Post by free2bme on Jul 5, 2010 20:03:57 GMT -5
I am a man that was involved with the patriarchal lifestyle.
I did not grow up in a household like that and I was never truly fond of having a marriage that way. We did not belong to any fundamentalist type groups or anything. We went to a Calvary Chapel for most of our marriage and they don't teach that way.
I was never looking to change churches or even become more conservative. I don't remember the timing exactly... but I knew my wife and I were disillusioned with the Sunday-school scene and we knew that Calvary did not allow children in the service.
Around this time someone had recommended that my wife read Created to be His Helpmeet by Debi Pearl. She read the book and was very hopeful that this would be the answer to our marriage problems. Looking back at it now, I think the majority of our marriage problems came after this book.
One day while I was out shopping I started talking to this lady about something (kids? not sure.) and we got on the subject of family-integrated churches. She told me about the church she attended and invited me to bring my family to visit. I took down her information and gave it to my wife when I got home.
It was a Baptist church. Very conservative. Everyone, with the exception of one family dressed up - ties and everything. All the girls and women wore dresses and skirts. I did not like it. It made me uncomfortable. I didn't want to spend all day at church - they had a really long service and then they had a pot-luck afterward. I guess it would have been okay if I was at a church that wasn't so stuffy and condescending. We finally left there after hearing a few strange doctrinal things from the pulpit - one of them being that people with life insurance do not trust God to take care of them and the other was the weird drum doctrine that says drums are from the devil.
From there we went back to a Calvary Chapel. If I remember correctly, we did not stay there long due to the whole Sunday-school thing again. I had spoken to the pastor about bringing the kids with us in the service and he said that would be okay. We did that for awhile but it just felt awkward so we quit going altogether while we looked for a different family integrated church. The problem we kept running into is the family-integrated churches are all ultra-conservative and have small congregations. We would probably run into the same problems at any family-integrated church.
So, we had stopped going to church altogether (bad idea). We moved to a different state and looked for churches there too. We tried out a very mainstream AOG church and the consensus was that we didn't want to go there.
We heard about a new family integrated church and decided to try it out. We went there for several months. We left that church I think mainly because they were pressuring me to teach in front of the church. I just wanted direction in how to be a better husband and father. The pastor told me teaching in front of the church would help me lead my family better. We even had the pastor and his wife over to talk about it and we went around and around for hours. The conclusion was that I must not be spiritually mature enough if I didn't want to teach in front of the church.
Another issue we had was the pastor came to me and told me that my wife said something at church that was really bothering him. I don't remember what it was, but it was a sarcastic comment about me making us late for church or something. He told me about it and I did not see the problem. I told him that is just her personality and she didn't mean anything by it. He told me that I was just desensitized to it and it really was a big deal and she needed to watch how she talked. Okay... and of course I told her about it. I think that is when she decided we would no longer be going there, which was completely fine with me. So again, we were church-less.
I look back now and wish we never made the Sunday-school thing a big deal. We probably never would have ended up in a church that taught this patriarchal way of thinking.
I am hoping to find men here that have also left that way of life. I believe women tend to think that men wouldn't want to leave - they like being treated like a king and told everything they do is right, don't they? Speaking from personal experience, I can tell you that's not true... at least in my case and I don't think I am too terribly different than a lot of men out there. That is a lot of pressure to put on a man that really has no clue how to lead a family correctly, which most men don't.
I think more men would leave the whole patriarchal lifestyle if they really understood the damage it is causing their families. Maybe I should start a blog or message board geared toward these men. It would be well worth it if I could save just one family from going through what my family went through. Men need to wake up and realize what is happening to their families. I think men are the last to figure out what is going on because they are not the ones feeling used on a daily basis - the women and children are.
Men have their own issues they have to deal with in families like this, but it is not the same as the pain the women and children feel when they feel like they are being used and abused.
I have a lot of regrets for the way I have treated my family in the past. Unfortunately, it is too late for my changes to make a difference in my marriage. All I can do is ask forgiveness and vow to never be like that again. I strive to be the best person I can be and try do behave in a godly manner in all situations.
I have definitely learned a lot.
I did not grow up in a household like that and I was never truly fond of having a marriage that way. We did not belong to any fundamentalist type groups or anything. We went to a Calvary Chapel for most of our marriage and they don't teach that way.
I was never looking to change churches or even become more conservative. I don't remember the timing exactly... but I knew my wife and I were disillusioned with the Sunday-school scene and we knew that Calvary did not allow children in the service.
Around this time someone had recommended that my wife read Created to be His Helpmeet by Debi Pearl. She read the book and was very hopeful that this would be the answer to our marriage problems. Looking back at it now, I think the majority of our marriage problems came after this book.
One day while I was out shopping I started talking to this lady about something (kids? not sure.) and we got on the subject of family-integrated churches. She told me about the church she attended and invited me to bring my family to visit. I took down her information and gave it to my wife when I got home.
It was a Baptist church. Very conservative. Everyone, with the exception of one family dressed up - ties and everything. All the girls and women wore dresses and skirts. I did not like it. It made me uncomfortable. I didn't want to spend all day at church - they had a really long service and then they had a pot-luck afterward. I guess it would have been okay if I was at a church that wasn't so stuffy and condescending. We finally left there after hearing a few strange doctrinal things from the pulpit - one of them being that people with life insurance do not trust God to take care of them and the other was the weird drum doctrine that says drums are from the devil.
From there we went back to a Calvary Chapel. If I remember correctly, we did not stay there long due to the whole Sunday-school thing again. I had spoken to the pastor about bringing the kids with us in the service and he said that would be okay. We did that for awhile but it just felt awkward so we quit going altogether while we looked for a different family integrated church. The problem we kept running into is the family-integrated churches are all ultra-conservative and have small congregations. We would probably run into the same problems at any family-integrated church.
So, we had stopped going to church altogether (bad idea). We moved to a different state and looked for churches there too. We tried out a very mainstream AOG church and the consensus was that we didn't want to go there.
We heard about a new family integrated church and decided to try it out. We went there for several months. We left that church I think mainly because they were pressuring me to teach in front of the church. I just wanted direction in how to be a better husband and father. The pastor told me teaching in front of the church would help me lead my family better. We even had the pastor and his wife over to talk about it and we went around and around for hours. The conclusion was that I must not be spiritually mature enough if I didn't want to teach in front of the church.
Another issue we had was the pastor came to me and told me that my wife said something at church that was really bothering him. I don't remember what it was, but it was a sarcastic comment about me making us late for church or something. He told me about it and I did not see the problem. I told him that is just her personality and she didn't mean anything by it. He told me that I was just desensitized to it and it really was a big deal and she needed to watch how she talked. Okay... and of course I told her about it. I think that is when she decided we would no longer be going there, which was completely fine with me. So again, we were church-less.
I look back now and wish we never made the Sunday-school thing a big deal. We probably never would have ended up in a church that taught this patriarchal way of thinking.
I am hoping to find men here that have also left that way of life. I believe women tend to think that men wouldn't want to leave - they like being treated like a king and told everything they do is right, don't they? Speaking from personal experience, I can tell you that's not true... at least in my case and I don't think I am too terribly different than a lot of men out there. That is a lot of pressure to put on a man that really has no clue how to lead a family correctly, which most men don't.
I think more men would leave the whole patriarchal lifestyle if they really understood the damage it is causing their families. Maybe I should start a blog or message board geared toward these men. It would be well worth it if I could save just one family from going through what my family went through. Men need to wake up and realize what is happening to their families. I think men are the last to figure out what is going on because they are not the ones feeling used on a daily basis - the women and children are.
Men have their own issues they have to deal with in families like this, but it is not the same as the pain the women and children feel when they feel like they are being used and abused.
I have a lot of regrets for the way I have treated my family in the past. Unfortunately, it is too late for my changes to make a difference in my marriage. All I can do is ask forgiveness and vow to never be like that again. I strive to be the best person I can be and try do behave in a godly manner in all situations.
I have definitely learned a lot.
