How I Told My Husband I Wanted to Leave the Mormon Church

did you ever consider divorcing me as people online seem to think at BYU essentially as soon as you've committed to dating someone seriously you have more or less set yourself on the track to getting married after You' shared with her that we had met playing Dungeons and Dragons uh that she asked if I'd be willing to give that up if we got married in order to be a good husband and father yeah so when you're trying to keep this peck on the lips Only Rule it's really hard to follow the rules kiss like Jesus is watching yes exactly welcome to today's video this is my husband Jackson he's jumping in today because I get so many questions about how my relationship survived leaving the ultr strict Mormon church how we worked it out together uh so many people have asked if he divorced me nope still here still here uh so we're going to tell our whole relationship story our very Mormon dating uh experiences going to BYU our wedding what that was like getting married in the Mormon Temple and what it was like for me to break the news that I no longer believed that I wanted to be Mormon and the church was not true big news all this and more on today's episode I'm so excited to introduce the sponsor of this video surf shark you may know I've made a lot of videos about the Mormon Temple and every time I post something like this I inevitably get a lot of negative hate hateful comments which is why it's become very important to me to keep my personal data secure surf shark VPN is a virtual private Network that keeps my online identity safe by encrypting the information between my computer and the internet this keeps my personal data protected from big companies and from cyber criminals as you all know since I left the church I've also become quite addicted to coffee and so I spend a lot of time working in coffee shops however using public Wi-Fi is a little bit risky and the great thing about using a VP is that it protects my personal data when I use free public Wi-Fi this amazing 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my sister was bummed that I was dating such a dud which if you're watching this uh you know sorry bud you were just off Mission it it it it happens that way I think I'd like to think that he probably thinks he dodged a bullet at this point with what with this whole social media this whole yeah anyway so my roommate um invited his sister-in-law to get breakfast with him and they were supposed to meet at uh our apartment before they went out for breakfast and so inw walks the sister-in-law this fine specimen here I was Ill prepared uh to meet such a beauty I was in my PJs looking very disheveled uh chilling on the couch but from that moment I knew I was going to have to make a move um didn't you say that you were you got like wifey Vibes like you were like I got to I got to put a ring got a wife that yeah it was the spirit moving upon me uh inspiring me which I'll say to your credit you never you never pulled that line I did have other guys pull the line that they that the Lord inspired them to to marry me of or date me or something I don't think I was holy enough for you to believe that I had actually been invited along to breakfast but I was in no shape to uh to go to breakfast so uh I think that the the first time we got to really talk um was at a at a Dungeons and Dragons game few weeks later yeah yeah so that was Jackson's sign of the story when I I was going to breakfast and I don't think I even really heard anything about you my sister was not putting the same little uh she was not telling me that I should be dating you mostly she was telling me I should not be dating this one guy um come on sis she was kind of laying the suitors out for me kind of pitching different guys maybe that might work out but uh so when I first went to their apartment uh to go get breakfast with my brother-in-law uh Jackson was there and he had recently gotten leg surg knee surgery yeah I just dislocated my my knee and it was pretty pretty gnarly he was on some pain medication at the time and I so when I walked in and to give a little more context my brother-in-law had another friend who he was kind of looking out for taking care of he had a friend who was down on his luck and my brother-in-law very kindly was helping him out and uh so when I walked in and saw Jackson he was kind of slurring his speech and he as bad as that huh uh slurring he was giving me um down on his luck Vibes and I uh I thought to myself oh this is so nice my brother-in-law has another friend that he's looking out for and Jackson also has a scar in the back of his head which do you want to show them your sure yeah gnarly so I when I first walked in I saw this Scar and I I thought maybe he you know had a a brain injury and that my brother-in-law had taken you know take you know out of the kindness of his heart had taken pity on this poor man and I when we had our conversation our 5 minute first time meeting back and forth I just was wanting to give him a little pat on the head give him a you know you got this buddy who's who's to say I'm not a project you know I I may may still be that's fair uh but yes as time went on obviously um we I did come to realize that you're a fully functioning adult mostly a few weeks went by we had our first conversation playing Dungeons and Dragons and which for those of you who know it's the Satan's game yes it was very I think it was a little taboo that we were playing Dungeons and Dragons the Mania around satanic panic I think has worn off so I don't think most people at BYU even knew what D Dungeons and Dragons was at that point may I don't know I don't know but I didn't know what it was uh before we started playing it you so you asked me out on I think our second or third round of playing d and d and what do you uh remember about our our courtship our courtship our very Mormon courtship well one of my favorite memories just to just to illustrate a little bit about dating at BYU and also what an absolute trophy of a woman I wound up with here so after we' gone on a couple of dates Alyssa invited me to a party at her apartment and so I show up fashionably late like 2 minutes after uh after the the the time you'd invited me over and I was the first one to arrive um so we were visiting having a little conversation chilling on the couch after a little bit the doorbell rings and uh a guy comes in and a couple minutes later doorbell rings again another dude uh over the course of the next 20 minutes or so uh probably eight 10 guys show up and they all clearly have it bad for Alyssa this is a a party of just dudes who are interested in dating Alysa and this so this story makes me sound horrible and I I have always like this story or this party was so embarrassing because I had very carefully invited the same number of men and women so that there'd be you know a balance and so that everybody had somebody to talk to and so there you know it was just I had invited and confirmed that mult like similar amounts of men and women were going to be coming to this party but then night of all of my female friends texting me a can't make it tonight sorry I have to study and almost all of my female friends dropped at the last minute but this hot commodity did not have any dudes backing out so um I'm I'm doing a good job kind of you know work in the room controlling the the prime real estate next to Alyssa but I had a trip I was supposed to be going on with brother-in-law uh you know same same same guy my roommate we were supposed to be leaving on a trip that evening and so I had to leave to go and meet with him and as I'm leaving the apartment I see the tallest handsomest specimen of a dude in the room move to fill the vacant spot I left behind next to Alyssa and uh it it wounded my heart so I take off to go uh start this trip but unfortunately due to some unforeseen circumstances the trip had to be canceled at the last minute and so I i' only left about 20 minutes earlier and I thought you know I have to go back I have to go reclaim that spot can't let me get swooped away can't let Alysa get swept off her feet but I needed a a a a a distraction you know something to to mix up the seating in the room something to give me the opportunity to kind of squeeze back into the uh the prime spot next to Alysa so I I I did what any you know self expecting uh college man would do I I I went to Little Caesars and I bought like six pizzas and like a bunch of bags of crazy bread and I come back over I knock on the door I say hey guys I brought pizza and all these starving college students get up to go and swarm the pizza and I remember being so impressed because I that was you know I was so poor in college and I remember being impressed that you could afford to buy that many Little Caesars Pizzas like this guy a provider this is this is this is the true wealth this is who I need to marry because he's the wealthiest man I've met at BYU and so uh you know Alyssa comes up to say wow thank you so much for bringing pizza that's so nice of you and and I I knew I'd clinched it um so that that that night that evening was later described by one of the attendees who uh apparently also did comedy at BYU as the Alysa games and I I love that description of it that is what it felt like uh it it definitely felt like a a a knockdown drag out for Alyssa's heart go I feel like you always remember that story as the time you bagged bagged your wife uh and you did you impress it was very impressive don't get me wrong but I was so embarrassed and I was so bummed that all of my it basically looked like I was the one that orchestrated the Alyssa games so that I could be the center of attention and it I acally just wanted to curl up in a ball and die so that's my side of that story but uh I do feel like as we were dating at BYU we had so many very Mormon dating experiences like I remember once you when we were officially dating you asked me you you needed to get something from your room and at BYU one of the rules is you can't cross the threshold of the opposite gender bedroom you only can stay in the common areas so I remember you needed to get something for your room and you said why don't you you can come and sit on the bed while I look for it and I refused and was like I I don't know what kind of girl you think I am but I will not be crossing the threshold to your bedroom uh as we were dating too I think we just we started to get to know each other obviously as you do and uh we had some conversations that I felt like were very confusing for me because we obviously started falling in love we having great conversations but then sometimes Jackson would just say things that would make my Mormon meter uh go off that I should not be dating this person um which was very confusing because me as a human being very much enjoying getting to know each other falling in love but me as a Mormon was feeling like I maybe this relationship shouldn't work out in some of these early conversations I remember mentioning very casually and offhandedly hey I you know I don't think gay people should be able to get married they you know they can go and be in relationships if you want but I believe that marriage is only meant to be between a man and a woman which is something that's very much echoed in all of the church it's in the document the family a proclamation to the world and so when I expressed that I was definitely expressing the the Canon view of most Mormons is that gay people should not be able to get married and I remember when we were discussing this asking why it is that your religious beliefs should dictate how anyone else has to live that it's you know really inappropriate to be using government in order to enforce a religious belief ultimately um yeah and I I feel like when you said that it like it felt like a slap on the face just because I had never considered the impact of my religious beliefs on on gay people I had I felt very Vindicated in having this totally bigoted point of view just because I had never really reflected on the real life impact of my beliefs and how my religion was being used or and Christianity in general to kind of control these people's ability to live in the way and love in the way that they wanted to uh and so that that conversation is a good example of many different conversations we had when we were dating that made me feel like Jackson had these points of view that didn't fall in line with the Mormon accepted Norm which I felt like I shouldn't like but I also found so engaging and very interesting and so cool uh was his ability to kind of see Nuance in a lot of these religious ideals that I had been presented as completely black and white just a quick reminder to like this video if you've enjoyed it so far subscribe to my channel I release a new video every week about Mormonism my experience Mormon doctrine that kind of a thing and drop a comment below if you have any questions for Jackson or I I'll be going through the comments and answering questions after the video gets posted so like any uh good Provo couple uh the pressure bore down upon us uh as we continue to date to get engaged um and in fact uh you know the same brother brother-in-law and sister-in-law who who introduced us uh were getting married and and even asked us if we'd like to get engaged at their wedding we ultimately decided not to but um but certainly the the the pressure the the environmental pressure was on for us to to get engaged my one specific memory I have is that we would go to church together and I remember our Bishop or my Bishop because we weren't in the same ward yet coming up to me at some point and saying Jackson seems like a great guy and we' probably been only dating for maybe dating seriously for 2 or 3 months and my Bishop just in the hallway asked me when we were going to get engaged and there's this unspoken rule at BYU that basically as soon as you pair off and you're official you're setting yourself on the track to get married the clock is ticking yeah so not a lot of people date for a few months and then break up date someone else for a few months break up date for a couple years years break up date someone you know that's normal people stuff at BYU essentially as soon as you've committed to dating someone seriously you have more or less set yourself on the track to getting married so when the bishop asked when are you guys going to get married I didn't even bat an ey because I expected that the bishop would be wondering that because it was so normal and that that that's a question that my friends were asked when they were dating seriously so and that's a question that asked me frequently when when are we getting engaged did I really yeah more than once you'd be like when when are you going to propose that's true the proposal I think of the two of us I was definitely way more in a rush than Jackson don't get me wrong I was excited I think that I had just seen so many friends you know one of my friends got married at BYU they got engaged within two weeks of meeting each other and married a month later and so by comparison I feel like we we're in the slow lane over here you know dating for 6 months before getting engaged I mean when everybody at BYU says when you know you know so I would say to Jackson well when you know you know I mean if we know we want to get married we might as well get married tomorrow or yesterday if that would be more ideal and I think a lot of that comes down to the fact that you know I I was I was in the culture but not of the culture of Provo I I think you were muchis in general and Mormonism in general I think you were much much more sort of intimately tied to um kind of BYU's culture and and also a a much more traditional Mormon culture than I was yeah cuz your mom uh left the church when you were two three yeah young uh really really early on my parents split up and my mom um was out of the church so I was I was raised with one family that was uh very active LDS and one that wasn't at all which when we were dating my mom did question I I think it it was prior to us getting engaged so me we were our relationship was getting more serious I'm talking to my mom you know you know me and this guy are getting more serious I remember her saying basically that she was wondering if Jackson was going to be a good spouse because he was friends with my brother-in-law who we've been mentioning who had recently left the church so she felt like because they were associating uh that was a sign that the marriage was not like I shouldn't marry him and that I should go find someone who was against the anti-mormons a little bit more uh because him being friends with our brother-in-law was a sign that he wasn't righteous enough which apparently was a valid concern but since I was the one that's triggered the leaving I'd like to I like to take credit for the leaving personally you are the Eve in this relationship it's true the woman thou gavest me yes so I think we both both did it to each other I I I'd like to think that it was a it was a team effort for us to leave the church I mean I I think I think your your mom had uh at least a few misgivings about me I know that you uh told me at one point uh after you'd shared with her that we had met playing Dungeons and Dragons uh that she asked if I'd be willing to give that up if we got married in order to be a good husband and father uh we know that the number one cause of deadbeat dads out there is uh Dungeons and Dragons don't play Dungeons and Dragons or you can't also be a good father that's right she lived through the satanic panic and she never got possessed so I think she felt like keeping the church close was very important uh but yeah she she did ask if Jackson would be willing to give up D and D in order to be a good husband and father another funny aspect of us dating especially after we got engaged you know once you're engaged you are Full Speed Ahead you know you want to get married you're planning on it I think from engagement to marriage was 2 or 3 months it was pretty quick but I but then you of course want to spend a ton of time together so I this is like one of the things that caused me the most guilt leading up to our wedding is that I would go over to Jackson's apartment and we'd watch a movie we'd be hanging out and this was also when I was working at the MTC the Missionary Training Center where you train missionaries how to do missionary work and so I'm having this very spiritual job while also trying to follow all of the rules that are required at BYU and it was very confusing time but as we were dating I would go over to your apartment and we'd watch a movie and we would lay in bed next to each other and never did any funny business because we were two very good Mormon kids but sometimes we would fall asleep in the same bed and I would wake up at 2 or 3 a.m. get back in my car or just even just in the morning get back in my car and I would go from spending the night just sleeping in your bed no funny business uh and I would drive to the MTC and go teach the missionaries and you get all of these crazy uh messages at the MTC you'll have these meetings where people will say Hey you know if you did anything last night that would keep you from feeling the spirit you need to report it to your boss and get out of the MTC because you will bring our missionaries down and keep us from finding converts to bring to the church and they always give the most intense eye contact and you also have to get interviewed before you can go to the temple to get married so I remember there would be some nights where I would spend the night and they ask you know if you've done anything during the temple recommend questions they ask if you've done anything that would disqualify you from receiving a temple recommend basically if you've kept the law of Chastity and everything associated with the law of Chastity and I felt so bad did you feel guilty I feel like I felt a lot more guilty because I was the I was the more morony of the two of us I remember one time you said I think I think I need to talk to my Bishop about this do you feel like you need to talk to your Bishop about it and I said no I talk to the Lord I think I'm good yeah Jackson would just be like I I prayed about it me and me and God are cool yeah we're all right and I so there yeah I confessed the bishop once when we were dating I did once end up confessing a small uh rule breaking to the bishop and oh gosh it it's just so hard because when you're dating as like adults when you're two adults dating and you're supposed to keep this incredibly strict rule I mean the guideline is no open-mouthed kissing so when you're trying to keep this peck on the lips Only Rule it's really hard to follow the rules kiss like Jesus is watching yes exactly so um I I was just I think on our wedding night honestly I was just relieved that all of this religious guilt could finally start to fall away because I had been feeling so guilty leading up to our wedding and it's not even like we broke the law of Chastity I was just sleeping in your bed for too long and even that was enough guilt to feel like it was going to crush me I was also relieved on our wedding night my God uh we did Jackson proposed I said yes we got married I think it was under a year from first meeting to wedding day I want to say I calculated it once it was like 11 months 10 or 11 so uh we got married in the temple fully in our Temple robes the the newly opened Pac Temple Noel and I remember I've shared some stories from that day but I remember just feeling like the temple aspect of the entire ceremony or the entire day was awful um my grandma drove up from Albuquerque my grandma and grandpa and they sat in the parking lot and my sister who had already left sat in the parking lot my mom and my brother and sister his basically his most of his family you know on his mom's side had to sit in the parking lot and you know we had a ring ceremony after because a lot of Mormons do that to kind or a civil ceremony now but I we had a ring ceremony to kind of throw throw the non-members a bone and even during the ring ceremony our Bishop mentioned several times about how what happened in the temple earlier today was the true you know most important aspect of the day that was what we that was the most sacred part that was the most important part and you know for anyone sitting in the audience it does feel like a slap in the face to be told th we're having a ring ceremony for you but during the ring ceremony you're going to be continuously reminded about how unimportant the ring ceremony is compared to the real ceremony which none of you were considered worthy enough to attend and what what do you remember about our wedding day well I remember you weren't allowed to wear your wedding dress because it wasn't as white as a sheet of printer paper uh I I I remember uh and she they told me the day of which was the worst part because the girl in the shop that sold me the dress said it was white enough and I had called the temple cuz I had had some friends who went through this and I called the temple and they wouldn't commit they didn't they don't let even let you bring in the dress ahead of time they said it's up to the decision of whoever is running the temple that day basically to to to make the final call so they wouldn't they wouldn't even tell me if I needed to go return the dress to get a different dress I also remember that the uh gentleman who did the ceiling uh got your name wrong yes uh which Alyssa I mean it's a pretty common name aloa yeah in in in general I think one of the one of the kind of difficult things about uh at least our Temple wedding and I I don't know about yours I don't know about anyone else's but at least ours is the extent to which it really has nothing to do with you you are on a marriage assembly line that is heavily standardized and optimized for Speed and efficiency um and that ex those are exactly the two words you want to hear on your wedding day speed and efficiency speed and efficiency and that excludes uh many of the most important people in your life and so I I I loved our wedding day it was great and we had a lot of fun at the reception um but I I do think that the the temple marriage aspect of it uh left something to be desired yeah and I remember too um before you so when you when you get married in a temple you sit across from each other on an altar you have your full Robes of the Holy priesthood on uh but before you get to go into the it's called the ceiling room you go into the brides's room which is where you you're supposed to get ready finish your makeup get changed that kind of a thing and I remember when I was in the brides room I want to say there were three to four other Brides In the brides room with their moms and their sisters and it was really crowded there was not you know first of all you can't even take pictures I've been so jealous of so many women have the pictures of their mom zipping up the dress I don't have a picture of that because there's no cameras allowed in the temple at all or even in that room and so I don't have any pictures of that moment but even if I did there would be three or four other Brides in my pictures with their mommies getting them into their dresses another bummer was uh they don't allow you to say vows so we did get to say vows during our ring ceremony but they're not real vows then you're just saying things you know a ring ceremony is not the same as an actual wedding as I recall you're actually explicitly discouraged from saying vows or making promises in the ring ceremony yeah the ring ceremony still has a whole set of rules according to the Mormon church so you can't even go off and kind of Do Your Own Thing the bishop is supposed to officiate there's kind of a script for him to follow and so even for the ring ceremony it still has its own code of rules at least it did when we got married I do think though we need we I've had so many people comment that we need to renew our fows and I think you know maybe one of these days we'll go to Vegas hey and we'll do a little vow renewal uh I think I think we owe it to ourselves so I don't remember if it was shortly after we got engaged or shortly after we got married but it's some point we are discussing combining finances and Alysa asked a question that made my blood run cold she asked do you pay tithing on gross or net income for those of you who don't know the right answer is that you pay tithing on gross income but tentatively I said net which if you're not familiar with that what that means basically do you pay tithing before taxes or after taxes because if you're paying before you pay your taxes that is a huge percentage of your paycheck so I had barely gotten the word net out before Alyssa said I think we're going to pay on Gross and and what I was sometimes told is do you want gross blessings or net blessings because do if you pay your full tithing prior to paying tax you're showing the Lord how righteous you are and how hungry you are for those tithing blessings that the that the Lord has promised you so I had always paid on my my pre-tax salary or income but Jackson so that and when we first got married I will say that there were in the same way when we were dating there were moments where we had these disagreements uh then after we were married we kind of continued to have these little moments where I feel like Jackson would say something and I would feel kind of pushed towards thinking of things in a more critical way a more thoughtful way like for example I remember sharing the opinion that in schools it should be abstinence sex education only because if you teach them anything to do with sex other than abstinence they're going to learn how to have sex and then you're just going to have all of these knocked up teenage girls all of these unplanned pregnancies so so you have to teach abstinence only sex education in schools and Jackson said I think they can figure out how to have sex all on their own uh but why why it it just seemed to me and seems to me still that a realistic view of this is to say well maybe we should teach them how to avoid pregnancy I think the underpinning argument I often had was that the religion was right and that any education or information outside of what I perceived to be religiously important was bad and Jackson always advocated for the fact that information and sharing information giving education is a really positive thing in people's lives and we shouldn't be afraid of information and education and I think that was that's just one other example of uh you know I wouldn't even call these arguments as much as Jackson would just drop a little truth bomb and I would Scuttle to try to figure out how to defend defend myself from my Mormon mindset and found that often what I had been taught or led to believe about the way the world should work was really small and narrow and not the best way to live your life and after we got married time went on and I started teaching uh you were working at your job and I hated teaching and if you remember from past stories basically the reason I had chosen to be a teacher was because of a blessing my father gave me in high school and I had gotten a fouryear degree to be a teacher I had prepared to be a teacher in all these different ways and as the school year progressed I absolutely hated it and I was super unhappy I would have panic attacks before going into work the kids when I was teaching ninth grade were so incredibly rude to me and I just realized pretty quickly I was not cut out to be a teacher and I really had this crisis of Faith because I had had felt like I had this direction from God during this blessing that I should be a teacher and I pursued it I followed God's command and here I am being a teacher and realizing th this is not what I want to be doing and it's making me have the worst mental health of my life about Midway through the year so we'd been married for about a year I had this moment where I was sitting in the parking lot waiting to go into our apartment and staring out over the mountains and just had this realization or really just allowed myself to think maybe God isn't real maybe instead of being forced into this job that's so clearly not a fit and thinking of all these other moments you know I I received this Revelation I was going to serve my mission in Italy I went to Denver Colorado I received another Revelation on my mission I was going to marry this guy I didn't marry that guy married this guy and all I remembered all of these moments where I had 100% sure believed something to be true and then had it proven not true and teaching was just one example of all these times that I felt so sure about something because of my Revelation that I had received and then it just was false and and I realized I would have chosen a different career for myself with my own brain but instead of doing the self-reflection it took to to find the career that was right for me I just blindly followed this blessing from my dad and when I sat in the parking lot I I finally allowed myself to think maybe none of it's true maybe God isn't real maybe the church isn't God's true religion and I just had this crisis of everything falling on me like a ton of bricks and that was the moment that I you were in the apartment and I just was sitting there having this realization and I had to walk in and decide if I was going to tell you I mean he you served a mission I served a mission and breaking this news was a was going to be really scary to me what do what do you remember about that one night I I remember that first night you expressed it in in pretty tentative terms uh I I I think that you know initially you said something along the lines of um I I'm not sure if the church is true uh it was it was a certainly softer than saying I don't think God exists for example and it felt as though you were sort of dipping your toes into uh the the that that thought a little bit part of me that felt a lot of apprehension because I think that it represents a really big change in the entire structure of our Our Lives if if it ended up if that thought ended up going somewhere but there was another part of me a significant part of me that felt a lot of relief I I think that you were very religiously scrupulous um through a lot of our very early marriage and when we were dating and I I think that there was a little bit of a relief for me also in feeling like that might be um fading somewhat did you ever consider divorcing me as people online seem to think no not not once in the process of leaving the church that I consider divorcing you why do you think a lot of people when they have this conversation end up discussing divorce because it seem I mean honestly from personal friends from stories online from people I've met so many people even comments on videos people will say how did your marriage survive like basically like most people don't get through this type of crazy experience of going from a high demand religion to being both completely irreligious and sex basically and I wonder why so many people do go straight to talking about divorce well I think part of it is that one or both Partners might lack the mental flexibility to to allow for um a mismatch in opinions and and feelings about the church right I I think often it's the case that you know maybe one person's moved on and they're looking at their partner who's still stalwart in the faith and they have little confidence that that partner can ever come around to their point of view and I think the other the other aspect is you know probably a level of of impatience we were moving in a similar Direction at a similar time ultimately um and I think that a lot of people who whose partner doesn't move as fast or in the same direction as them gets impatient waiting for them and sort of can't imagine continuing to live their life as an active member of the church so I think both of those things have to do with it I think we were fortunate to be you know sort of both open-minded and moving in the same direction at the same time I agree with what you said about being on the same general path because I feel like we kind of were changing who was ahead of leaving and who wasn't and almost playing chicken with each other to both stay uh especially in those early months after I first told you because I think that we were kind of afraid of what would happen if just one of us left so I think we were kind of seeing are we going to do this together is just one of us going to do this and I think that being ultimately kind of on the same track was very very helpful I have some friends who their spouses left two years apart from each other so the wife leaves first and then two years later the husband leaves or vice versa and those years of being on different pages sound so excruciating because we were on different pages for 3 or 4 months from the time that I made my first confession to both of us definitively saying we're not going to church anymore I think that probably was about 3 months but uh you know even those three months of the indecision between the two of us was really really hard and so I think that that probably is what helped us ease into this new relationship was the fact that we kind of came together pretty quickly versus having to have these years of being on completely different pages around the same time you were going through this I was taking a a couple of night classes at BYU and one of the one of the classes was a uh class that was required then I don't know about now but it was called foundations of the restoration I uh I used to call it defense against the dark arts and the the purpose of the class was to sort of teach you all of the potentially troubling aspects of church history from a faithful perspective to sort of inoculate you from from being drawn away um by church history the final project for that course was supposed to be like creating um a a report or a document or something that conveyed a piece of church history and in my case what I decided to do was to create a timeline of Joseph Smith's polygamy and it included um his affair with Fanny aler it included um marriages to uh you know young teenagers it included marriages to mothers and daughters to sisters to others other men's wives it it sort of laid out in detail on a timeline all of the the the you know kind of ugly details of Joseph Smith's polygamy after producing this timeline and the essay that went with it taking it to my professor who is one of the foremost historians um of the church and saying is this right am I getting something wrong here what am I missing and he looks it over and spends some time with it and he says uh yeah no this is this is correct it's pretty disturbing isn't it and that's all he had to offer me was yeah pretty disturbing isn't it and I I I felt like that really broke my faith cuz you take it to them and you you think they're going to say some magic thing that makes it all okay or bear some crazy testimony or you know have have some response and I've what my experience has been when sharing this information with active members who already know it is not that they say well here's a million different reasons why this is okay or not that they say anything that makes you feel any better they kind of just shrug and say it is what it is I still believe so you probably should too and reading through Joseph Smith's polygamy and finding out how disgusting and corrupt and horrible he was it's very hard to take that to someone who's a BYU professor and have them say I don't have you know just have nothing to say to you about how to excuse it or how to make you feel better about it they kind of just say accept it for what it is and that's the only way that you can move forward with your testimony which I I feel for that Professor because I can understand that being your perspective that this information is disturbing but also having your entire livelihood tied to continuing to support the church and I understand that's a really difficult position but for me who had no Financial ties to the church other than tithing other than tithing right it it it it it wasn't such a difficult decision after fully internalizing that information to say I can't continue to be a part of this church yeah and I think that as I had always kind of excused gross church history by saying that I had a testimony of the Book of Mormon I had a testimony of Joseph Smith and I think when I started to realize realized that this spiritual feeling I had been using to confirm truth you know the feeling in my tummy to know truth about the world that this way of learning truth was actually completely inaccurate and kind of made up I really started to question all this stuff that I had put in the back of my mind as unimportant because up to that point I had been able to say if Joseph Smith had all these wives you know I believe that he was a prophet because I had a spiritual feeling about it and so I I don't need to dig into church history I don't need to know more about the wives I just need to know that the spirit confirmed the fact that Joseph Smith was a prophet and so none of the rest of it matters to me and so so as soon as the perception of how I could use the spirit to figure out truth fell away all this other stuff that Jackson is coming home and sharing is way more disturbing because I'm reading it truly for the first time and I no longer have a testimony that Joseph Smith was a prophet full stop no questions asked so we really I think started to together dig into the truth claims of the church the spirit and just started being a lot more honest with each other too I remember having the first our first Frank conversation ever about the endowment ceremony because I had always said I love it I feel closer to God because I do this and um I I had never told anyone my true feelings about it because I was so ashamed that I didn't have a testimony of this very culty ceremony uh but I didn't want to reveal that to anyone and show that I was not enough of a Believer so I also remember that when we first had a truly honest and Frank conversation about the endowment and you also shared H it's a little ridiculous and very strange and uh probably stolen from Masonry we I just remember feeling so safe and secure and also just relief at feeling like for the first time I could finally come clean about my true feelings and have someone who could hear me and say yeah I also feel the same way about garments about the endowment washing and anointing the whole kit and Kaboodle of the temple it is interesting cuz I don't think I don't think up to that point I had ever told anyone frankly how I felt about the endowment ceremony either it's just not I'm so glad we don't have to do that anymore it's just not done and it definitely had some Midsummer Vibes if you've ever seen that movie yeah that's a good comparison and so I think throughout that time we just were having we were kind of just binging all of this anti-mormon content or you know we were watching Mormon stories we were listening to infants on Thrones reading books rough Stone Rolling we were were really just both trying to get our hands on as much stuff as possible I remember one Sunday Jackson decided to go to church because this was obviously still in the phase where we were not totally on the same page because I think for a while you were feeling like you wanted to go to make it work for the community and for cultural reasons and for the nice message and my boss was my elders corn president so I I remember one Sunday you said you wanted to go and I I was having when I would go to church I was feeling like I wanted to throw up I I once I stopped believing I had a hard time with church because it just felt like such a lie and it seemed so I just would feel so claustrophobic every time I would go into a church building because I didn't believe anymore and I remember one Sunday you went to church and I was in the car and I walked into a Five Guys cuz I'm pretty sure that was open on Sunday yeah I I remember uh around this time coming out of church to Five Guys fries frequently which I loved I had never allowed myself to shop on Sunday you know that was one of the most that was one rule I was always a rule follower so I would NE I never allowed myself to shop on Sunday and I remember while you were at church I went into five guys and I bought a burger and fries and I took it back to my car and I sat there scrolling the ex Mormon subreddit while eating my burger and just feeling like the foundation of my life was crumbling underneath me and I had no idea what I was doing and feeling so confused because I was too afraid to move into to this not Mormon world but also too afraid and just not even believing to stay in the Mormon world so I I lived in this limbo I think during those we those months because I just felt like I couldn't move ahead I didn't want to make the decision to leave for good but I also knew I didn't believe anymore so it was just a very weird time throughout my life there had been a number of times when I had seriously doubted the church and I remember one of the first times I really took a look at the church and felt like it might not be true is when I was 16 and at the time what I told myself was look for over a century your family has been Mormon these are your people these are you've been raised among Mormons you've lived among Mormons this whole time you are a Mormon and you grew up kind you grew up in Utah quite a bit I grew up spending a lot of my time in Utah and my you know my Pioneer ancestors founded some of the little towns in southern Utah and it felt to me like Mormons were my people and so I had this thought that like maybe it doesn't matter if it's literally true these are my people and I'm going to live among them and serve them and uh act as if I believe and I I think that that train of thought gave way to phases of of really believing strongly and phases of believing a little less but what this meant was that kind of at the time we started doubting I think I was slower to walk away from the organization because I'd already grappled with and constructed a framework that allowed me to continue attending and living as a Mormon even when my faith was kind of at a at a low point and I think that me I only ever wanted to be Mormon because I had a a belief in it and so as soon as I stopped believing I just felt so disingenuous going taking the sacrament taking part in any part of the religion because I didn't believe it and I just felt like I never had this Nuance of existing in the church for the community I liked the community some aspects of it uh but I had never been there for it so I think that that was maybe a difference and so there was maybe three weeks where Jackson went to church and I stayed home and I remember those were really scary weeks and I felt like you know I guess I I think I started to feel like maybe you know briefly for three weeks I was feeling like this is I guess our new Norm Jackson goes to church on Sunday I go get my five guys and scroll the exw subreddit and look at funny memes of Satan there came a point where I think the third or fourth Sunday Jackson said he was going to church and I said I'm going to go this week I'm going to see if I can make it work because I was in this limbo stage still and as we went to church uh I just I had that same feeling the claustrophobic gross feeling and I made it through the church was still 3 hours now it's two but I made it through the first and second hour and as the time goes on my gross feeling is growing I make it to the third hour of relief society and I remember during Relief Society this woman the Relief Society president the leader uh said that everybody was going to share their testimonies of Joseph Smith because the lesson that people were supposed to prepare the person didn't come to church for whatever reason so instead of having a lesson we were going to share our testimonies of Joseph Smith so she puts the picture of Joseph Smith up on the podium in front of all of us and I just feel worse than I felt the entire time because if there's one person I have a bone to pick with at this point it's Joseph Smith and maybe I can get behind at that point you know the the songs to Jesus and all but I did not feel like I could handle a full hour of bearing testimony about Joseph Smith and so all these women stand up they say their their little testimonies about how you know he was the greatest man second only to Jesus who's ever walked the Earth and prais to the man a woman read the lyrics to praise to the man which is a song about how important Joseph Smith was and you know there's eyes that are filling with tears the best testimonies ever you know going around the room and I recall you know a common saying in the church is a testimony is found in the bearing of it and I remember thinking to myself maybe if I Bear My Testimony I will have that feeling back again and there will be something that changes and I will just know beyond a shadow of a doubt that the church is true and I can finally go back and everything is going to go back to normal and so I stand up and launch into my test testimony and I say I'd like to Bear My Testimony I know that at one point I did have a testimony that Joseph Smith was a prophet I know he did have 30 plus wives many of them were children and many of them were already married when Joseph Smith married them and I also know that there's a lot of evidence to show The Book of Mormon is completely made up and he didn't translate it out of the gold plates but I also know that Joseph Smith I had a testimony of him and I've shared testimony of him in the past and so if I believed that he was a prophet in the past I guess maybe I do still believe he's a prophet now and I say these things in the name of Jesus Christ amen and I sat down and I just for a second the world paused and I just had this feeling like this hope like maybe maybe something is going to change and I'm going to have some revelatory moment and I look up and I just see that every woman in the class is staring at me with shock uh the Relief Society president gets up and you know before everybody else she had been saying thank you for your testimony sister so and so thank you for your testimony she pretends like I do not exist and she launches into her own very impassioned testimony about Joseph Smith was a prophet of God and he saw in Jesus Christ in sacred grove but I remember feeling totally cut off and completely shunned and everybody acted like I didn't exist I didn't feel any sort of little warm burning in my bosom there was no angel that visited me and I I waited for a few more minutes to pass so that I wouldn't be making a scene and I walked out of the room I walked to the car and I sat in the car till Jackson was done with priesthood session hour and that is the last time I ever went to a Mormon church service which was now about 8 years ago how many seeds of Doubt do you think were sewn that day you know I've told that story and and whenever I have told that story the video has had a lot of views and I've always wondered if someone is going to reach out and say I was in the relief society that day and I remember because people that doesn't happen very often people don't people don't say stuff like that very often so I do wonder you know if you're watching this and you were there I would love for someone else to share what that was like for them to hear as a Believer but I think that it was not long after that that we both fully decided we were going to stop going to church and some people often you know in their comments have said that you stopped going because I ruined your testimony and it was my fault and you you know somebody the other day said I think he wanted to divorce you but just felt bad for you so now is your chance to answer that uh claim uh well I I I don't I don't think the spirit was speaking to them on that one um no I I I think that um the timing of our decision was conveniently close uh to each other um but I think we were on the the same path already and I think in some ways I I was Paving the way for you to to come to the conclusion in some ways I think that you uh were were Paving the way for for my decision but I think that it was a a a journey that we took truly together before we continue just a reminder to like this video and hit subscribe smash the Subscribe button if you haven't already just uh I have a new video every week sometimes Jackson makes a guest appearance uh and just talk about Mormonism my experience with Mormonism Mormon Doctrine gra me a copy of the book can I can can I plug it oh yeah sure and if you're on this crazy journey of leaving the church yourself pick up how to leave the Mormon church by my wife Alysa grenfell thanks thank you for pitching my book uh around the time that you had borne your uh your anti- testimony to uh the Relief Society we had also set up a meeting with our Bishop and My Hope every time I interacted with someone in Authority in the church and shared my doubts with them was that they would confront them headon um and in this meeting with the bishop I began to share the things that that I had been learning about Joseph Smith and they concerned me and I guess you could say my testimony was found in the bearing of it as I started going through this I was getting more and more impassioned talking about all of the problems I saw in church history and and all of the ways in which it seemed to me that the church couldn't be true and all he had to say was I don't really want to engage with any of that and I remember that for me that really was a a a moment that that clinched it I when I realized that there wasn't a single faithful person in my life who was prepared to stand and defend the church on its history or on its truth claims um and in fact most of them didn't even want to hear about it yeah and I remember when cuz I was there I just remember feeling so disappointed that you know this is a church and a religion and a belief that you've put on this pedestal for so long and nobody tells you any of this stuff nobody tells you about really Joseph Smith's polygamy nobody tells you about reasons why the Book of Mormon might not be the book of scripture that they say it is these are not things that are really discussed I mean you had one class about it you would tell me things in that class though I had never heard and so most of the history that you dig up as you're leaving the church is stuff that nobody's ever told you and then when you go and ask them about it they reveal that they've known about it all along but it just doesn't matter to them and that to me also is a huge damning aspect of when you have these conversations is not that they are also oh surprised I've never heard that they totally know about it most of the time they completely are like the ostrich putting its head in the sand because they know the history a lot of them especially Bishops people who are very heavily invested in the church they know the history they choose to ignore it and they choose to not talk about it with the younger people who are coming up until maybe they bring it to them directly and so you know even when they do kind of give a little hint of putting things on the gospel topics essays you know they'll mention it but they really bury it and hide it and pretend like it doesn't exist or that it's just not important Joseph Smith's polygamy just not important we're going to have a little section about that in the back of the book and talk about it very broadly and act like it was a minor aspect of the way the church evolved in the beginning after we left some of my favorite stories are of how we started breaking the Mormon rules together because you know you don't usually get to have your first drink with your spouse when you're 24 most people have their first drink I don't know when they sip their parents wine at a family dinner or something but we all of our firsts outside the church were together so that was really fun and I remember when we we fully finally decided after my Relief Society experience and your Bishop experience we fully decided we were going to leave we drove to Salt Lake and we went to a little coffee shop and didn't know what to order I think I got a latte I I can't really I think I got a mocha m sugar and cream than coffee yeah and the chocolate Chate helps cut the taste apparently I don't like mochas now but um but we both got mochas and we have the cutest little pictures and we both sat there and we did our little sip and it was just so silly so silly but felt like the most Monumental moment of our marriage like it's a big you know we got married that was important but trying coffee together for the first time was mind melding some the symbolic gravity of choosing to have your first coffee like it's not it's not a big deal but within a Mormon context it's a huge deal and it feels as though it's a step from just not believing anymore to beginning your life as a non-member or an ex-member and that that felt like a really big step to me yeah I agree there's kind of the no longer believing phase and then there's the decision point where you stop wearing garments you go underwear shopping you start you know you go try your coffee for the first time and I do remember feeling so like just like it was the most crazy moment to be trying that coffee it was really fun and I'm really glad we took pictures cuz those are some of my P Favorite pictures of us but uh not long after coffee we went full cner and we tried drinking for the first time I remember the first time though getting drunk you were gone on a work trip also getting drunk and we uh I was with my friend who had also recently left the church and as we were trying drinking uh you know we we went to the liquor store we just got random stuff we got VOD a bottle of vodka was what we went with first and we just start taking shots or out of you know cups basically cuz I didn't have shot glasses at our house at the time yet uh and I remember drinking and we kind of compare notes you know are you feeling anything yet no no so we drink more 5 minutes later do you feel anything yet no no no and we're we're drinking every few minutes because keep in mind we have no understanding how alcohol works I thought you basically felt it immediately so we are here you know thinking us me and my friend we're just impervious to the effects of alcohol and I go to go open up a bottle of of white wine and I'm struggling to figure it out and I hear my friend say that she can't feel her face and I realize I'm not I'm struggling to even move my hands and suddenly we just both realize we are completely inebriated and that actually was kind of a freaky night because my friend you know at that we basically had had so much that it was there was no going back she ended up tripping at one point and falling and hitting her eye on a table and getting a black eye I threw up and it was just this awful experience that same night I was actually on a a a work Retreat a company retreat at Bear Lake and as I mentioned my boss at the time was also my elders corn president and so you made a decision when you were going to this Retreat you could choose to stay in a drinking cabin or a non-drinking cabin and I put down that I was going to stay in a non-drinking cabin um um but I attended the festivities over at the drinking cabin and uh I had no concept of how to paste myself or what an appropriate amount of alcohol was and so I would drink as many drinks as were put in front of me and I remember at one point I I was starting to feel it and I was like okay I should stop I should have a drink of water so I'm I'm sipping on a water bottle and I'm talking to two co-workers and I'm sharing with them that this is my first time really being drunk drunk and they thought that was hilarious and amazing and they were very supportive and kind then one of them made a joke while I was in the middle of of drinking water and it struck me as so funny and I was so sort of lacking in control that I laughed and I spit water all over these uh two co-workers it was very embarrassing um but I slowed it down drank some water I did end up uh throwing up at about 4:00 a.m. um we were both throwing up on two different sides of you UT it was it was so romantic it was awful it was awful sense have learned to to you know really control it and yeah I think that's one of the other interesting aspects of leaving together is that we end up having so many conversations about these moments where we dis you know anytime before we're going to try anything from since the very beginning we discuss it we talk about it we share you know what are what are you worried about what are you know and I think as time has gone on I feel like it's so funny to me that people ask how did your relationship survive leaving the church because I feel like in many ways it brought us way closer together than we were as members of the church where the church was kind of the third wheel in our relationship always getting in the way of truly connecting on things like I can't believe we didn't have a Frank conversation about the endowment till after we were already married but I was I was holding up my guard so much even to my husband that I wasn't willing to share the the way I really felt about it and so I think leaving together allowed us to have all of these conversations that we wouldn't have had if we were still a active members of the church and really be really vulnerable with each other in ways that I don't know that we would have experienced if we would have stayed in the church and I'll say in the midst of a hangover the next day I was pretty convinced that the Lord was right about alcohol yeah I do remember the next morning I was like oh maybe they're right about this one thank you guys for joining us for this conversation thank you to Jackson for being uh my guest on the channel today and I hope we answered some of these questions everybody has so it's so funny if you Google is Alyssa grenfell the one of the results that apparently people are Googling is married is Alysa grenfell married well the answer is yes but I'm really grateful and happy and lucky honestly that I got to be married to someone that you know my relationship survived this crazy transition winner of the Alyssa games is still on top baby the winner of the Alyssa games thank you for she still here to this day thank you for not divorcing me because I left the church thank you for not divorcing me because I left the church the funny thing too is that when I removed my name from the church roster I spiritually divorced you so we are no longer in an eternal relationship uh it's still death to you part I guess but that's going to make every moment a little more sweeter in my opinion and don't worry we'll get uh one of our cousins to rebap tize you and steal us again after yeah my mom my family always says they're going to baptize me after I'm dead anyways just a reminder if you haven't and if you've made it to the end please like this video subscribe to my channel drop a comment if you have a question for Jackson or I and as always I will see you all next week see you soon