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Post by Vyckie D. Garrison on Oct 30, 2009 19:36:41 GMT -5
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Post by Vyckie D. Garrison on Nov 5, 2009 10:43:07 GMT -5
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Post by hopewell on Nov 5, 2009 11:11:32 GMT -5
The word you were looking for is JERK. Not spiritual giant, not man of God, but garden variety J.E.R.K. I'm so sorry you had to live thru this!
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Hillary
Full Member
"Quivering Daughters ~ Hope and Healing for the Daughters of Patriarchy" Now Available!
Posts: 129
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Post by Hillary on Nov 5, 2009 11:17:01 GMT -5
It's like dissociating. That's what a lot of cult members do. And there is cognitive dissonance.
Wow--what a story! Did he have OCD, by the way?
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Post by xara on Nov 5, 2009 13:10:23 GMT -5
Yikes!. How awful. He was a manipulative jerk.
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Post by loverofpurple on Nov 5, 2009 13:17:02 GMT -5
Hi,
This is actually my first post here. Your story is very suspenseful! I keep waiting to read that you were able to get away from that very dysfunctional man!!! Thank you for sharing. I can't wait to read part 4, and I'm hoping that you're now living a peaceful life.
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Post by thenerd on Nov 5, 2009 14:14:54 GMT -5
I have never joined the forums because I thought "These women have been through so much, but I can't really relate. I have nothing to add to the convo." Then I read this story, and when I got to the scene at the table where he fears for your soul, I was transported back in time to a very similar place in my own life.
To have someone I loved so deeply say that he didn't think I was going to heaven, was for me to hear that he thought I was the worst kind of person - an agent of Satan. To anyone who hasn't experienced this, the pain is unimaginable.
Thank you for writing your story. More people within religious communities need to read this, and learn to identify and protect people from emotional/spiritual abuse in relationships.
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Post by journey on Nov 5, 2009 15:53:10 GMT -5
Thank you all for your kind words and thoughts. It has been good...kind of scary, but good...to share bits of my story here. I hate reliving it as I write...and it's strange, too, in that I can't believe I fell for it it all... As I write, I want to jump through time and go shake that young woman and tell her to RUN, to not believe a word of it. Then again, I have that same feeling as I read posts and comments here from others on the NLQ blog and forums, want to reach in through the words and pull out that precious soul that is being destroyed.
My hope is that we will make the "biblical patriarchy" world, even if only in the smallest of ways, a much more difficult place for abusive people to get away with their behavior.
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Post by margybargy on Nov 5, 2009 16:20:53 GMT -5
It seems like he saw you gearing up to leave and used the most effective weapon he could think of against you. It's scary that someone could be that calculating. *shiver*
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Post by arietty on Nov 6, 2009 7:56:15 GMT -5
I had so much anxiety reading this post Journey. It is just sooo horrible to be manipulated using GOD as a WEAPON. Horrible, horrible, horrible. He took something good in you, a desire to be a good person and serve God, and used it against you to get as much control as possible. I have to say this is quite evil behavior but it is also the behavior of someone who has invested a lot of their personality into honing how to get what they want from people. It's not easy to understand when you are a normal person who doesn't think about getting power and control out of relationships. It's not easy to see even when you're the focus of that power and control if you don't have this agenda yourself. It took me a long time to figure out that one reason I didn't see my husband's agenda of control was because it was completely foreign to me. Of course now that my eyes have been opened I see it in other people's actions (and I'm always on guard not to exert any coercive powers on my kids). It is hard to believe that someone is lying/manipulating when the lie is just SO HUGE. This is certainly how my ex gets away with so much, we just don't make that kind of jump when viewing someone who seems perfectly reasonable and nice in so many ways. We might accept that someone exaggerates or is a bit of a bullshit artist but to actually see that a person is telling an enormous lie to get something they want is hard to come at. It didn't occur to me for YEARS that my ex was actually telling enormous lies. I had to put up with some quite horrible changes in my life because my ex had heard from God.. isn't it funny how at first you think it is so awesome to be married to someone who hears clearly from God (and who cries about it in your case, soooo terrible). I was able to overlook a lot of awful things about my ex because despite them he heard from God so he really must be a sincere and spiritual man. There is no real way to express how disgusted I am with all this. It all happens step by step though doesn't it? You think you are walking down a path towards being right with God and you are really walking down a path of deeper and deeper abuse.
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Post by nell65 on Nov 6, 2009 8:49:30 GMT -5
I am so glad you are telling your story like this: it makes plain what is so often hard to understand about the horrors of patriarchal religious systems. Your husband was both a jackass, and ill. Very ill - but the teachings of your faith not only made it impossible to name, but actually elevated as godly all the behaviors that were making him sicker - and therefore in a position of greater and greater power to harm. And because you were so tightly held inside that world - there was no one who could say to you (in a way that you might hear) that a man telling you that the voices in his head said you had to clean the bathroom with bleach every night was NOT HEALTHY! That he was NOT a religious giant - but at minimum a controlling jerk, and more likely a man in deep deep trouble! Thinking about this in the context of my own marriage and my not-quite-ex -- had we been inside such a system, wow. He would have become a power drunk freak, and ultimately (and probably faster than slower) an abusive horror - on all fronts, emotional, spiritual and physical. He is absolutely NOT those things, but he has many unresolved emotional issues that given free reign would have destroyed him. Instead - living out here in the world - he understands how unacceptable those actions are and manages (more or less) to stay healthy, safe and sane. He was a crappy husband nonetheless, as you might imagine, but not abusive. Just --- selfish and lost. These last few years, as I have spent a lot more time in the feminist blogsphere and reading in RL as well (I self identified as a feminist as soon as I heard the word - 8 maybe?! lol! - so after college didn't really keep up with the reading because - you know, I knew what I was!) have often thought that even in our secular/liberal/university world - my husband's unacknowledged male privilege -- that language that developed after I drifted away from reading up on the topic, but might have *might have* helped me, him and us -- is what poisoned him and ultimately our lives together. He walked away from our family and our marriage because he wasn't the center and star of our lives - though of course he knew better than to say it like that. He still probably doesn't even think of it like that - but that's what it was. He was simply not prepared to be a fully equal partner (though he believed he was/is - talked the talk, but couldn't walk the walk as it were -- because he didn't know it would be a different walk than his father's and so got way lost) and when I treated him as a partner, expected things of him as a partner, he felt dismissed and diminished, but couldn't figure out how to say in a way that didn't make him look like a freak in our world and in his own heart and mind, so he just stewed in his own frustrated unhappiness until it made him ill. Literally physically as well as emotionally. By that point - leaving us* was the only thing he could think to do to feel better ... and certainly easier than the kind of intense self- examination that might actually make a long term difference. (Why yes -- after the excitement the new faded, he is just as unhappy as he was before, why do you ask? ) But if we had been inside a world that gave him all the power and authority backed by God and access to salvation itself? Oh man. Oh man oh man oh man would that have been bad. And he/we/I can not possibly be the only people with experiences like this. The system you are in DOES matter - and some systems/social structures are in fact far worse than others. Pointing out the healthy people who are fine is pointless. They would be fine in any system, with any structure. The question is the one of harm. Which system does the least harm to the least number of people? Which does more? This is where patriarchy falls so hard and fast. It leaves so many victims behind. Not that the 'outside' is harm free, far from it, but then - it doesn't claim to be. And that alone is a vitally important difference. *I'd like to point out here that though he moved out more than two and a half years ago, he has yet to file for divorce?** So - you know - "leaving" is an in-exact word! lol! ** Why haven't I? Lost my job at the same time (it was a sucky few years there) and his health insurance is pretty priceless to me. Hello - could we get a public option on health care please? Of course I'd especially love single payer.... but anything that would let me insure independently would be great!
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Post by D on Nov 6, 2009 10:00:19 GMT -5
Journey-
Again, thank you so much for sharing your story. It has changed me.
OT Nell65 - do you have Humana available in your state? If it's just you it would be possible to receive it for not much per month, of course, if you are unemployed then even if it's only 100 bucks then it's not doable, huh? Their rates are pretty good if you don't have any pre-existing conditions. I would hate for someone to stay in a crap-o marriage just for the healthcare! Yikes! Never even thought about it that way. I guess it's good he didn't file for divorce....yikes!
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Post by nell on Nov 7, 2009 6:24:22 GMT -5
Thanks for the recommendation on Humana, D - there will come a time when I need it. As for now, though - my marriage is a legal fiction only, so I am not 'in' it at all. I'm not even in the US! I'm an academic, and when my life fell apart there, I applied for and received a fellowship for international research and teaching. For the last three semesters I've been living in abroad with my kids - with their Dad's full support in having this horizon expanding experience. Our house there is gone, my things are in a packed-to-the-rafters storage locker, and he has established his own home/space. When we return to the states, I'll have to figure out what to do next... but I'll cross that bridge when I get there.
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jlp
Junior Member
Posts: 54
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Post by jlp on Nov 7, 2009 22:29:21 GMT -5
Your husband suffered from severe dillusion.
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