u/Equal_Machine_723

My shelf broke a few months ago and I keep going to church with my family, wearing garments, paying tithing, and avoiding coffee and tea. I have done this in an attempt to regain some nuanced belief but it hasn’t worked and I don’t feel much better. I’m contemplating taking off the garment, trying coffee, and cutting tithing down to 5% so that my husband can be a full tithe payer on “his half” of the money (even though we have a joint bank account). I don’t know if I will do it though. I love my husband and don’t want to make him sad. I plan to continue to go to church with him.
-What do YOU do?
-What do YOU recommend?
-How should I have that conversation?
Thanks in advance!

Yesterday I told my TBM husband I would take the kids to a more generic (one hour) Christian church and then meet him at the LDS church to support him being set apart for his new gospel doctrine teacher calling. At the other church, we took their sacrament, the kids got to play in the kids’ room during the service, and afterwards, someone got baptized. I felt the Spirit and felt so happy for her- she is able to follow Jesus without worrying about institutional sexism, temple sexism, handshakes, polygamy in heaven, temple recommend interviews, or underwear. She can drink coffee and give a reasonably sized donation. What a relief it would be, what a weight off my chest if that could be me!

I then went to relief society and there was a video about preparing for a spiritual class by reading the conference talk ahead of time. After church, the military relations missionaries came over and showed us a video about receiving answers to our prayers and feeling peace. The fifth Sunday video lesson last week had a similar message. Where do I get these answers and this peace? How are these other people able to experience that and I can’t? I felt more peaceful watching someone in a t shirt get baptized into another church.

I am a female active duty service member and lifelong active church member. RM, seminary grad, BYU grad, married in the temple. Ever since I was a little kid, I have had a huge issue with the sexism in the church. As a teenager, I was beside myself with rage that my brothers got to go on amazing church sponsored outdoor adventures while I went to girls’ camp. On my mission, I struggled with the sexism in the temple and the idea that only elders could be district leaders. The mission age changed while I was serving and the influx of 19 and 20 year old sisters meant that the mission president had to change districts so that there would always be a man in charge. I hated the idea of polygamy and didn’t believe it was a commandment, but thought there had been more women than men in the early church. My shelf broke at the end of May 2026 when I found out that there had been more men than women in the early church. It made no sense to me that women had to share a husband while there was this big underclass of men who couldn’t get married at all. I read apologetics, including Elder Widstoe’s essay, but it seemed like a stretch. In my fury, I finally allowed myself to read the Wikipedia page about the Book of Mormon and now I can’t imagine being able to believe again now that I know there are so many anachronisms. I tried to claw back some nuanced belief, but FAIR didn’t help.
My shelf broke in the middle of moving to a new state. My wonderful TBM husband (who moved with me to support my career) is a stay at home dad and doesn’t know many people here. I still attend church with him and the kids, avoid coffee, and wear garments. It’s painful to hear about the temple at church. I am reading faith crisis books and I plan to attend the temple one more time to pray to see if I can find a way to believe some of it again or at least feel better at church. Any advice?