The More Normal Life Feels, the Weirder JW Culture Seems.
Going on vacation soon with wifey and a group from the hall which is kind of hilarious considering where I’m at mentally these days 😂
As some of y’all know, I’m into nudism, and my wife has been very slowly getting more comfortable with it over time. It’s definitely not a straight line. Some days she’s more open and relaxed about it, other times the lifelong JW modesty conditioning kicks back in hard. Honestly though, seeing how deep that conditioning runs has been eye opening for me.
This trip has a spa area with communal showers and a sauna, and while we obviously won’t be socially naked around the group itself, I already know I’ll be fully nude in those spaces because… that’s literally how those places are designed to be used.
And honestly, the contrast is wild to me now.
You grow up as a JW and even the idea of simple non-sexual nudity gets treated like something dangerous, scandalous, or morally loaded. Everything has to be hyper-controlled. Your body is treated like it’s automatically tied to shame, temptation, stumbling people, or “bad motives.”
But then you step outside that bubble and realize most normal adults in the world do not think this way at all.
People use spas naked.
People shower communally.
People go to saunas.
People go to nude beaches.
People change in locker rooms.
And somehow society survives 😂
The more distance I get from JW culture, the more I realize how much fear and shame got attached to completely normal human experiences. Nudism honestly helped me separate the human body from guilt for the first time in my life. It stopped feeling like something scandalous and just started feeling… normal.
Meanwhile I already know if someone from the hall accidentally saw me walking out of the sauna with a towel around my shoulder instead of wrapped around me like a burrito, it would probably become an elders meeting by Tuesday.