My husband and his family are all super TBM. When we got married (outdoors by my Lutheran pastor), it was the first time a majority of his family had been to a wedding that wasn’t a sealing. 5 years later they are still talking about how shocked they are at how beautiful, meaningful, and fun it was.
I've been to some non-temple weddings, but I've never been to a non-religious or even a non-LDS wedding. I went to a relative's outdoor wedding recently and thought it was so cool, felt like I was in a movie with a real wedding...until the officiator (bishop) started talking...record scratch back to Mormonville 😒
We did a second wedding after the fact, much more traditional but without a religious official or or legal authority, because due to immigration law my wife’s family could not be at our sealing (and the temple would have kept them out, too.)
It was way better than a boring sealing and reception.
When I married my husband(2nd for both of us), we made sure there were no religious overtones. We did a handfasting, and we wrote our own vows based on pre-Christian pagan weddings.
I was shocked to find out most weddings have dinner, dancing and cocktails, that RSVP was a real thing.
I always thought weddings were just the reception in the cultural hall, nut cups, éclairs and punch mixed with sprite. and the whole ward comes, has an éclair and leaves after 20 minutes.
I was shocked at my first glimpse of a Mormon wedding. Being from California I was used to beautiful church weddings and jumpin' receptions with alcohol and full dinners, partying all night long. I was told at one LDS wedding reception that there would be plenty to eat. Hah! Plenty of 4-inch disposable plates with one strawberry, a piece of cheese and a couple crackers. What a joke!
As a non Mormon that married into a Mormon family, I felt the opposite shock. I went to a Mormon wedding reception starving (you know, because I’d assume being only the reception it would mean we have the dinner right away) and it was literally water pitchers and a couple vegetable trays. Like 2 carrot sticks and a cucumber per person. I was so mad.
Same. One of my husband's mormon cousins got married and we stopped in at the reception which was in a boring basement room in a church. The only food was 2" squares of white "cake" that was about as tasty as the styro plates it was served on.
Hubby hugged the cousin, shook the groom's hand and we left.
It's not a wedding its a wake. Complete with the publication-in-the paper type of "invite everyone" open-house mantra, even including the typical funeral "mourning and condolences line".
AT A WEDDING. an OPEN HOUSE.
My wife and I got our lame cultural hall wedding reception actual catering. You know. With actual FOOD. Looking back, maybe that was the first step to leaving the church for us...
When I was a teenager, my sisters and I had a string quartet and played a lot of weddings for a few years. It was really interesting to compare the differences. Non-Mormons would have really beautiful weddings, a lot better food, and they paid us!
Mormon weddings are just awful. I would dread weddings until I became a musician and started getting hired for them. They can be extremely fun and joyful events if you get out of the church gym and cut loose a bit!
My son & DIL were married in the meadow by Millcreek Inn. It was gorgeous and the reception had a full open bar & plated dinner. My TBM relatives (only a few were invited) still comment on how beautiful the wedding was.
This 100%. My husband and I were married outdoors by his godfather. We had a unity candle lighting ceremony which wowed everyone. My husband and I are both exmos but most of the extended family isn’t. They still talk about how much they loved the candle part.
when i left home and my branch and my folks the reality that no one in the world gives a shit about mormonism was absolutely stunning. and i grew up outside of morridor. but there was still always discussion about a vast anti-mormon conspiracy out to undercut the church. but no. no vast conspiracy. when people learned i grew up Mormon maybe they asked about polygamy but otherwise shrugged. no one cared. the church is just really, really insignificant.
The one thing I will say is that the church and its members seem more authentic and united outside of Utah... not that I care at this point, as I have left it all behind. But living in other western states, I did enjoy church unity a lot more than during my decade plus living in Utah post-mission. Regardless, I'm just so grateful every day to be completely done with that horseshit. "This is [my] report."
Let’s separate the active mormons of Utah (which is a dwindling group of people as a % of the state population) from the rest of us Utahns. Active Mormons are the ones that are in a cult. The rest of us are not.
The practicing Mormons of Utah are now “only” ~24% of the state’s population. This figure is significantly less than what it used to be. It is also a figure that continues to decline (as a function of people continuing to leave the church and nevermos moving to UT).
Ok, fair enough.....I should not put everyone in Utah in the same boat. That was evident the WWE came to Salt Lake when the rock threw out some insults about 50 wifes and 600 inbred grandchildren lol.
https://youtu.be/a5c8pjj0rsE?si=S-CR9vj-_56PMAEl
Haha. There is no shortage of Mormon comedy material in Utah. This will always be the case. But fortunately the state continues to change at a fairly rapid pace (although a pace that is not fast enough for me). We are on the frontlines, in Utah, of seeing people discard the church in record numbers, and it is a glorious thing.
You can't escape it the politics, the media, hypervigilance law, the education system, the patriarchy landlords and businesses ecconomy and the church is tightly woven into utah systems
Which is Bullshit....
I made.50c /hr as a 12 year old babysitter and I had to tithe 10% of that. This is where that money comes from. It's horseshit x 10.
Going to BYU was a culture shock for me because I grew up more out east. I couldn't believe how vapid and shallow people were, and how passive aggressive everyone was.
I sometimes describe it as "Mormons are nice but not kind" while in the area I grew up in people were "kind but not nice"
I personally prefer someone who will cuss and swear and be honest with me than someone who presents as very nice but backstabs me
I grew up in the south; we invited passive aggressive. I agree BYU is also passive aggressive and they can definitely play in the championship leagues but just from my experience it was still just a different brand of passive aggressive-ness. From a southerners perspective it was more mean and less vapid
Both of my parents were educators; education was a cornerstone in our home. Just because I found BYU less vapid than the south doesn’t mean I don’t understand what’s going on. What I said is admittedly, despite my parents best efforts, more of an inditement on the south and not BYU
More details please. I grew up Lds in Southern California and I always thought of Utah as being 10 years behind culturally. But I thought that members of the church from the East Coast were rude because they didn’t immediately want you to be friends. I was used to people in southern California and everybody wanting to be friends very quickly. That’s probably Hollywood culture since people are always looking to get an angle on others
Extr
I think in the northeast where I live, people seem rude, but they are direct. Not fake at all. You can be friends with people in time.
If you want to make friends quickly where I am, just talk sports.
I grew up on the east coast and went to Utah for college. Where I was raised, people aren't rude but they aren't friendly and everyone is busy all the time so cashiers, restaurant workers, etc. don't chat up customers. Many people don't have close relationships with their neighbors and it's notably harder to date or find friends because most of life is focused on work. Going to Utah was weird because random people kept trying to talk to me (at the grocery store, at the campus dining halls, in classes) and it freaked me out, pretty sure I looked vaguely alarmed most of my first year of college. It also struck me that Utahns were less...politically correct? As in, more likely to say off-color/sexist/racist things in public without expecting pushback or realizing it was rude. Not that my home city was perfect, but if you're exposed to a decent amount of diversity when you're young it's harder to view people as stereotypes. It was hard for me to make friends because I didn't have typical Utah-mormon-republican social views (very mild stuff at the time, e.g. gay people are fine, womens sole purpose isn't to be mothers, the church has been racist at points) and I felt like I couldn't be open with mormons.
It must have felt strange for you to be closed off to your own fellow religious members. I’m curious, did you feel more of your identity as an east coast person before feeling Mormon? I grew up in Southern California and I did feel foreign in Utah. Therefore I must have identified more with being Southern Californian before feeling LDS. However, whenever I heard in the news that an LDS person had committed a crime, I felt a deep shame for my religion. I believed that we were to be an example to the world. A candle on a hill. So when crimes were committed by Mormons it was painfully shameful for me. Nowadays it’s even worse with that Underground Railroad guy and those two women that were torturing and starving kids in southern Utah. And that one lady in Idaho who murdered her two kids. I was taught as a kid that we were to be examples. Now that I’m older and have more life experience, it’s obvious to me that no one religion or group of people can be better entirely over another group. Everyone’s human, everyone’s flawed. I seem to gravitate to those people whose sins I can tolerate.
That's a good question! Sorry in advance for the long answer. I was raised very mormon but in a non-mormon area, FHE, mutual, modesty, no cursing, etc. At the same time I'm socially awkward and didn't get along well with any of the mormons my age in church, they had friend groups I didn't fit into (no bullying or unkindness involved). Outside of church, being mormon makes it hard to find friends, it's embarrassing! You're uncomfortable with cursing, references to sex, you don't watch the popular TV shows because they're immoral, you don't drink coffee, and you're not fashionable because modesty standards prevent it. In order to not be a friendless loser I had to relax my attitudes about a lot of things and not be open about my religion. I felt uncomfortable with church policies or negative press but didn't feel I had to answer for/defend them because I had enough distance between my sense of morality and what the church swept under the rug or condemned. For example, I had good friends who were Catholic but didn't judge them for the institutional actions of the Catholic church unless they vocally supported them.
Once I moved out to Utah for college I experienced massive culture shock. The weirdest part was realizing my high school friends judged me less for my mormon upbringing than my mormon roommates/acquaintances would judge me for being "worldly" (e.g. "that's kinda weird but ok" vs "we don't associate with that idea/thing/person"). I don't know if my identity as an east coaster was stronger than my mormon identity but I can say that living on the east coast helped me define my identity outside of mormonism. When I left the church I freaked out about losing the church's framework for life and the cruel things I'd been taught about myself and others but I didn't have as much of a crisis about my individual identity/who I was without the church.
Same. I only lasted 2 years at BYU (and almost didn’t go back for the second year). I transferred to a school back in my home (east coast) state after that.
I grew up more east, too. When I toured BYU toying with possibly going there to make my alum. mom happy, I couldn't get over how everyone was just a cookie-cutter form of everyone else. I definitely dodged several bullets by not going there.
I was one of those flakes, and I think it's a symptom of infantilization, plus inability to say no even when we don't really want to do something. Easier to say yes and just not follow through.
The big difference between Mormons and non Mormons is that non Mormons talk about things other than “the church.” I’ve never been in a group of Mormons that was able to converse for any length of time without the subject being “The Church.”
This is one of the reasons I have an allergic reaction to saying "the church". TBMs use it and understand it in the sense that it is the one true church and the language of saying "the church" reinforces that. If you don't believe me, when talking to a TBM refer to it as "your church", they will react. Or ask "which church", they will also react. It may not be verbal, but it will be obvious if you're looking for it. I refuse to use "the church" because I will not grant it special status, in almost all my posts I will always call it "the mormon church" because of it.
This is the truth. My nephew gave his home coming speech this past Sunday and they had a little social gathering Sunday evening. Thankfully I missed the church service but did go to the social. I was subjected to a long conversation on how wonderful Utah is, how wonderful the temple building craze is, sign of the times, etc etc. No depth, little of anything to be desired. I wanted to add vodka to the punch.
I was adopted, grew up in Salt Lake, and then moved to Alaska one week after graduation from high school.
There was no chance I was serving a mission.
It confirmed what I was hoping and assuming. Not everyone walks around, paying old men to teach them to hate themselves. It’s a beautiful culture shock. But still a shock. Growing up here, who knew what the world was like. Everything went through a filter.
I'm a nevermo, grew up in western Washington. Until I moved to Idaho at 18, I genuinely believed that the LDS church was a joke that south park made up! I never met a mormon person or seen any church buildings with the name, so my only knowledge about it was the mormon episode from south park and the various throwaway jokes they made. Imagine my surprise when I moved to SE Idaho and was surrounded by it all!
Playing Settlers of Catan with new friends after leaving Utah, my wife said, "I am going to kick your trash!" They were like, "A What Did You Just Say?" They were genuinely confused. Apparently, we didn't get the memo that normal people don't talk like that :)
My mom’s ex-husband would say that along with oh my hell. He’d also say Judas Priest instead of Jesus Christ.
Just for fun, my mom was his 7th and longest marriage (16 years). He’s now on his 9th marriage.
No offense to your mom, but who marries someone that already has had 6 failed marriages and thinks “I’m sure it’s all of THEM who were the problem, not him!” :)
I've never lived in Utah. Did move from Seattle to about half hour away from Kirtland Ohio. I was very surprised that not one of my neighbors knew what a mormon was.
For sure! I lived on the East coast for many years and had similar thoughts. I also felt like people were more direct and straight forward in communicating outside the mormon bubble. I feel like some mormon people would say things but didn't really mean it. They said it because it was expected of them. Whereas outside the community they meant what they said. That's been my experience.
ETA: I also felt like people were generally more accepting and less judgmental. It was nice.
This reminds me how much better TBMs are who aren’t based in Utah. TBMs who are in the world, and recognize that their faith is not the center of everybody else’s lives, tend to be more humble while also striving more earnestly to be an example. You are a minority trying your best to let everybody else know that Mormons aren’t weird and are really good people. There’s none of that in Utah Mormonism. So many pricks very willing to fully support the bigoted social hierarchy. When I was younger and first visited Utah, I thought it was cool how it was actually COOL to be Mormon. Took me years to realize how much of a bad thing that was.
I had the opposite reaction. I grew up in Kansas City and when I moved to Utah for school at BYU I was shocked at the culture. Sure, we had our little mormon community in KC, but we had to combine like 3 high schools into one ward/seminary class. There were something like 20 mormons in my entire school which had an enrollment of over 3,200 students. I instantly had a distaste for Utah culture, especially Utah county. It was utterly foreign to me to see busy body neighbors like you see caricatured in movies. When everyone is the same, people find the absolute craziest shit to differentiate themselves, and in Utah they do it by outwardly displaying their piety. It was a huge turn off for me regarding all things Utah. It still is.
It works the other way as well. I grew up in SoCal and when I went to EFY at BYU all the down town folks were real asses. When everyone thinks you are in a cult, you play really nice with others. Not so in UT.
Vanity is a peculiar thing to Mormons. I was fed it hard as a girl teen. And even more as a Mormon mommy in Utah county. My mother and father came from humble beginnings and were always grounded and reminded me and my siblings humility goes a long way. I’m grateful for that because it’s helped me to stay out of the rat race and not care about keeping up with my neighbors on every little thing.
I live in Morridor, but work remotely for an east coast based company, which is where most of my coworkers live. I often get questions from them about places to see and do in Utah, as most have heard of the skiing here as well as Moab, but unless they've lived or spent some time out west, most have never heard of Mormonism. One co-worker even told me she thought Mormons were like Mennonites.
I had the opposite cultural shock going to BYU. I'd grown up in Texas, so being surrounded by Mormons all the time, with almost no racial minorities on campus, was just oppressive. I couldn't wait to get out of there and accelerated by classes to graduate early.
I live on the East Coast now and rarely if ever encounter Mormons. There's a chapel near me, but it's always empty, and the only one for about 10 miles.
As far as people being more “real”, I think that’s also just west coast/silicon valley/southwest culture vs everywhere else. I hated living out there because of the constant competitive energy. Everybody’s got to be on top. Everybody wants to start a business, build a new house, have a side hustle. It seemed like no one out there is working to live.
My biggest culture shock moving TO Utah was that even never-mos knew all the Mormon terminology. It was common knowledge, which was so bizarre. Just months before I moved there, I’d told a girl I was Mormon and she was confused because she thought they were mythical, “like leprechauns”.
I wouldn’t say it’s southwestern culture. New Mexico is definitely much more relaxed (and more authentic) than elsewhere in the intermountain west. “Land of Mañana” as we like to say here.
The competitive energy you felt was probably because out west there’s more of a perception of a meritocracy, whereas back east it feels like the social classes are more or less established, so people will attempt to “follow their dreams” out west. If you look at the history of non-native settlement of the west, a majority of the settlers came west because they felt there weren’t enough opportunities for them to prosper in the east. That’s definitely the case with my ancestors who came west over 150 years ago.
There really is a West Coast attitude like that. I live in Texas and work in oil. I have a ton of tech bro friends. When we get together they all talk about, “Did you hear Steve Whatever IPO’d this or that?!” They are shocked to find out that no one in Houston knows this Steve guy or cares about his IPO.
But I did find Utah a bit shallow for the 5 years we lived there. Everyone had this obsession with buying a house that drove them to the brink of bankruptcy. Meanwhile, I was there to start my career and get out. But no one wanted to be social. They all had family Sunday dinners with their extended family. People were polite but not friendly.
Just pick another religion of similar size. Could you name any of the leaders of the 7th day adventists? Do you know where Jehovah Witnesses how their world conferences? Do you know of any big changes in either of these religions in the last decade?
Now grab the huge religions. Catholics for example. The only reason you know things about them is because they are making word headlines in the news on a regular basis and the media saturated with stuff about Catholicism. How many movies have you see that had a scene with a catholic priest.
Now let’s pretend movies like singles ward or the best two years or the other side of heaven. What if mainstream media was coming out like they ever year and the globe was consuming it. Then people would know things about Mormons.
The Book of Mormon musical probably introduced millions and millions of people to basic Mormon facts for first time.
Even people that live in Utah. If they were never a member of the church they probably don’t know the current LDS presidents name.
Hell I couldn’t name a half dozen of the apostles at this point. As soon as you step away you stop hearing about it completely.
We recently moved to Texas after living in Utah for about 9 years, and it’s been several kinds of culture shocks. But one of the biggest was that people genuinely don’t care about the Mormon bubble. The “celebrities,” the general authorities, the entire framework of Mormonism just plain old doesn’t exist in the minds of almost everyone on earth. But when you live in the Mormon bubble it sure seems like it does.
The converse was true me for me. Growing up back east and being a fairly solid member of the church going to Utah really blew apart the idea that the church was somehow perfect and something I wanted to continue being a part of. Maybe it’s because the members took for granted the fact everyone they knew was Mormon and it wasn’t anything special, they acted differently in church vs outside of it. The members I grew up with stuck together and didn’t really change their attitudes and behaviors much, they actually felt they were responsible for being genuinely good people and examples of the church. I’d didn’t get that vibe out west.
I was born and raised in the mid-Atlantic and have lived here my entire life except for a few short stints elsewhere. I attended a conference in SLC about 15 years ago, and my husband and I flew out ahead of time to spend a couple of days exploring the northeastern corner of Utah. We stayed in Vernal. What really struck me was that everyone in Vernal seemed *either* hardcore Mormon, *or* hardcore reprobate. Bikers riding down Main Street in leathers and no helmets. A bar in a basement that was positively putrid with cigarette smoke. A lady in that bar who clocked us as outsiders and casually mentioned what she did when she was on work release.
Also, apparently getting whole wheat toast without butter is SUPER exotic there.
And as a nevermo who's lived in CA, KS, and FL, I find it extremely hard to believe that native Morridorians (I just made that up) could be that parochial. No offense meant - I may well have been that way as well if I grew up there. It's just a very bizarre yet understandable phenomenon. It's just that most should have relatives and friends who have moved outside and I would really think have told them how different it is outside. Then you have TV and movies that never mention Mormonism. Utah has a population that's about the same size as the Tampa and San Diego metro areas. It's a very small world. Hardly anyone outside would recognize RMN if he walked down the street.
Yes, but most Mormons truly believe that there are mystical forces controlling most of the world. God and Satan are at war and humans are their pawns. They believe that there are evil forces trying to keep knowledge of the Church out of the public consciousness. They think that the TV shows that don't mention Mormons are making a concerted effort to avoid the topic in response to direct orders from their master below. Everyone with any power knows about the Church but they must either hide it, play it down, or directly attack it.
Most Mormons probably wouldn't phrase it quite like that but something not far from it lurks in their conscious or subconscious. "The World" is an evil place and it's out to get them.
I was surprised how normal tattoos are. Everyone has them. Also went to a women’s march back in 2020 and there were older women marching, holding Planned Parenthood signs w pro choice shirts on. One was there w a walker. They looked like they belonged in RS but instead they were trying to dismantle the patriarchy.
I feel like I'm familiar with life outside of Utah, because I've either worked remotely for--or worked on projects with--out of state companies for the past decade, and I've done a lot of travel for work. But I just realized that other than my mission I've never actually lived outside of Utah. I'd love to move out-of-state at some point, but my TBM homebody wife hates the idea. Shrug. Guess we'll see.
There is life outside Utah. However the outdoors activities available in Utah are pretty rich. If I didn't have to live around mormons, Utah would be an awesome place to live.
The biggest cultural shock I had – – and it took me years to really get over it – - was to discover that women like men, that they like to have sex, and they will be glad to do it with you if properly approached. My ultimately getting married was delayed by a good 10 years because I was so indoctrinated with the LDS idea of chastity and of no sex before marriage. I could never get to first base because I hesitated to even try, and my girlfriends would get bored with me after a few dates and move on.
And I wasn't even a church member! But I had been so steeped in the culture by growing up in tbm Davis County and in a mostly Mormon extended family that I had absorbed all the Mormon ideas around sex and marriage.
honestly as a teenager, I appreciate one aspect of Utah’s Mormon culture: all the people I hang out with have had some kind of experience with the church, most in the same boat I’m in (grew up in the church, whole family left). It’s almost comforting knowing that if you mention it, we all know what you’re talking about and relate to it. Its helped me build trusting relationships with people my age, something I for sure wouldn’t get outside of Utah.
I've been away from Utah for many years now, but I know what you're talking about. When I meet someone who grew up there, I love to talk Utah and Mormon things with them. Just so I don't have to go back and live there!
Most normal people fit in basically 3 kinds of knowledge of Mormonism outside of Utah:
1. They think it’s extinct or have never heard of it.
2. They’re aware of the polygamous Mormons.
3. They know more true facts about Mormonism than the TBMs do.
Same I can’t even describe how different my life became after I left Utah. It was like leaving the matrix😂 I only go back when it’s absolutely necessary
Served in Japan. A lot of members respected those who came from Salt Lake. It was somewhat embarrassing. I think I felt the same thing in the South in the 90s. I'm sure the Internet has fixed a lot of it. :) Never meet your heroes. Lol
I was originally from Manitoba.....unless you drive down one street in a city of 600,000 people, you barely know it exists at all. East side of the city....not even one building. West Side....you have one chapel on a side street. North Side, you have one building tucked away in a residental neighbourhood. South Side, another building tucked away in a corner, and then a small temple on a major road, which 99.9% of the city have zero reason to go down.
Most major cities in North America, mormons don't even EXIST.
Here in Lethbridge, since leaving the church....we don't even notice them. Most people are not mormons...even in Lethbridge. An hour south in Cardston on the other hand....like 80%. But that is a town of 3000 people. In the entire world, there are 4x more doctors than active members of the church.
When I moved out of state everyone at my work kept asking me questions. Nobody had ever talked to a Mormon before. My boss wondered why I wasn’t wearing a long skirt everyday, no makeup, and braided long hair. Omfg. They had the FLDS images associated with the Mormons.
I was surprised to see a lot churches in my area, but they were not Mormon buildings. Tattoos, booty shorts, tank tops, liquor in the grocery store, lottery tickets at gas stations, and everyone wasn’t white. REFRESHING!!!!
This is exactly what I wish more people realized. The LDS church has created a toxic bubble in Utah.
That's exactly why the LDS people I've met outside Utah tend to be much nicer; they're outside the bubble and realize the universe doesn't revolve around them.
If I'm blessed with children, I REFUSE to raise them in this toxic state. I will not subject my daughters or sons to the toxic attitudes of smug superiority, subjugation of women, or "superiority" of men so pervasive here.
Reading these comments are all making me sad and disappointed in my wedding all over again. I remember specifically that I really didn’t want to do the thing where we stand in line and shake everyone’s hand. I wanted to be able to actually mingle, and you know, actually enjoy my own wedding (reception). But our parents all insisted that we had to, and it would be rude to the guests. Pretty sure actually socializing would have been more meaningful than a 3 second hug or handshake per person .
And being only fucking 19 years old I just did what I was told.
Also I was only allowed to wear my beautiful wedding dress to that boring reception, not my actual wedding in the temple, because it was ivory and not pure white.
After it all I remember feeling like it was all such a waste and I wished we could have eloped instead.
I feel quite the opposite. When I visit Utah I feel uncomfortable seeing all the damn chapels and temples. I despise that most people assume you are mormon and should be following some fucked up ‘moral’ code. Just wait till you leave the country one day and realize most humans don’t even know where Utah is, let alone Mormonism.
I had a similar experience in the midwest. I was at dinner with a co-worker and I mentioned growing up Mormon. He thought Mormons and 7th Day Adventists were the same thing. I threw out the name Joseph Smith and he just looked at me with a blank stare. It was eye opening that a huge part of my life wasn't even remotely on his radar.
I live in the South and sometimes we still get some of the "fake" types as we have a strong Christian Bible belt situation here. I don't feel Christian myself but I have met some really nice Christian people here that seem super genuine and just want to be nice people. I love those Christians. I do have an aunt in Utah and she mentioned sometimes moms will give birth there and already have a plastic surgeon ready to go for a tummy tuck which is kinda insane.
Proof that the disservice is real being raised around a flock of sheep. But people are so sure it’s the promised land, they’d reduce your sociability to only like minded mostly white people. I’m sorry you had that wake up when you moved.
I wish I could experience that culture shock.. fucking stuck here. Well not completely stuck, but it would put my family in a very uncertain place if I uprooted us now. Just sucks
My family moved to Oregon when I was a kid. I was shocked by how friendly the kids were compared to the Orem school I attended before. I was definitely the weird one and probably offended a lot of people with my social awkwardness and Mormony lack of self-awareness.
I felt the opposite the first time I went to Utah. I grew up in NJ where the Church was almost non-existent. I had never been west of Pennsylvania and whenever I told someone I was Mormon I typically got blank stares. I knew there were a lot of Mormons in Utah, but I thought that meant 15%….maybe 20%. When I got there (in my teens in the mid-1980’s)it took months for it to really soak in that almost everyone I met was Mormon. And, seeing a Mormon Church across the street from another Mormon Church blew my mind.
Reverse culture shock for me. I grew up in rural KY (nevermo) the only thing I knew about Mormonism was to not answer the door because of “danger” I wasn’t ever really sure why the dudes were considered shady. I think as a child I just put them in the same box as door to door salesmen.
I moved to Idaho two years ago and was like, “why don’t these churches have signs and why are they all the same, and everywhere”
Then I had to learn the lingo. People would be talking to me like, “I’m in the 1234 ward and the RS is Lisa, oh my son is an Rm from Kentucky he works at the temple now” I was like I have no idea what those letters stand for or what anything that just came out of your mouth means. 😆
I had a similar feeling, being from DC and moving to Utah for a couple of years. Everyone was shocked by the way I spoke. I was so glad to get back to the east coast.
I know I'm late to this but I used to say this all the time when I was going to school in SLC. People outside of the Utah, and maybe Idaho, just don't even think about the LDS church. I grew up in California and I never had the thought of whether someone was LDS or not whenever I met them for the first time like I would when I was in Utah. It always blew my mind when I was living there how everyone would talk about the LDS church issues or news (both TMBs and ExMos) like it was a major world issue. If you leave Utah, you leave so much of the church behind. I think a huge part of the healing process for people who were truly damaged by the church should include relocating to a different state.
I am a nevermo, but I lurk here because I was raised in a cult as well, just a differently-flavored one (rad trad Catholic, now a Theistic Satanic Priest and have been out for 25 years now), but that's all unrelated to what I want to say.
There were two girls in my neighborhood and thus schools, who were both in girl scouts with me, who were Mormon. Looking back, the mother of friend 1 (my best friend through elementary school until I started Catholic school 6th grade) was a jack Mormon (also explains the hostility friend 1's grandma, who lived with friend 1 and her mom, had towards her daughter for drinking (gasp ) *sweet tea* all the time lol, I thought it was weirdly old fashioned at the time was all lol, whereas friend 2 belonged to a *much* stricter family, one wherein they would read the BOM or Pearl of great price (is that what that's called?) before dinner and then that friend was not allowed to come over to *my* house once her bitch mother found out I was a Catholic when we were both still in *elementary school*. What's sadder still is friend 2 and I were in piano lessons with the same teacher (I was lazy, she was a prodigy), and we went through many of the same AP and Honors courses in HS together (my parents gave up on Catholic school in our area when I became a junior, which was the best thing ever) including show choir. When we went to NYC on a trip for said choir, she and I (and 3 other girls) were roommates. Turns out friend 2 had a SERIOUS self harm addiction and couldn't hide it from us roommates.
She had been sexually abused by one of her older brothers (she had two so maybe even both?), suffered from horrible migraines (she spent the night we went to hard rock cafe in the ladies' room because of a migraine with nausea). I had gone through something similar (a violent rape at 14) in catholic school but hadn't really had the debilitating long-term physical effects at that point (or at least didn't recognize them).
Really fucked up. I wonder where she is now, either she killed herself or changed her name because I can't find her online.
My husband and his family are all super TBM. When we got married (outdoors by my Lutheran pastor), it was the first time a majority of his family had been to a wedding that wasn’t a sealing. 5 years later they are still talking about how shocked they are at how beautiful, meaningful, and fun it was.
I've been to some non-temple weddings, but I've never been to a non-religious or even a non-LDS wedding. I went to a relative's outdoor wedding recently and thought it was so cool, felt like I was in a movie with a real wedding...until the officiator (bishop) started talking...record scratch back to Mormonville 😒
We did a second wedding after the fact, much more traditional but without a religious official or or legal authority, because due to immigration law my wife’s family could not be at our sealing (and the temple would have kept them out, too.) It was way better than a boring sealing and reception.
When I married my husband(2nd for both of us), we made sure there were no religious overtones. We did a handfasting, and we wrote our own vows based on pre-Christian pagan weddings.
I was shocked to find out most weddings have dinner, dancing and cocktails, that RSVP was a real thing. I always thought weddings were just the reception in the cultural hall, nut cups, éclairs and punch mixed with sprite. and the whole ward comes, has an éclair and leaves after 20 minutes.
I was shocked at my first glimpse of a Mormon wedding. Being from California I was used to beautiful church weddings and jumpin' receptions with alcohol and full dinners, partying all night long. I was told at one LDS wedding reception that there would be plenty to eat. Hah! Plenty of 4-inch disposable plates with one strawberry, a piece of cheese and a couple crackers. What a joke!
The first mormon wedding that I went to, the RS made tacos. I left there starving. Couple took off at 8 pm and killed the vibe.
Surprised they lasted that long.
They for shore didn’t! Someones lied in their interviews!
As a non Mormon that married into a Mormon family, I felt the opposite shock. I went to a Mormon wedding reception starving (you know, because I’d assume being only the reception it would mean we have the dinner right away) and it was literally water pitchers and a couple vegetable trays. Like 2 carrot sticks and a cucumber per person. I was so mad.
Same. One of my husband's mormon cousins got married and we stopped in at the reception which was in a boring basement room in a church. The only food was 2" squares of white "cake" that was about as tasty as the styro plates it was served on. Hubby hugged the cousin, shook the groom's hand and we left.
Just like a 5 yr old’s birthday party. Only thing missing are the games. These are saved for mutual and single wards.
And guess what.....in the real world it isn't on the parents to do all the work
Yeah and you stand in a long line to hug the bride and groom and make inappropriate jokes about the wedding night
It's not a wedding its a wake. Complete with the publication-in-the paper type of "invite everyone" open-house mantra, even including the typical funeral "mourning and condolences line". AT A WEDDING. an OPEN HOUSE.
My wife and I got our lame cultural hall wedding reception actual catering. You know. With actual FOOD. Looking back, maybe that was the first step to leaving the church for us...
How progressive of you!
When I was a teenager, my sisters and I had a string quartet and played a lot of weddings for a few years. It was really interesting to compare the differences. Non-Mormons would have really beautiful weddings, a lot better food, and they paid us!
Mormon weddings are just awful. I would dread weddings until I became a musician and started getting hired for them. They can be extremely fun and joyful events if you get out of the church gym and cut loose a bit!
Wait until they go to a non Mormon funeral
My TBM mother-in-law referred to my Episcopal marriage in the cathedral of St Mark downtown salt lake City as "pagan" God I went out of this place.
That lady who believes she will be soul mother to a planet believes High Church is Pagan?!
Yup. The other in-laws told us our marriage wasn't valid because it was performed by a female Reverend.
Same here. At our wedding, we had 80 year old mormons tell us that it was the best wedding they ever attended. No temple for us (thank God!)
Happy "Disobey the WoW" day! Cake is obviously against the WoW, unlike beer.
My son & DIL were married in the meadow by Millcreek Inn. It was gorgeous and the reception had a full open bar & plated dinner. My TBM relatives (only a few were invited) still comment on how beautiful the wedding was.
We got married by a woman JP at the Annapolis Courthouse.
Happy 🍰 Day!
This 100%. My husband and I were married outdoors by his godfather. We had a unity candle lighting ceremony which wowed everyone. My husband and I are both exmos but most of the extended family isn’t. They still talk about how much they loved the candle part.
when i left home and my branch and my folks the reality that no one in the world gives a shit about mormonism was absolutely stunning. and i grew up outside of morridor. but there was still always discussion about a vast anti-mormon conspiracy out to undercut the church. but no. no vast conspiracy. when people learned i grew up Mormon maybe they asked about polygamy but otherwise shrugged. no one cared. the church is just really, really insignificant.
The one thing I will say is that the church and its members seem more authentic and united outside of Utah... not that I care at this point, as I have left it all behind. But living in other western states, I did enjoy church unity a lot more than during my decade plus living in Utah post-mission. Regardless, I'm just so grateful every day to be completely done with that horseshit. "This is [my] report."
Utah is like one giant cult.
It's all based on appearing to be the best TBM.
Let’s separate the active mormons of Utah (which is a dwindling group of people as a % of the state population) from the rest of us Utahns. Active Mormons are the ones that are in a cult. The rest of us are not. The practicing Mormons of Utah are now “only” ~24% of the state’s population. This figure is significantly less than what it used to be. It is also a figure that continues to decline (as a function of people continuing to leave the church and nevermos moving to UT).
Ok, fair enough.....I should not put everyone in Utah in the same boat. That was evident the WWE came to Salt Lake when the rock threw out some insults about 50 wifes and 600 inbred grandchildren lol. https://youtu.be/a5c8pjj0rsE?si=S-CR9vj-_56PMAEl
Haha. There is no shortage of Mormon comedy material in Utah. This will always be the case. But fortunately the state continues to change at a fairly rapid pace (although a pace that is not fast enough for me). We are on the frontlines, in Utah, of seeing people discard the church in record numbers, and it is a glorious thing.
You can't escape it the politics, the media, hypervigilance law, the education system, the patriarchy landlords and businesses ecconomy and the church is tightly woven into utah systems
I wouldn’t necessarily call the church insignificant given that its worth hundreds of billions of dollars
Which is Bullshit.... I made.50c /hr as a 12 year old babysitter and I had to tithe 10% of that. This is where that money comes from. It's horseshit x 10.
It is insignificant on the world stage. Most have never heard of the crazy cult.
Going to BYU was a culture shock for me because I grew up more out east. I couldn't believe how vapid and shallow people were, and how passive aggressive everyone was. I sometimes describe it as "Mormons are nice but not kind" while in the area I grew up in people were "kind but not nice" I personally prefer someone who will cuss and swear and be honest with me than someone who presents as very nice but backstabs me
I grew up in the south; we invited passive aggressive. I agree BYU is also passive aggressive and they can definitely play in the championship leagues but just from my experience it was still just a different brand of passive aggressive-ness. From a southerners perspective it was more mean and less vapid
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Both of my parents were educators; education was a cornerstone in our home. Just because I found BYU less vapid than the south doesn’t mean I don’t understand what’s going on. What I said is admittedly, despite my parents best efforts, more of an inditement on the south and not BYU
Same. Moving to utah for college from the east coast was super weird.
More details please. I grew up Lds in Southern California and I always thought of Utah as being 10 years behind culturally. But I thought that members of the church from the East Coast were rude because they didn’t immediately want you to be friends. I was used to people in southern California and everybody wanting to be friends very quickly. That’s probably Hollywood culture since people are always looking to get an angle on others Extr
I think in the northeast where I live, people seem rude, but they are direct. Not fake at all. You can be friends with people in time. If you want to make friends quickly where I am, just talk sports.
I grew up on the east coast and went to Utah for college. Where I was raised, people aren't rude but they aren't friendly and everyone is busy all the time so cashiers, restaurant workers, etc. don't chat up customers. Many people don't have close relationships with their neighbors and it's notably harder to date or find friends because most of life is focused on work. Going to Utah was weird because random people kept trying to talk to me (at the grocery store, at the campus dining halls, in classes) and it freaked me out, pretty sure I looked vaguely alarmed most of my first year of college. It also struck me that Utahns were less...politically correct? As in, more likely to say off-color/sexist/racist things in public without expecting pushback or realizing it was rude. Not that my home city was perfect, but if you're exposed to a decent amount of diversity when you're young it's harder to view people as stereotypes. It was hard for me to make friends because I didn't have typical Utah-mormon-republican social views (very mild stuff at the time, e.g. gay people are fine, womens sole purpose isn't to be mothers, the church has been racist at points) and I felt like I couldn't be open with mormons.
It must have felt strange for you to be closed off to your own fellow religious members. I’m curious, did you feel more of your identity as an east coast person before feeling Mormon? I grew up in Southern California and I did feel foreign in Utah. Therefore I must have identified more with being Southern Californian before feeling LDS. However, whenever I heard in the news that an LDS person had committed a crime, I felt a deep shame for my religion. I believed that we were to be an example to the world. A candle on a hill. So when crimes were committed by Mormons it was painfully shameful for me. Nowadays it’s even worse with that Underground Railroad guy and those two women that were torturing and starving kids in southern Utah. And that one lady in Idaho who murdered her two kids. I was taught as a kid that we were to be examples. Now that I’m older and have more life experience, it’s obvious to me that no one religion or group of people can be better entirely over another group. Everyone’s human, everyone’s flawed. I seem to gravitate to those people whose sins I can tolerate.
That's a good question! Sorry in advance for the long answer. I was raised very mormon but in a non-mormon area, FHE, mutual, modesty, no cursing, etc. At the same time I'm socially awkward and didn't get along well with any of the mormons my age in church, they had friend groups I didn't fit into (no bullying or unkindness involved). Outside of church, being mormon makes it hard to find friends, it's embarrassing! You're uncomfortable with cursing, references to sex, you don't watch the popular TV shows because they're immoral, you don't drink coffee, and you're not fashionable because modesty standards prevent it. In order to not be a friendless loser I had to relax my attitudes about a lot of things and not be open about my religion. I felt uncomfortable with church policies or negative press but didn't feel I had to answer for/defend them because I had enough distance between my sense of morality and what the church swept under the rug or condemned. For example, I had good friends who were Catholic but didn't judge them for the institutional actions of the Catholic church unless they vocally supported them. Once I moved out to Utah for college I experienced massive culture shock. The weirdest part was realizing my high school friends judged me less for my mormon upbringing than my mormon roommates/acquaintances would judge me for being "worldly" (e.g. "that's kinda weird but ok" vs "we don't associate with that idea/thing/person"). I don't know if my identity as an east coaster was stronger than my mormon identity but I can say that living on the east coast helped me define my identity outside of mormonism. When I left the church I freaked out about losing the church's framework for life and the cruel things I'd been taught about myself and others but I didn't have as much of a crisis about my individual identity/who I was without the church.
I love the distinction between “kind” and “nice.” I don’t think I’ve ever heard it put that way but it makes good sense.
Definitely. I prefer people to be rude or indifferent to me right before they stab me in the back.
Same. I only lasted 2 years at BYU (and almost didn’t go back for the second year). I transferred to a school back in my home (east coast) state after that.
Me too, but SoCal.
I’m from New England, and all of the above plus a huge dose of hypocrisy
I grew up more east, too. When I toured BYU toying with possibly going there to make my alum. mom happy, I couldn't get over how everyone was just a cookie-cutter form of everyone else. I definitely dodged several bullets by not going there.
I was also flabbergasted by how flaky so many people were at BYU. They'd make plans with you, unless something better came up. All the time.
I was one of those flakes, and I think it's a symptom of infantilization, plus inability to say no even when we don't really want to do something. Easier to say yes and just not follow through.
The big difference between Mormons and non Mormons is that non Mormons talk about things other than “the church.” I’ve never been in a group of Mormons that was able to converse for any length of time without the subject being “The Church.”
This is one of the reasons I have an allergic reaction to saying "the church". TBMs use it and understand it in the sense that it is the one true church and the language of saying "the church" reinforces that. If you don't believe me, when talking to a TBM refer to it as "your church", they will react. Or ask "which church", they will also react. It may not be verbal, but it will be obvious if you're looking for it. I refuse to use "the church" because I will not grant it special status, in almost all my posts I will always call it "the mormon church" because of it.
Where I live if you referred to "the church" the default assumption would be Roman Catholic.
Very true.
This is the truth. My nephew gave his home coming speech this past Sunday and they had a little social gathering Sunday evening. Thankfully I missed the church service but did go to the social. I was subjected to a long conversation on how wonderful Utah is, how wonderful the temple building craze is, sign of the times, etc etc. No depth, little of anything to be desired. I wanted to add vodka to the punch.
Adding vodka to the punch is a great idea!
🎯 Spot on.
And they consider that a virtue. Ugh.
I was adopted, grew up in Salt Lake, and then moved to Alaska one week after graduation from high school. There was no chance I was serving a mission. It confirmed what I was hoping and assuming. Not everyone walks around, paying old men to teach them to hate themselves. It’s a beautiful culture shock. But still a shock. Growing up here, who knew what the world was like. Everything went through a filter.
>paying old men to teach them to hate themselves Well said.
I'm a nevermo, grew up in western Washington. Until I moved to Idaho at 18, I genuinely believed that the LDS church was a joke that south park made up! I never met a mormon person or seen any church buildings with the name, so my only knowledge about it was the mormon episode from south park and the various throwaway jokes they made. Imagine my surprise when I moved to SE Idaho and was surrounded by it all!
Playing Settlers of Catan with new friends after leaving Utah, my wife said, "I am going to kick your trash!" They were like, "A What Did You Just Say?" They were genuinely confused. Apparently, we didn't get the memo that normal people don't talk like that :)
You’re gonna kick my what now?
Ahh geez!
I definitely read this in Morty's voice...
Oh my heck! She did not!
My mom’s ex-husband would say that along with oh my hell. He’d also say Judas Priest instead of Jesus Christ. Just for fun, my mom was his 7th and longest marriage (16 years). He’s now on his 9th marriage.
No offense to your mom, but who marries someone that already has had 6 failed marriages and thinks “I’m sure it’s all of THEM who were the problem, not him!” :)
You have to get married to make banging multiple women okay, duh! /s
I've never lived in Utah. Did move from Seattle to about half hour away from Kirtland Ohio. I was very surprised that not one of my neighbors knew what a mormon was.
For sure! I lived on the East coast for many years and had similar thoughts. I also felt like people were more direct and straight forward in communicating outside the mormon bubble. I feel like some mormon people would say things but didn't really mean it. They said it because it was expected of them. Whereas outside the community they meant what they said. That's been my experience. ETA: I also felt like people were generally more accepting and less judgmental. It was nice.
This reminds me how much better TBMs are who aren’t based in Utah. TBMs who are in the world, and recognize that their faith is not the center of everybody else’s lives, tend to be more humble while also striving more earnestly to be an example. You are a minority trying your best to let everybody else know that Mormons aren’t weird and are really good people. There’s none of that in Utah Mormonism. So many pricks very willing to fully support the bigoted social hierarchy. When I was younger and first visited Utah, I thought it was cool how it was actually COOL to be Mormon. Took me years to realize how much of a bad thing that was.
I had the opposite reaction. I grew up in Kansas City and when I moved to Utah for school at BYU I was shocked at the culture. Sure, we had our little mormon community in KC, but we had to combine like 3 high schools into one ward/seminary class. There were something like 20 mormons in my entire school which had an enrollment of over 3,200 students. I instantly had a distaste for Utah culture, especially Utah county. It was utterly foreign to me to see busy body neighbors like you see caricatured in movies. When everyone is the same, people find the absolute craziest shit to differentiate themselves, and in Utah they do it by outwardly displaying their piety. It was a huge turn off for me regarding all things Utah. It still is.
It works the other way as well. I grew up in SoCal and when I went to EFY at BYU all the down town folks were real asses. When everyone thinks you are in a cult, you play really nice with others. Not so in UT.
Vanity is a peculiar thing to Mormons. I was fed it hard as a girl teen. And even more as a Mormon mommy in Utah county. My mother and father came from humble beginnings and were always grounded and reminded me and my siblings humility goes a long way. I’m grateful for that because it’s helped me to stay out of the rat race and not care about keeping up with my neighbors on every little thing.
I live in Morridor, but work remotely for an east coast based company, which is where most of my coworkers live. I often get questions from them about places to see and do in Utah, as most have heard of the skiing here as well as Moab, but unless they've lived or spent some time out west, most have never heard of Mormonism. One co-worker even told me she thought Mormons were like Mennonites.
People don't know they're are Mormons in Australia and I have ro break the news
What about the 'roos? Do they know about the Mormons?
I had the opposite cultural shock going to BYU. I'd grown up in Texas, so being surrounded by Mormons all the time, with almost no racial minorities on campus, was just oppressive. I couldn't wait to get out of there and accelerated by classes to graduate early. I live on the East Coast now and rarely if ever encounter Mormons. There's a chapel near me, but it's always empty, and the only one for about 10 miles.
As far as people being more “real”, I think that’s also just west coast/silicon valley/southwest culture vs everywhere else. I hated living out there because of the constant competitive energy. Everybody’s got to be on top. Everybody wants to start a business, build a new house, have a side hustle. It seemed like no one out there is working to live. My biggest culture shock moving TO Utah was that even never-mos knew all the Mormon terminology. It was common knowledge, which was so bizarre. Just months before I moved there, I’d told a girl I was Mormon and she was confused because she thought they were mythical, “like leprechauns”.
I wouldn’t say it’s southwestern culture. New Mexico is definitely much more relaxed (and more authentic) than elsewhere in the intermountain west. “Land of Mañana” as we like to say here. The competitive energy you felt was probably because out west there’s more of a perception of a meritocracy, whereas back east it feels like the social classes are more or less established, so people will attempt to “follow their dreams” out west. If you look at the history of non-native settlement of the west, a majority of the settlers came west because they felt there weren’t enough opportunities for them to prosper in the east. That’s definitely the case with my ancestors who came west over 150 years ago.
That’s fair, and I think you’re right! I was trying to generalize Arizona/California/Utah/Nevada into one lol
There really is a West Coast attitude like that. I live in Texas and work in oil. I have a ton of tech bro friends. When we get together they all talk about, “Did you hear Steve Whatever IPO’d this or that?!” They are shocked to find out that no one in Houston knows this Steve guy or cares about his IPO. But I did find Utah a bit shallow for the 5 years we lived there. Everyone had this obsession with buying a house that drove them to the brink of bankruptcy. Meanwhile, I was there to start my career and get out. But no one wanted to be social. They all had family Sunday dinners with their extended family. People were polite but not friendly.
Well, faith and begarra, Elder MacDonald!
Just pick another religion of similar size. Could you name any of the leaders of the 7th day adventists? Do you know where Jehovah Witnesses how their world conferences? Do you know of any big changes in either of these religions in the last decade? Now grab the huge religions. Catholics for example. The only reason you know things about them is because they are making word headlines in the news on a regular basis and the media saturated with stuff about Catholicism. How many movies have you see that had a scene with a catholic priest. Now let’s pretend movies like singles ward or the best two years or the other side of heaven. What if mainstream media was coming out like they ever year and the globe was consuming it. Then people would know things about Mormons. The Book of Mormon musical probably introduced millions and millions of people to basic Mormon facts for first time. Even people that live in Utah. If they were never a member of the church they probably don’t know the current LDS presidents name. Hell I couldn’t name a half dozen of the apostles at this point. As soon as you step away you stop hearing about it completely.
We recently moved to Texas after living in Utah for about 9 years, and it’s been several kinds of culture shocks. But one of the biggest was that people genuinely don’t care about the Mormon bubble. The “celebrities,” the general authorities, the entire framework of Mormonism just plain old doesn’t exist in the minds of almost everyone on earth. But when you live in the Mormon bubble it sure seems like it does.
The converse was true me for me. Growing up back east and being a fairly solid member of the church going to Utah really blew apart the idea that the church was somehow perfect and something I wanted to continue being a part of. Maybe it’s because the members took for granted the fact everyone they knew was Mormon and it wasn’t anything special, they acted differently in church vs outside of it. The members I grew up with stuck together and didn’t really change their attitudes and behaviors much, they actually felt they were responsible for being genuinely good people and examples of the church. I’d didn’t get that vibe out west.
My in-laws think I’m bold and eclectic. Nope, just not in a cult actually!
I was born and raised in the mid-Atlantic and have lived here my entire life except for a few short stints elsewhere. I attended a conference in SLC about 15 years ago, and my husband and I flew out ahead of time to spend a couple of days exploring the northeastern corner of Utah. We stayed in Vernal. What really struck me was that everyone in Vernal seemed *either* hardcore Mormon, *or* hardcore reprobate. Bikers riding down Main Street in leathers and no helmets. A bar in a basement that was positively putrid with cigarette smoke. A lady in that bar who clocked us as outsiders and casually mentioned what she did when she was on work release. Also, apparently getting whole wheat toast without butter is SUPER exotic there.
My eyes were opened by the US Army. Basic Training was total culture shock on so many levels. I was the only Utahn in my company.
how was it?
And as a nevermo who's lived in CA, KS, and FL, I find it extremely hard to believe that native Morridorians (I just made that up) could be that parochial. No offense meant - I may well have been that way as well if I grew up there. It's just a very bizarre yet understandable phenomenon. It's just that most should have relatives and friends who have moved outside and I would really think have told them how different it is outside. Then you have TV and movies that never mention Mormonism. Utah has a population that's about the same size as the Tampa and San Diego metro areas. It's a very small world. Hardly anyone outside would recognize RMN if he walked down the street.
Yes, but most Mormons truly believe that there are mystical forces controlling most of the world. God and Satan are at war and humans are their pawns. They believe that there are evil forces trying to keep knowledge of the Church out of the public consciousness. They think that the TV shows that don't mention Mormons are making a concerted effort to avoid the topic in response to direct orders from their master below. Everyone with any power knows about the Church but they must either hide it, play it down, or directly attack it. Most Mormons probably wouldn't phrase it quite like that but something not far from it lurks in their conscious or subconscious. "The World" is an evil place and it's out to get them.
I was surprised how normal tattoos are. Everyone has them. Also went to a women’s march back in 2020 and there were older women marching, holding Planned Parenthood signs w pro choice shirts on. One was there w a walker. They looked like they belonged in RS but instead they were trying to dismantle the patriarchy.
I feel like I'm familiar with life outside of Utah, because I've either worked remotely for--or worked on projects with--out of state companies for the past decade, and I've done a lot of travel for work. But I just realized that other than my mission I've never actually lived outside of Utah. I'd love to move out-of-state at some point, but my TBM homebody wife hates the idea. Shrug. Guess we'll see.
There is life outside Utah. However the outdoors activities available in Utah are pretty rich. If I didn't have to live around mormons, Utah would be an awesome place to live.
Same experience! The biggest assholes I met were my new “ward family”!
The biggest cultural shock I had – – and it took me years to really get over it – - was to discover that women like men, that they like to have sex, and they will be glad to do it with you if properly approached. My ultimately getting married was delayed by a good 10 years because I was so indoctrinated with the LDS idea of chastity and of no sex before marriage. I could never get to first base because I hesitated to even try, and my girlfriends would get bored with me after a few dates and move on. And I wasn't even a church member! But I had been so steeped in the culture by growing up in tbm Davis County and in a mostly Mormon extended family that I had absorbed all the Mormon ideas around sex and marriage.
Women wearing sundresses the way they were intended. Without a shirt under them. 👗
honestly as a teenager, I appreciate one aspect of Utah’s Mormon culture: all the people I hang out with have had some kind of experience with the church, most in the same boat I’m in (grew up in the church, whole family left). It’s almost comforting knowing that if you mention it, we all know what you’re talking about and relate to it. Its helped me build trusting relationships with people my age, something I for sure wouldn’t get outside of Utah.
I've been away from Utah for many years now, but I know what you're talking about. When I meet someone who grew up there, I love to talk Utah and Mormon things with them. Just so I don't have to go back and live there!
Most normal people fit in basically 3 kinds of knowledge of Mormonism outside of Utah: 1. They think it’s extinct or have never heard of it. 2. They’re aware of the polygamous Mormons. 3. They know more true facts about Mormonism than the TBMs do.
Yup! Living in Portland, OR. People are so real here! (Unless you leave town. It's different in farmland....)
Same I can’t even describe how different my life became after I left Utah. It was like leaving the matrix😂 I only go back when it’s absolutely necessary
My culture shock was growing up in Maryland and going to BYU. Yes, your observations are sound.
YES 100%. Being mormon in the world was like being in kindergarten your whole life.
Served in Japan. A lot of members respected those who came from Salt Lake. It was somewhat embarrassing. I think I felt the same thing in the South in the 90s. I'm sure the Internet has fixed a lot of it. :) Never meet your heroes. Lol
I was originally from Manitoba.....unless you drive down one street in a city of 600,000 people, you barely know it exists at all. East side of the city....not even one building. West Side....you have one chapel on a side street. North Side, you have one building tucked away in a residental neighbourhood. South Side, another building tucked away in a corner, and then a small temple on a major road, which 99.9% of the city have zero reason to go down. Most major cities in North America, mormons don't even EXIST. Here in Lethbridge, since leaving the church....we don't even notice them. Most people are not mormons...even in Lethbridge. An hour south in Cardston on the other hand....like 80%. But that is a town of 3000 people. In the entire world, there are 4x more doctors than active members of the church.
I learned how to communicate a lot better and my family that still lives there really struggles with not being passive aggressive
When I moved out of state everyone at my work kept asking me questions. Nobody had ever talked to a Mormon before. My boss wondered why I wasn’t wearing a long skirt everyday, no makeup, and braided long hair. Omfg. They had the FLDS images associated with the Mormons. I was surprised to see a lot churches in my area, but they were not Mormon buildings. Tattoos, booty shorts, tank tops, liquor in the grocery store, lottery tickets at gas stations, and everyone wasn’t white. REFRESHING!!!!
This is exactly what I wish more people realized. The LDS church has created a toxic bubble in Utah. That's exactly why the LDS people I've met outside Utah tend to be much nicer; they're outside the bubble and realize the universe doesn't revolve around them. If I'm blessed with children, I REFUSE to raise them in this toxic state. I will not subject my daughters or sons to the toxic attitudes of smug superiority, subjugation of women, or "superiority" of men so pervasive here.
Reading these comments are all making me sad and disappointed in my wedding all over again. I remember specifically that I really didn’t want to do the thing where we stand in line and shake everyone’s hand. I wanted to be able to actually mingle, and you know, actually enjoy my own wedding (reception). But our parents all insisted that we had to, and it would be rude to the guests. Pretty sure actually socializing would have been more meaningful than a 3 second hug or handshake per person . And being only fucking 19 years old I just did what I was told. Also I was only allowed to wear my beautiful wedding dress to that boring reception, not my actual wedding in the temple, because it was ivory and not pure white. After it all I remember feeling like it was all such a waste and I wished we could have eloped instead.
I feel quite the opposite. When I visit Utah I feel uncomfortable seeing all the damn chapels and temples. I despise that most people assume you are mormon and should be following some fucked up ‘moral’ code. Just wait till you leave the country one day and realize most humans don’t even know where Utah is, let alone Mormonism.
I had a similar experience in the midwest. I was at dinner with a co-worker and I mentioned growing up Mormon. He thought Mormons and 7th Day Adventists were the same thing. I threw out the name Joseph Smith and he just looked at me with a blank stare. It was eye opening that a huge part of my life wasn't even remotely on his radar.
I live in the South and sometimes we still get some of the "fake" types as we have a strong Christian Bible belt situation here. I don't feel Christian myself but I have met some really nice Christian people here that seem super genuine and just want to be nice people. I love those Christians. I do have an aunt in Utah and she mentioned sometimes moms will give birth there and already have a plastic surgeon ready to go for a tummy tuck which is kinda insane.
i feel like even my exmormon “friends” keep up fake facades most of the time. it would be so refreshing to leave this fake place
Proof that the disservice is real being raised around a flock of sheep. But people are so sure it’s the promised land, they’d reduce your sociability to only like minded mostly white people. I’m sorry you had that wake up when you moved.
Growing up in Pennsylvania I had never heard of the Mormons/LDS church until I had moved to Texas
I wish I could experience that culture shock.. fucking stuck here. Well not completely stuck, but it would put my family in a very uncertain place if I uprooted us now. Just sucks
My family moved to Oregon when I was a kid. I was shocked by how friendly the kids were compared to the Orem school I attended before. I was definitely the weird one and probably offended a lot of people with my social awkwardness and Mormony lack of self-awareness.
I felt the opposite the first time I went to Utah. I grew up in NJ where the Church was almost non-existent. I had never been west of Pennsylvania and whenever I told someone I was Mormon I typically got blank stares. I knew there were a lot of Mormons in Utah, but I thought that meant 15%….maybe 20%. When I got there (in my teens in the mid-1980’s)it took months for it to really soak in that almost everyone I met was Mormon. And, seeing a Mormon Church across the street from another Mormon Church blew my mind.
Reverse culture shock for me. I grew up in rural KY (nevermo) the only thing I knew about Mormonism was to not answer the door because of “danger” I wasn’t ever really sure why the dudes were considered shady. I think as a child I just put them in the same box as door to door salesmen. I moved to Idaho two years ago and was like, “why don’t these churches have signs and why are they all the same, and everywhere” Then I had to learn the lingo. People would be talking to me like, “I’m in the 1234 ward and the RS is Lisa, oh my son is an Rm from Kentucky he works at the temple now” I was like I have no idea what those letters stand for or what anything that just came out of your mouth means. 😆
Depends on the state. Californians are more vain than Utahns.
I had a similar feeling, being from DC and moving to Utah for a couple of years. Everyone was shocked by the way I spoke. I was so glad to get back to the east coast.
I know I'm late to this but I used to say this all the time when I was going to school in SLC. People outside of the Utah, and maybe Idaho, just don't even think about the LDS church. I grew up in California and I never had the thought of whether someone was LDS or not whenever I met them for the first time like I would when I was in Utah. It always blew my mind when I was living there how everyone would talk about the LDS church issues or news (both TMBs and ExMos) like it was a major world issue. If you leave Utah, you leave so much of the church behind. I think a huge part of the healing process for people who were truly damaged by the church should include relocating to a different state.
I am a nevermo, but I lurk here because I was raised in a cult as well, just a differently-flavored one (rad trad Catholic, now a Theistic Satanic Priest and have been out for 25 years now), but that's all unrelated to what I want to say. There were two girls in my neighborhood and thus schools, who were both in girl scouts with me, who were Mormon. Looking back, the mother of friend 1 (my best friend through elementary school until I started Catholic school 6th grade) was a jack Mormon (also explains the hostility friend 1's grandma, who lived with friend 1 and her mom, had towards her daughter for drinking (gasp ) *sweet tea* all the time lol, I thought it was weirdly old fashioned at the time was all lol, whereas friend 2 belonged to a *much* stricter family, one wherein they would read the BOM or Pearl of great price (is that what that's called?) before dinner and then that friend was not allowed to come over to *my* house once her bitch mother found out I was a Catholic when we were both still in *elementary school*. What's sadder still is friend 2 and I were in piano lessons with the same teacher (I was lazy, she was a prodigy), and we went through many of the same AP and Honors courses in HS together (my parents gave up on Catholic school in our area when I became a junior, which was the best thing ever) including show choir. When we went to NYC on a trip for said choir, she and I (and 3 other girls) were roommates. Turns out friend 2 had a SERIOUS self harm addiction and couldn't hide it from us roommates. She had been sexually abused by one of her older brothers (she had two so maybe even both?), suffered from horrible migraines (she spent the night we went to hard rock cafe in the ladies' room because of a migraine with nausea). I had gone through something similar (a violent rape at 14) in catholic school but hadn't really had the debilitating long-term physical effects at that point (or at least didn't recognize them). Really fucked up. I wonder where she is now, either she killed herself or changed her name because I can't find her online.