People who were raised in cults, what was it like and how did you escape?

Breaking Free from the Cult

Renee and Justin were childhood friends who grew up in an extremely restrictive and religious cult. This cult was so extreme that reading anything that wasn’t religious material was a punishable offense. Despite this restriction, Renee and Justin read a lot, which brought them closer. In high school, they started dating.

Unfortunately, their parents caught them and had an absolute mental breakdown about it. They forced Justin to marry Renee. They married, but what their families didn’t understand is that putting them together only made them stronger.

Over the next two years, Renee and Justin set up a secret bank account. They started stealing money from their parents’ paychecks in amounts just small enough so they wouldn’t notice. When they were 20, they had enough money to get out and start over.

They left their house in the dead of night with nothing but what could fit in their car. They uprooted to live across the country. Pretty quickly after they moved, they decided to get amicably divorced since they never wanted to be married anyway.

They still lived together for a while and basically became something between platonic roommates and each other’s only family. Over time, they started dating other people.

Some partners were scared off by the weird relationship between them, but most got it. They understood that Justin and Ry had basically bonded through mutual trauma.

This whole time, both their families and other members of their community were relentlessly harassing them. People were showing up at their house at all hours.

They had reason to believe people were trying to steal their identities over the years. They’d fortunately both put a freeze on their credit so nothing ever came of it.