Hi everyone,

Since I have been blogging and podcasting for FMH, people often reach out to me to share their stories and experiences of being a Mormon woman. One of the things I have learned over the years is that the people we see in our wards and neighborhoods, the women we think are “living the perfect Mormon life,” are anything but behind closed doors. I found this out in our Second Class Citizens post series we did and our series on Mixed Orientation marriages. There is no such thing as a perfect Mormon woman. And a “good Mormon” is so broadly defined that it can’t be defined.

I also have talked to many women about a phenomenon that many (most?) Mormon women do not talk about, and that involves matters of the heart. I have been open about my own story and that has helped me heal but I find that many, many women and men in our church have similar stories and no place to put them. We feel shame for living them, let alone even speaking them or acknowledging that. Shame gets us nowhere productive. I hope that shame can end today. We need to speak our truths and say what we need to say. It is the only way to health and healing.

Please read the true stories below of three women who have graciously and bravely shared their truths with us and then we invite you to share the truths you need to share, anonymously in the comment section below. Feel free to change your name and emails as well.

Think of it as a testimony meeting for your authentic selves. 🙂

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STORY # 1:

My junior year of college, I started dating someone named Will.* We fell in love, and after a few months I knew I wanted to marry him. Unfortunately, Will couldn’t take me to the temple. Because he “struggled” with masturbation (I use quotes because I now believe that this was a normal expression of human sexuality that our religion villainizes to the point of causing cyclical patterns of shaming and self-medicating behavior). We dated over the course of two years. And to make a long story short, I ended the relationship. I considered it my Abrahamic sacrifice. When I started dating my husband Pete a few months later, I knew I still loved Will. Will asked me to reconsider multiple times. I wanted to say yes. But I was certain that my family, my religious community, and God himself would be disappointed in me if I did. I’d met a wonderful person who wanted to marry me and take me to the temple. And so I refused. Because doing anything else felt like giving the universe a gigantic slap in the face. Pete and I got engaged, and we married in the temple. I didn’t grieve the choice I had made in a straightforward way at first. Mostly I just cried a lot. And told myself that I would get over it with enough time. And that I’d made the sacrifice because I had to. I look back at myself at 22, and I want to say, “Stop it! Slow down and listen to the voice you keep stomping on. There are so many ways to be, and God is so much bigger than what you think right now! There are far worse things than disappointing others.” But I can’t. And when I finally admitted to myself what I had done, it was really difficult. I’ve thought about the person I was at 22 a lot. I’ve spent a long time hating her and effectively burning her at the stake. Lately, I have offerered the tiniest olive branch of compassion to the person I was at 22. She was doing the best she could with the limited maturity and viewpoint of life that she had. It doesn’t fix anything. But I can’t keep crucifying her. I don’t know what the future holds. I do know that sweeping this under the rug hasn’t worked. And that naming the source of my pain and beginning to wade through these waters has offered me the first tentative breath I’ve been able to take in years.

*Names changed

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STORY #2:

I am a married woman and a mother of 4 children. When I was in my mid thirties, I met and fell in love with a married man. We tried to maintain a platonic friendship, but passion and circumstances took over and our relationship turned physical six months after we’d met.

We were able to carry on in our affair for over a year, spending a few stolen days together every month and burning up phones in the days and nights we were apart. Even as it was going on, I knew that it would end badly. There was no other way it could end and the end seemed inevitable.

At the end of the first year, I discovered I was pregnant. As I considered all of my options, my lover told me that I needed to keep everything secret, because exposing what we’d done would destroy two families and mark our child as the product of an affair. He was terrified of excommunication from the Mormon church and public exposure as a philanderer. He didn’t want to lose his wife and children in divorce. He promised he would be there to support me and our child. He promised I would not have to bear the weight of this secret alone. He begged me to keep our secret.

That is what I did, and to this day, it is what I still do.

A few short months after the baby was born, he cut off all contact with me. I haven’t heard from him in several years.

Our son is now ten. When he sits next to me on the couch when we’re watching TV, or in the pew during sacrament meeting, he takes my hand and absentmindedly plays with my fingers. His father used to do the same thing, except now I feel his fingers on my heart while our son’s fingers wind and unwind with mine.

I think of him every day. Sometimes I’m sad, sometimes I’m annoyed, and sometimes I want to burn down his whole world. I write long letters to him, his wife, his bishop, and sometimes even my bishop, but I freeze with my finger on the “send” button while I consider the consequences.

I always delete the letters. It will only end badly. There is no other way.

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STORY #3:

I got married for two reasons: To have sex and to get out of the house.

I was really young when I got married but it was the only option I saw at the time to escape the control of my parents. I needed to be free to be an adult, because I was becoming one but they didn’t trust me to live as one. They were very religious and strict and even at 19 I had a ten o’clock curfew, amongst other very strict and confining rules. They wouldn’t let me live with roommates, go to school or try to live on my own. They were so afraid of losing control of me and that made me start doing dangerous things to rebel against them. I became a cutter and although I loathed doing it, it was the only thing I felt like I had control with in my life. I planned to run away but I didn’t have a car and I didn’t want to disappoint the Lord by disobeying my parents, even though their control was suffocating me. I really was a good Mormon girl, by every sense of the word but the fact that I was harming my body made me feel like a terrible hypocrite. I felt that I didn’t deserve to be an adult and make choices for myself. This guilt compounded my problem.

When I met my husband, he had just gotten off a mission. He was ready to get married. Because of my Mormon background, marriage seemed to be the only thing my parents thought I was ready and mature enough for. Looking back that seems so odd and irresponsible but when I started dating my husband, they encouraged us to get married quickly. After two months we were engaged and got married shortly after.

I didn’t love him. I wanted to sleep with him, because my hormones were raging, but I never was in love with him. He is a good man, but I’ve never known what it feels like to be with someone I’m in love with and sometimes that is hard to bear.

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