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Post by krwordgazer on Feb 12, 2010 20:13:26 GMT -5
When QF/P folks talk about defrauding, is there ever any thought about what a wife should do if her husband sometimes defrauds her desire for sex? Or is it just assumed that "nice girls" don't initiate sex anyway? As I recall, Debi Pearl talks about how dominance is masculine -- so maybe this would also apply to taking the initiative in sex -- as in, if a woman is initiating, then she's stepping out of her feminine role into a role that she doesn't belong in anyway? You know, this is very weird when you compare it to writings of the 2nd and 3rd century church, during the days when virginity was prized above all. There are several writings of men who acknowledge that the Scripture says the wife has just as much authority to request sex as he does-- and the issue is how often he can get away with not granting her her marital rights. It is assumed that a good Christian will be reluctant, wanting to be devoted more to prayer-- males especially, since women were perceived as less capable of controlling their passions. But the one thing they couldn't get away from is that Paul said husbands and wives had equal authority in the area of sexual relations.
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Post by dangermom on Feb 12, 2010 21:50:25 GMT -5
For someone like me who would not be willing to abort, there's absolutely no purpose to those kinds of tests anyway. Except that I guess you could prepare yourself that there "might" be a problem ... Except, as you say, for the fact that you still really have no idea about the extent of the disability anyhow. So you still don't really know what to prepare for. But there's always another side to the story or something. I had an amnio during my 2nd pregnancy after my first baby died in utero from a genetic problem. Not because I would have aborted a baby with a disability (I totally agree with km there), but because I was so worried about it happening again. Having an amnio and knowing one way or the other was a huge relief. Though in retrospect I guess it was pretty irrational--but all I wanted was to be reassured that she would live.
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em
Full Member
Posts: 176
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Post by em on Feb 13, 2010 11:28:04 GMT -5
I honestly do not get why women always, always have to put men first ... but he never, ever has to stop and say "you know, honey, the last 4 times we've had sex you didn't really want to but you did anyway. I'm sorry, if you don't want to tonight I'll live." Why is that so impossible to these people? And, meaning absolutely no offense to any of you, but how can you stand to be in a relationship where you give up everything for that person and they don't take you into consideration at all or only for something very small and trivial? I know people like that in my family or at work, and UGH. I don't know how you guys could put up with it, from a husband of all people, for so long.
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Post by krwordgazer on Feb 13, 2010 13:27:20 GMT -5
True enough, Em. Even when my husband and I thought we had to live under patriarchy, he would say, "Why would I want to have sex with you if you aren't really wanting it, but are just going along with it? That's a complete turn-off to me. I'd rather wait till you feel desire to be with me." The result of this respect and healthiness was that I actually did feel desire to be with him more often. But the patriarchal model just never fit us, no matter how we tried to fit into it.
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Post by susan on Feb 13, 2010 13:54:17 GMT -5
But there's always another side to the story or something. I had an amnio during my 2nd pregnancy after my first baby died in utero from a genetic problem. Not because I would have aborted a baby with a disability (I totally agree with km there), but because I was so worried about it happening again. Having an amnio and knowing one way or the other was a huge relief. Though in retrospect I guess it was pretty irrational--but all I wanted was to be reassured that she would live. (((hug))) I can understand that, Dangermom.
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Post by susan on Feb 13, 2010 13:56:11 GMT -5
True enough, Em. Even when my husband and I thought we had to live under patriarchy, he would say, "Why would I want to have sex with you if you aren't really wanting it, but are just going along with it? That's a complete turn-off to me. I'd rather wait till you feel desire to be with me." The result of this respect and healthiness was that I actually did feel desire to be with him more often. But the patriarchal model just never fit us, no matter how we tried to fit into it. That is how my husband has always been, too. Am I naive to assume that that is how MOST husbands must feel -- even the ones in hardcore Patriarchy? It's just extremely hard for me to picture ANYONE wanting to have sex with someone who doesn't want to have sex. This would be a real turnoff to any NORMAL person, I would think.
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Post by philosophia on Feb 13, 2010 15:13:24 GMT -5
True enough, Em. Even when my husband and I thought we had to live under patriarchy, he would say, "Why would I want to have sex with you if you aren't really wanting it, but are just going along with it? That's a complete turn-off to me. I'd rather wait till you feel desire to be with me." The result of this respect and healthiness was that I actually did feel desire to be with him more often. But the patriarchal model just never fit us, no matter how we tried to fit into it. That is how my husband has always been, too. Am I naive to assume that that is how MOST husbands must feel -- even the ones in hardcore Patriarchy? It's just extremely hard for me to picture ANYONE wanting to have sex with someone who doesn't want to have sex. This would be a real turnoff to any NORMAL person, I would think. They often do not know you do not want to have sex. I think that there is something you are missing, in that we are expected to make him feel desired whether he is or not. Under those circumstances we are doing this to ourselves, but it is how we believe we are expected to behave lest he stumble into temptation. In my case he became angry when he wanted it and then was an ass the next day. It was a no-win situation. I know that to a large degree mine believed it was owed, because after a long dry spell right before we separated he wrote me, listing the scriptures about what I owed him. Being sexually unavailable in that context also includes not really feeling like it. So smile and go along. I'm sorry That is the way it is. If you have read Debbi Pearl at all, it is all about making him feel great, irregardless of the circumstances. If he's "happy", you'll be happy.
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Post by madame on Feb 13, 2010 15:28:02 GMT -5
we are expected to make him feel desired whether he is or not.
That's it, Philosophia. And do it with a smile, "as to the Lord", like you wash your sink full of dishes and do endless piles of laundry.
I think that the husband-wife relationship becomes more and more shallow the more the wife just gives in, regardless of how he is treating her, or whether she feels like having sex or not. Sex is just a part of the relationship, and I don't think it's a duty.
But then, I don't know if patriocentrists consider marriage a relationship of equals that both have to work on and nurture. It seems like it's all about duty, authority, obedience and rules.
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Post by Sierra on Feb 13, 2010 15:28:56 GMT -5
It's just extremely hard for me to picture ANYONE wanting to have sex with someone who doesn't want to have sex. This would be a real turnoff to any NORMAL person, I would think. I used to think, as a teenager in a patriarchal church, that I would never be able to have sex, much less love, someone who owned me the way a husband was supposed to own his wife. It seemed all very cynical to me: talk of "owing" each other sex as though it was the most repugnant task in the world just seemed like another symptom of the lack of love in the patriarchal family model. What's romantic about doing your duty to your boss? I decided I would be celibate and single for the rest of my life. There was really no way to win and have a decent relationship in that model. As a child, I also got very defensive of my mother whenever I could tell my father wanted sex. (His signals were not so subtle. I knew what he was on about by the time I was 10.) I used to deliberately distract or get in the way to try to protect her from having to do something that intimate with an abusive person. The thought of how I was conceived horrified me, as it was obvious sex was all about my father's kink and none of my mother's wishes were ever respected. He wasn't a church dude, but he loved to exploit those verses about not withholding sex because her body "belonged" to him. It's really a horrid way to express mutual pleasure, as when one person is abusive, that person is going to be the only one who wants sex anyway. Whether or not they keep up their end of the "bargain" is irrelevant, as the whole thought of being near them is repulsive.
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Post by susan on Feb 13, 2010 15:37:08 GMT -5
I used to think, as a teenager in a patriarchal church, that I would never be able to have sex, much less love, someone who owned me the way a husband was supposed to own his wife. It seemed all very cynical to me: talk of "owing" each other sex as though it was the most repugnant task in the world just seemed like another symptom of the lack of love in the patriarchal family model. What's romantic about doing your duty to your boss? I decided I would be celibate and single for the rest of my life. There was really no way to win and have a decent relationship in that model. Oh, Sierra, I'm so glad you got out of that life! (((hug))) Oh, how awful! It sounds like he didn't even wait until you were asleep to start pestering her!
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Post by susan on Feb 13, 2010 15:47:08 GMT -5
Philosophia, Debi Pearl sounds just awful! I'm so sorry for you and for all the other women who tried to follow her books! A little off-topic, but I just recently read her article, "The Jezebel Profile" -- and that's actually where I read her saying that dominance is part of the male role. If most women in Patriarchy are following her kind of teaching, they'd never be initiating sex, so there'd never be occasion for their husbands to "defraud" them anyway. And it really sounds like Mrs. Pearl is (indirectly) advocating for women to fake orgasms and just be totally fake about their whole relationship with their husbands. Whatever it takes to make him feel manly and desirable. I also see Sierra's point that abused wives are extremely-unlikely to want to be physically intimate with their husbands anyway. But I guess they still have to fake it if they want to be doing it God's way, huh?
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Post by musicmom on Feb 13, 2010 18:28:23 GMT -5
"The result of this respect and healthiness was that I actually did feel desire to be with him more often. " Yes! I credit this rule (having to have sex whether you wanted to or not) with effectively killing my sex drive while I was married. Of course, as Vykie as said, him treating me like a child did not help either. Oh, and expecting sex a few weeks after a baby was born did not really enamor me to the whole activity either Yet, I can see that Chris suffered under this rule as well. Since I was trying so hard to be "good" QF wife, I would almost always give into his demands, whether I wanted to or not. I could tell, after a while, that he hated that. He hated that I NEVER wanted to, on my own accord, because I knew that it would be soon enough that he'd want to, and then I'd HAVE to. The result being, that his wife never wanted to be with him, but only was because she "had to". Of course, he didn't hate the rule enough to tell me to refuse him when I didn't really want to .
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Post by km on Feb 13, 2010 18:33:39 GMT -5
It's just extremely hard for me to picture ANYONE wanting to have sex with someone who doesn't want to have sex. This would be a real turnoff to any NORMAL person, I would think. An abuser? And from what so many of the women here say, it seems to me that the QF lifestyle can be attractive to abusive men--and that, in fact, this kind of thing is probably more common than we would like to believe. I'm glad that your husband is a decent enough human being, but I think many have been much worse off. Over the time that I've been reading this website and others about the QF lifestyle, I've seen so many stories about marital sexual assault and rape that it's frankly very unsettling. And it's a lifestyle that doesn't even provide women with the language to name is as "abuse" or as "rape." It's "submission," you know, and "God's will," and it's easy to see why certain psychopathic men might be attracted to it.
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Post by musicmom on Feb 13, 2010 18:38:25 GMT -5
*shakes head* Are you me? Parallel lives, it must be. Freaky. Three of a kind. And that is why I am so happy - happy is not the right word really - relieved? ecstatic? - that I found this board. I thought I must be the only person in the world to have those thoughts and feelings and experiences. I mean, i know there are other QF families around, but I knew no one who had divorced and left this life and had a bunch of kids and a big transition to regular life to navigate. The fact that you other women know of what I speak, it just really, really helps. I have felt so lonely and have had no one to talk to that had any idea where I was coming from. This lifestyle is not such that you can explain to people easily - that I'm not just a stupid bimbo who didn't understand how babies were made and liked to be pregnant and barefoot for "my man". You ladies are so intelligent and compassionate and sincere in your desire to be good people and I am so honored to be one of you!!! Vyckie - THANK YOU for starting this site and for contributing to exchristian.com where I first saw your site linked.
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Post by km on Feb 13, 2010 18:42:02 GMT -5
And it really sounds like Mrs. Pearl is (indirectly) advocating for women to fake orgasms and just be totally fake about their whole relationship with their husbands. Whatever it takes to make him feel manly and desirable. Okay, this is regrettable, sure, but women in mainstream secular culture also feel pressured to fake orgasms fairly often. And, honestly, to me, this sounds like one of the least harmful things she advocates (Not singing the praises of The Fake Orgasm, certainly, but I don't see it as being on par with "whenever he wants it, even if I experience it as an assault."). Generally speaking, I'm okay with whatever adults decide to do in consensual relationship. What scares me so much is the degree of force that seems to have entered into so many of these sexual relationships.
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Post by km on Feb 13, 2010 18:59:55 GMT -5
Okay, this is regrettable, sure, but women in mainstream secular culture also feel pressured to fake orgasms fairly often. And, honestly, to me, this sounds like one of the least harmful things she advocates (Not singing the praises of The Fake Orgasm, certainly, but I don't see it as being on par with "whenever he wants it, even if I experience it as an assault."). Generally speaking, I'm okay with whatever adults decide to do in consensual relationship. What scares me so much is the degree of force that seems to have entered into so many of these sexual relationships. To this end, I guess I would also say... My problem with the fake orgasm would be the level of coercion involved (the sense that "part of submission is to *pretend* that I am enjoying this even if it makes my skin crawl."). And that's the problem with so many of the issues that seem to come up here--the justification of coercion offered by lifestyles like QF. It reminds me of an astute scene in that unremarkable film, The Breakup, in which Jennifer Aniston and Vince Vaughan have a fight about his willingness to do the dishes (or lack thereof). At a point of extreme frustration, Aniston yells, "I want you to WANT to do the dishes!" And Vaughan replies, "Why would anyone WANT to do the dishes?" I could relate. I mean, really, who ENJOYS the dishes? This pattern in QF--engendered by the encouragement of "joyful submission"--is humiliating because it constantly forces women and children to pretend that they are "enjoying" the activities that they're relegated to. I mean, it's not only the fake orgasm, is it? It's every human interaction in everyday life... Day after day. One would be have to "joyfully" affirm that she had enjoyed the inane Christian movie that the family had just seen (a la Fireproof) even though everything about the movie (its cheap sentimentality and stupid dialogue!) grated against her thinking instincts. A constant process of "joyful submission" day in and day out. It's a level of self-regulation that's just...inhuman to expect of anyone...ever.
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Post by philosophia on Feb 13, 2010 19:20:35 GMT -5
The fact that you other women know of what I speak, it just really, really helps. I have felt so lonely and have had no one to talk to that had any idea where I was coming from. This lifestyle is not such that you can explain to people easily - that I'm not just a stupid bimbo who didn't understand how babies were made and liked to be pregnant and barefoot for "my man". You ladies are so intelligent and compassionate and sincere in your desire to be good people and I am so honored to be one of you!!! Vyckie - THANK YOU for starting this site and for contributing to exchristian.com where I first saw your site linked. Musicmom, I believe that Vyckie's site was a sanity saver if not a life saver to me. Explaining it to others is TRULY a struggle. Even my attorney shakes his head in disbelief despite the fact he had me give him a written narrative of my marriage so that he could grasp the atmosphere. Other Christian acquaintances who did not follow these teachings don't "Get it" at all.
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Post by journey on Feb 13, 2010 19:54:41 GMT -5
ah...."joyful"... That was my goal. To be joyfully his (not God's, but my husband's, because in belonging joyfully to my husband, as the books and teachings said, I therefore belonged joyfully to God)...
Interestingly, I wrote a letter to Debi Pearl once, specifically about my sex life (I felt so ashamed and horrified that I was not excited about sex all the time), and she did respond back to just jump in and, essentially, fake it till you make it.
It never occured to me that perhaps sex with someone who treats you as a child would NOT something that is exciting.... Nope. It had to be me. It had to be all my fault.
And, yes, sex was not just a duty---it was a mandate. If your husband looks at porn, it is *your* fault for not satisfiying him. So the penalty for the husband's sexual sin falls also on the wife, so to speak. If you do not meet his needs joyfully, YOU are responsible for whatever sins he may commit in that area.
So you push out baby after baby, exhausted and depleted physically because there is never enough time to recover, you are exhausted from home educating everyone and nursing the babe and keeping up with the toddler, and you are exhausted trying to keep the house perfect and the meals home-made and healthy, and that's to say nothing about the part where you walk on eggshells around your husband's moods (since you are responsible for those, too), and then you're supposed to be hot and horny in the sack?
It's so crazy to look back on, but then, I was so tired...so very tired....who had time to step back and think clearly? Impossible. You just keep trudging on, forcing that smile, singing songs and pasting verses every where in an attempt to keep that joy there, to keep that smile on...
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Post by journey on Feb 13, 2010 19:56:32 GMT -5
I appreciate you all too. It is so good to know that, somewhere in this wide world, there are others who truly understand what it is like.
(((((hugs)))))
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Post by km on Feb 13, 2010 20:14:24 GMT -5
journey--Your comments and posts about these things always strike me as...so powerfully expressed. I hope that you're involved in some kind of book project of your own. Do you happen to have a blog?
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Post by journey on Feb 13, 2010 22:05:11 GMT -5
Thank you so much for the kind words. There are many powerful speakers here. I am often humbled, and I mean that, by the stories shared here and the strength of those who tell them. As for a book or a blog, well..... maybe some day. I cheer on those who set out to write books, mainly, and I contribute to the NLQ blog, here and there. The more this movement can be exposed (the more the TRUTH behind the pretty pictures can be made visible), the better. People like me were sucked in by those pretty promises and pictures. The other side of the coin is so desperately needed. So big hurrahs to all of you who have the guts to tell your stories. Some years ago, you could only rarely find stories like these...they were kept carefully hidden....silenced by shame and disapproval. Now, the truth is becoming more and more visible. I am thrilled at this.
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Post by susan on Feb 14, 2010 14:40:56 GMT -5
Journey -- ((((hug))))
The thing that upsets me about fake orgasms, is I guess the same thing that upsets me about the whole Patriarchal lifestyle -- or as you describe Debi Pearl's advice "Fake it til you make it."
It's being dishonest at your very core, in what should be your most intimate relationship.
Actually, there's a "fake it til you make it"-element to many of the pyramid "Get Rich Quick" schemes as well. In order to get more people to invest in the scheme, the salespeople have to give every appearance of raking in lots of money themselves, even if they aren't really making any (which I guess means going out on a limb on credit).
Either way, faking it til you make it financially, or in your personal life -- it really means living life at a defecit, at a debt. Everything's bound to crash eventually, just like our economy, huh?
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Post by arietty on Feb 14, 2010 22:04:54 GMT -5
I remember C.S. Lewis talked about walking in the things you want for your life, like being kinder or faith affirming even if you didn't feel these things, and that they would become real with practice. A kind of cognitive therapy that can be helpful but I took those words and the 10,000 submission words that followed in my reading and applied it to working VERY hard at being joyful. As I posted once before I used to tell people I had a gift of contentment.. but what I really had was a gift of denial thanks to some powerful self brainwashing. These writings need to be exposed. Journey is so right in this blog post about how we were trained not to call it abuse. I remember going to my pastor's wife about some issues, my husbands rage, and her answer was the same as it was to other women who came to her: "Men are very stressed these days and we need to be more supportive of them." She was not a QF or homeschooling person, quite mainstream evangelical. She led bible study groups for the book "You can be the wife of a Happy Husband" which was just a big load of crock about how you must submit to your infantile husband on all counts so he will love you, LOL. www.amazon.com/You-Can-Wife-Happy-Husband/dp/1564767116The thing is the worse your marriage is the more of these books you read, the deeper you go into the submission maw. You NEED some answers and something to fix things so you're not going to be satisfied with some vague christian article about loving each other. You're driven to find the formula that promises to help you. Writings that face reality don't promise to help you or to fix it because they know that there is no magic formula that can be applied with biblical precision to make it work. Many of us had already swallowed a whole lot of formulaic thinking in our christian walk which just primed us to embrace these marriage formulas.
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Post by km on Feb 14, 2010 22:28:54 GMT -5
The thing is the worse your marriage is the more of these books you read, the deeper you go into the submission maw. You NEED some answers and something to fix things so you're not going to be satisfied with some vague christian article about loving each other. You're driven to find the formula that promises to help you. Writings that face reality don't promise to help you or to fix it because they know that there is no magic formula that can be applied with biblical precision to make it work. Many of us had already swallowed a whole lot of formulaic thinking in our christian walk which just primed us to embrace these marriage formulas. Seems like a very insightful observation.
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Post by madame on Feb 15, 2010 17:01:41 GMT -5
The thing is the worse your marriage is the more of these books you read, the deeper you go into the submission maw. You NEED some answers and something to fix things so you're not going to be satisfied with some vague christian article about loving each other. You're driven to find the formula that promises to help you. Writings that face reality don't promise to help you or to fix it because they know that there is no magic formula that can be applied with biblical precision to make it work. Many of us had already swallowed a whole lot of formulaic thinking in our christian walk which just primed us to embrace these marriage formulas. Seems like a very insightful observation. I agree.
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