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Post by Vyckie D. Garrison on Aug 20, 2010 13:46:09 GMT -5
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Post by Vyckie D. Garrison on Aug 20, 2010 14:00:40 GMT -5
LOL ~ as soon as I posted this article, the Amazon ads started trying to sell peanut butter products to NLQ readers! I'm waiting for the mouse traps to show up in the ads too ...
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jo
Junior Member
Posts: 73
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Post by jo on Aug 20, 2010 14:28:22 GMT -5
So correct, Vickie. My marriage never fell apart because he failed to LOVE me. He loved me dearly. He loves me dearly STILL. It wasn't his love nor his willingness to lay down his life that led us down the nightmare of Patriarchy.
I'm actually going to C&P how I described it somewhere else. Sometimes, its still very hard for me to talk about where I've been and what I've faced now. Sometimes its just easier for me to borrow my own words to explain what Patriarchy did to my marriage and to my family.
Patriarchal marriage is dangerous. First, there is NO accountability to the husband. If the husband is ungodly or inappropriate, then you are to wait for God to deal with him. So basically, a husband can tell his wife to do ANYTHING he wants. The potential to abuse this authority with NO consequences is massive and scary. Only a very few men would not become abusive in some manner or another. There is no safety for a wife if her husband becomes abusive. There is no real accountability for men.
Patriarchal leaders are very open that a wife should never, ever concern herself with what accountability or oversight might exist for a husband, because that would be dishonoring his godhead in her life to do so.
Now, that was not the aspect we accepted. Even at our most consistent with Patriarchy, we were a poor example of Patriarchy. It was easy for me to see the fallacy and danger in this concept from the start. However, we did believe it was the husband's job to provide for his family at all costs, and the wife's job to maintain the home and support the husband at all costs. And, in embracing this, we not only lost accountability for both of us, but we diverged and lived parallel lives rather than being truly joined as one.
I carried the full burden of the household. I maintained all of the schooling, all of the care for the medical needs, all of the behavioral issues, all of the feeding and cleaning and maintenance of a large, special needs family. It was a lonely an stressful world. And, the babies kept coming, knocking my ability to manage everything off at the feet yet again. But, the final blow was the Autistic, Bipolar, VIOLENT Cystic Fibrosis child who nearly KILLED me in the last pregnancy.
For his part, DH was expected to shoulder the full financial burden of this ever-growing, special needs family. when he had jobs that were unhealthy environments, he was not free to leave them. When finances were struggling, he was responsible for it. He had no one to help with this burden, no one to talk to, no one who began to understand. Isolated an feeling like he could fail his family at any moment, his burdens combined with his mental health issues and his childhood abuse led him down a path where he medicated his stress and fears with an addiction. That addiction nearly destroyed our family and our marriage.
There never should have been a his versus hers in the marriage. His happiness should not have been my burden The selfishness and isolation of Patriarchy should have never existed for him. But, he also should have been able to carry worth in the family beyond his paycheck. He was a lonely and forgotten monarch. I was a beaten down and exhausted serf. And, because Patriarchy told me to put a smile on it, and never burden him with MY failings, there was no checks and balances for either of us to truly love the other unconditionally and freely. There was no opportunity for either of us to truly support an love the other as we should have been able to do.
I was the PERFECT wife. I put his needs before mine always. I hide the challenges and struggles of actually providing for the emotional needs of this family far away from him. I structured the family around his career. I sacrificed myself in every way I was told to do so. I was the picture perfect wife. And, the world called me blessed.
If my DH had gone the normal route, he would have been abusive or simply dismissive, which is almost guaranteed with this marriage outlook. He was fundamentally a decent man and went down the road of self-destruction and addiction in his own efforts to control what this dynamic brought to him.
Neither of us was more valuable than the other. Neither of us should have sacrificed permanently, nor carried an expectation that we could do whatever we wanted. We should have been fully partnered, fully accountable and fully joined with each other in all things. We should have both put each other as the priority of our lives and honored and respected the other while also holding onto our own person hood as just as valuable.
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Post by krwordgazer on Aug 20, 2010 14:50:03 GMT -5
Jo, thanks for that story. It is in accordance with what so many other wives and husbands are saying.
I sometimes say it this way on Christian websites, about the Adam and Eve story:
The woman is to be the man's "face-to-face strong aid." That's what "help meet" really means in the original text. The man and the woman together were to rule the other creatures, and thus, the man would not be alone. When the man began to rule the woman, he was relegating her to the status of the other creatures-- thus rendering himself alone again. God had specifically said that this was "not good."
When Christians practice patriarchy, they are taking something God said was "not good" and saying it is God's divine plan. They are perpetuating the bad relationship dynamic created by the Fall, as if it were what Christ came to give us. No wonder it doesn't work!
I'm going to re-post here a comment I made on the blog:
Thanks for the sweet words, Vyckie!
You know, I just made a connection– these teachings are just another form of utopianism. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, people thought they could create utopian societies where all of life’s problems would be solved and everyone would be blissfully happy. The only problem with making people happy was the people themselves. They needed to be fixed and changed and molded to fit the ideal, so the ideal society would actually work. But it never did, somehow. . .
The result? Complete subordination of individual autonomy and worth, to the utopian ideal. And nobody was happy.
Idealized, fantasized perfect happiness, somehow just doesn’t work. Apparently part of the reason is that in order to be perfectly “happy,” what you can’t be is free.
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Post by Sierra on Aug 20, 2010 15:29:55 GMT -5
The woman is to be the man's "face-to-face strong aid." That's what "help meet" really means in the original text. The man and the woman together were to rule the other creatures, and thus, the man would not be alone. When the man began to rule the woman, he was relegating her to the status of the other creatures-- thus rendering himself alone again. God had specifically said that this was "not good." When Christians practice patriarchy, they are taking something God said was "not good" and saying it is God's divine plan. They are perpetuating the bad relationship dynamic created by the Fall, as if it were what Christ came to give us. No wonder it doesn't work! This, and you, are awesome.
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Post by humbletigger on Aug 20, 2010 18:52:54 GMT -5
Amazing post, Vickye, and also the link to the previous posts. Jo, could I link to your post from my blog? So well put, how this patriarchal teaching destroys good marriages and ruins good people's lives.
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Post by sandra on Aug 20, 2010 19:52:53 GMT -5
Religion gets so hung up on hierarchy--the relative primacy of various persons of the Trinity, ecclesiastical politics and power, and submitting to "proper authority" (however that gets defined by your group). Bah! All that has ever led to is confusing roles for real people, ever-more-hair-splitting interpretations of rules, and lots and lots of pain. The whole of Christianity is based on the person of Jesus, right? Did he ever submit to anyone? Did he not break absolutely every rule supposedly given by God in the Hebrew Scripture? Did he not scandalously mingle, eat, and cohabitate with some of the most despised people in his society? Did he ever preach a message of "thou shalts" that wasn't part of a larger message of "love one anothers"? How can we ever think people can love anyone when there is no acceptance of actual people and not simply for the roles they have been assigned. I wrote a series of blog posts chroniclesofachristianheretic.blogspot.com/2010/02/love-in-fundamentalism.html that grew out a conversation I had on this very topic of marital roles and submission. I can't say I convinced anyone of the absurdity of their position but I surely cleared a lot of skeletons out of my own closet about having grown up fundy with an overbearing father/preacher and a "yes, dear" mother.
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jo
Junior Member
Posts: 73
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Post by jo on Aug 20, 2010 20:29:48 GMT -5
Link away, humbletigger. Although, if you really want to drive the point home, you can refer people to my blog--a rather raw and emotionally intensive look at the REAL aftermath of Patriarchy and addiction. www.womanreclaimed.blogspot.comIt, like I, is a work in progress on a journey I'm approaching the one year mark of having begun...even though I never signed up nor intended to be here.
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Post by kindaconfused on Aug 20, 2010 22:06:13 GMT -5
Thank you for this story Vicki, I don't think I have heard it before, at least not in so many words.
As an 'outsider' this raises questions in my mind:
Do you believe that all QF marriages are like yours?
Do you think it is at all possible to have a healthy QF marriage or are they all only good on the surface?
IF you and Warren both realized the horrible spiral QF lifestyle put you in, why couldn't you both just step out of it and work on having a non-QF marriage? Is that possible?
and lastly.....
Do you think the Duggars are like this? I don't know if that's a fair question, perhaps if TLC had not stepped into their lives and made them multi-millionaires it would be, but like or not, money does change everything
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Post by km on Aug 20, 2010 23:44:48 GMT -5
You know, I'm surprised people don't say more about Lindvall around here. How big of a deal is he in these circles anyway? And how widespread is the whole "betrothal" thing?
I remember someone mailing some Lindvall tapes to me when we were both adolescents/young teenagers... And thinking, "oh, well, of course, this seems like the most logical extension of courtship." Ugh...
And then I knew these family friends who got rid of their TV for years because Lindvall convinced them that TVs are like idols... And an alien civilization just making contact with us would assume we worship the television because all the chairs point at it... This was an actual point.
Oh, and there was also the thing about not letting his kids play sports because... Competition is bad? What was that one about? It seems antithetical to the kind of free market ideology/libertarianism that one assumes he also believes in, but eh...
I recently went to Lindvall's website. Despite being a little less tech-savvy than what we see out of bigger names like Doug Phillips, I see he's still promoting his brand of extremism everywhere he turns. And he seems...harsher to me than many?
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Post by madame on Aug 21, 2010 1:32:18 GMT -5
Great post, Vyckie. When you said this: So in other words ~ the failure was not in the teachings of Patriarchy ~ but in our practice of it ~ we were doing it wrong.
I remembered this happening to me too.
It's all very well to tell husbands to love their wives and then define a love that doesn't include respect, assumes he always knows better than her, and is more paternalistic than fraternal. How often have your husbands told you "I love you, just trust me", leaving you with questions and very reasonable fears to just suck up? It's not just disrespectful of our needs, it'S also so patronising!
Husbands are also taught that love sometimes means not giving their wives what they want, challenging them, holding their ground, etc... these husbands believe we want a man who has the upper hand and the last word, and that that makes us feel safe, as long as he is not being "self-seeking" Yeah... sure.
Totally off topic. Have any of you noticed that comp-patrio men are patronising and condescending towards women? It's like they are talking to children instead of grown women. They make this huge effort to sound "loving and caring", but they just come across as patronising. Maybe it's just me....
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Post by madame on Aug 21, 2010 1:36:21 GMT -5
KM
I just visited Lindvall's site. Creepy! Just that picture at the top, of the man with his walking stick walking a few steps ahead of his children and wife put me off. These patrio men do group women and children together! Ack!
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Post by nikita on Aug 21, 2010 1:55:00 GMT -5
Have any of you noticed that comp-patrio men are patronising and condescending towards women? It's like they are talking to children instead of grown women. They make this huge effort to sound "loving and caring", but they just come across as patronising. Maybe it's just me.... It's not just you. I always get the feeling I am being 'handled'. Mostly I notice this in men (and some women in traditional male authority roles such as physicians and lead attorneys) who think they are so very much above you in some way, that you are a child to them in status or thinking. It comes off patronizing because it is patronizing. But it's just some men and some women in those roles. But I have yet to meet a comp/patriarchal man who doesn't do this. They may be out there somewhere, but I haven't run into them. Somebody gave me a book when I was a teenager written by a patriarchally inclined doctor about women's bodies and sex and childbirth and the entire thing was couched in that same manner, with cutsie little names for chapters and a lot of implied 'there there's and 'my dear's to the point it was enraging to me. And I think he had no idea that he was coming off that way, it was just the very air he breathed and had lived his whole life, to view his female patients like that. I thought it was an affliction of men of an earlier generation. But it seems to be in full swing in the present patriarchal/complementarian circles.
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Post by nikita on Aug 21, 2010 2:00:00 GMT -5
I checked out Lindvall's site too. Ick.
I read his article on 'child chastening' and loved how he explained the difference between chastening and child abuse: motivation. It's not abuse if you are properly motivated. I mean, he goes into more detail about this in following paragraphs, but that intro really jumps out at you. He also alleges that since the bible talks about 'stripes' that it's okay to hit with a rod hard enough to leave marks. That it's biblical to do that and not only acceptable but to be desired.
I didn't see anything about marriage there, just courtship. Was it hiding from me?
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Post by madame on Aug 21, 2010 3:32:26 GMT -5
I have an awful time reading ANYTHING by these teachers because of the excessive use of the word authority. There must always be one who is "in authority". For more on Lindvall, here's an "assault on Lindvall" by a very patriarchal person. myweb.tiscali.co.uk/largerhope/Courtship%20&%20Betrothal%20Essays/God%20in%20the%20back.htmLindvall says that God sits in the backseat while Daddy owns his daughter's hearts and dictates what they should and shouldn't do. Sons are extensions of their fathers. He teaches that obedience means adopting father's beliefs, Biblical interpretation, etc.... Even extrabiblical notions. Failure to do so is rebellion and he advises parents to shun sons who rebell. When he advises parents to shun (adult) sons who rebell, he doesn't even listen to the children's side of the story. He doesn't think he has to, because there is no mention of listening to the rebellious son's side in that passage where parents are instructed to stone rebellious children. Daughters belong to their daddies. There is no talk whatsoever about mom. This man is beyond ick!
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Post by nikita on Aug 21, 2010 4:58:02 GMT -5
Thank you for that link. I find it fascinating that when patriarchalists challenge the rigidity or extremism of another patriarchalist they never go very far. It's 'those people over there who over do it' or who read the scriptures wrong, but 'not me, who believes almost everything those other people do and go almost as far but not quite that far...See how reasonable I am?' Yet they say almost the same things, and for almost the same reasons.
The author here doesn't doubt for a minute that patriarchy and headship and submission and authority are all very important and that the OT should have such tremendous influence on our lives even under the new covenant, but simply thinks that Lindvall has 'gone too far'.
This is one of the reasons Kristen's series of articles is so important, because it tackles these subjects from inside and with scriptural reasoning, but does not assume that the basic premise is also sound. She challenges the basic premise.
I also love the way these people constantly cry 'sola scriptura' yet add so many extra-biblical layers and interpretations on every thing that you would be hard pressed to get from a simple reading of scripture what they do, without the prior teachings to 'lead you' in their peculiar interpretations. It's always 'sola scriptura' plus their must-have series of books on what the scriptures really mean.
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Post by grandmalou on Aug 21, 2010 7:31:07 GMT -5
Religion gets so hung up on hierarchy--the relative primacy of various persons of the Trinity, ecclesiastical politics and power, and submitting to "proper authority" (however that gets defined by your group). Bah! All that has ever led to is confusing roles for real people, ever-more-hair-splitting interpretations of rules, and lots and lots of pain. The whole of Christianity is based on the person of Jesus, right? Did he ever submit to anyone? Did he not break absolutely every rule supposedly given by God in the Hebrew Scripture? Did he not scandalously mingle, eat, and cohabitate with some of the most despised people in his society? Did he ever preach a message of "thou shalts" that wasn't part of a larger message of "love one anothers"? How can we ever think people can love anyone when there is no acceptance of actual people and not simply for the roles they have been assigned. I wrote a series of blog posts chroniclesofachristianheretic.blogspot.com/2010/02/love-in-fundamentalism.html that grew out a conversation I had on this very topic of marital roles and submission. I can't say I convinced anyone of the absurdity of their position but I surely cleared a lot of skeletons out of my own closet about having grown up fundy with an overbearing father/preacher and a "yes, dear" mother. Welcome, Sandra, and thank you for this post. I can't wait to go to your blog spot and read what you've written! But have to go to work in a little bit. This particular thread has triggerd so many good posts! WOW! Oh, do I ever remember that "Yes, Dear" BS...sometimes think if I hear it again I will hurl! And the other one like it..."Yes, Dad..." with eyes firmly fixed upon the floor, never looking up. ACK!
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Post by madame on Aug 21, 2010 7:32:10 GMT -5
You're right, Nikita, Kristen's articles get to the heart of the matter, while these "critiques" only scratch the surface. People like Lindvall are probably not as dangerous, precisely because of their extremism. The more moderate patriarchs are the dangerous ones because everything they propose sounds good as long as you accept the basics. As you said, the foundations of hierarchy, authority and submission need to be torn down because they are not even "literal" Bible.
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Post by km on Aug 21, 2010 8:40:44 GMT -5
I have an awful time reading ANYTHING by these teachers because of the excessive use of the word authority. There must always be one who is "in authority". For more on Lindvall, here's an "assault on Lindvall" by a very patriarchal person. myweb.tiscali.co.uk/largerhope/Courtship%20&%20Betrothal%20Essays/God%20in%20the%20back.htmLindvall says that God sits in the backseat while Daddy owns his daughter's hearts and dictates what they should and shouldn't do. Sons are extensions of their fathers. He teaches that obedience means adopting father's beliefs, Biblical interpretation, etc.... Even extrabiblical notions. Failure to do so is rebellion and he advises parents to shun sons who rebell. When he advises parents to shun (adult) sons who rebell, he doesn't even listen to the children's side of the story. He doesn't think he has to, because there is no mention of listening to the rebellious son's side in that passage where parents are instructed to stone rebellious children. Daughters belong to their daddies. There is no talk whatsoever about mom. This man is beyond ick! They forget things like...the parable of the Prodigal Son. It's unfortunate that people like this are more interested in OT passages about stoning and retribution.
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Post by km on Aug 21, 2010 8:48:02 GMT -5
Thank you for that link. I find it fascinating that when patriarchalists challenge the rigidity or extremism of another patriarchalist they never go very far. It's ' those people over there who over do it' or who read the scriptures wrong, but 'not me, who believes almost everything those other people do and go almost as far but not quite that far...See how reasonable I am?' Yet they say almost the same things, and for almost the same reasons. The author here doesn't doubt for a minute that patriarchy and headship and submission and authority are all very important and that the OT should have such tremendous influence on our lives even under the new covenant, but simply thinks that Lindvall has 'gone too far'. And this seems to happen all the time. If it were me, the fact that I was aligned and associated with people like this would give me pause and make me reconsider my thinking. But, yeah, these people love to go on and on and on about how so-and-so is "caught in the bondage of legalism" in spite of the fact that there is very little difference between the critic and the critiqued in the eyes of just about everyone else. In my experience, QF people love nothing more to decry the slightly-more-hardline among them as "legalistic." I guess the reasoning is that this gives them the sheen of "moderation" or something... Not that they need to appear moderate, mind you, what with being crucified daily with Christ and all that.
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Post by coleslaw on Aug 21, 2010 11:52:22 GMT -5
I've been reading Elizabeth Gilbert's book Committed and she sheds some interesting light on the difference between family values in the Old Testament and the New Testament. Since the book is primarily a memoir, she doesn't give footnotes, but does say she relies primarily on Stephanie Koontz and Nancy Cott as her sources for the history of marriage in the western world. At any rate, she says She goes on to say that the New Testament She goes on to say Of course, people kept getting married, through what she calls "various improvised styles" and then registered themselves in village or city documents as being married. They were also able to file for divorce in the "surprisingly permissive early European courts". I'm leaving out a lot and trying to condense a chapter or so, but if Gilbert represents her sources correctly, this history would explain why family-oriented QF-er's rely more on the Old Testament than the New.
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Post by amyrose on Aug 21, 2010 12:11:47 GMT -5
I read Lindvall's articles on courtship and betrothal. All of his explanations of what scriptures mean make me think of a line from The Princess Bride: "I don't think that means what you think it means".
I particularly liked the part where he says that just because Jesus wore robes and sandals, that certainly doesn't mean men have to wear that today. It's outdated.
All right, then. But you expect that relationships and marriages should be conducted by first Century Palestinian Hebrew standards? That is not outdated?
The man says that a couple making sure they are emotionally compatible is somehow equivalent to the "sin" of living together. Seriously?
But then, I think that the whole patriarchy thing works with that idea that it doesn't matter if you care for each other or are at all compatible. Compatibility is no longer an issue if the wife is merely a servant to the husband. She is just going to be required to suppress her needs, likes and desires to his whims, so what does it matter? And that attitude exists even among less blatantly patriarchal Evangelicals. A friend told me before my wedding that "marriage is hard work" because "as a woman you have to give up what you want and what you like". And that would be hard work. But an egalitarian marriage between adults who are both willing to consider the needs, opinions and desires of the other, is not such "hard work" in that way.
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Post by madame on Aug 21, 2010 15:15:32 GMT -5
Amyrose, I think that courtship focuses a lot more on whether the couple are ideologically suited, and whether they are prepared to fulfill their "roles". A very telling series of sermons are those on "Biblical manhood" and "Biblical womanhood" by Voddie Baucham.
My parents stated my role as a wife very succintly: you have to learn to obey and to try to make things work his way. ( Even if it means that you suffer unnecessarily for years!)
Patrios teach that marriage is a lot of work. Oh yes. The wife is there to serve the husband, the husband is there to make sure she does it and to "lead", which usually means control, make all final decisions, etc...
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Post by Vyckie D. Garrison on Aug 21, 2010 20:41:47 GMT -5
Sorry to be so quiet here on the forum lately! The past few days, I have had a cold ~ which makes me grumpy and lazy. This morning, I woke up with a terrible headache ~ thought about getting something to eat, but didn't have the energy to feed myself, so went back to bed. Later, Mimi came to the rescue with lunch from Taco Bell ~ and John brought me some Zicam ~ that plus Excedrin and another nap seems to have cured me. I am feeling better ~ though still kind of fuzzy brained ~ LOL Anyway: Jo ~ thank you for sharing your story ~ wow! (BTW ~ Jo & Sandra ~ if you'd like me to add your blogs to the NLQ Members blogroll ~ send me a PM. Humbletigger ~ you have a blog?) kindaconfused: I'll try to answer your questions as best as I can ~ keep in mind though that if it doesn't all make perfectly good sense, it's because QF/P doesn't actually make sense. Do you believe that all QF marriages are like yours?Of course not ~ we're all unique. Like Tolstoy said, "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." Do you think it is at all possible to have a healthy QF marriage or are they all only good on the surface?By "QF marriage" I'm assuming that you are referring to the Patriarchal roles & style of relating ~ to which I would say honestly that I believe truly patriarchal marriages are always unhealthy. Granted, there are many Quiverfull families which only give lip service to the headship/submission thing ~ but for those who take it seriously ~ for those who insist on the man as head/leader/initiator and woman as submissive/follower/helpmeet ~ that marriage is inherently dysfunctional and abusive. As I said in my blog post, "If a husband is truly loving his wife self-sacrificially ~ then the issue of Patriarchy ~ of headship and submission ~ is a moot point. A husband who loves his wife has a relationship of mutuality which has nothing to do with the teachings we are addressing here at No Longer Quivering." IF you and Warren both realized the horrible spiral QF lifestyle put you in, why couldn't you both just step out of it and work on having a non-QF marriage? Is that possible?I'm pretty sure that Warren is still convinced that male headship and wifely submission are biblical priniciples. Only he is no longer in a position of having his ego-trips reinforced by me and the kids ~ so he has mellowed out considerably. I wrote in this blog post: nolongerquivering.com/2010/07/20/when-its-time-to-let-go-of-an-unhealthy-relationship/ about how much easier Warren is to get along with since the divorce. Somewhere else ~ on the forum, I think ~ I have written about what led to my almost-instant decision to file for a divorce. Truthfully, when I filed for divorce, I was just barely starting to understand how destructive patriarchy was to our relationship ~ and Warren and his friends had taken my six younger children and were not allowing me to see or even talk to them ~ they kept them from me for six weeks and were using them like bargaining chips to try to force me to go along with their attempts to rehabilitate me (read: make me more submissive) ~ that was the deal breaker for me. I was not going to play games when it came to the children. For about half a minute, it did enter my head that I could work things out with Warren ~ that I could explain to him that all this strict gender-role garbage is what was fouling us up ~ but honestly ~ by that time, I was just so worn down ~ physically, emotionally, spiritually ~ I just wanted to lay down and die. I knew that I did not have the energy to keep going with Warren ~ and when I realized that I no longer believed that the Bible is the "Word of God" ~ there really was no reason for me not to get a divorce and let someone else deal with him ~ I'd put in my time, given him my best (misguided though it was) ~ what energy I had left, I decided I had better devote to getting healthy myself and to helping the kids. Later, after I'd made some progress and was feeling more able to deal with Warren ~ I found that I do not have any desire to get back together with him. I realize that, if it were not for my Christian belief in the "sanctity of the family" ~ I'd have probably figured out early on that we were not really compatible ~ there was a huge disparity in our intellectual and communication abilities ~ there was a huge imbalance in the energy flowed between us ~ and by that, I mean that I am very much an introvert so spending time talking, "discussing," etc. with Warren totally drained me of all my physical and mental energy ~ while he is very much an extravert ~ so he was always quite energized by our exchanges ~ always went away feeling refreshed and recharged, while I went away utterly exhausted ~ there were just so many ways in which we were not a good match. I believe that apart from my Christian faith ~ I'd have left him much earlier. He's an extremely high-maintenance guy and I really have no desire to be in a relationship with anyone who requires so much energy and attention. I could go on ~ but I'm boring myself ~ and probably you too. and lastly.....
Do you think the Duggars are like this? I don't know if that's a fair question, perhaps if TLC had not stepped into their lives and made them multi-millionaires it would be, but like or not, money does change everythingBy "like this" ~ do you mean Patriarchal? I'm sure they are in theory ~ but from what I've observed, I kind of suspect that in practice, they're not so much. I remember a conversation I once had with a man who didn't understand why I was having such a problem with Warren being the "head" of our family. This man has been married to his wife for over 30 years ~ they both believe that the bible teaches the man is to be the head of the home. What does that mean? I wanted to know. Well ~ he explained ~ it means that in situations in which the two of them could not reach a decision that they both agreed on ~ then it would be up to him to make the decision. "And how many times in your 30 years of marriage have you had to pull rank on her?" Well ~ actually ~ when he tried to think of a single instance when that had happened ~ he came up blank. "I guess we always have managed to work something out together." He told me. That is NOT Patriarchy. No wonder that man could not understand what my problem was with Warren. Warren insisted that I should consult him before making any decision ~ no matter how minor ~ even when it came to areas in which he had no knowledge or experience and I had plenty. K ~ I'm out of steam ... hope this helps and does not leave you even more confused than when I started ... !!! Madame ~ good to hear from you again.
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Post by km on Aug 21, 2010 21:39:06 GMT -5
Vyckie: I'm not entirely sure that I agree with your assessment about the Duggars. Sure, Jim Bob seems like a relatively gentle guy, but... Patriarchy in marriage is not only about the marriage relationship, but about the rearing of children. Patriarchy is absolutely practiced when it comes to the children. This is why we talk so much here about the Duggar girls being so burdened by serving the family all the time, and by fulfilling mothering roles that the mother doesn't have the capacity to fulfill all on her own.
Also, I think the mere fact of having 19 children is kinda...patriarchal in practice. This was brought home most clearly to me when I saw the episode about Josie's birth. Yes, Jim Bob got upset, and yes, he obviously loves her... But what struck me most of all was that this was so...strictly her lot in life--that is, nearly dying in order to bring another "arrow for the Lord" into this world.
Per abuse: I've been seeing some interesting conversations on the web lately about how there is often love that coexists with abusive relationships--and that this is why it can be so difficult for some people to leave them. So, I do think they have some family practices that are abusive, and I think this is true whether or not Jim Bob is gentle and loves his wife.
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