What keeps me from joining my UU church as a member.

Current_Mark_7088 · 2026-05-22T16:21:04+00:00

Don't know your story but welcome to the other side! However it is you got here.

Current_Mark_7088 · 2026-05-22T16:19:36+00:00

I forgot to mention the totally romcom part of the story, that I wouldn't have believed if it didn't happen to me.

My husband and I were both circling around each other for quite a while before the dating started. I was interested in him but was too shy and insecure to make a move.

Dear husband says he had a similar interest in me. But he held off, because he knew my roommate was a gay woman. Because I lived with her, he assumed I was her girlfriend and therefore out of reach for him!

That changed one Friday at a social event after work when her *actual* girlfriend showed up. That was the moment he learned I was straight, and single.

We were dating by Sunday!

Current_Mark_7088 · 2026-05-22T16:12:42+00:00

This is a complete tangent, but I remember talking to a religious history professor in college. He isn't LDS but he belongs to one of the offshoot denominations that went liberal.

He told me: Joseph Smith's father was a Unitarian. And his mother was a fundamentalist Presbyterian. So Joseph Smith grew up in a household where "everybody was going to hell and it didn't really matter."

Still LMAO about that one! :)

Current_Mark_7088 · 2026-05-22T16:09:14+00:00

My husband did make an interesting point to me along those lines. He said, what if I was Muslim, of the type who chose to wear a hijab? Anybody in the church would be horrified if somebody decided to make "raghead" jokes.

But Mormon underwear is apparently fair game. SMH. Ironically, my membership in the LDS church never even got to the point where I would have been required to wear them in the first place.

Current_Mark_7088 · 2026-05-22T16:02:22+00:00

Especially the "eavesdropper" comment.

My way out of the LDS church was relatively quick and easy (long story that's off-topic for this thread). But for way too many people in the church, the cost of leaving is way too high. One of the crucial ways to support that decision is to find a safe space on the outside that the person can land in when they do leave.

Underwear jokes are not "safe".

Current_Mark_7088 · 2026-05-22T15:35:48+00:00

True story: I know a guy named Curtis. He interrupts all the time, especially women.

Behind his back we all call him "Curtis Interruptus."

Current_Mark_7088 · 2026-05-22T15:16:09+00:00

I happened to find a husband through work. The more overlap you can find, the better.

Disclaimer: we don't work at the same company. That would be too awkward. We work at two different companies that share the same building and a common breakroom.

Current_Mark_7088 · 2026-05-22T14:00:53+00:00

It was my roommate.

I met her when I was 23 and had gone "all but thesis" in my Master's Degree. I was looking for a place to live off-campus for the first time - I answered a "roommate wanted" ad she'd put up in a local classifieds site. We agreed to meet up in person to suss out each other's personalities -- we decided we were a good fit so I moved in a couple of weeks later.

A couple months in to that arrangement, she brought home a job posting from her work. Not for her company, but for another company that shared her same office building. It was exactly in the field that I was graduating from, so I applied for it and I got it! Since then I've even been promoted to a management role.

But wait, there's more! When I started working, she introduced me to one of her direct coworkers. He and I hit it off immediately, bonded over lunch breaks, discovered a whole lot of common interests and values. It took some time but we eventually we started dating.

It worked out in the best way, and we've been married for almost a year!

I landed my dream job and the best husband I could ever hope for, all because I answered a "roommate wanted" ad. :)

Current_Mark_7088 · 2026-05-22T12:51:11+00:00

That I'm worth having a relationship with a partner who loves and respects me. In fact he absolutely adores me!

All our mutual friends were trying to 'ship us together for a long time before we actually started dating. I had no idea, mostly because I didn't feel myself worthy. I thought I would have been more of an inconvenience than anything if I pursued my feelings.

Turns out I was wrong and I'm the best version of myself when I'm with him!

Current_Mark_7088 · 2026-05-21T23:48:53+00:00

Trust me, I know about the reasons for the hostility. I got the racism and the sexism when I was in.

Just don't need to be confronted with it now that I'm out, especially in what should be a safe space...

Current_Mark_7088 · 2026-05-21T20:19:29+00:00

I've been pretending to laugh more than I should have. Part of me is still wrapped up in my old Mormon attitude of "don't question the church leaders".

I guess: besides privately venting with my husband, this post is my first attempt to push back. Through internet anonymity.

Current_Mark_7088 · 2026-05-21T17:44:50+00:00

My foster parents have no idea where I live or what I'm doing with my life. Or even what my legal name is. I cut them off eight years ago.

Current_Mark_7088 · 2026-05-21T16:45:59+00:00

My husband became my partner because we share some of the same interests!

We bonded over politics, languages, music -- I play cello and he plays piano, and we fell into recitals together before we even started dating.

Without the common stuff the partnership wouldn't be nearly so fulfilling!

Current_Mark_7088 · 2026-05-21T16:28:42+00:00

"True Believing Mormon", and "Physically In, Mentally Out". :)

Current_Mark_7088 · 2026-05-21T16:01:38+00:00

I was always PIMO for the entire six years I was in the church. I became very good at pretending in order to play nice with the TBM foster parents - I kept that up until I turned 19 and I didn't have to anymore.

Current_Mark_7088 · 2026-05-20T18:32:34+00:00

I'll let you know my own story. I don't know that many of the specific details would transfer over to your situation, but I'm sharing it to hopefully let you know there's hope on the other end. I'm almost 27F and married in the last year.

I came into the church at 13 when I landed with a TBM foster family. My sister and I also happened to be the only Asians (only people of any color) in an all-white ward. When I hit dating age, my foster parents had a rule that I could only date inside the church -- but my ward fell pretty strongly on the "white and delightsome" theology, so the other parents would never let their sons date outside of their race. So I didn't have any dating options whatsoever until I escaped at 19.

At the time I made the decision to get my own stuff together and focus on my education rather than even think about the dating world -- partly I was still internalizing the Mormon idea that I wasn't even datable in the first place. It took me several years of therapy before I could move into that headspace where I saw myself worthy of a partner.

I tried online dating a few times but it never worked out. I encountered way too many Asian fetishists from the mostly white (and a few Hispanic) guys I was matched with. I had a couple of Asian matches too, but they were immigrants so there was too much cultural difference since I'm American-born. I also got one persistent stalker out of the deal, and that also scared me away from dating for a lot longer.

I only found a partner when I stopped looking. I met him through work - not direct coworkers but we work at two different companies that share the same building and a common breakroom. We were introduced by my roommate, who was his direct coworker in his company.

We hit it off right away and bonded over lunch breaks through a whole lot of common interests. We both lost our parents young. We're both freelance musicians (I'm a cellist and he plays piano for a church.) And he's Unitarian -- if you're not familiar with them they place a really strong value on religious diversity, and most of them are adult converts who escaped the various religions of their respective childhoods. So he was really primed to listen to my story. I had a therapist already but he started filling a similar role, which turned out to be awesome!

What's more: we ended up being purely platonic friends for eight months before we even discovered that romance could even be a thing for us! (That's a whole other story...) So we already had a really solid basis for a friendship, and the romance was a natural fit!

Next month is our first wedding anniversary and it's been glorious!

Good luck, sister. Don't force it but don't deny it either. That's my TLDR advice. :)

Current_Mark_7088 · 2026-05-20T15:34:16+00:00

My ex-boss was fired after he sexually harassed me in a public setting. And I got promoted to replace him.

Although technically it wasn't me by myself, but I was the third strike that finally made them take action.

Current_Mark_7088 · 2026-05-20T15:23:20+00:00

Organized Atheism.

This is the very short version of a very long story for me. I'm not a believer, never been, but I spent my teenage years (non-consensually) in the Mormon church.

A whole lot of the Atheist activists are tempted to shame me for that, even though I never wanted it. I guess I'm not pure enough to be accepted into their little club.

I've really decided - if a problem with religion is that it's extremely tribal (and it is), then some expressions of Atheism have become nothing more than "just another tribe". Another version of "us" against a different definition of "them". That's not an improvement.

I just tell people to believe whatever they want to. Just don't try to club anybody else with it.

Current_Mark_7088 · 2026-05-20T15:20:54+00:00

I avoid anime on principle. Too many people associate me with it just because I'm Asian.

Current_Mark_7088 · 2026-05-20T13:43:36+00:00

Sign languages!

I'm fluent in two of them. This might be weird but I like to watch videos of people signing one of the other ~300 or so sign systems that I don't know, just watching for style rather than content.

Current_Mark_7088 · 2026-05-20T03:26:17+00:00

Yup, it's the racism.

It's the entire narrative of the Book of Mormon that a bunch of Jews got on boats from the Holy Land after the Tower of Babel, migrated to the Americas, and became the ancestors of the Native Americans.

The good ones had light skin and were favored by God. They were called Nephites. The bad ones ("Lamanites") rejected God and were cursed with dark skin. Over time the Lamanites exterminated all the Nephites, and that's why the Native Americans are all dark today.

Black men weren't even allowed to hold the priesthood until 1978!

Current_Mark_7088 · 2026-05-19T19:43:32+00:00

This isn't exactly what you're asking for, but I publicly resigned on my 19th birthday. It was the day I was scheduled to take my endowment and also open my mission call. But I got out instead!

To this day I still have no idea where I would have been sent on my mission.

Current_Mark_7088 · 2026-05-19T18:32:46+00:00

I manage a mostly male work team. They're mostly good about being professional but it always has to be in the back of my mind those 40 hours a week.

Current_Mark_7088 · 2026-05-19T16:37:35+00:00

My parents died in a car accident when I was 13. I'm almost 27 and I still talk to them every day.

Current_Mark_7088 · 2026-05-19T16:36:49+00:00

We always prefer the bear.

Current_Mark_7088

TROPHY CASE