by Jamye Waxman
“I left my church. I did not want to be psychologically manipulated, and I did not want to be exploited, psychologically or financially. They sometimes said from the pulpit, ‘You are free to go. The doors are all unlocked.’ While that was true, they also knew there were psychological reasons people would not ‘need’ to be locked in.
So I walked away. I avoided the barrage of leaders trying to ‘get together’ with me to manipulate me, and I reached out to friends who had been excommunicated for support. After a few weeks, the leaders grew tired of calling and trying to set up meetings with me when I refused to respond. I did a lot of writing, reading, thinking. I found a social worker, went to the doctor, tried new hobbies, and reached out to people I lost contact with because of the cult.
I didn’t really document my decompression out of the church. I used the Internet, but YouTube (where I have my own videos about leaving) was not around during the time I left. Instead, I was finding things like the Apathetic Agnostic Church of Atheism. So, it’s really interesting now that you have all kinds of information online for deconverting.
Particularly interesting to me is the idea of coming out of the church and not really having a good concept of what the real world is like. Because when you are a part of the church, it’s such an insular community. There’s so much anxious dependency. There’s this idea that when you leave the church, you’re going to leave this community. I was fortunate enough to leave the church with a husband who was skeptical by nature and who really loved me when we left. That’s not a given. There’s so much control of every aspect in your life, it’s hard to be in a setting without those particular scripts in your mind.” —Lisa
“I broke up with a group of spiritual trainers. They like to think of themselves as the Harvard of metaphysics. I truly felt I had found my path, my purpose in life, until I finally realized that it was a top-down pyramid scheme. They charge thousands of dollars for healings and workshops to be ‘certified’ in certain healings.
Once that happened, I just stopped talking to everyone. For weeks I received phone calls from members trying to entice me back, telling me my negative ego was getting in the way. I eventually had to just ignore the calls, and I stopped going to events that I knew members would be at.
I really missed the feeling of community, the intense ‘energy highs,’ and feeling like I had a higher purpose. So, for a long time I drank heavily. I even went on anti-depressants for a while. I felt that my self was fragmented and I didn’t know who I was or what reality was anymore. I finally reconciled with my friends, who thought I was crazy for joining the group in the first place, and I got back into yoga, hiking, and rock climbing. Being active has really helped.
I learned that you are your own guru, and you are the only one that can save yourself. I learned that I don’t need to search for a ‘higher purpose.’ I just need to seek the things that make me feel alive, and everything else will come together.” —Ciara
Breaking Up with Social Media
Social media has changed our way of interacting with family and friends and has blown wide open the definition of what it means to have a community (and followers). For starters, friends aren’t always people we have met in the flesh, and followers don’t necessarily refer to people who live and breathe our every word. Nowadays we can live a seemingly full life (whether it’s fulfilling or not) in the virtual realm.
We share a lot of ourselves, including our thoughts and fears, our hopes and dreams, and pictures of what we are eating for breakfast, lunch, and dinner with our social media connections. We ask for help, forgiveness, and advice on the Web. I got people to share their real break up stories thanks to social media. While social media can be a wonderful connection for us, it can also waste of a lot of our time. It can destroy relationships because we misinterpret what someone wrote or we get annoyed with the views that someone has or because they’re actually writing to someone behind our back. And while most people wouldn’t romantically break up on social media (even if they break up over it), we end relationships with all sorts of people—especially “friends”—on the very same site we may have connected. Especially when those friends say something we deem really offensive (like a racist comment) or because we’re sick of seeing their posts on their love for Jesus or the Tea Party. And sometimes we break up with social media too.
When we find that we’ve devoted an entire twenty-four hours to living on our screen, we may realize that social media is sucking away too much of our life. We may make the decision to end our time online so we can go be in life. Most of the time, this break is temporary, which makes it all the more important to share our leave of absence with the rest of our virtual world.
Before you delete your profile from any of a number of sites, send out a last post, tweet, picture, or message letting your community know that you are taking a break. Because we don’t always stay up to date on all of our friends at any given moment, leaving without the final message can seem like a big deal to any number of people. They may think it’s just them you’re breaking up with.
When taking a break, find a way to break the news to your circle. If nothing else, it’s a common courtesy and a way to make sure that no one tries to send you an important message while you’re away.
HOW DO YOU BREAK UP WITH SOCIAL MEDIA?
“I have had to take a few breaks from Facebook. I simply write a post the day before so that people have a heads up. It is a terrible addiction, this Facebook world, and I have always come back. The hardest part is that I live two thousand miles away from my hometown, so this is my connection to them.”
“I have just deleted my account [in the past]. I was off for about five months. I didn’t say anything to anyone. Just hit delete. And I never went back to that account. I have no idea where all the stuff from that account is now.”
“A couple of years ago I was really grief stricken and I needed to take myself off Facebook for a month. I did not want to read any more bad news. I told everyone I was taking a leave of absence and that one day I would be back.”
“Every year I take a break for Lent. I find it gives me time to evaluate how social media affects my life. I use the time to rediscover my surroundings, physically connect with friends and family, create a new recipe, find a new crochet stitch to master, and reflect on my many blessings.”
Breaking Up with Other Communities
Physical groups of people who organize under a common interest or goal have been around a lot longer than social media ones. They aren’t as drastic in their rules and regulations as other, cult like organizations. These communities of interest don’t require you to drink the Kool-Aid, although some of them may like you better when you do. These can be communities you meet through organized festival groups like Burning Man, sororities and fraternities, or your local writers group. You usually leave them because you outgrow the purpose they serve in your life. It may just be that you no longer want to do “that” or be “this.”
When I was in college, I pledged a sorority. I pledged an incredible, fun, smart sorority, and yet it was the idea of sororities that I chose to leave. I did get a lot out of my sorority in terms of friendship. Some of my closest friends from college are women I once referred to as “sister.”.
Beyond the friendships, and at first the social life pledging afforded me, I grew weary of members-only groups. So, after a semester abroad in Australia, I decided to come back home to a more independent college experience. I had this righteous thought in my mind that voting on people was now mean, cruel, and uncaring and that I didn’t want to be responsible for other girls feeling rejected too.
I only left after the president, who happened to be my little sister, asked me to (since I refused to vote). I still kept the friends I had made in the community, but I left the experience of being associated with those three Greek letters. Looking back, I wish I had addressed the group with a more formal good-bye and let them know my feelings, so that they could understand me and not form their own op
inions based on other people’s stories about what happened. But that’s not how it went down. Live and learn.
Odds are, you have made some friends with common interests by being a member of a group. And while you may break up with the community at large, you may like being friends with some of the group’s members. In this type of break up, you may feel more left out by the collective even if you remain in contact with some of its members. Staying in touch with some people may also leave you struggling to establish an identity that is separate from the group you just left. If you don’t make a clean break, you’ll want to set some boundaries with those people you choose to stay in touch with. For example, keep talk about the community off-limits. After all, if that’s all you really have in common, how far can the relationship go?
You can also get together on a set day and time with a set purpose. At least until you get your ducks in a row. For example, you only meet your friends from the group the second Tuesday of every month for a night of trivia. Or you get together once a month for a book club. Having another focus—one that takes the focus away from the community interaction—can allow you to build up new interest with old friends.
If you are leaving the group completely, it’s pretty much the same options as any other break up. Meet face-to-face with the members of the group that you want to share this information with. Write down a list of pros and cons of being in the group prior to this meeting, so you can follow it and get your point across. Thank them for the good times. Even if you aren’t going to let go of the bad times, if things don’t need to be called out, then there’s no need to rock the boat. After all, you are leaving. But if there are things that you feel the community could address, here’s your moment to shine.
If the face-to-face doesn’t work for you, a letter or phone call is always an option. Call the person who is the group president, or send an email to them, or send it to the group email list. Let them know what you loved about the group and also why you are leaving it. If you feel like you are open to contact from the group (especially if this is a group formed on a common interest), leave them your email address as a way to be in touch.
As I’ve said in all the other chapters, disappearing isn’t cool, especially not in a community that you joined because you liked the people and possibly the mission. Even if it’s an email, sending a goodbye is so much more respectful than saying nothing at all. Let everyone know that you are no longer available and around, and explain yourself. If nothing else, it won’t be awkward if you run into each other again.
Real-Life Break Ups
“I helped create and shape a suspension group. We started about thirteen years ago. I was not the founder of the group, but I met the founder when I went to film a flesh hook suspension. We were young and we had this obvious connection so we began dating. That was definitely a toxic relationship.
I really admired him though. And he wanted this suspension group to be the biggest, best force to be reckoned with in the body modification world, and that’s exactly what it became. I helped with all the unsexy stuff (becoming an organization, getting supplies, etc.).
After we broke up, I didn’t speak to him for a year. Then his grandmother died. She was someone I cared about, and at the funeral we reconnected, this time as friends.
From there I rejoined the group and started training full on as a practitioner—as a piercer and taking blood-born pathogens, taking first aid and CPR and suturing and training with the boys. It was an ‘all boys’ club of ten of us, which quickly grew through the years to chapters in a number of states.
This group of people became much closer to me than my own family. When you hang from hooks you can’t really talk about it with other people who haven’t done it; you have to have the experience of the rush and your reasons for doing it. It’s indescribable.
I always wanted the group to be more structured and organized. I’m a fucking dominatrix. Eventually, I got put in charge of the group and everyone shut down my ideas. It was infuriating. I believe it had to do with me being a woman. I stepped down because my life was chaotic and crazy and I couldn’t herd cats. Then things fell apart.
So I wrote a formal good-bye and wished everyone the best. I told them I’d still show up to events, but that I didn’t want to throw events anymore. And no one really reacted to it. I’m still close with the ex-leader, because he was honest about wanting to leave, but the rest of the group I don’t stay in touch with.
I learned that the community was important to them in different ways than it was to me. And while I feel like I don’t have a hook family anymore, it’s time to get out of my comfort zone and find my community.” —Bella Vendetta
“After fifteen years, I broke up with Alcoholics Anonymous (AA). I always really loved some of the people I met and knew through AA. I had friends that really went through some hard times and had spoken honestly about the pain they experienced. At times, there was a realness there that I could relate to. There was a common bond of coming out of hell and trying to do something constructive with our lives.
When I finally realized that I was pulling away from AA, it was because I wasn’t going to meetings and I didn’t have a sponsor. I felt guilty about not wanting to do all of the things other AA people were doing. I just felt like it was redundant and I needed to move on, grow, and have different experiences. Also, I had a realization that I was not an alcoholic. I had definitely had bad experiences with certain hard drugs, but having been forced to identify as an alcoholic, I convinced myself that I had a drinking problem. Recently, I actually had a drink. The walls didn’t cave in, I didn’t die, and I didn’t even throw up. It doesn’t seem to be an issue for me.
I had tried one last time to work with a sponsor and that’s when I knew I was done. She told me I was going to die and that my partner was a horrible person who controlled me when in reality it was my sponsor who wanted all the control. I was to go to the meetings she wanted me to go to and be at her house to “work the steps.” Basically, I just removed myself from AA and most of the people I knew in AA. A lot of the people I knew had stopped talking to me anyway when they realized that I wasn’t living the sober life they felt they wanted me to live.
Now, I’m actually taking better care of myself by practicing yoga, communing with nature, meditating, and being mindful. I learned that I am definitely not a joiner. I really enjoy the freedom to have the thoughts and actions I want to have. I learned that no matter what, I actually have the intuitiveness to take care of myself. It’s funny how I feel more connected to people now that I’m not focusing on “my alcoholism.” I feel more aware of the world and how I would like contribute to humankind in any way I can.” —Angel
Taking Care of Yourself During the Break Up
Going from being part of a group that may have meant the world to you, or may have literally been your world, to being alone with your thoughts and feelings can be a really tough transition. When it comes to breaking up with community, it’s super-duper important to balance staying busy with time for reflection.
Keeping a journal and then reflecting back is a great way to transition to the next place. Heck, if you started your journal before the break up, that’s even better, because then you can reread the thoughts and ideas that allowed you to come to the place you’re at now.
You need to show yourself ample amounts of love and respect, so do things that feel good to you. Go to the gym to get into your body. Go out dancing. Find a good yoga class or stretch routine to help you get in touch with yourself. Try making a personal altar, so you can have a visual idea of what makes you a powerful, wonderful community of one. Or build a dream board, giving yourself something to focus on in the future.
Reach out to old friends, whether they are ex-members of the same community you left or not. Go to the movies to take your mind off your own story. Plan a trip to someplace new, or a place that allows you to reconnect with your roots. And remember, you can build your own community if there isn’t one that suits you. When I
wanted a community of strong women around me, I invited a select group of them to become part of my Goddess Group. We got together once a month, with the intention of female bonding and empowerment. When the group became too social and gossipy, we disassembled and got together more one on one.
Still, I think of these women whenever I need support. And even after the group dispersed, it helped to remember the energy I got from them. Whatever you do to get away from your ex-community, there’s a whole world out there beyond the one you knew that can bring you hope, inspiration, and comfort. Because community is everywhere, even right outside your front door.
CONSIDERATIONS FOR THE BROKEN UP
1.It’s okay for people to disagree with your views. We all believe something that someone else doesn’t, so deal with your feelings about your former community member’s changing views.
2.You may want your former member back, but give them space to go their own way.
3.When you find yourself pushing too hard, reflect inward and determine why that push has gone to shove. What are you missing in your own life that makes you want to convince someone else that your way is the right way?
4.Talk to your community about your feelings, whether you are happy for the former member or hurt that they are gone.
5.If this brings up thoughts about getting out as well, reach out to ex-members and your own outer circle for the support you need to break up.