I guess I’m a pretty lucky guy. After months of reading how disastrous the revealing of a Mormon heretic’s unbelief could be to said heretic’s spouse, my wife took it pretty well.
There is still a sense of mourning that I feel from her, but I am making every effort to let her know that while I am no longer dedicated to the Mormon church and temple ceremonies, I believe in our marriage and family with all my heart. While she is in mourning for our eternal marriage, I am opening my mind that God would never be so petty and mean as to take away one’s family because the right ceremony was not performed.
That sounds kind of judgmental. I don’t really mean it that way, and that is something I am trying to stress to her too. I fully intend to respect her right to believe however she wants and let her come to me to ask whatever questions she has. I am trying to respect the Mormon mindset she has, mainly because I understand it and have been where she is.
She seems to keep pressing me for details, though. She scoffs at most of my concerns and writes them off as me simply parroting what I have read on the internet somewhere. I am offended at comments like this, as if I haven’t read and evaluated enough sources or something. When I have let her know what she is doing, she apologizes and accepts my difference in opinions. The thing is, I was just like her when I started learning the truth about the foundations of the Mormon institution. I kept scoffing at each new fact and wondered why someone would let that particular fact sway them. At some point, however, I stopped to take stock of all I had learned and realized that there wasn’t that much left for me to believe in anymore. Its like I once had a complete puzzle, but kept picking up and discarding certain pieces, until the original completed mosaic has no recognizable form anymore.
Things are slowly hitting home for her now. She is realizing some compromises will need to be made in our life. Like teaching about Joseph Smith in our house or talking about temples, the Book of Mormon or priesthood. I don’t think it’s dawned on her that I have made this compromise for her. I just won’t teach about that stuff at home. I will teach the New Testament or Old Testament. My children will be blissfully ignorant of the 400-plus page socio-political and religious rant about the early 19th century that is the Book of Mormon.
I might cherry-pick a few of Joseph Smith’s Book of Mormon sermons about feeding the hungry and poor, but a bulk of that document can simply be jettisoned in my view. Likewise for the Doctrine and Covenants, as a majority of what was written was to keep specific people in line with what Joseph Smith wanted them to do and cannot really be applied much more widely. In my house, I will teach them not to idolize this man as I was taught to do, not by my own father, but by my mission experience. I hope that he will hold a place as a historical character, whose life should be studied, but certainly not placed on a pedestal as the Mormon church would have us do.
So why am I lucky? My wife chooses me over the church (so far)! Since I’ve revealed my non-orthodoxy to her, she has told me she would support me wherever this leads. I’m learning quickly that this support has some boundaries. 
I have to live the Word of Wisdom and she has told me that she won’t wear her wedding ring unless I wear my garments. This really saddens me, as I hold our marriage higher than the temple and I made those endowment promises to my version of God when I was a naive 19-year old, not her. I am keeping our marriage promises as made in the temple!
We’ll see where this journey takes us. It has been wonderful not to have to hide this anymore. She wants to keep up hope for me, but in my mind, that train has long since left the station. However, I appreciate the love and understanding I am feeling from her, even as I know what I am doing hurts and cuts her to the core. I feel so close to her right now, like we are finally on the same page. I haven’t felt this way for years! It really is exciting!
