Using a throwaway account for this in order not to bring wreckage into my personal life.

I live not too far from one of the proposed temple sites that’s recently been in the news. I’m not in that specific neighborhood — but close enough that I’ve taken a serious interest in following the controversy.

I’ve found myself really, really irritated and disgusted with — what appears to me — to be the absolute, entitled refusal of the Church to negotiate any aspect of the temple’s size or design with the local community. It does not help that the temple is, frankly, hideous no matter how tall the ridiculous spire is. But putting that aside, I’m surprised at just how mad I am.

This controversy has really brought my long standing resentment against the Church to the surface and I need a place to express those feelings. I was not raised LDS. I was raised in a mainstream Protestant denomination, in fact my father was a minister. (I told my in-laws this in an effort to get them to stop trying to convert me once very early in my marriage, which was the first time I realized that being very clearly already Christian is apparently NOT enough.)

My husband was Mormon — until he left the faith over 20 years ago. He is the only one in his family to have made this choice & his decision created such a rift in his family that he was asked to leave the family home before he was even 18.

Not so shockingly, being forced to live in a car while still in high school & ostracized by his loved ones caused him incredible pain. It’s not a wound that’s been healed.

And instead of respecting the fact that my husband does not want, for obvious reasons I think, to be a member of the Church & is hurt by what happened to him — we continue to be pursued by the Church (urged on by his estranged family). We get missionaries at our door to this day — and it’s been 20 years! We’ve moved 6 times! More than once it’s not just missionaries but some dude in a suit who ironically wants to talk about family togetherness (I don’t know the titles, sorry).

It’s so frustrating & it causes my husband — and by extension me — so much irritation and pain. I can’t figure out a way to deal with it except to cut contact, which I naively never wanted to do for various reasons. We have now, mostly. But to bring it full circle, it just seems like another case of entitlement. It doesn’t matter what we want, clearly, or what’s in our best interest. The Higher Purpose is more important.

It’s all so intrusive and draining. And seeing that attitude play out in the public arena is upsetting. And it boggles my mind when current members of the Church present themselves as unaware of the wreckage that gets left in their wake sometimes. You don’t understand why I’m not jumping at the opportunity to join you or think that your virtuosity may not be real? I don’t know what to tell you, look around.

(Thanks for being my therapist, Reddit. I don’t really need advice, this is more of a vent. Thanks for hearing me out.)