Social rebuilding after the congregation: from structure to freedom.

Recognizable questions How do I make new friends as an adult? Where do I meet people outside the congregation? Why do new contacts feel so superficial at first? How do I build a social life without the fixed structure of meetings and field service? And why can I meet new people and still feel lonely? For many Jehovah’s Witnesses, the congregation is an important part of their social life. Meetings, field service, conventions, and contact with other Witnesses mean that you regularly see the same people. Friendships, faith, and social activities can therefore become strongly intertwined. When you become inactive or leave the organization, that structure can partially or completely disappear. Some people keep family and friends, while others lose a large part of their social network. That raises a very practical question: How do you rebuild a social life as an adult? Why can that be difficult? Making new friends can be hard for any adult. But when a large part of your social life took place within one community for years, there can be extra barriers: You may have little experience building friendships outside the congregation. Some social situations may feel unfamiliar or awkward. You carry a background that you may not always want to explain right away. You may miss the ease with which you kept seeing the same people within the congregation. You may be afraid of losing people again. New contacts may feel superficial compared with friendships that lasted for decades. That last point is important. When you know someone for three months, you may unconsciously compare that relationship with someone you knew for fifteen or twenty years. New friendships need time to develop a history. You do not have to look for friends right away It may sound strange, but you do not have to go out with the assignment: ‘I have to find friends.’ A more practical first step is: Where would I want to go regularly, even if I did not immediately make friends there? For example, think of: a sports club or regular fitness class; a language, music, painting, or writing course; volunteer work; a walking group; a hobby association; neighborhood activities; study or training; a peer support group. The advantage of places like these is repetition . You see the same people again. That allows conversations to naturally continue where they left off last time, and familiarity can develop. From acquaintance to friend Within a congregation, you may not have needed to consciously think about how you built social contact. You simply kept running into each other. Outside such a fixed structure, contact sometimes takes more initiative. A friendship can start very small: ‘Are you getting a drink after training?’ ‘Shall we go for a walk together next week?’ ‘I had a nice time. Shall we exchange numbers?’ Not every contact becomes a friendship. And that is fine too. Maybe you meet one person you have coffee with occasionally, another person you exercise with, and yet another person you can talk to about personal things. No one person or group has to replace everything the congregation used to offer. Social freedom can take getting used to A new social world can offer more choice, but precisely that choice can feel awkward at first. Who do I want to spend time with? How much do I want to share about myself? What activities do I actually enjoy? What boundaries do I want to set? What do I expect from a friendship? These are questions you may not have an immediate answer to. You also do not have to do everything that is common outside the organization. You do not have to like going out, drink alcohol, celebrate birthdays, or adopt certain social customs in order to belong somewhere. Freedom also means that you can discover for yourself what does and does not suit you. Rebuilding trust For some ex-JW’s, trust can be a sensitive topic. When important relationships changed or disappeared after a change in faith, the thought may arise: ‘What if these people eventually abandon me too?’ That does not mean every ex-JW struggles with trust. But if you recognize this, you do not have to tell a new friend your entire life story right away. Trust may grow in small steps. You can share something personal and see how someone handles it. You can state a boundary and experience whether it is respected. You can discover that a disagreement does not automatically have to mean the end of a friendship. That is how you get to know someone — and how that person gets to know you. What if you actually miss the congregation? Building a new social life does not mean that you can no longer miss anything from your old community. Maybe you are building new connections and at the same time still missing certain people from the congregation. Those things can exist side by side. Ask yourself: Do I miss these specific people? Do I miss the feeling of belonging somewhere? Do I miss the religious community? Or do I miss my faith itself? Those are different needs. New friends can offer social connection, but for example they do not have to answer questions about faith or meaning in life. This is also an interesting question for active Jehovah’s Witnesses Even when you are a Jehovah’s Witness and do not want to leave at all, you can ask yourself: How broad is my social network? Do I also have contact with people outside my faith? Can I have a good relationship with someone who thinks differently from me? And how much of my social life is connected to my religious community? There does not have to be a right or wrong answer to that. A close-knit faith community can actually provide a lot of connection and support. It can still be interesting to realize how much faith, community and friendship are intertwined in your own life. About loneliness You can be among people and still feel lonely. Especially when you long for the familiarity of relationships that existed for years, new contacts may initially not feel the same. So try not to see loneliness as proof that you cannot find connection outside the congregation — but also not as something you should simply ignore. If your loneliness persists, becomes very heavy, or is accompanied by, for example, sadness or the feeling that you no longer belong anywhere, it may be wise to talk about it with your GP or another professional helper. Finally A new social life usually does not arise all at once. It grows out of small encounters that repeat themselves. At first you know someone’s name. Then you make small talk. Then maybe you have coffee together. Months later you suddenly notice that you call someone when something important happens. You do not have to replace your old social world as quickly as possible. And you do not have to become someone else in order to make friends outside the congregation. So perhaps the first question is not: ‘Where do I find a new community?’ but: ‘Where can I meet people regularly while doing something that suits me?’ From there, something can emerge that does not have to be organized or predetermined, but grows slowly: a social life that you shape yourself.