'I was a Mormon for 30 years. Here are the real secrets of the church.'

For the first 30 years of Emma's* life, she was consumed by the Mormon Church.

There was seminary every morning, church on Sundays, weekly youth activities, bi-annual lectures from modern-day prophets, independent study of the Book of Mormon and guidebooks… and so much more. The messaging was constant and inescapable.

"People don't really appreciate the scope of what it means to be Mormon and how it's part of every little bit of your life," Emma told Mamamia. "I spent so much time trying to be a good woman that I really didn't have time to rest."

And there is a lot to remember to be a "good Mormon".

No sex until marriage. No drugs, no alcohol, no cigarettes. No porn. No swearing, no lying. No coffee or tea. No gambling. No abortions. No "immodest" clothing. And that only scrapes the surface.

Watch: The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives is nothing like the alleged reality of the church. Post continues below.

While there has been recent talk of certain 'loopholes' to these rules (more on those here), Emma suggested that these aren't as common in Australia.

"I'm sure the popular loopholes like 'soaking' would be treated very seriously inside church walls," she said, adding that punishments could be both "arbitrary and cruel" depending on the severity of the "crime".

(BTW, "soaking" is a practice allegedly used by some Mormon youth to get around the rule against premarital sex. It is basically sex without movement — so, a man enters a woman and both partners remain still, allowing them to supposedly engage in sexual activity without technically "having sex".)

"There are rules that you could certainly break and you wouldn't necessarily get kicked out of the church, but you might be stopped from participating in certain things," Emma said — like the honour of visiting the temple, which is considered the "closest thing to heaven" in the Mormon church.

"Sometimes girls would get around modesty rules by wearing 'skimpy' clothing for swimming, costume parties, or exercise," she continued. "But those specific girls would be discussed in leadership meetings."

According to Emma, members of the Church — otherwise known as The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — were also encouraged to police each other and themselves.

"People would say things like 'no empty seats in heaven', and you did not want to be the one who could not join your family and friends in heaven because you weren't good enough," she explained.

"Guilt and fear would weigh heavily on every decision, then shame would follow if you made a mistake. This was even encouraged. They said if you did not have 'godly sorrow', you were not truly repenting."

Emma recounted one incident when — as a "young women's leader" — she was encouraged to reprimand a girl for wearing ripped jeans to a youth dance.

"After a lot of pressure from this older man, I reluctantly went and told the girl her clothing was inappropriate," she recalled. "I had been on the end of this myself over the years. If my top was too low-cut (I am a big-breasted woman), someone would side-eye me and gesture for me to pull it up.

"I messaged this girl years later to apologise and to say, 'We should have just been happy you were in attendance.' That's how much it bothered me."

Similarly, years ago, a friend of Emma's attended a wedding without wearing her traditional garments. (When Mormons go through the temple as an adult, after marriage or a church mission, they are given special undergarments to remind them of "the rules and promises they have made", explained Emma.)

"You're not meant to take the garments off unless showering," she told Mamamia. "You also shouldn't be wearing anything that would show the garments through the clothing, otherwise the clothing would be considered inappropriate.

"At the wedding, my friend wasn't wearing garments so that she was able to wear something to be more skimpy. People were like, 'Oh, what kind of garments are you wearing with that?'"

Emma's church leaders also got involved in discipline. But punishments depended on where they ranked in the church, and were "justified through the power they had from God to make said judgements," said Emma.

When she was 14, Emma confessed to a bishop that she was behind on her tithing payments — another of the church's rules.

"As a Mormon, you pay 10 per cent of your income, and it is considered an "honour" to do so." Emma explained. "You get taught quite young. Even if I had $1 of pocket money when I was nine, I would give 10 cents."

In her early teens, Emma was struggling financially.

"At the time, I could not even afford menstrual products and I was still learning how to budget properly. I thought it would be okay because I said I would catch up, but he told me I was not worthy for the temple, and did not give me a recommendation at the time.

"No matter how poor I was after that, I never missed paying tithing again," she said, adding that the church was not transparent about what they did with the money.

"When I was younger, they were very much like, 'Oh, it goes back to you anyway, because the church uses it for activities and for resources,'" Emma said. "Back then, all of our church manuals were printed, so I could kind of justify it. But when everything went digital, I was like, 'Okay, well where is this money going?'

"And our budgets for activities were generally very small, and you would usually end up having to bring your own food anyway."

Though she was scrupulous with her tithing payments after the initial confession, two years later, the 16-year-old felt obligated to share her "sexual sins" to the bishop.

While she was unsure of the consequences she'd face for her admissions, simply divulging such details to a 40-year-old man with nobody else in the room felt like a punishment in itself.

"The leader above my bishop had a son who would text me and say things like, 'Wear something sexy tonight so I can look at you," Emma recalled. "When I was 16, I sat in his office and told him how I had gone a little too far, and he asked me to describe what I had done. I was embarrassed, but explained in as few words as possible, 'Over the clothes a little on the bottom, and under the clothes on the top.'

"I explained that I had already repented, I had stopped taking the bread and water for a while, and I was willing to apologise to the boy for causing him to sin with me. Thankfully, this was acceptable to him. However, every time I had an interview with him after this, he would never believe me when I said I was doing the right things.

"He would say things like, 'You don't want to end up like (a girl who got pregnant), do you?' and 'We had that lesson on chastity just because of you.'"

It wasn't until Emma's good friends started "gently teaching" her about the outside world that she was able to unlearn what had been "deeply ingrained since birth".

"Once I started questioning, it all started just coming down around me," she said.

"I was hearing things that I really disagreed with and I found really upsetting. It's really hard to hear people speak so negatively about everybody else in the world and how everybody else is bad, but we're good, and how we've got the truth, and nobody else has the truth."

Emma was 30 years old when she left the Latter-day Saints (LDS). Her decision lost the now-36-year-old many friendships, and came with much criticism from the church. But, she says, she was more fortunate than others.

"I'm lucky in the sense that my family were never considered high profile in the church," she explained. "But a lot of my friends have had a really hard time of things, because their parents are in really high leadership positions, and were really awful to them when they left.

"There are also people who can't leave because of their family situations, like they might get disowned, or their partner might divorce them. It depends largely on your circumstances."

Unlearning a lifetime of beliefs came with a "grieving process" for the once-dedicated Mormon, and Emma is still dealing with the fallout.

"I try not to follow what's happening within Mormonism too much, because every time they come out with a policy that is harmful to other people, it'll really upset me," she said. "I remember how it felt when I was still in the church and I'm worried about people who are still in, who don't really fit the Mormon mould, who are different."

Avoiding reminders of Mormonism means steering clear of the hit TV show The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives, which follows eight Mormon TikTok influencers in the wake of a swinging scandal. Having only read about the show, Emma is concerned it reduces the religion to something "weird and quirky" rather than depicting the "gravity" of the organisation.

"I will tell you this: I would not want to be in their shoes," Emma said of influencers within the LDS church. "Even if they were lucky enough to have compassionate leadership, they would still be facing harsh criticism.

"To these women, I would say that if they can leave the church safely, they should just leave. Want to have sex with who you want and in the way you want? Great, you can safely and consensually do that and it can be no one's business but your own. You can be a swinger and be a good person, you can drink alcohol and express yourself with jewellery, bright-coloured hair and tattoos, and be a good person. 

"When I left and asked for all my details to be erased (as well as my baptism, initiatory and endowment) from the church records, I was warned that this meant I could never be with my family again. My kids would not have a mother with them in heaven. But I had already made up my mind: If God and heaven exist in the way Mormons say, is that a God worth worshipping?

"My answer was no."

*Emma is known to Mamamia, but has chosen to remain anonymous to protect her privacy.