Who is the Author of Letter For My Wife? What was his intent, what was his motive?

This is what we know.

• His name is Thomas Faulk (sometimes referred to online as Faulkner).
• He was “born in the covenant” to two parents.
• He grew up in the Church, participating in Nursery, Primary, Boy Scouts, and Young Men’s.
• He went on a mission.
• He married in the temple.
• He held a calling as a Sunday School teacher.
• He claimed to have a “terrible memory”.
• He claims he wrote the first version of Letter for My Wife as a private document intended to convince his wife to join him in his doubts.
• His Reddit Handle is JeffreyArrrHolland2 he deleted his original Reddit handle JeffreyARRHolland
• He made a picture of the Reddit Snoo riding a Tapir while holding a stein of beer for an anti-mormon gathering in 2018.
• His wife divorced him around 2019 after 20 years of marriage.
• He referred to his wife online as a “fingers-in-her-ears TBM (totally brainwashed Mormon).”
• In effort to “put his life back together” he made a post saying that he was leaving Mormonism and Exmormonism but turned his Letter For My Wife website over to a fellow ex-mormon to maintain.

A Closer Look at Thomas Faulk—And the Assumptions He Invites

Mission and Temple Attendance

While he “went” on a mission, we have no record of where it was, how long it lasted, or whether he was even honorably released. He was married in the temple, but there is no indication that he ever returned or worshipped there afterward. How can someone gain a testimony of the temple’s power if they never go back?

Calling(s)

He claims to have had “many” callings, yet only mentions being a Sunday School teacher. He doesn’t even specify what age group he taught or for how long he had the calling. Was it really only three months? Was he ever actually active in the Church? Bishoprics often call less-active members to youth Sunday School in an attempt to reactivate them so they’ll attend the second hour.

Poor Memory

Because of his terrible memory—which he admitted to repeatedly in A Letter For My Wife—it was difficult for him to remember the truths he once knew and the Spirit he felt. It was hard for him to remember facts, so only the freshest things, usually from his frequent ex-Mormon Reddit interactions, stayed present in his mind. Is someone who openly struggles with memory really a credible source for rewriting Church history?

Word of Wisdom

One reason Tom struggled, and one reason he may have looked for excuses to find fault with the Church, shows up clearly in his Word of Wisdom chapters. The first edition especially reveals hostility toward the commandment. His enthusiasm for getting wasted at Tapirfest doesn’t help his case.
If he could convince himself the Church wasn’t true, then he wouldn’t have to feel guilt about alcohol anymore. Whether Word of Wisdom issues contributed to his mission outcome is unknown—but it’s certainly not conclusive either way.

Mocking Church Leaders

As Faulk immersed himself in non-LDS Reddit communities, he mocked all kinds of Church members and leaders, especially Elder Jeffrey R. Holland—whom he even used as his mocking Reddit handle. Elder Holland is known for passionate testimony and bold declarations of faith. Those statements clearly irritated Faulk. What kind of person mocks someone like Jeffrey R. Holland? It was people like Holland that Faulk ridiculed constantly, because Holland represented everything Faulk didn’t want his wife to be: faithful, confident, and spiritually anchored.

Mocking His Wife

In his public letter, written in a soft, compassionate tone, he says nothing but kind things about the love of his life. Yet on Reddit he said harsh things about her—calling her “unwilling to listen,” “closed-minded,” “stuck in indoctrination,” and “not smart enough” to see what he was seeing. Worst of all, he referred to her as a “fingers-in-her-ears TBM (totally brainwashed Mormon),” one of the cruelest insults in ex-Mormon circles.

Divorce

Faulk leads readers to believe he was happily married and that the only reason for the divorce was his wife’s refusal to read his letter and “see the truth” he had discovered. But based on the information we do have—his exaggerations and misrepresentations, his selective storytelling about reading the Joseph Smith Papers, his unclear activity in the Church prior to leaving it, his possible Word of Wisdom issues, his openly admitted memory problems, and his repeated insults toward Church members, leaders, and his wife—none of this paints a picture of a stable spiritual or emotional foundation. Would anyone want to live with someone speaking and behaving that way?

Using Manipulating Implicit Assumptions

Do you see what I just did there?

It’s possible that everything I wrote above is true—but it cannot be verified. At least not by me. I used speculation, gaps in information, and “reading between the lines” to construct a narrative using the bits and pieces available and framing them in a negative light.

Is that a true narrative?
A true history?
True facts about Thomas?

The reality is that I don’t know very much about Thomas Faulk at all.
Yet these are the same methods he—and other anti-Mormon writers—use to cast doubt on the Church. They take scattered details, fill in the unknowns with the worst possible assumptions, and lead readers to conclude that the absence of evidence somehow proves their point.

In A Letter For My Wife, Thomas frequently uses this misleading technique especially in the First Vision, Polygamy, and Priesthood and Race sections.

The difference between what I did above and what he does in his letter is simple:
I admitted it was speculation. He presents speculation as fact.

Tom might actually be a great guy who served an honorable mission and was active for years before being deceived and losing his faith. He might not drink at all. He might never have had any Word of Wisdom struggles. I genuinely feel for him—faith crises are hard. And I understand his heartbreak that his faithful wife got custody and is the one raising their children (in the Church that he so despises).

Thomas, if you ever read this, I’m sorry for making light of your situation. But I also want you to know something: the Church is true. You can repent. You can feel light again—the same light you once knew when you testified of truth as a missionary.

You can still choose the path Alma the Younger chose—to recognize the harm caused by the techniques you used and begin repairing the faith you helped unravel. You know the methods well: pulling quotes out of context, exaggerating gaps in the record, stacking assumptions on missing information, and guiding readers toward conclusions the evidence itself can’t support. People like my wife trusted those arguments because they were presented as history rather than inference dressed up as fact. You can acknowledge the impact those tactics had, turn back toward the truth you once knew, and begin helping rather than hurting. It isn’t too late to choose healing—for yourself and for those influenced by your words.

While I can’t give a full picture of his character or motives, one thing is clear from the tone of his original 2017 letter: by that time, he was bitter toward the Church and did not feel goodwill toward its members.

How Thomas Really Felt About Church Members

By the time he wrote the 2017 Letter, Thomas had very hostile feelings towards the church and it’s members. In his original letter he used these condesending statements in his talking points. Chat GPT discovered these attitudeds he shared that no longer show up in the current letter version:

• Body-shaming temple-attending members:
  “Currently, extremely obese members are given temple recommends…”
  This was contrasted with “fit and healthy” people being barred over coffee,
  turning worthiness into a punchline at members’ expense.
• Mocking member obedience to the Word of Wisdom:
  He repeatedly highlights how modern members “don’t even follow” parts of Section 89,
  framing them as naïve or ignorant.
• Sarcasm about “barley drinks”:
  “What drinks are made from barley? Beer.”
  A rhetorical jab designed to embarrass believing members.
• Ridiculing modern interpretation:
  He dismisses how millions of members live their faith as merely “the modern Church
  settling on” an incorrect interpretation.
• Insinuating that members are gullible:
  Throughout the chapter, he repeatedly implies that members accept “canonized stories”
  because they don’t know better or haven’t researched like he has.
• Mocking the lived health practices of Latter-day Saints:
  By saying the Word of Wisdom “lacks real health considerations,” he uses member
  behavior as proof that the revelation itself is flawed.

His Reddit History: What It Reveals About His Motives

Once again, I asked my assistant ChatGPT to comb reddit and come up with what it thought Thomas Faulk’s motives were.  This is what it came up with.

Once Faulk’s Reddit handle “JeffreyArrrHolland2” is identified, the
public record paints a very different picture from the calm and polished tone of the
modern Letter for My Wife website. His Reddit activity shows he was deeply
engaged in online ex-Mormon spaces for years before publishing the letter publicly,
and his tone there was markedly more emotional, confrontational, and dismissive than
the composed persona presented on his website.

Archived discussions show that he frequently expressed frustration toward believing
Latter-day Saints, used sarcasm when responding to active members, and repeated
anti-LDS talking points taken from existing sources like the CES Letter long before
he claimed to have “discovered” these issues on his own. His Reddit comments also
included harsh language about his still-believing wife, describing her in
derogatory terms to anonymous users. This behavior is difficult to reconcile with
the notion of a private, compassionate letter written solely to help her understand
his concerns.

Faulk’s Reddit posts reveal a pattern of someone who was already immersed in
ex-Mormon arguments, emotionally invested in tearing down LDS belief, and
regularly criticizing members who still believed. This stands in sharp contrast to
the updated website version of his letter, which presents him as calm, neutral,
and objective. His online history suggests that the modern presentation was
carefully refined for public persuasion rather than an accurate reflection of his
state of mind during the writing of the original document.

Readers should take these differences into account. When evaluating a document
that claims to be a heartfelt explanation written “only for my wife,” it is important
to consider whether the author was already participating in public debates, already
sharing the same arguments under a pseudonym, and already using a combative tone
toward believers. His Reddit history indicates motivations that extend far beyond a
private marital conversation, raising legitimate questions about how the letter was
shaped and who it was ultimately written for.

Conclusion:

It seems clear that Faulk eventually became fully convinced the Church was not true, and the anti-Mormon Reddit community played a major role in shaping that conviction. In the beginning, it even appears that his goal was to persuade his wife so they could “go down together.” I don’t know how active he truly was in the Church or what personal struggles preceded his crisis, but the record shows that he grew increasingly bitter toward Church members, Church leaders, and even his own wife. Whether or not that was his original intent, his letter and website now function to pull believing members away from their faith by presenting partial historical facts, half-truths, and a steady stream of assumptions built from reading between the lines.