On Mormon Parental Love
TLDR at the bottom
Two years ago when I started to deconstruct my beliefs I told my parents that I couldn’t believe anymore. This started a prolonged series of lectures and discussions where I tried to explain my personal experiences along with any historical problems. Most of these points would be straw-manned, misunderstood, or simply ignored because they didn’t pertain to the “real gospel of Jesus Christ”. Even now my parents would rather read books from LDS perspectives than ask their son why people are leaving the church. All through my teenage years I had fights with them about religious things with similar results.
Around 6 months ago since I still lived in Utah I thought I should go back to church. Not because of any changes in my convictions but because I thought of people like myself and how nothing changes when no one refused to speak up. I see now that this is a naive assumption I do regret. As a part of this I did get rebaptized since I removed my records from the church. And it was an unfortunately demonstration on how conditional the light switch of love changed in the minds of members like my parents and other “friends”.
I would go to church and I would see constant reminders of how damaged Mormons really are. Healthy people don’t need to constantly talk about overcoming guilt, shame, and depression. I’d hear stories in sacrament meeting talks that mention quite frankly abuse played out like it was no big deal. Even if I didn’t feel those emotions the constant triggers have made me quite sad on Sundays.
As I was sitting in church these last two weeks the constant topic of motherhood came up. The conversation often mentioned how we were chosen spirits and that God trusted us to be stewards of his children and of the next generation.
This explanation is when it hit me. I was raised by parents who believed that their level of commitment to raising me to be a good Mormon was a reflection of their self-worth. That I wasn’t truly their child but the churches child. This created two versions of me. They would love me if I conform to expected church roles and be disappointed if I couldn’t live up to this roles. That is worse than conditional love.
That is the kind of love of Abraham who would kill his son to please a God. The martyr of a child to support religious convictions. Because if they loved me enough to support me for who I was, then all the years of religious indoctrination would fill them with shame and guilt as they fear on judgement day they will be held accountable for my sins.
I see this pattern with my younger siblings. They don’t understand why they are so hard on them. But when they talk to me they are always concerned my siblings will become “worldly”. When they feel prompted by God that something must be done, not amount of debate or internal feeling will change their minds. When I bring up challenges in my life it always comes back to somehow God will provide. It feels belittling and demeaning.
I don’t know if I can say I love my parents. It breaks my heart but if they find happiness in a cult I do my best to let them be. Maybe that’s love, to allow someone to hurt themselves if it makes them happy. But I know they do not “love” me. After all, they once told me once that they would rather me be physically dead than spiritually dead. It was probably the hardest I had ever cried hearing that from them.
I don’t really know how to heal a wound like that but I am trying to figure it out.
TLDR: Mormonism teaches parents to treat their children as future members who agreed to come to Mormon families before this life instead of simply their children and to filter all love through that. This creates shame and guilt on the parents if their children don’t conform which leads to aggression and other abuse practices as a form of love. This only alienates their children making the shame cycle worse.