The Truth About Courtship

[Dev83]

This makes me so so sad :( Former fundie blog post:

"I just sit and stare. My mind blank and my heart not sure what emotion to deal with first.

This is what the last seven days has been like. My birthday ended and the war started back again. More battles to fight.

I have been avoiding this last week. Something inside me has walled back up again and I hate it. I haven't even wanted to try. I have felt completely exhausted with Sam and I. One thing I have learned and that is joy and happiness only comes when you deal with the negative first. You can not push aside the hurt, pain, anger, confusion; stuff it away; and make yourself find happiness in life and focus on the positive. Plaster on that smile and skip throughout your days.

If you numb one thing you numb everything. If you numb the ugly you numb the beautiful.

That has been this week.

Two steps forward and one step back. One giant step back.

A huge victory last week and now injured and fighting through yet another battle.

Sam and I have been the ones facing the battles now. I spent a year in therapy working on myself and am far from done but things have begun turning to our marriage now. God it's scary and hard. The horrible, terrifying reality of what it is and what it has been. How it started and why it started. As our 5 year anniversary approaches the dread and knots that take my breath away make me kinda want to skip that day and REALLY pretend we aren't married yet. A clean unknown slate between us to start from.

A couple days ago I pulled up my evernote and started trying to write from the beginning. Trying to write out our REAL "love story" and after less than a paragraph I utterly shattered into a million pieces. I can't even see it as a "love" story. More of a "controlled-feardriving-fake-following the rule book-courthip 'like' story". It ain't purty. It's freaking plain ugly. It's a darn painful disaster.

I was taught love was not a feeling. It was a choice. Love isn't about passion or attraction or connection. Feelings always went to the back burner. Since I wasn't to feel I found myself going into complete silence. Putting on my mask and literally unable to find the words to explain anyways what I was experiencing inside. And most of that was because I was scared. Scared of my parents, of others, of the power that hovered over me and around me. And the times I did work up the courage to try and express what I was feeling, I was shut down quickly with harsh words or correcting lines of what I SHOULD be "saying" or "feeling".

As Elizabeth Ester puts it in one of her blog posts:

"I truly began to believe my husband didn’t really love me and/or that I was inherently unlovable. I mean, I knew he loved me. But I didn’t feel it. There was a huge disconnect. As long as love stayed up in an ivory tower making highly-intellectual pronouncements about love being a DECISION of the MIND!, a fulfillment of DUTY! and a KEEPING OF THE VOWS!–I could not connect. I tried. Oh, how I tried. But something was missing.

This constant disconnection led to the worst consequence of all. I became deeply, horribly depressed. I wanted to die. In fact, dying looked like a blessed relief. Dying meant an end to the constant pain of living without feelings of love. I really thought something was terribly wrong with me–spiritually, morally and physically. I mean, what was so wrong with me that I couldn’t just BELIEVE and make a DECISION OF THE WILL and CHOOSE to love? It seemed to work for everybody else! WHY couldn’t I just get with the program? Was there some sort of unconfessed sin in my life? Had God maybe predestined me for Hell?

The damage of ignoring, suppressing, shaming and denying our human emotions is one of the most hardest and painful things to change and heal from.

What I have learned is that when it comes to love, separating feelings of love from actions of love is a false dichotomy. We are human beings, we are not disembodied spirits. Our feelings and emotions are just as much a part of us as is our mind, will and intellect. And it is dangerous to compartmentalize, separate and shut-down ANY part of our humanness.

I’ve also learned that loving actions don’t just appear out of nowhere. They are sourced from loving feelings. Yes, it’s important to behave lovingly even if we don’t feel loving. However, to say that love isn’t a feeling AT ALL but ONLY an action is to unintentionally degrade the importance of loving feelings. It is the kind of teaching that falsely elevates the importance of the mind over the importance of our God-given human emotions.

Love is first a feeling AND then actions come.

Love is first a passion AND then sacrifice.

Love is first attraction AND then commitment follows.

Love is first an adjective AND then a verb.

Love is first word AND then deed.

Love isn’t JUST a choice.

Love is also a feeling.

So the hard part is now trying to learn how to switch it all. Because I was taught the above truth about love in TOTAL opposite.

Facing it all is slow. We have torn down the unstable walls that were building up our marriage and are back at the rotten foundation but...we have been here a long time already not getting anywhere. Honestly it feels like we are trying sweep up an extremely dusty room and all we are doing is stiring up the dust and chocking on it instead of getting it into the dustpan. I get the feeling we're going to be here a while just trying to clean up to before we can even start on our foundation again.

It is hard work.

Especially when nothing...was built at the BEGINNING."

http://shepherd-photography.com/2013/02 ... eling.html

[August]

It sounds like you're in a really bad place, I'm sorry. Have you thought about walking away?

[dairyfreelife]

Dev, can you put her post into quotes? It looks like it's your situation, not someone else's. I was confused until I say the post.

[ILoveJellybeans]

Thats so sad :(

Courtship fails again. Parents should let their children make their own decisions on who they want to marry.

[acheronbeach]

Dev, can you put her post into quotes? It looks like it's your situation, not someone else's. I was confused until I say the post.

Me too...

[Dev83]

Fixed! Luckily my situation is nothing like hers, with all the sinning we did prior to marriage.

[Bbfamteam]

This situation is probably all too common and the reason most young fundie newlyweds look like they are less than excited about starting life together and a lot more like they are going through the motions of their expected roles within that culture

[Drina Adams]

How many of the couples snarked about here are either feeling this way or afraid to admit they feel this way? I know some couples of Indian/Pakistani origin who had 'arranged' marriages but it seems to be a totally different situation to the 'courtship' approach, and most seem very happy. I wonder how many SAHDs fear feeling like this and feel safer at home than having to make it work with someone they barely know.

[duplessis3]

In the arranged marriages they probably aren't expected to constantly say "I married the love of my life and my best friend..."

[Ellimenopy]

Right. Arranged marriages are at least more honest. They're explicitly about economic and social connections, and Indian women are explicitly told by their parents and by their culture that they won't be madly in love on their wedding day.

[Anne Tudor]

With arranged marriages, too, there isn't the component that your everlasting soul is on the line, either. In these courtship scenarios, you are against God if you are against your husband.

[debrand]

It sounds like you're in a really bad place, I'm sorry. Have you thought about walking away?

Although I know this wasn't the OP talking, I do think that leaving the marriage might be an option. Life is short and I don't understand wasting part of it trying to force yourself to fall in love

[redcurls]

I was taught love was not a feeling. It was a choice. Love isn't about passion or attraction or connection. Feelings always went to the back burner.

As Elizabeth Ester puts it in one of her blog posts:

"As long as love stayed up in an ivory tower making highly-intellectual pronouncements about love being a DECISION of the MIND!, a fulfillment of DUTY! and a KEEPING OF THE VOWS!–I could not connect.

Does anyone else remember Priscilla's story about jogging around a lake at Journey to the Heart and praying about David "Lord, I know that love is not an emotion! Please show me what you are doing!"? That always confused me until now. I think this idea of love as a choice and a decision is exactly what Priscilla was talking about.

[SomewhatFundy]

I completely and totally lucked out with my husband. I was courting a guy my dad set me up with, and he was an utter jerk. If I complained about him, my dad took it personally. Like I was attacking him instead of the creep he set me up with. So I swallowed it, and went along for the ride.

Anyway, the guy ended up in quite the scandal because he was gay. His parents found gay porn on his computer, and he of course had to confess it to our pastor, my dad and myself. Dad ended it for me, and I thought I was in the clear. Then somebody put the idea in his head that I "turned" the guy gay. Which meant he had to marry me off as quickly as possible so as to squash the rumor that I was turning men into homosexuals with my feminist ways or whatever.

I was married after six months of courting my husband. It was terrifying. We cared for each other as much as two people who were barely allowed a private conversation could. Our first year of marriage sucked, because we both put on this face of obedience and piety that didn't really fit. After the walls came down and we actually faced each other as who we really were, we found that we had a lot in common. We love each other immensely, but us coming together was sheer dumb luck. Or maybe God knew what he was doing a heck of a lot better than my dad did, and decided to bring us together. ANYWAYS, the point is....

...My dad still credits himself with making some wise choice about who I married, because we have a successful marriage now. I call bull, he married me off to save face and it ended up working out.

I look at my younger siblings and their marriages, and how sad they all seem. It bothers me a lot. I love my husband like crazy, and I couldn't imagine being with somebody I didn't care for so deeply. How colorless and empty my world would be if I was joined for life with somebody I didn't have any attraction for.

[Dev83]

Although I know this wasn't the OP talking, I do think that leaving the marriage might be an option. Life is short and I don't understand wasting part of it trying to force yourself to fall in love

The have twins together - moment after marriage babies. I am sure that makes it a tougher decision - add that too the years of fundie upbringing and I am sure walking away would be a hard thing for her to do. Sad all around since her H seems like a great guy, just not the great guy for her.

[Seven Severn]

Does anyone else remember Priscilla's story about jogging around a lake at Journey to the Heart and praying about David "Lord, I know that love is not an emotion! Please show me what you are doing!"? That always confused me until now. I think this idea of love as a choice and a decision is exactly what Priscilla was talking about.

Yes, I remember that, too. At the time I thought it odd and just peculiar to her or her family, but apparently it's a Gothard thing. It's nuts. I can't imagine not falling in love with a potential spouse.

[debrand]

I completely and totally lucked out with my husband. I was courting a guy my dad set me up with, and he was an utter jerk. If I complained about him, my dad took it personally. Like I was attacking him instead of the creep he set me up with. So I swallowed it, and went along for the ride.

Anyway, the guy ended up in quite the scandal because he was gay. His parents found gay porn on his computer, and he of course had to confess it to our pastor, my dad and myself. Dad ended it for me, and I thought I was in the clear. Then somebody put the idea in his head that I "turned" the guy gay. Which meant he had to marry me off as quickly as possible so as to squash the rumor that I was turning men into homosexuals with my feminist ways or whatever.

I was married after six months of courting my husband. It was terrifying. We cared for each other as much as two people who were barely allowed a private conversation could. Our first year of marriage sucked, because we both put on this face of obedience and piety that didn't really fit. After the walls came down and we actually faced each other as who we really were, we found that we had a lot in common. We love each other immensely, but us coming together was sheer dumb luck. Or maybe God knew what he was doing a heck of a lot better than my dad did, and decided to bring us together. ANYWAYS, the point is....

...My dad still credits himself with making some wise choice about who I married, because we have a successful marriage now. I call bull, he married me off to save face and it ended up working out.

I look at my younger siblings and their marriages, and how sad they all seem. It bothers me a lot. I love my husband like crazy, and I couldn't imagine being with somebody I didn't care for so deeply. How colorless and empty my world would be if I was joined for life with somebody I didn't have any attraction for.

I am very happy that your marriage worked out but your dad sounds like a cruel jerk. If your marriage hadn't worked out, how would your family react?

[kitkat]

South Asian arranged marriages, are way, way different than fundie courtship. For a start, the young woman is usually involved in the process from the very start, she's sitting with her mom and relatives going through a stack of resumes, or now days possibly sitting in a cyber cafe going through profiles on a website, she isn't just sitting at home waiting for Mr. Right to talk to her father. Also, part of the goal is finding someone that your son or daughter will be compatible with, plus there isn't a tendency to get hung up on minute points of philosophy. Yes, when marriages are being arranged, they tend to be 'in group', but as long as the person is a member of the desired religion, and of an acceptable level of piety, well, no one is going to turn down a good match because the prospective groom's theology doesn't perfectly line up with the bride's, or her father's.

If you're in an urban area, it also isn't uncommon-at least once things have progressed past the initial stage-for the couple to be allowed to talk in private, and have unsupervised conversations on the phone or the internet. Once the couple is actually engaged, unchaperoned dates are on the menu. It actually is pretty common for a young couple to be starting to fall in love when they get married-and no one thinks this is a problem. For that matter, its perfectly ok to want to find out more about someone because you thought that they looked cute in the picture attached to their resume.

I don't know that I would want to have a South Asian-style arranged marriage, but I think that over all, its a pretty decent way to find a person that you can build a happy life with, which is more than I can say for the way that fundies arrange courtships in the US.

[chaotic life]

Yes in most arranged marriages, there is no expectation that the bride groom profess to LOVE each other. It is generally thought that love will come with time, but there is also an acceptable option that love never comes and compatibility is sometimes sufficient to make a marriage work.

I think she's done a really good job of explaining how ANY move towards even emotional intimacy before the wedding day was a violation of the purity they were supposed to observe....yet, the moment they were married they were then expected to be madly in love and fully joined in intimacy--an accomplishment that even long-term marriages understand waxes and wans through the years.

If today you are expected to be no closer than platonic friends and tomorrow you are supposed to be madly in love and NEVER show conflict or growing pains in marriage, then how do you flip that switch? You don't. In Fundamentalist circles, the burden to conform and sacrifice personhood is entirely upon HER. As much as he is trying to love and woo her now, there isn't a lot of insight into how much he tried to domineer the marriage into conformity at the beginning. My guess is that he did, because he was told that was the ONLY way to MAKE her conform to the appropriate emotions and intimacy of the marriage.

[August]

Fixed! Luckily my situation is nothing like hers, with all the sinning we did prior to marriage.

It's still not a quote. Select the text, then click on the Quote button above the text box.

[Dev83]

She posted another entry. Damn - I feel for them. Seems like they are certainly doing the best they can. See this fundies? THIS is what you are doing to your children.

"Masks. Pretending. Outward appeal. Inward rot. Reputation. Games. Lying. Coping. Manipulation. Guilt trips. Abuse. Anger. Fear of man. A man follower. A pleaser. Rules. Hypocrisy. Legalism. Forced smiles. Closed doors. Pits. False love. Stale okays. Duty. Never taking chances. Never going after more. Miserable...Living Dead...

We called THAT A "Christian" life...a God follower.

I want more. SO much more! I want more than all that that I was raised in. I want more than what I saw in all the marriages around me. I want more with my relationship with God and others. I want more in my family. I do not want to settle. I do not want to be okay. I do not want to survive. I want to thrive. I want something called LIFE.

We have gotten tastes of it this last year and no mater how smallishly decadent they may have been it was plenty enough to make us want so much more of it.

The path to finding that "so much more" has been and is the most incredibly painful, frustrating, difficult path. It's narrow and winding. FAR from a wide and broad easy way. Facing the truth and digging out the lies is hard. Being on the narrow path has stripped us down to the raw tender pains of every wound we have ever had or have. Truths have come out that I never thought I would be set free of. Chains have come off those who thought they were in complete control. We have been cut off by some of my own family, scape goated, lied about, guilt tripped, manipulated. We have had to make the choice to fight. To fight for ourselves, to fight for us as a marriage, us as a family. And it is hard. It's not easy in any way. To be vulnerable. To be open. To be willing to learn to trust, to talk through things, to understand things, to come to see who God really is and what He wants to do for us and how He views us. To dig out the pain in order to be able to heal from it and LIVE our life NOW.

The hardest steps are always the most biggest and yet always the most rewarding steps....

And though the pain at times can be so great that your heart feels like it is physically being ripped from your chest I have found it to be BEYOND worth it.

Sam and I have been together for 7 years now, married for 5, have two perfectly handsome amazing little boys, have gone from getting married to each other not knowing each other at all, to getting pregnant within 2 months, to a year of complete and utter misery, to nearly calling it quits, to moving to a helpless little small town that has brought everything out of us, to basically hating the lives we had, to feeling hopeless and completely hitting the bottom, to everything finally spilling out giving us the strength to fight again, to......becoming best friends. And now, these two here best friends standing in the same place they have been for the last year, on a dirty, uneven, rocky, ground, with shovels and picks still in hand, dripping with sweat from head to toe, exhausted at times and frustrated at times when they hit a wall and fall into a bout of slight depression, are still fighting and stilling trying to level out there beginning.

Why?

Because things undealt with will always affect the now. Your past will always hold up your present until you go back and fix it, it will slowly destroy your todays. And it certainly was doing it's work on us. Every time we would hit a "glorious spot" something would come crashing down right after. As soon as one spot was level we immediately hit another. I envision it as the more rough spots we fix the more level ground we will have and the more level ground we have the more glorious times we will have.

And, because we want to have a crazy love of a marriage. We want something unimaginable. We want something completely on the other side of the opposite sex marriage jokes, the wait and you will sees, the this is all there is. So much more than what all the books or "teachers" say or have to offer. We want something that isn't seen everyday. We want something OUT of the rut. Something extraordinary. Something valuable. We want a titanium castle we can live in whilst this perfect storm called marriage rages on in all is ugly and beautiful.

We weren't shown. We don't know the how, or where, or what... We don't have answers we need most of the time. We are learning as we sweat and strive away. We do hit walls. We do go two steps forward and one step back...more often then not actually. But that doesn't mean we stop or we should stop. Because we look around us...and that deep longing down inside, that no one wants to talk about or be vulnerable about, for something more, is too strong to ignore now...

"The world isn’t captivated by people trying to give the impression they have it all together. That’s not what draws them. What captures their attention is the sight of humble, desperate, dependent people who acknowledge their sin and who point to their Savior as the only one who rescues. In other words, the world needs our confession, not our competence." Tchividjian"

[salsa]

world needs our confession, not our competence.

Though I don't agree wihth what this could imply in terms of so-called biblical marriage, I have to say, "by george, I think she's got it!" If, in her point of view, she believes that one ought to be an example, then, she is correct; no one (well, maybe a very few) believes plastic smiles and frumpers are models of true relationships. Keep seeking the real! I still wouldn't agree with the patriarchal model, but I respect her frankness.

sign me ...

from the world

[Sola]

These seem more in common with forced marriages than Asian style arranged marriages.

[Savoring Samsara]

Is it just me, or is her blog both insanely ugly and impossible to navigate? Yikes.

[Dev83]

Is it just me, or is her blog both insanely ugly and impossible to navigate? Yikes.

It is bad. I follow it through reader or I wouldn't be able to read it. It is a bummer too because it is a very good blog, starts from the very beginning when she was courting her now husband. That is why I copy and paste the posts here.