Like my wife, I was born and raised in the Mormon church.
I was the middle child of five kids, and like many kids who grow up in the church, I learned pretty early on what I was supposed to do.
I was supposed to be obedient.
I was supposed to listen to my parents.
I was supposed to go to church.
I was supposed to read my scriptures.
I was supposed to pray.
I was supposed to serve.
I was supposed to become a missionary.
I was supposed to get married.
I was supposed to provide for my family.
I was supposed to be a good Mormon man.
And for most of my life, I did exactly what I was supposed to do.
When I moved out and went to college, I still went to church every Sunday.
But college also gave me my first real taste of life outside of the very small world I had grown up in.
I partied.
I met people who believed completely different things.
I went to other churches.
I experienced things that weren’t necessarily compatible with what I had been taught growing up.
And yet, no matter where I went or what I experienced, nothing felt quite like the Mormon church.
So I stayed.
I told myself that if I had looked around and still felt that the church was where I belonged, then that must mean something.
Eventually, I decided to serve a mission.
I left for a two-year mission in Chile.
And that’s where things started to get complicated.
I began having doubts.
Not huge, earth-shattering doubts at first.
Just little questions.
Little moments where something didn’t quite make sense.
But I had been taught what to do with doubt.
“Doubt your doubts before you doubt your faith.”
So that’s what I did.
Whenever something bothered me, I pushed it down.
Whenever I had a question, I looked for an answer that would make the church right.
Whenever something didn’t sit well with me, I convinced myself that I simply wasn’t understanding it correctly.
I remember struggling particularly with teaching about Joseph Smith.
I just couldn’t bring myself to fully buy into some of it.
In fact, I struggled with it so much that I saved that lesson for last.
I figured if I could just get through everything else first, maybe by the time I got there I’d have figured it out.
I never really did.
But I kept going.
Because that’s what you did.
You pushed through.
You had faith.
You doubted your doubts.
You finished your mission.
And then COVID happened.
I came home from Chile during the pandemic on planes the church had purchased to evacuate missionaries.
Everything about coming home felt strange.
I hadn’t finished my mission the way I expected to.
I didn’t get the normal ending.
And when I got home, I didn’t receive any real end-of-mission counsel from my mission president.
I felt abandoned.
I felt lost.
I had spent two years with an incredibly structured purpose, and suddenly that purpose was gone.
I was home, during a global pandemic, and I had absolutely no idea what I was supposed to do next.
Then I was offered a job as a wildland firefighter for the summer.
And I absolutely loved it.
For the first time, I found something that felt completely different from church, school, or anything else I had been told I was supposed to do.
I loved the work.
I loved the people.
I loved being outside.
I loved the feeling of doing something difficult and knowing that I was capable of it.
But summer eventually ended, and I went back to school that fall.
And because I had been taught my entire life that one of the things I was supposed to do was get married and start a family, I started looking for a wife.
Not because I couldn’t slow down.
Not because I was incapable of being alone.
But because I genuinely believed that this was the next step.
This was what I was supposed to do.
I created a dating profile because all of my firefighter coworkers had dating apps.
I figured, why not?
On the very first day I was back in my college town, I opened the app.
And I saw her.
My wife.
I decided to message her.
We ended up talking on FaceTime for three hours that day.
Three hours.
And by the end of that conversation, we had already planned an in-person date for the following day.
We dated for three months, living about 45 minutes apart.
Three months later, we were engaged.
Five months after that, we were married.
And we were sealed in the temple.
We were young.
We were in love.
And we were absolutely convinced that we were doing what we were supposed to be doing.
My wife left everything she had and moved up to my college town because I was closer to finishing school.
And almost immediately, the next expectation kicked in.
We were married.
So, naturally, we were supposed to have children.
But before that happened, I stressed myself out with the idea that I needed to provide for her.
I had been taught what a man was supposed to be.
A man was supposed to provide.
A man was supposed to protect.
A man was supposed to take care of his family.
A man was supposed to make sure his wife and children had everything they needed.
So I put an enormous amount of pressure on myself to become that person.
I stressed myself out to the point that, just one week after our wedding, I left my brand-new wife behind to go do wildland firefighting for the summer.
Not because I didn’t want to be with her.
Quite the opposite.
I loved her.
But in my mind, working was how I was going to take care of her.
It was the only way I could think of to “provide” for my new family.
Once I came back to school that fall, we were finally living together full-time.
And that’s when we decided to try for a baby.
Because that’s what married people were supposed to do.
Because we had been taught to “multiply and replenish the earth.”
Because I was supposed to become a father.
Because this was the next step.
And it stressed me the fuck out.
I was already trying to finish school.
I was already trying to work.
I was already trying to provide for my wife.
And now I was trying to figure out how to become a father too.
Eventually, I learned that I was potentially infertile, and we stopped trying.
At the time, that information was complicated.
But looking back, stopping that process gave me one less expectation to carry before I was ready to question where those expectations had even come from.
But the pressure to provide was still there.
I had been taught what a man was supposed to be.
A man was supposed to provide.
A man was supposed to protect.
A man was supposed to take care of his family.
A man was supposed to make sure his wife and children had everything they needed.
So I put an enormous amount of pressure on myself to become that person.
I stressed myself out to the point that, just one week after our wedding, I left my brand-new wife behind to go do wildland firefighting for the summer.
Not because I didn’t want to be with her.
Quite the opposite.
I loved her.
But in my mind, working was how I was going to take care of her.
It was the only way I could think of to “provide” for my new family.
Once I came back to school that fall, we were finally living together full-time.
But I didn’t slow down.
I worked more than full-time while finishing school.
I was trying to provide.
I was trying to take care of everything.
I was trying to be the husband I had been taught I was supposed to be.
And I was doing it all on my own.
Eventually, I finished school.
I got a job with the state.
And then I joined the Army Reserves.
All within a matter of a few months.
Looking back, I was constantly moving from one thing I was “supposed” to do to the next.
Graduate.
Get a career.
Provide.
Join the military.
Be a good husband.
Be a good Mormon.
Be a good man.
Then I went to basic training.
And for the first time in my life, I experienced what it felt like to have almost no control over anything.
Where I went.
When I woke up.
When I ate.
When I slept.
What I did.
Where I stood.
What I wore.
Almost every aspect of my life was dictated by someone else.
And when I couldn’t control anything else, I turned to the one thing I felt like I could control.
My religion.
I started reading the Book of Mormon every single day.
My religion became essentially my entire personality.
I became extremely devout.
But at the time, I didn’t understand why.
I thought it was faith.
I thought I was becoming closer to God.
I thought I was doing what I needed to do.
But underneath all of that was fear.
I was terrified that something would happen to my wife while I was gone.
I was going to be away for seven months.
I couldn’t protect her.
I couldn’t be there.
I couldn’t control what happened to her.
So I convinced myself that if I was devout enough, if I prayed enough, if I read my scriptures enough, if I followed the commandments closely enough, then nothing bad would happen to her.
I didn’t realize it at the time, but my faith had become a bargain.
If I did everything right, God would keep her safe.
If I wasn’t devout enough, something terrible might happen.
And when nothing bad happened while I was gone, I interpreted that as proof.
Proof that my faith had worked.
Proof that God had protected her.
Proof that I had done the right thing.
But when I got home from training and was finally back with my wife, we started talking.
Really talking.
We started discussing the doctrines of the church in more detail.
And eventually I realized something that completely changed the way I understood my own faith.
My devoutness wasn’t the reason nothing bad happened to my wife.
My prayers didn’t protect her.
My scripture study didn’t protect her.
My obedience didn’t protect her.
I had been using religion as a way to cope with the obsessive and unwanted thoughts that something terrible would happen to her while I was gone.
My entire faith had been driven by fear.
Not actual belief.
And once I realized that, I couldn’t unsee it.
At the time, I was also serving as a Young Men’s leader.
And I genuinely loved being with the boys.
I loved working with them.
I loved talking to them.
I loved helping them.
But I noticed something about myself.
I started avoiding gospel topics.
Instead of teaching them doctrine, I found myself talking about how to be a good person.
How to help other people.
How to treat people with kindness.
How to be someone others could depend on.
I was still technically teaching them within the framework of the church, but I was quietly moving further and further away from the actual doctrine.
Eventually, my wife and I decided to take a step away from the Mormon church.
And stepping away gave me something I hadn’t really had before.
Distance.
Distance from the constant messaging.
Distance from the expectations.
Distance from the guilt.
Distance from the idea that there was only one correct way to think, live, believe, and exist.
And for the first time, I could actually think.
I could take the skills I had learned in college.
I could take the skills I had learned in the Army.
I could look at information critically.
I could question things.
I could examine both sides.
And I could finally allow myself to consider the possibility that the church wasn’t true.
And eventually, I realized something incredibly simple.
I just didn’t believe it.
And I don’t think I ever did.
And the more I learned, the more I realized that it wasn’t just that I didn’t believe the church.
I hated the foundation of the doctrine.
I hated what it taught.
I hated what it had taught me about what it meant to be a man.
I hated what it had taught me about what my wife was supposed to be.
And I hated what it had done to young women.
But I also realized it wasn’t just young women.
It had damaged young men too.
It had taught us that our worth was tied to obedience.
That being a good man meant being a provider.
That doubt was something to overcome rather than something to explore.
That fear could be mistaken for faith.
That questioning could be mistaken for weakness.
That there was a prescribed version of who we were supposed to become.
And I had spent most of my life trying desperately to become that person.
Now I’m trying to figure out who I actually am.
And honestly?
That’s a constant battle.
I’m still learning which parts of me are actually me and which parts were built by years of indoctrination.
I’m learning what I actually believe.
What I actually value.
How I actually want to live.
What kind of husband I want to be.
What kind of man I want to be.
What kind of person I want to be.
Not what the church told me those things were supposed to look like.
But what they actually mean to me.
That process has been difficult enough that I’ve gone to therapy to help me work through it and understand myself.
And I don’t have all the answers.
I’m still figuring it out.
But there is one thing I know with absolute certainty.
I will never go back to the Mormon church.
And I don’t think I will ever go back to religion in general.
For me, the damage caused by the church has been exponential.
The indoctrination.
The guilt.
The shame.
The fear.
The expectations.
The stunted personal growth.
The years spent trying to become someone I was told I was supposed to be instead of figuring out who I actually was.
I don’t regret everything.
I don’t regret meeting my wife.
I don’t regret the people I met.
I don’t regret the experiences that shaped me.
And I don’t regret learning how to question things.
Because ironically, leaving the church may have been the first time I truly allowed myself to think for myself.
For most of my life, I thought being a good person meant doing what I was supposed to do.
Now I’m learning that being a good person might simply mean figuring out who you are, deciding what you believe, treating people well, and having the courage to live honestly—even when nobody else gets to tell you what that is supposed to look like.
