A former Mormon has revealed the bizarre list of rules she had to follow when she was a member of the strict religious group – from a ban on coffee to extreme regulations about dating.
Alyssa Grenfell, 31, regularly shares tidbits from her past Mormon life to social media, documenting her journey from active church participant in the ultra-religious sect to finally leaving the group.
In a recent YouTube video, Alyssa, who now lives in Austin, Texas, with her husband and two kids, shared the list of rules she was forced to follow when she was a member of the church.
‘I did not drink coffee until I was 23,’ the mom-of-two shared in the clip. ‘Because I thought that if I drank coffee God would not let me through the Pearly Gates.’
Alyssa Grenfell, 31, revealed the bizarre list of rules she had to follow when she was a member of the strict religious group
Alyssa, along with her husband, left the Mormon Church in 2017, embarking on a journey to discover what her life could be outside the church
The bizarre rule is just one of many that Alyssa believed to be true, until leaving the Mormon church with her husband when she was in her late 20s.
She explained that Mormons follow a health code called The Word of Wisdom – which was a scripture essentially given to Joseph Smith when he was organizing the church in what was supposedly a health code given to the Saints for them to follow.
She added despite common misconception that coffee is banned due to the caffeine, that’s not actually the case.
‘Mormons do love their Monster energy drinks, their Red Bull caffeine – you know even Dr Pepper, Coke, Diet Coke – those are all well loved within the Mormon community so it is not about caffeine,’ she pointed out. ‘The reason coffee is prohibited is just the coffee itself – nothing more.’
While the former member said there is a movement to scale back on the ‘very rigid set of rules’ that the church enforces, she said the religion itself is always going to center around a set of rules and obsession with purity.
‘Ultimately at its core the church is always going to be so heavily focused and obsessed with rule following,’ she explained. ‘It’s not even about the rule, it’s about staying 10 to 20 to 30 steps back from sin and being “as pure as possible.”‘
Alyssa delved into the complicated rules around dating in the church – describing it as a ‘doozy.’
‘When I was growing up, dating before you were 16 was completely against the rules,’ she explained, before reading a passage from the church’s handbook.
‘Do not date until you are at least 16 years old,’ she read. ‘Dating before then can lead to immorality.’
She continued: ‘Limit the number of other young people you meet and deprive you experiences – that will help you choose an eternal partner.’
Mormons follow a health code called The Word of Wisdom, which says alcohol and coffee are not to be consumed
The mom-of-two regularly shares tidbits from her past Mormon life to social media. Pictured is Alyssa when she was teaching at a Mormon Missionary Training Center in Utah
Alyssa delved into the complicated rules around dating in the church – describing it as a ‘doozy.’ She added everyone is expected to wear undergarments (seen) for modesty reasons
She said that although some people bend the rules when it comes to courtship, most don’t entertain the idea of dating until they are 16, and go on group dates until they are at least 18.
Alyssa met her now-husband before she was 18, but admits there was a lot of ‘mental gymnastics’ involved around navigating of their relationship.
‘We would hang out at that person’s house when I was dating him and not go on dates – so I think that was kind of a way of skirting around this rule,’ she admitted.
‘Like we’re not going on dates, we’re hanging out there just the two of us,’ she said. ‘So we’re not dating, we just hold hands but we’re not dating or we go on group dates but we’re always just with each other and we’re paired off but because we’re on a group date.’
Although teenagers are encouraged to wait until they are 16 to date, once they turn 18 it’s ‘open season,’ and people often hurry to marry as the men go off and serve in missions for two years.
Alyssa, who got married at 22, joked she was an ‘old maid’ for getting married at that age, as most of her classmates at Brigham Young University – BYU – got married at around 19 or 20.
‘It’s very much seen as 18-year-old girls start dating returned missionaries – so 21 or 22-year-olds – guys go on their mission for two years, so that kind of is what changes in the dating scene.
‘I will say too, even before you’re 16, at least for women, you hear and talk about your future Eternal companion all the time in church lessons [and] young women’s meetings.’
She also shared some of the strange rituals they would take part in as children, including writing letters to their future spouses.
‘I’d be writing my journal to my future spouse in church meetings – young women’s lessons – I would be encouraged to write letters to my future spouse,’ she recalled.
‘You know, “Dear future husband, I hope you’re a returned missionary, I hope you love the Savior Jesus Christ, I hope you’re a good priesthood holder,”‘ she listed.
Alyssa added that they’re told not to even entertain the idea of dating someone that’s not marriage material – and ‘heavily encouraged’ to follow the law of chastity when you do strike up a connection.
‘People would say well this law of chastity is not just having no sex before marriage but it’s also avoiding heavy petting,’ she shared.
Alyssa added although these rules are targeted at young people, the same rules apply for anyone who is dating but not yet married, a major overarching theme being only to do things you would be comfortable doing in the presence of your parents.
‘I think it also creates a lot of weirdness around the wedding night because when you first get married you’re kind of expected to go from hand holding and closed mouth kisses to having sex, and that is a huge acceleration,’ she explained.
Alyssa also touched on the modesty standards for Mormon men and women, sharing that people who are fully active in the church are expected to wear religious underwear called garments that cover the sleeve and go to the knee
Alyssa met her now-husband before she was 18, but admits there was a lot of ‘mental gymnastics’ involved around navigating of their relationship
Alyssa said that tank tops – or anything that shows your shoulders – and bikinis were strictly off limits, as well as body modifications like piercings and tattoos
Alyssa added that as the church does not allow masturbation at all, it puts strange expectations on your new spouse.
‘You’ve been so trained to see sex as the sin next to murder [in the Mormon church],’ she explained.
‘It’s really setting people up for completely awful, horrible experiences on their wedding night because the two people are going to have no familiarity with the bodies of the other individual at all,’ she pointed out.
Another byproduct of sex as a taboo topic that people can develop unhealthy relationships towards pornography – which she claimed is ‘heavily demonized’ in the religious order.
‘[The] Mormon church is saying, “Right, you’re not worthy of marriage or maybe you are addicted to pornography because you viewed it three or four times and you need to go to your bishop and confess,”‘ she shared, pointing out that although there are morality issues in the industry it should not mean that you are deemed unfit for marriage.
She added that many people think they have an addiction to porn, but when they leave the church they suddenly can ‘take a breath of fresh air’ and have a healthier relationship with it and their sexuality.
Alyssa said discussions about gay marriage, transgender people or anything on the spectrum of gender non-binary individuals is ‘basically off limits’ in the church.
She added they go as far as to call it ‘same-sex attraction’ to demean gay relationships.
‘They almost want to reframe it as like an emotion,’ Alyssa said. ‘[They frame is as] something that comes and goes and passes and you struggle with, versus something that you just are.’
Alyssa then outlined some other rules that were enforced by the church growing up. One was abiding by was the belief that 10 per cent of all earnings – before tax is taken out – should go to the church
Four years after her initial ‘faith crisis,’ Alyssa decided to get a tattoo, and the next year she felt ‘finally ready to buy a bikini’
‘Six years after leaving the church, I got my nose ring, I got my ears pierced, and I have three tattoos,’ she explained, along with a picture of her dated from 2021
Although she hopes that the church’s stance on gay marriages changes ‘one day,’ Alyssa said it will only happen when they are forced to by external factors – using the church removing polygamy after the United States refused to let them join the Union.
‘Black people were not permitted to enter the temple or have priesthood which is like a Mormon power of God, and then they got a lawsuit by the ACLU and then they changed the doctrine,’ she explained.
‘So they do have a history in my opinion of changing doctrines whenever it becomes too inconvenient to persist in that path.’
Alyssa also touched on the modesty standards for Mormon men and women, sharing that people who are fully active in the church are expected to wear religious underwear called garments that cover the sleeve and go to the knee.
She said this is both for modesty, and that they’re considered sacred religious garments.
Alyssa also shared that tank tops – or anything that shows your shoulders – and bikinis were strictly off limits, as well as body modifications like piercings and tattoos.
‘I didn’t wear my first bikini until I think I was 26 or 27,’ she revealed. ‘And even after I left I still kind of mentally had a hard time just committing to wearing a bikini.’
While the standard for women’s appearance is often heavily discussed, Alyssa outlined the standards for men as well, which include shorts down to the knee, no rolled sleeves, a specific haircut, and limited or preferably no facial hair.
Alyssa shared some other fascinating insights into Mormon culture, including food storage and paying money to the church.
‘You’re supposed to have six months to a year supply [of food],’ she shared. ‘They say if you don’t have any food storage you should start by just having like a two-week supply.
‘The purpose of food storage is to prepare for the second coming,’ she explained. ‘Basically Mormons believe that before Jesus Christ comes again there’s going to be a lot of bad things happening and so the food storage is what you need in order to prepare to get through the emergencies that will come.’
Alyssa then outlined some other rules that were enforced by the church growing up.
One was abiding by was the belief that 10 per cent of all earnings – before tax is taken out – should go to the church.
She said this was something she was trained to pay tithings as a kid, starting from when she got money for her birthday.
‘If I would get $10 in an envelope from my grandparents for my birthday money, I would have $1 of that go to tithing,’ she explained.
Alyssa added the Mormon families had to pay for their son’s missions, which can cost around $16,000.
‘So that’s another way that they kind of get money is they get free labor and then the labor pays for the privilege of doing the labor,’ she added.
Alyssa has previously talked about her journey to becoming comfortable in her own body, admitting it took her ‘years’ but she now loves looking back on her transformation.
‘Honestly, there’s something so beautiful to me looking through all these photos and seeing this transformation, the self discovery that’s taken place in my life, of finding out who I am outside of Mormonism,’ she shared.
‘I hope that every ex Mormon finds as much joy in this journey as I have.’
