA: I will mention that while the police and medical professionals were not involved in any of the events with my parents, my exit from The Organization was prompted by my decision to get a divorce from my then-husband, and the end of that relationship _did_ involve police and medical professionals and an order for protection.)
Third, and probably most importantly, I can _now_ see embedded in these events a meaning that was not apparent to me at the time, or for decades thereafter as I repeated, many, many times, a very particular pattern.
I have a _very_ well defined structure for managing relationship conflict. Here it is:
Notice the conflict. Identify the boundaries of the conflict clearly, and the nature of it. Accept the elements of the conflict that are not-remediable, after putting in good faith efforts to mitigate / remediate / persuade / convince. Sometimes, I find that my position is Incorrect and I adopt the position of the other parties, and the conflict is over. Occasionally, the reverse is true. Ideally, we both meet in a new, better position. But if none of these happen, just _knowing_ exactly what the conflict is is the first element of my structure.
Reduce active conflict, by agreeing to steer clear of the conflict boundaries. As needed, reduce the amount of contact with the other person or persons, until the remaining contact is tolerable to everyone. That might require reducing contact to zero.
Make it as clear as possible that, if the other person’s position changes materially, the relationship can be further modified. “My door is always open.” “Your choices have led to …” My daughter calls this, “Make them dump you”. I actually don’t totally agree with either the Make Them Dump You policy as a policy, or my daughter’s characterization of what I do as a Make Them Dump You policy, but her perspective seems worth including here because it’s entirely possible she sees this more clearly than I do.
I think that this above structure for managing relationship conflict is _why_ people used to tell me that I was the most reasonable JW they’d ever met / said other admiring things about how handled an unpleasant interaction at work / in a social setting / etc.
I want to be super clear about a couple things. I am _not_ advocating for this. Don’t do it. It’s actually not a good way to live your life. You might think about moments where you wish you had called someone out for their *ist joke or comment, or where you wish you had NOT called someone out for their *ist joke or comment, and where everything got heated and there was shouting and so forth. Let me tell you, when you identify the *ist joke or comment as a conflict element and then relentlessly manage it as I describe above, the pain goes on for a lot longer. I am a “rip the bandage off” sort of person in a lot of ways, but not in this area. When I experience values conflict with someone, I will tell them _and then we will talk about it a lot_. That’s not better.
I do not know how I can be more clear about this. _Being reasonable and patient is a total crock of shit._ People will admire you for your restraint and _they will continue merrily on in their wickedness_. You’re better off with the heated exchange. You’ll get clarity, and there will be a nice, sharp moment that everyone can point to and go, that’s where it ended. And it will have ended. Maybe it will restart. Maybe it won’t. But it will not be just fucking dragging on.
I don’t think anyone has read this far. This is a thing that I do, and I am telling you: don’t do it. Don’t advocate for it. Don’t aspire to it. It wasn’t just avoidance and denial that got our country to where it is right now. It was a lot of people like me, who thought that we could figure out a way to accomplish goals together.
We have been wrong. We need to put that down and actually do what we should have done a long time ago. Pass the ERA. Reform SCOTUS, so that it once more has one justice per district, and they actually _oversee their district_. Reform SCOTUS so that it handles most cases that rise to that level as individual judges or panels, not en banc. Get rid of the filibuster. Pass voting rights legislation. Revisit the failed reapportionment of 1920, and return our country to _truly_ representative democracy. We have a super complicated mechanism for deciding what is going to happen that _does not require us all to agree_. We should update it, and make use of it. Extensively.
I’m going to wrap up with this link:
https://www.vilendrerlaw.com/five-main-causes-conflict-mediation-can-resolve/It’s a great taxonomy. I’m not opposed to mediation. But sometimes, you really, really, really need to stop.
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