Kindred Grace contributor married at 17- Jessiqua (MERGED)

[NachosFlandersStyle]

I just fell down a rabbit hole while browsing around Kindred Grace and since I now have the post count to start new topics I thought I'd try it out.

Anyway, Jessiqua Wittman is a contributor over there who mentioned that she was married at 17 to a man more than twice her age. She wrote up the whole story on her blog last year and of course it's 27 pages long because these folks can't eat breakfast without writing a 12- part blog series about it. Here's the link: jessiquawrites.blogspot.com/2014/01/my-journey-to-gritty-memoirs-of-teenage.html?m=1

I don't want to disparage her situation too much because she seems genuinely happy and she has some thoughtful posts on KG about how people view her marriage. But hoo boy, the way she describes her courtship makes it sound like things could have gone really wrong. Her family is Messianic and was in a really iffy living situation when, at 16, the an older man approaches her at a church function. A family friend shoos him away and tells Jessiqua's parents that he seems like a "predator"-- so of course they invite him to dinner. It sounds like her parents were more or less arranging the marriage and keeping it secret from her, and then she's married so fast she doesn't even have time to tell all her friends.

Pretty fascinating read. It must have been so overwhelming to be in her shoes-- and now she looks to be about 22 or 23, with three little kids. I'm glad she finds time to write.

[Cleopatra7]

I'm actually surprised that there aren't more teenage fundie marriages, given their obsession with "purity. " The fear of teenage girls having sex and dishonoring their male relatives is the rationale of marrying off girls the moment they hit puberty, from classical Athens to modern-day Yemen. In the US, teen marriage has fallen out of favor even among fundies (aside from really fringe groups like the FLDS), but it seems that the marriage meat market begins the minute girls turn 18.

[SolomonFundy]

I think that most fundie families hold off on super-early marriages for their daughters due to the usefulness of the girls. JimBob and Michelle Duggar married in their late teens, but the youngest age at which any of their children have married (so far) is Josh at 20. It's a bit unusual since their lifestyle together is far more conservative than what either of them grew up with.

Another factor is finding a suitable mate within whatever is considered their accepted "community". This becomes nearly impossible with some of the families on freejinger, the Maxwells being a prime example. Steve has "set apart" his family to the point that most of his adult children have no opportunity to meet people or make a connection that could lead to a relationship. The only ones that have been able to find partners are sons. It is theoretically easier for a male to bring a female into the Stevehovah lifestyle than the other way around.

In situations where a family is living within a large community of like-minded people (like FLDS, Amish, or Messianic Judaism), it is far easier to allow daughters to marry early. This could be due to a cultural expectation of early marriage, or a practical expedient.

[NachosFlandersStyle]

I keep thinking about this and what's bugging me is the way the adults around her were feeding her belief that "this is all God's crazy, unpredictable plan!" even as they seem to be scheming above her head. I mean, it's obviously in her husband's interest to claim that he didn't WANT to marry a teenager, but God was working in mysterious ways... And yet he's having all these behind-the-scenes negotiations with her parents before the two of them have even had a personal conversation. Wtf.

She nominally has the option to refuse the relationship, but her judgment is made very complicated by her belief in God's will, and her parents keep reminding her of that when she expresses trepidation. I so remember those feelings of fear and ickiness that I had as a teenager when sex and romance first became an issue. I just wanted to say "leave me alone, this is making me uncomfortable!" Luckily I had that option. What kind of fatherly protection are you offering if you're telling your daughter to ignore those instincts?

[nelliebelle1197]

I am still trying to figure out the name Jessiqua. It cannot even be pronounced.

[ViolaSebastian]

I am still trying to figure out the name Jessiqua. It cannot even be pronounced.

I imagine it pronounced as "Jessie-quoi".

I made it through the whole thing and can't get past the fact that her memoir of her teenage years is one in the same as her memoir of how she met and married her husband. Plus the speaking one on one with God as though he's your BFF and pretending that He answers back directly is... :?

[Cleopatra7]

I am still trying to figure out the name Jessiqua. It cannot even be pronounced.

I assume that it's supposed to be pronounced like regular "Jessica," just with kreative spelling. :roll: Or maybe it's the way the French spell "Jessica," since the "qua" would be pronounced "ka" in the French language.

[uber frau]

When we went to visit Dad at the college, he told us not to pick up the little bags of white powder on the school lawn because they had drugs in them... [/quote ]

When I go to uni next week I'll be sure to keep an eye out for baggies of white powder.

Admittedly I'm only half way through the second ep does anyone else get the impression this series is ab bit 'inspired by real life events ' rather than strictly autobiographical?

[Mellanya]

When we went to visit Dad at the college, he told us not to pick up the little bags of white powder on the school lawn because they had drugs in them, but we didn’t know anyone that actually shot up on the stuff.

From the story. This comes up in every other fundie story about going to a real college.

Seriously... what kind of college are these guys visiting?? I've seen a bunch of different campuses in different cities, and I have yet to encounter bags with blow strewn across the lawn (or teachers making out with students on cafeteria tables, or people having sex in dark corners, or anything like that).

Seriously?!

[Mellanya]

lol didn't see your post on time. Thanks for feeling the same way about that.

[uber frau]

To be fair, going by my uni's 'confessions' FB page, it's not _that_ uncommon to accidentally interrupt a couple having a good time in the private study rooms in the one of the libraries. (The doors have pathetic little windows that can be covered with a sheet of A4 paper and the some blu-tack. The study rooms in the newer libraries have massively expanses of glass) but I've never come across students taking (or even buying ) hard drugs on campus. Pot,dexies, alcohol? Yep,yep and yep. White powder? Never.

[grovelina]

Seriously? Baggies of white powder on the lawn? I feel like those have to be too expensive for people to be randomly dropping around campus in the volume she is suggesting.

[nelliebelle1197]

Seriously? Baggies of white powder on the lawn? I feel like those have to be too expensive for people to be randomly dropping around campus in the volume she is suggesting.

If I had gone to that college I could have paid tuition with all of that white powdered scattered in the wind.... I bet the dad did say that. These fundies want to scare their kids. They make the world to be a scary place with coke growing on trees, teenagers hooking up with people a decade and a half older....wait a minute :pink-shock:

[grovelina]

They do want to scare them, and logic bedamned. At least drugs are something scary, unlike the Bates and their fear of a college filled with green-haired freaks. :roll:

[Jencendiary]

Can someone TL;DR the 900 page story of Miss Thang's Creepy Courtship? I tried to read the first page, but my brain literally could not even.

[jerkit]

What the actual hell is this? I am so creeped out right now.

[jerkit]

Oh god, I just got to the wedding. What is her father wearing? What is her husband wearing? What world did I step into?!

[browncoatslytherin]

i'm reading the whole 90,000 part life story, but i'm having to take it in spurts as it's making my head hurt at certain points.

[Grimalkin]

Oh my, do I take a shower and clean my house and run errands or get sucked into the rabbit hole?

I'm gonna take a peek but set my timer.

[anjulibai]

My undergrad university had a massive drug problem. The year after I graduated there was a giant FBI/DEA/Police sting. Over 100 dealers, mules, etc. we're arrested ( that's why 3 agencies were involved). It was mainly over cocaine and meth.

And yet in the years I was there, I never once found drugs strewn randomly around campus. The only drugs I ever saw was small amounts marijuana, but that was never out in the open, and in the off campus dorms.

No one would be stupid enough to leave drugs just lying out in the open.

And the dealers on campus were dumb. A large portion of them were in the criminal justice and homeland security majors. One was quoted as asking if his arrest would hurt his chances at a career in law enforcement.

But no leaving bags of white powder everywhere. Are fundies really so dumb to believe these lies?

[NachosFlandersStyle]

Can someone TL;DR the 900 page story of Miss Thang's Creepy Courtship? I tried to read the first page, but my brain literally could not even.

I can try. So about the first third of it covers her family's slide into poverty-- her father has some sort of health issue and they end up living on an isolated, wooded lot in a trailer that they literally got for free on Craigslist (the roof's a little caved in, but it's still good!) They don't have water or electricity or heat for a while. During this time Jessiqua has been praying for her future husband and she is starting to have very literal visions about what he looks like, what he's doing right now, etc. She has a premonition that she will meet him at a church retreat, and is very distraught when the retreat comes and goes and the only man she has met is this guy well into his thirties who her friend is creeped out by.

After the retreat her parents start asking her about the guy and asking her more questions about her visions of her future husband. Soon they invite him to dinner for an awkward set up. Her parents ask her to leave the room so they can ask him some questions about her, they have a long conversation that they won't tell her about afterwards. Soon he starts calling the house regularly and speaking to her parents; she only finds out later that they have been talking about her marriage prospects.

He invites the family to his church where he preaches a sermon about Rebecca and Isaac (an older man marrying a young woman). Jessiqua starts to take an interest in him with the idea that he might know or lead her to her future husband, but she doesn't like the idea of marrying him. However, her parents keep bringing it up and a few months later they are courting. She finds out that this dude magically has a lot in common with the premonitions that she's been having-- and that her parents have been telling him about those premonitions in great detail.

There's a lot of blah blah blah about meeting the family and the proposal. Her friends are shocked by the engagement and disapprove of the age difference. The wedding seems weirdly rushed-- they don't start decorating the church until the morning of, and her father has to drive to another state to get some stuff at the last minute? She doesn't seem to have any idea who has and hasn't been invited to the wedding? Anyway, she's frightened at overwhelmed at first, her father officiates (while dressed like a scraggly hippie), and it's all over before she knows it. Two months later she's pregnant-- and dealing with "crazy teenage hormones" at the same time! Now she's a stay-at-home mom who writes Christian apocalyptic fantasy novels in her spare time.

[TrueRebel1]

I keep thinking about this and what's bugging me is the way the adults around her were feeding her belief that "this is all God's crazy, unpredictable plan!" even as they seem to be scheming above her head. I mean, it's obviously in her husband's interest to claim that he didn't WANT to marry a teenager, but God was working in mysterious ways... And yet he's having all these behind-the-scenes negotiations with her parents before the two of them have even had a personal conversation. Wtf.?

Thank you for putting my feelings into words! Not just in this Jessiqua situation (which I think is absolutely weird!) but for many fundie match-making situations. It's the fact that the parents, or want-to-be-groom, is manipulating the situation and scheming how to make the girl feel as if it's all God's providential plan. I have several fundie friends/acquaintances where this exact thing happened, minus the age difference. It was obvious from outsiders that the guy and/or parents was a manipulative jerk, and yet the family had the girl convinced that this was a match made in heaven, and it was ordained by God. Makes me so mad and sad for the duped girls. I'm all about "soul-mates"....but these obviously were not!

[anjulibai]

I can try. So about the first third of it covers her family's slide into poverty-- her father has some sort of health issue and they end up living on an isolated, wooded lot in a trailer that they literally got for free on Craigslist (the roof's a little caved in, but it's still good!) They don't have water or electricity or heat for a while. During this time Jessiqua has been praying for her future husband and she is starting to have very literal visions about what he looks like, what he's doing right now, etc. She has a premonition that she will meet him at a church retreat, and is very distraught when the retreat comes and goes and the only man she has met is this guy well into his thirties who her friend is creeped out by.

After the retreat her parents start asking her about the guy and asking her more questions about her visions of her future husband. Soon they invite him to dinner for an awkward set up. Her parents ask her to leave the room so they can ask him some questions about her, they have a long conversation that they won't tell her about afterwards. Soon he starts calling the house regularly and speaking to her parents; she only finds out later that they have been talking about her marriage prospects.

He invites the family to his church where he preaches a sermon about Rebecca and Isaac (an older man marrying a young woman). Jessiqua starts to take an interest in him with the idea that he might know or lead her to her future husband, but she doesn't like the idea of marrying him. However, her parents keep bringing it up and a few months later they are courting. She finds out that this dude magically has a lot in common with the premonitions that she's been having-- uand that her parents have been telling him about those premonitions in great detail.

There's a lot of blah blah blah about meeting the family and the proposal. Her friends are shocked by the engagement and disapprove of the age difference. The wedding seems weirdly rushed-- they don't start decorating the church until the morning of, and her father has to drive to another state to get some stuff at the last minute? She doesn't seem to have any idea who has and hasn't been invited to the wedding? Anyway, she's frightened at overwhelmed at first, her father officiates (while dressed like a scraggly hippie), and it's all over before she knows it. Two months later she's pregnant-- and dealing with "crazy teenage hormones" at the same time! Now she's a stay-at-home mom who writes Christian apocalyptic fantasy novels in her spare time.

Sounds like her parents couldn't afford to raise her so the married her off to the first guy to come along.

Poor girl.

[Mellanya]

To be fair, going by my uni's 'confessions' FB page, it's not _that_ uncommon to accidentally interrupt a couple having a good time in the private study rooms in the one of the libraries. (The doors have pathetic little windows that can be covered with a sheet of A4 paper and the some blu-tack. The study rooms in the newer libraries have massively expanses of glass) but I've never come across students taking (or even buying ) hard drugs on campus. Pot,dexies, alcohol? Yep,yep and yep. White powder? Never.

I was referring to another "real college experience" story from a different fundie blogger. The blog has been taken down, but the gist of the story was that she walked through the cafeteria and saw that the literature prof was (literally) screwing a female student on a table, some male students watched while touching themselves, others were doing drugs, some were listening to loud music "with empty eyes" or something like that. There was more but I don't remember all the details. Supposedly quite a busy cafeteria.

Anyway, it struck me as very similar to this story. And it's not the only one.

[uber frau]

I was just taking the piss :lol:

Everyone,including the fundies, knows the biggest threat is that their children might learn to think.