The Most Harm, Part One
Thursday, March 12th, 2009
New Year's Eve, 2006. I look older then than I do now.
Yesterday’s trip to the mall reminded me of the harm that can come from religion. Walking along, Steve and I came across a camera man, an interviewer, and another man sitting at the table. “Would you like to ask the Duggars a question?” the man asked.
“No, thanks,” we said, but I began thinking. My parents loved Bill Gothard , as these people do. They tried to raise me in a similar way the Duggars try to raise their children. I wonder about those girls. What will they do without a college education? What if what happened to me happens to one of them?
People often ask the non-religious “Why be so against religion? It doesn’t hurt anyone!” Even ignoring the wars and prejudice associated with religion, religion can hurt people on an individual level. I am proof of that.
People who have been reading my blog for awhile have seen bits and pieces, but I have never put it all together. I have mentioned growing up in a fundamentalist home and marrying a ministry major at my conservative Baptist school. Together, we served in professional ministry for about three years and later divorced. I talk about what it’s like to have an ex and what it was like to be a minister’s wife. What I don’t mention is what it was like to be married, and the very personal ways religion has harmed me through that marriage. Writing about it is very hard, publishing it even harder. This is definitely the most personal, intimate post I have ever written. I am a very modest person, so writing about the most secret parts of me is very hard to do. But I think it is necessary for others out there who may be in similar situations or who are parenting their children in the same way I was parented. The more people I meet, the more I see a need. So here it goes.
It began as a child. My mother worked evenings as a nurse, leaving me with my father and two younger brothers. At the time, my father definitely had more of a domineering attitude toward women. (I think he has softened some since, but am uncertain.) While he did not force me to cook and clean, he did have strong expectations for me to take care of my younger brothers. I can remember once he forced me to “serve” my brother a piece of pie I had made while tears streamed down my cheeks. During that time, he treated my brothers as “the boys” and me as just a girl. All of this based firmly in religious beliefs.
As people felt strongly about sex education in my rural high school town, I received very little of it in school. My parents did not discuss it with me apart from “the talk” and I was not allowed to watch movies with a higher rating than PG. Except once when I begged my mother to let me watch “Never Been Kissed.” Sometimes I watched higher rated movies anyways when I visited friends, but we mostly watched scary movies and we were all pretty modest and shy about the subject. The most graphic sex education I ever received in high school came when I visited a long-distance friend’s house, and she and another friend discussed what the other friend had let a boy do to her. It’s not like they explained the mechanics, though, so I mostly just felt confused.
So there is the level of naivete I left with for college. I attended a private Baptist school, so there were not many temptations to go wild. By the time I had spent a year in college, I had never gone farther than holding hands. I had never smoked, drank, or done drugs (I still don’t do that, though). I followed the rules and felt quite terrified of what would happen if I broke them.
I bought the “True Love Waits” dogma hook, line, and sinker. The message is that if you wait, you will have a better marriage. You will please God. You will be glad you did, because people who don’t wait are more likely to get divorced and more likely to have miserable marriages. I met a ministry major my sophomore year, and married him the next summer. My parents approved.
We fought a lot, but we loved each other. Over the next couple of years, however, I realized that our love was not the kind of love that you need to sustain a marriage. We had no feelings for each other. What feelings were there, I believe had more to do with biological needs than emotional fulfillment and companionship. However, I felt, and still do to some extent, that love is not based solely on feelings. I also knew that we had hit a spot that many couples do as newlyweds. Plus, I was pregnant. So we tried to get along the best we could and have the best relationship we possibly could.
And really, this is a nice version of the story. If I was going to be completely honest, I would talk about how we were both sexually starved when we married. How eventually, the sexual expectations became ridiculous–at least once a day, and often more than that for several years on end. How sullen he became if I refused, or how he sometimes insisted to the point where I gave in. How sometimes he just did what he wanted anyways, even if I said no. How I simply resigned and pictured myself elsewhere toward the end. But it is still painful and embarrassing, and it gets worse.
All of these things about his near addiction level need for sex I would have known if I hadn’t waited for marriage. I began questioning how to talk to our daughter, because I didn’t want this for her. I didn’t want her to wait, just to find out she married a man who constantly pressured her to perform, and to do more and more things she didn’t feel comfortable doing. I began noticing the “happy” Christian marriages around me. Both sets of parents stayed together, and neither set was happy. They stayed for religious reasons. As time passed, I realized I did not want to be like Bob’s father, stuck in a marriage with a verbally abusive, manipulative, angry woman. I did not want to be a doormat like my mother.
But I didn’t know what to do. If I left Bob, he would probably lose his job. Things weren’t all bad. Plus, what about our daughter? What about money–I had a degree, but no job despite looking for a year. I had spent all of my effort in the church, leaving me with a moderately good GPA and absolutely no experience or extra curricular activities to shore up my resume. I had no job references outside the church. Church, in that respect, really hurt my career. That, too, gets worse.
I decided to stay and try to work it out. Everyone has rough patches, I reasoned. We moved across the state so I could begin graduate classes. Things began to run more smoothly.
But it didn’t last.
(Click here for part 2.)
Tags: abstinence, marital rape, religion, True Love Waits
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March 12th, 2009 at 9:25 pm
Being raised a fundamentalist will do wierd things to a person’s sexuality. I don’t know how much of my low sex drive is natural and how much is due to all those lessons I’m sure I’ve internalized to some extent. My husband (who is a fundamentalist) has certain expectations… and I think it has gotten slightly worse since I became an atheist.
Looking forward to hearing the rest of your story.
March 12th, 2009 at 9:45 pm
notreallyalice: Just looked briefly at your blog. You’ve got a familiar story, the like of which I’ve heard often on de-conversion.com. Congratulations on finding your way to truth. It ain’t always easy, but it is reality.
March 12th, 2009 at 10:46 pm
I certainly appreciate your honesty, letting yourself be vulnerable in beginning to share your whole story, here, LauraDee. Hope very much your ex-husband is getting some addiction counseling, and help with his control issues, too.
March 13th, 2009 at 1:43 am
I very much agree with you about the harm caused by religion. So many people are warped and hurt by the terrible things religion teaches. I don’t understand why so many people encourage so much self loathing. I hope very much that you have entered into a much more positive life now that you are not forced into a bad lifestyle because of taboos caused by belief in imaginary friends. Be your own person and be happy because of it. Good luck to you Laura.
March 13th, 2009 at 3:22 am
“Hope very much your ex-husband is getting some addiction counseling, and help with his control issues, too.”
Nope! Actually, he blamed the whole thing on me then remarried this November. I don’t know. Half the time, I feel it really was my fault, or at least that I should put more blame on myself than I do (after all, aren’t I blaming the whole thing on him? Doing the exact same thing he is doing), then I think I start to sound like one of those wives who say they shouldn’t have overcooked their husband’s eggs when he beat the s*** out of her. The truth is, I find it all confusing.
March 13th, 2009 at 4:08 am
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March 13th, 2009 at 12:07 pm
I was raised in a “True Love Waits” environment too, but I never really bought into it. I think it helped that my dad advocated with me to let me go to the public high school (which was nothing like yours. I think yours was so full of the same type of people that it was like a private Christian school). Anyway, one of the things I’ve always said about True Love Waits is “how would the couple know if they’re sexually compatible? What if they’re not?” I’ve often wondered about it, and I appreciate you sharing your story. I certainly have never been able to get my friends from back in my fundamentalist days to open up to me about what their marriages are like and if they actually waited.
March 13th, 2009 at 12:10 pm
Ah, sorry, one other thing. It does seem that most of the other women commenting here who were raised fundie found themselves to have low sex drives or at least unable to understand a high one. I have to say; I may not have totally bought into True Love Waits, but I wasn’t kissed until I was 20, and since then I have…..fallen in love with sex, lol. In fact, the liberal guys I’ve dated have told me I have a “crazy high sex drive.” I know it’s not a new concept. There’s that Catholic school girl idea out there, and I think that’s where this sort of thing comes from. If you repress something, some people will still struggle with having internalized that repression. Others will just explode……
March 13th, 2009 at 1:26 pm
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March 13th, 2009 at 4:41 pm
I’m sure this is easier to say than to do, but: don’t worry about blame. Blame is easy to assign and justify but it not very useful. On the other hand, if the other party will not accept any responsibility for a situation s/he helped create, that’s the end.
March 13th, 2009 at 4:41 pm
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March 13th, 2009 at 7:01 pm
((Lauradee)))
I can’t think either that you are to blame. But, the truth is both of you were very young, and under tremendous stress, and pressure. It sounds like you certainly didn’t get support from the church, or much help from anywhere else either.
May 23rd, 2009 at 6:31 am
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May 26th, 2009 at 3:36 am
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November 2nd, 2009 at 10:40 pm
Did you ever think of it as rape? Fugitivus has a really intense long post about a relationship where she gave in to sexual demands a lot because she kind of knew if she said no he’d go ahead and then he’d be a rapist and she would have to do something, or at least know that about him.
But it seems like your education around sex and consent was so different than hers, maybe the internal dialogue was different.
November 2nd, 2009 at 10:44 pm
I’ve thought of it. I would have never thought that rape wasn’t a black and white issue,, but I don’t feel like I can claim to be in a category of women who have been so violated, either, because I don’t feel that traumatized. I don’t feel I have the right to say, “I know how you feel” to someone who was attacked because while lines were crossed, he never *hurt* me. Once, I protested and protested, and he said he thought I was “joking.” Looking back, I am not so sure it was true, but I accepted it, probably because it made me feel better to think he didn’t mean it, so maybe I’ve just always been in denial about the whole thing. I read bulletin boards now at school about rape that would include me in the category, but it would be right on the line, and I don’t feel comfortable telling people he did. If that makes any sense at all, which it probably doesn’t.
November 3rd, 2009 at 10:25 am
it does make sense, and I think there’s a big gap between internal labeling and external self-identifying, too. And “on the line” makes sense, too – there’s a whole continuum between actually thinking of your partner as a whole human being with the same rights to boundaries and choice as yourself (which I think a lot of us have issues with – it’s always hard to think other people’s rights are as important as your own) to the wholly submissive wife thing thought of as “love” and on straight to marriage as a property contract.
Also, if denial prevents you from being harmed more (instead of putting you in the way of more harm from him) then i’m all for it.
November 3rd, 2009 at 5:52 pm
When he has my kid, he is most definitely not a rapist. So yes, denial definitely helps there, as I am doing the best I can on the parenting front.
November 12th, 2009 at 12:03 am
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November 24th, 2009 at 5:25 am
What your ex and his friend did is rape. US law may not say so (though UK law explicitly does), but it was nonetheless rape. You have no duty to protect either your ex or his friend from the consequences of their actions, and you have every right in the world to feel angry and to want some payback. You’ve said that Bob is a good father, but if I was in your shoes I would worry about leaving my daughter in the care of a man who is a sexual addict and who has been both an accesory to your rape by another man on one occasion and who has on several occasions raped you himself (you’ve said there were times he took you when you had told him no – that is rape).
I’m so glad that you got away from him, and I hope that you can heal and find peace in yourself.
December 21st, 2009 at 11:39 am
I second Custador’s comment. What your ex did was rape. You said “no”, and he still forced sex on you.
**”How sometimes he just did what he wanted anyways, even if I said no.”**
The more I read your blog comments, the more I realize how abusive this marriage truly was. Please keep in mind that abuse does not necessarily have to include physical violence. Emotional abuse, economic abuse, and sexual violence are all characteristics of abusive relationships, and the damage they can do is devastating. Thank goodness you left this poisonous relationship and now recognize it for what it was!
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