|
Post by anotheramy on May 3, 2009 13:39:15 GMT -5
This is particularly painful and poignant when one remembers that the traditions of most winter festivals/holy days (pagan, Christian, just about any religion...) are to bring light and hope into the darkness if midwinter.
|
|
|
Post by anotheramy on May 3, 2009 14:03:20 GMT -5
That's a wonderful tradition!
|
|
|
Post by stampinmama on May 3, 2009 14:04:27 GMT -5
Oh, I also wanted to say that I think it was absolutely horrid what Dale did to you and the kids.
And him changing his mind now? It's apparent that he did it simply to act out vengeance and hurt.
|
|
|
Post by Kaderin on May 3, 2009 15:28:32 GMT -5
Wow. Another thing to take away, another thing to hurt you... *hugs Laura* I hope you had a beautiful Christmas with Richard. Dale really has no concept whatsoever of wants and needs that are not his own. Still, I don't think this: is true. I really believe this had nothing to do with Laura (although her hurt may have been an added bonus to him), but with his new wife. As others have said - the descent into abuse is very gradual. He won't take his new wife's pleasures away right away, but bit by bit. I bet in 5 years they won't be celebrating
|
|
|
Post by stampinmama on May 3, 2009 15:42:50 GMT -5
I really believe this had nothing to do with Laura (although her hurt may have been an added bonus to him), but with his new wife. As others have said - the descent into abuse is very gradual. He won't take his new wife's pleasures away right away, but bit by bit. I bet in 5 years they won't be celebrating That's more what I was trying to say. That it was done to hurt, but in a round about way. There's probably no way that he could have taken away the holiday from his new wife so quickly like that. Like you and others have said, it's a gradual descent. What I was trying to say was that without it being obvious to his new wife, there was dual purpose to his actions. To both hurt and meet out vengeance on Laura, but also to deceive his new wife into thinking that everything is okay...until he can wear her down.
|
|
|
Post by justflyingin on May 4, 2009 0:33:51 GMT -5
This story is horrible-- and also confusing. In every evangelical or fundamentalist church I know, Dale would be disfellowshipped for living with a woman outside marriage-- even if it was only for a month. Was he still going to church at the time? Did he manage to keep it a secret somehow? I cannot understand how a man who would be so legalistic that he would turn away from Christmas as a "pagan holiday" (an issue on which even fundamentalists differ widely) would then turn around and live with a woman outside marriage-- an absolute no-no for all fundamentalists! I just can't understand how he could justify this to himself. Every indication is that he's got some sort of mental issues, of course. But why no church has ever called him on this behavior is beyond me. These are my thoughts exactly. This is terrible! How has he justified this behavior? Ignoring the plain teaching of scripture (immorality is sin) for some sort of "derived application" (can't celebrate Christmas)? Oh yeah...he's been doing this for years! Ignoring the clear command of scripture of "fathers are to provide for the family" (leaving for Brazil alone) while believing in an application of "children are a blessing" as interpreted "no birth control." I guess it is "same song, different verse".
|
|
|
Post by purpleshoes on May 4, 2009 10:08:34 GMT -5
arietty, I think that's very insightful about the whole Don't Be Too Busy for God thing being a bunch of men who aren't working eighteen hours a day preparing for a holiday chiding a bunch of women who are just trying to take care of their families. I grew up in a largely secular family, but work still fell pretty clearly into men's and women's spheres. My mother usually started planning and budgeting for Christmas around July. My dad could usually be depended upon to spend six hours setting the tree up and that was it. And my dad's a good man who cares about this kind of thing. (Though even with him being a good guy, heaven help us all if my mother decided she didn't want to spend three days making a turkey dinner that only my dad would eat anyway.)
|
|
|
Post by enlightenmentgirl on May 4, 2009 10:43:35 GMT -5
Tapapi wrote: I was also thinking that Dale's new relationship is especially tricky for him as a controlling bastard because he NEEDS for this new wife to happily take care of so many children that are not even hers. So the usual honeymoon period an abuser allows for is likely to be extended until or unless he is damn sure that she's bonded enough with the kids to be happy about caring for them or really sad to leave them behind. [Obviously the main reason this guy is keeping the children is to hurt Laura--I can't imagine that a guy who was so clueless about his children's lives before the divorce is suddenly so attached to them that he really wants them for their own sake. That in itself is heartbreaking for the kids. In this case, the arrows are truly being used as a weapon.]
I so agree with this and other posters who sees this as a way to a)hurt Laura and b) lull this new woman into his life. If he had sat down with her before Christmas and their wedding and had told her his "no Christmas" beliefs, that would have been a huge red flag for her to up and leave, and he can't have that. Who's going to grind and bake the bread by hand? Who's going to watch the kids? Dale can't do it because he needs time to sleep!
As others have said, once he has her legally his, he'll start his old tricks again. Actually, I wonder what would happen five years from now if his new wife says, "I just can't do the big Christmases anymore. Can't we downscale it?" I bet good money Dale would suddenly want the biggest, bestest Christmases EVAH to make up for all those years his fanatical ex made his kids do without. Because, let's be honest, he will dump a lot of the blame at Laura's doorstep, even if it is a blatant contradiction of what the older kids remember. I hope Laura will remind the kids when they tell her about the awesome Christmases at Dad's , that that's what she wanted for them but Dad had stopped it.
So sorry about this, Laura.
|
|
|
Post by willow on May 4, 2009 13:04:55 GMT -5
I've joined this forum simply to say. I've been out of this movement for more than a decade. Happily Divorced. I thought my ex was the biggest jerk in the universe. I never thought would move him to the 2nd position on that list but I am. Dale takes the cake for major abusive jerkdom. A list of two...amazing.
|
|
|
Post by decamom on May 4, 2009 16:29:33 GMT -5
I want to thank all of you for your sympathy and disgust on my part. It's strange to me now that I didn't put up more of a fight at the time. I guess I was just so beaten down that I didn't even think that I had the option of fighting for what I wanted. When I pointed out to my ex that he had a woman living with him in the home and they weren't married and that this was a VERY poor example of Christian Purity for our kids, he told me they were not sleeping together. He was sleeping on the couch. RIGHT!? I pointed out that no one really knew what went on after all the children went to bed now did they....and doesn't that bible exhort Christians to "avoid the very appearance of evil..."? He took his usual tack and said nothing. Recently I was visiting my children and one of the younger girls had a ballet class (forbidden when I was there!) so I attended it with my ex's knowledge. Afterwards, my ex's wife, Loretta , stood out on the sidewalk, in front of two of my kids and yelled at me and threatened me that if I posted any of the pictures I took, which had her little daughter in them as well as mine, I would "hear from her lawyer!!!" She says I am emotionally unstable. She says she is a Christian. Here she is screaming at me in public in front of my kids. I just calmly told her that she was not in charge of me and walked away. Can't help but think that I was the Christlike one in that instance. And that's not the first time she yelled and screamed at me. UGH! My poor kids...I can't protect them from her screaming at them when she gets angry. Laura
|
|
|
Post by Vyckie D. Garrison on May 4, 2009 18:40:08 GMT -5
I want to thank all of you for your sympathy and disgust on my part. It's strange to me now that I didn't put up more of a fight at the time. I guess I was just so beaten down that I didn't even think that I had the option of fighting for what I wanted. Laura ~ I certainly understand being in that place in which it just doesn't occur to you that you could fight for your own preferences ~ as a Christian, your preferences aren't really supposed to matter anyway, right? And if you do have preferences ~ you certainly should never *fight* for those preferences ~ that'd be just unthinkable. Funny though ~ there was a time when the pastor of a fundamentalist church we attended for a while brought up the topic of Christmas ~ and he made it very clear that he was against the entire celebration. Warren mentioned it afterwards ~ and he really wanted to cut down, or even eliminate our Christmas traditions ~ mostly because he felt like it was too much work, too expensive, and ~ I think, because Christmas was my turn to really make an impression on the kids. Since I really hated Thanksgiving (because that's when Scott first cheated on me) ~ I always did a knock-out Christmas ~ incorporating all kinds of fun traditions, special Christmas devotions ~ we pretty much put everything else on hold and spent at least two weeks "doing Christmas" ~ and even though it was all totally centered on the birth of Jesus, we had the works ~ TONS of decorations, trees (more than one ~ sometimes we'd set up all four of them), lights, candles, cookies, caroling, presents ~ I always went all out. So when Warren started to be influenced by the pastor to scale back or eliminate our Christmas celebration ~ I found an article in Credenda/Agenda by Doug Wilson which very strongly supported the celebration of Christmas and debunked the "it's a pagan holiday" line of thought ~ and I read that article to Warren and wouldn't budge an inch on Christmas. A few years later, when he heard from Dale about how your family did not celebrate Christmas, Warren brought it up again ~ and I dug out that article (tried to find a link to the online article, but without success) and read it to him again ~ and then I told him that Dale was an ultra-spiritual guru with a humongous god-complex and he'd better just forget about emulating him because the guy was seriously messed up. This last Christmas (our first Christmas without Warren), we didn't do nearly as much ~ mostly because it was always so about Jesus and I wanted to re-think how to do it now that I'm not a huge Jesus fan. We still did all the decorations and presents (instead of individual gifts, I put all the money into buying a new TV and X-box) ~ but the kids did let me know that they missed our big Christmas celebrations ~ and so this year, I'm planning to do all the old traditions that I still feel comfortable with and add some new things that we wouldn't have done as Christians.
|
|
|
Post by arietty on May 4, 2009 23:45:18 GMT -5
This thread has really affected me, more than most.
I've been thinking about the insanity of a man forbidding Xmas or some other thing and then going all out and embracing it with the second wife. What gets to me is that this is SO familiar, I've seen it with my own ex and I've seen it with other people. I think that these declarations and ideological proclamations are really all about control and the man making himself feel more spiritual and in charge. With wife no. 2 that need will still be there and it will take a different form because as has been pointed out the insanity takes some years to brainwash or intimidate a family into accepting. My ex was very aggressive with me and the kids. With his string of live in girl friends he has been much more sneaky and passive aggressive, sickly sweet talking in his "religious voice" to their faces but spewing swear words about them to the kids once the girlfriend is no longer present. I have no doubt in my mind he's indulging in varying secret sins behind the girlfriend's back because that will make him feel more in control. So something like canceling christmas was a control point with the first wife but won't work with the second wife BUT.. there will be other things.
As to the double moral standards, it's a continuing mystery to me. My ex has had several girlfriends, two living with him in the 10+ years since the divorce. He has continued to attend his fundy churches and his parachurch activities. I can just imagine what a pariah (a fallen woman!!) I would be if I showed up at one of those places week after week while "living in sin". I do think the hand of judgment definitely falls heavier on women in these places. Part of that is simply that it's easier to judge her because (and I suspect this is a dynamic with my ex) people may be too intimidated to judge the man. Another element is that men DO see a woman who appears to be carrying on her life as she sees fit without their permission as a threat. If this woman can divorce her husband and take up with someone else then how do they know their own wife's grumblings won't lead down that track? It freaks them out. A woman outside of their control is something to be very wary of. A man "living in sin" is no personal threat to the church males.
Laura my words to you in regards to your children are to always offer them a place of freedom and love in your home and your heart and in all your dealings with them. It took several of my children some years to actually see me as the person that offered that and their father for what he was. In the year after the divorce I had my 7 year old's teacher call me up and tell me that he was praying during devotions time that "mommy and daddy would get back together because otherwise mommy will go to hell". This is what his father had told him. The teacher knew there was some bad stuff going on from the father's end. My oldest daughter was emotionally manipulated in the extreme and viewed me as an evil, hellbound woman who had "destroyed our family" (again, the father's words). It was time, love, freedom and the sheer contrast of his home and my home that allowed them to see the truth. Each child had their own timetable of shaking free the religious and emotional pressures and coming into freedom. Always keep your doors open in every possible way, heart, home, communication. My oldest daughter used to RAGE at me (she was a teenager), about the family destroyed, her world ended, how God is against divorce, how embarrassed she was at school.. and I honestly felt that allowing myself to be the object of her rage was my gift to her. Because I was the safe person, the person she COULD vent her pain at. There was no way on earth she could vent anything at her father. She has a freedom with me (even if it was to be angry) that her father would never give her. She is an adult now and has apologized many times for all that and thanked me for leaving many times as well.. we are very close and she does not speak to her father at all. It took a long time but the power of being the one who offers a healthy relationship won out over manipulation and control tactics.
Anyway.. my heart goes out to you very much.
|
|
|
Post by jadehawk on May 5, 2009 1:10:14 GMT -5
Recently I was visiting my children and one of the younger girls had a ballet class (forbidden when I was there!) so I attended it with my ex's knowledge. Afterwards, my ex's wife, Loretta , stood out on the sidewalk, in front of two of my kids and yelled at me and threatened me that if I posted any of the pictures I took, which had her little daughter in them as well as mine, I would "hear from her lawyer!!!" She says I am emotionally unstable. She says she is a Christian. Here she is screaming at me in public in front of my kids. I just calmly told her that she was not in charge of me and walked away. Can't help but think that I was the Christlike one in that instance. And that's not the first time she yelled and screamed at me. UGH! My poor kids...I can't protect them from her screaming at them when she gets angry. Laura oh shit. the husband of a friend of mine has an ex-wife like that. it nearly ruined their marriage, drove my friend mental to the point where she had to take anti-depressants and go to therapy, and resulted in my friend's husband having to give up all rights to the children he had with her just to protect his new family. I really do hope your children won't have to stay in such a toxic environment for long (or at least, that this Loretta only reacts mental to you, not to everything and everybody)
|
|
aimai
Full Member
Posts: 172
|
Post by aimai on May 5, 2009 6:43:22 GMT -5
Arietty, That is just one of the most powerful testimonials to motherhood I've ever read, and to the freedom of the human spirit. Its sort of what I was trying to tell Lectio in my post on her divorce. Breaking up a marriage that contains children is a huge emotional, financial, moral, and social burden on the woman. And the kids and society are going to rage at her for it. But as you so beautifully put it in the end the children will know and value the path that you have shown them—and the safe haven that you have constructed for them. And that safe haven doesn't have to be physical, it can be just the knowledge that there is one person, outside of their “home” who loves and cherishes and respects them just the way they are and for the dreams they have. Especially in the context of these narrow, religious, bigoted households knowing that there is somewhere with a library, with a radio, with tv, with christmas, with unconditional love is going to be so important down the road. But there's going to be a huge thicket of thorny grief and rage and fear to get through first for all the kids. If we had a “starred post” system and not just Karma I'd vote Arietty's post “best post” for the day.
aimai
|
|
|
Post by sleepybones on May 5, 2009 14:02:29 GMT -5
Wow - I've been lurking for some time and, like others have said, this post has prompted me to register.
I've read pretty much everything you've both posted, and while it was certainly engaging, I retained a certain sense of separateness from it.
Until this post. I was getting tears in my eyes reading this. Such sorrow and rage on your behalf. It touches on a nerve for any mother. (Perhaps I should say "any decent parent".) Because we all have dreams for our children and for our relationship with them, not even necessarily about Christmas, per se, but that's usually a big one.
I'm not sure whether Dale was intentional with this, but sometimes I wonder if anyone could be this intentional. Seriously, if a person could be sensitive enough to understand what would hurt you the deepest, then you'd think they'd be sensitive enough not to do it.
Even the kind of sociopath I've heard about (the kind who can read people really well and act the part of a truly wonderful person but lead a secret evil life) - how could a person like that really understand a mother's heart in a way that they would know to take exactly the steps that Dale did here? (Note: I'm not trying to imply that Dale is a sociopath. If I had to make a diagnosis, I would say "profound asshattery".)
Sorry if I'm being a bit unclear. I'm not saying that I can't imagine someone intending such harm to another person. I think people are capable of unbelievably cruel intentions. I just can't imagine that such an evil mindset could have the capacity to conceive of this way of hurting someone, because it would require a degree of actual empathy.
Anyway, I hope your kids see the light/truth in the end. There's a good chance that they will. At least some of them.
|
|
|
Post by krwordgazer on May 6, 2009 16:01:34 GMT -5
I agree with Sleepybones. For Dale to have changed Christmas for new wife, as a way to deliberately hurt Laura, would imply that he actually thinks about someone besides himself. And I don't think he does.
Dale does what's Dale thinks is best for Dale, always.
|
|
|
Post by tapati on May 6, 2009 16:14:12 GMT -5
I was thinking since I said the other day that Dale does what is best for Dale, that I should qualify it with "what Dale thinks is best for Dale." It's an important distinction. Ultimately it would be better for Dale to learn compassion and act on it. Unlikely, but better for Dale.
|
|
|
Post by anotheramy on May 6, 2009 19:17:05 GMT -5
I just can't imagine that such an evil mindset could have the capacity to conceive of this way of hurting someone, because it would require a degree of actual empathy. This is a very good point.
|
|
|
Post by philosimphy on May 16, 2009 1:05:49 GMT -5
Wow, Dale's a prick.
|
|
|
Post by philosophia on May 21, 2009 15:59:44 GMT -5
I can totally relate to this. My husband sent out the pamphlet Holy days and Holidays to our relatives when we were no longer going to celebrate any of the PAGAN RITUALS. This broke the hearts of our parents, especially. At the house it was a matter of course, but the memories of my own childhood holidays was troubling, some of the fondest of my childhood.
We are not divorced yet, but on Easter this year I gave each of the kids a little Easter Basket full of candy. They were thrilled! They had NEVER experienced that before! He did not say a word. He was angry. But, by george, I was gaining strength by not giving a darn anymore what anyone else thought about it!
Oh, I can so totally relate. We were Christmas free for 16 years. :-(
|
|
|
Post by suzannedeaz on May 25, 2009 18:07:33 GMT -5
So when your ex celebrated Christmas with his new girfriend did you confront him about his beliefs that he used to keep you all from celebrating it as a family years before? I hope you confronted him. If so what did he say?
|
|
chloe
New Member
Posts: 37
|
Post by chloe on Jun 26, 2009 22:23:15 GMT -5
This, along with a number of other stories that have been shared here, reminds me of a very old story. No one knows for certain what the original version is, but Boccaccio, Petrarch and Chaucer all wrote versions in the fourteenth century. Because they wrote in Italian, Latin and Middle English, the following link is to an translation of a version printed in Perrault's fairy tales instead. www.pitt.edu/~dash/perrault09.htmlThe essence of the story is that a King distrusts women and doesn't want to marry, but he needs to produce an heir. He finds a peasant girl who is perfectly virtuous and marries her under the condition that she obey him unconditionally (in Chaucer's version, she promises to obey him "in thought and deed"). But the more virtuous and submissive she is, the more the king is possessed with the desire to break her virtue by making more and more painful demands. The "happy ending" is sort of present in the older versions, but the story-tellers are actually quite appalled by the husband's behavior, and even though there is a lesson about the virtue of "patience" in wives, no one seems to believe the tale is reasonable. In fact, in the medieval version, he actually pretends to have both of her children murdered. And she gives them over willingly. Children's editions of Perrault (or the Grimm Brothers, who also include this story) thankfully no longer include the tale.
|
|
|
Post by luneargentee on Jun 27, 2009 0:55:35 GMT -5
Perrault often wrote stories slanted in a way that were intended to teach young women to be obediant, accepting, faithful wives, no matter how poorly treated by their often older husbands. Both Perrault and the Grimm Brothers rewrote the stories they heard with their own attitudes. Also, many of the stories were so frightening that they were softened and softened again as time passed, losing much of the warnings embedded in the stories. Terri Windling is a wonderful writer and editor. She has edited a number of books of fairy tales, some brand new, some updates of old stories. There's a wonderful site with hundreds of fairy tales: www.surlalunefairytales.com
|
|
chloe
New Member
Posts: 37
|
Post by chloe on Jun 27, 2009 19:58:12 GMT -5
I'm going to disagree with you slightly about Perrault (though not the Grimms). I think that his tales were partly for shock value and that the intended audience was adults. He had his son perform them at salons and took familiar tales, giving them either "shocking" endings (his Red Riding Hood)*, or he completely undermined the apparent lesson of the tale with a witty little moral at the end (Bluebeard, for example). If examined closely, almost all of his tales are ambiguous, with both a socially acceptable meaning and another, equally plausible meaning that undermines social convention.
But if you truly want a version that encourages obedience, etc, in women, the first fifty years of Disney pretty much covers it. Then they started to shift. One of my favorite moments in grad school was when a terribly nasty professor tried to insist that Disney's "Beauty and the Beast" was a politically correct violation of the original tale. I raised my hand and asked him if he'd read the original. No, he'd not. He'd never heard of Madame de Villeneuve or the fact that the original tale is a call for female education equal to that of men.**
Generally speaking, the violent tales stay violent for 200-300 years before they started to be revised, with the exception of some Italian versions, such as Sleeping Beauty, which were revised pretty quickly.***
*Lots of people have insisted on the that the "original" Little Red Riding-hood was eaten and not rescued. But there were now so many folk versions of the tale, none of which permanently killed the child, that I personally think that Perrault altered a familiar folk tale for literary effect, and most other writers failed to follow his lead. But that's a personal interpretation based on the way he altered other stories, not a generally agreed upon fact.
**Folklore scholars would call Cupid and Psyche the first version, of course, but I don't think most people make the connection.
***Adding footnotes to everything is a very bad habit and makes you look ridiculous. Note, however, that this did not stop me.
|
|
|
Post by xara on Jun 28, 2009 8:05:32 GMT -5
The way this thread has gone lately reminds me of the book Women Who Run with the Wolves by Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés. I don't remember a lot of it as I read it for fun over 15 years ago and then loaned out my copy and never got it back. But I remember she talked about several of these stories, and how they changed over time and what the message in each story was for women. It was a very interesting book. In college we also read Don't Bet On The Prince which is a collection of feminist fairy tales edited by Jack Zipes. I remember there were some interesting stories in there as well, though again it has been years since I read them. I might still have my copy but am not sure I do.
|
|