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Hey Married People: Beware of strangers who speak nicely to you.


louisa05

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It occurs to me that perhaps she's been reading too many Christian mommy blogs and it's playing out in her relationship. Sounds like Jared walked into it with that one, totally not expecting it.

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I am reading her blog now.  It is horrible and snarkworthy, and deeply sad all at the same time, eg, this: http://beckythompson.com/2013/08/23/sweet-little-bride/

She married at 19, and now at 28 seems to be finding fulfilment by marketing herself as a (very young) Titus2 woman, because there seems to be very little genuine joy in her marriage.

I am so sorry and cross that someone so young is peddling this shitty version of patriarchy as an ideal.  She is very pretty and in many ways seems to live a charmed life, with a husband, three shiny kids, a nice house and car and holidays.  I can see why she is attractive to others, with her trendy lifestyle and matching blog, but underneath that she seems like a cross between the YLCF and Lori whatsername, to me. Really unhappy and trying to pretend she has the answers, maybe in order to get the attention and affection from her followers that she is missing in her marriage.

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My favorite part is that the man said "I hope your day gets better!" and she said that the comment sounds creepy (no,  dear...just...no.) Then she calls her husband up again, and says..."I love you and hope your day gets better!"

Ma'am...either you are consciously being creepy to your husband or the comment does not sound creepy.

Logic.

(Yes, I'm aware that she probably meant that the stranger himself was being creepy, not that the actual comment sounds creepy. But if that's the case, why was she concerned about him being a threat to her marriage? Why would she have an affair with someone that she perceives as creepy? None of it actually makes much sense.)

 

ETA @blessalessi YLCF! Argh! I think you're on to something...

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Also, WTF is going on here.  One of her most shared blog posts about how she cried with relief at praise from a teacher who reported back that her son is standing by his family values (he had told the teacher, with sadness, that he was sitting on his own instead of playing zombies with the other kids, because Jesus). http://beckythompson.com/2015/12/09/momma-youre-doing-better-than-you-think/

The faux humility running through the blog just burns. 

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Also, I have scanned 20-30 of the 5* reviews on Amazon, and they all read as though they have been written by some sort of automated review generator.  Not one so far that gives a personal reaction to the book, just a volley of "Moms, you NEED this book" type blurbs. http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/reviews/160142812X/ref=cm_cr_dp_mb_btm?ie=UTF8&pageNumber=2

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21 minutes ago, blessalessi said:

I am reading her blog now.  It is horrible and snarkworthy, and deeply sad all at the same time, eg, this: http://beckythompson.com/2013/08/23/sweet-little-bride/

She married at 19, and now at 28 seems to be finding fulfilment by marketing herself as a (very young) Titus2 woman, because there seems to be very little genuine joy in her marriage.

I am so sorry and cross that someone so young is peddling this shitty version of patriarchy as an ideal.  She is very pretty and in many ways seems to live a charmed life, with a husband, three shiny kids, a nice house and car and holidays.  I can see why she is attractive to others, with her trendy lifestyle and matching blog, but underneath that she seems like a cross between the YLCF and Lori whatsername, to me. Really unhappy and trying to pretend she has the answers, maybe in order to get the attention and affection from her followers that she is missing in her marriage.

That post was...sad. Especially this quote:

"In that first six months, you will stand with all you can for “rightness.” Don’t bother. To this day if that sweet boy standing next to you says the sky is orange, there is nothing you will be able to do to convince him that it is blue. Practice with me, “Yes, what a lovely orange sky we are having today, my darling.”

It feels different than the typical "respecting your husband is believing everything he says is gospel" spiel. It sounds defeated, like she won't even bother speaking her mind (or pointing out the obvious!) anymore because it's not like he's going to listen anyway. 

I feel like that part was where the post started spiraling into a bitter pity party. Everything seemed pretty normal before that point. Also, the overuse of "sweet boy" sounds really passive aggressive. 

(Note: sorry, still a newbie and trying to figure out how to quote other sources!)

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She refers in one post to "them", the ones who have expected her young marriage to fail.  She doesn't refer often (or at all?) to family support or real life friends. I feel really sad for her, and yet so frustrated that she is building a career out of giving bad marriage advice to others.

I wonder what her husband thinks of it?  You would have to be pretty disconnected and thick-skinned not to feel the anger and pain in her posts.

But then, Steve Maxwell, somehow missed the passive-agressive undertones of Teri's infamous pizza post too. 

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Wow, that sounds like such a miserable marriage.

Hijack:  being Of A Certain Age™, I now have this line from "Ode To Billy Joe" stuck in my head:

Brother married Becky Thompson, they bought a store in Tupelo...

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3 hours ago, louisa05 said:

When I got engaged, my evangelical friends all deluged me with warnings about how hard marriage is. It is "hard work" and the "first year is so difficult" that "you'll wonder why you even did it" and it is "a battle" and "Satan will test you" and some days "you will hate your spouse more than anyone else" and "he will wound you" and on and on it went. Always ending with "congratulations!". 

They do paint a horrible picture of marriage. I have tried to figure out why they all struggle with it so much. I think the whole gender roles thing is part of the problem. If people's natural preferences, talents and personalities don't fit into the gender boxes, it would be really difficult. My friend's husband was 38 when they got married and had cooked for himself for years and got pretty good at it. My friend is not that great of a cook--she can put dinner on the table, but everything is boring and bland. But they are committed to the whole gender role thing so guess who cooks? And one of their big early marriage struggles was he didn't like what she made. Of course, she is still cooking 15 years later because they could not possibly step outside of those roles. 

I also have seen a tendency across the board with fundies and evangelicals a belief that there is no real need for compatibility--if you both believe the same things and stick to the assigned gender roles, then a marriage will work regardless of whether you enjoy the same things or are in any way compatible. That is not true at all. 

Then there is the ban on male-female friendships of any sort. The result is that some of these people have no idea how to relate to someone of the opposite sex until they are thrown into a marriage. The discussion about intimacy in the Lori thread is really demonstrative of the need for real friendship in marriage and that is something that a lot of fundies and even evangelicals have no concept of--men and women simply aren't supposed to  be friends so it makes marriage difficult to navigate. 

So they have these twisted marriages and then women like this one are advising the rest of them based on all the skewed and unhealthy things about her own marriage--creating an endless cycle of bad relationships. 

And then they preach to the world about the importance of this institution that they basically regard as miserable and how we all need to be married. All I can think is of the old saying, misery loves company, right? 

Being repeatedly told how big and important a responsibility marriage is has made me shy away from it.  But at least my parents have highlighted the importance of compatability, on multiple levels.

6 hours ago, onlyme said:

I've noticed some people doing the same thing with "vibration". Like in Christian circles people will say "They just sensed 'in the spirit' that something was off about a person, and in a lot of New Age circles they'll say there is something negative about your vibration. Or pretend like they know some deep problem about you that you are unaware of because of your vibration. It's equally annoying. I was in an art group where the leader went on about how sensitive she was about people's vibrations and she would talk down people who left because of their vibration. It had all the signs of a cult to me (other things, like editing conversations to make herself look better, wanting constant applause, etc.) and so I left. I'm very skittish over stuff like that these days! Lol.

Christians aren't the only manipulators, for sure! 

I intuit that you have a hypersympathetic coefficient of molecular energy.

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7 hours ago, onlyme said:

I've noticed some people doing the same thing with "vibration". Like in Christian circles people will say "They just sensed 'in the spirit' that something was off about a person, and in a lot of New Age circles they'll say there is something negative about your vibration. Or pretend like they know some deep problem about you that you are unaware of because of your vibration. It's equally annoying. I was in an art group where the leader went on about how sensitive she was about people's vibrations and she would talk down people who left because of their vibration. It had all the signs of a cult to me (other things, like editing conversations to make herself look better, wanting constant applause, etc.) and so I left. I'm very skittish over stuff like that these days! Lol.

Christians aren't the only manipulators, for sure! 

The religion my family was involved with always talked about the energy that people/places/things gave off. Pretty similar to your former art group leader but just with a different term. I don't blame you a bit for leaving. Life is too short for such bullshit. 

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Relationships definitely take work, but there's a huge difference between "Marriage is hard but in the right situation it's ultimately worth it" versus "Marriage is pretty much all-around miserable but you have to do it anyway because... um... God." This type of blog always seems to me much more like the latter.

Imposing restrictive gender roles on your relationship regardless of the partners' natural gifts and personalities and adding a bunch of "biblical" rules that are way more specific and nitpicky than anything actually found in the Bible causes so much unnecessary stress and friction. Yet these bloggers seem incapable of seeing how much of their struggles are self-imposed, and completely normalize marriage being a mostly unhappy situation.

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NEWS ALERT:  I shook hands with a man today.  I think I might be pregnant.

Nevermind that I had a hysterectomy years ago.

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1 hour ago, Gimme a Free RV said:

NEWS ALERT:  I shook hands with a man today.  I think I might be pregnant.

Nevermind that I had a hysterectomy years ago.

*gasp* and he didn't wear a glove??? Weren't you taught about safe handshaking? :pearlclutching:

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She is a terrible mother. Can't manage to send her nursery school aged son to school with his coat? It's not that difficult. She is just Me Me. Me poor little me. I have no sympathy what so ever. She sounds totally spoilt.

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3 hours ago, Helga G. Pataki said:

*gasp* and he didn't wear a glove??? Weren't you taught about safe handshaking? :pearlclutching:

OMG COOTIES!!1!1

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After reading her Valentine's day blog, I'm thinking her Quicksand/Stranger's Comment blog was merely a cry for attention from her husband.  The whole scenario might have even been a work of fiction.

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15 hours ago, blessalessi said:

Also, WTF is going on here.  One of her most shared blog posts about how she cried with relief at praise from a teacher who reported back that her son is standing by his family values (he had told the teacher, with sadness, that he was sitting on his own instead of playing zombies with the other kids, because Jesus). http://beckythompson.com/2015/12/09/momma-youre-doing-better-than-you-think/

The faux humility running through the blog just burns. 

Too humble is half proud.

There is yet another option here.  The man who made the (creepy - seriously?) comment may also be homosexual and therefore she was being tempted into a non-existent relationship by a man who didn't have any sexual interest in her WHATSOEVER.

Also, as pointed out upstream, this doesn't mean she shouldn't be all on-guard if a woman says something nice to her.  She could be homosexual or bisexual herself. 

Beware of anyone who is polite or friendly.  Stick to your fundie friends because, you know, none of them are ever creepy (Jack Schaap).

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I looked back to the start of her blog. In 2013 she started as a fashion blogger who mentioned church occasionally. Then she started writing some personal posts, including one very long one about her husband who is a pipeline builder, and the isolation she experiences while he is away for days at a time, and the pain she feels about the way they are regarded as relatively low status. Around the same time, she started up a local bible study group and after she wrote a very long and much shared post about hope after miscarriage, and her blog sort of abruptly transitioned from Modest is Hottest into a Soundbites for Struggling Christian Mommies blog. She has apparently found the affection and social status she craves, as a writer.

There is something generally off about her writing, to me. It's not that her stories seem fictional, but she seems to dramatise absolutely everything and projects an awful lot of her own feelings onto the behaviours of others.  And she seems to spend a lot of time in humble tears about the way God is working through her. The post (complete with photos) where she took her young children shopping for tins of formula milk to give out to random poor people was.... interesting.

 

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1 hour ago, blessalessi said:

I looked back to the start of her blog. In 2013 she started as a fashion blogger who mentioned church occasionally. Then she started writing some personal posts, including one very long one about her husband who is a pipeline builder, and the isolation she experiences while he is away for days at a time, and the pain she feels about the way they are regarded as relatively low status. Around the same time, she started up a local bible study group and after she wrote a very long and much shared post about hope after miscarriage, and her blog sort of abruptly transitioned from Modest is Hottest into a Soundbites for Struggling Christian Mommies blog. She has apparently found the affection and social status she craves, as a writer.

There is something generally off about her writing, to me. It's not that her stories seem fictional, but she seems to dramatise absolutely everything and projects an awful lot of her own feelings onto the behaviours of others.  And she seems to spend a lot of time in humble tears about the way God is working through her. The post (complete with photos) where she took her young children shopping for tins of formula milk to give out to random poor people was.... interesting.

 

With a quarter of that dramatisation maybe the Moody books would be readable...

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2 hours ago, blessalessi said:

The post (complete with photos) where she took her young children shopping for tins of formula milk to give out to random poor people was.... interesting.

 

Would you mind linking it?  I don't have the patience to go flipping through this woman's site to find it.  Plus I think I'll find myself driving to her door to slap her.

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1 hour ago, Gellhorn said:

Would you mind linking it?  I don't have the patience to go flipping through this woman's site to find it.  Plus I think I'll find myself driving to her door to slap her.

I had a chat to God about your request @Gellhorn and He spoke to me in a God way and told me there would be no greater feeling than if I should reach out to help you with this link.  I am in tears that I was so selfish not to post it before. Please don't upvote me or buy my little book by way of thanks,  just know that God loves you!  He loves you all, folks! ;)

http://beckythompson.com/2013/08/21/love-god-serve-others/

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He’s a great listener. Did you know that? God who created all things and formed the universe loves it when we share our hearts with Him… Really. He is the best.

Yeah, you know who else is a great listener?  The flowers in your garden.  Your dog or cat. Your pillow.  Your mirror.  They are all really "great listeners" if by "great listener" you mean someone who listens without interrupting or being judgemental or having any opinions or feedback.  I bet  you could get some more really great ideas (if by "great idea" you mean buying 4 cans of formula and taking them to a couple of apartment complexes) if you talked to your underpants and then listened really, really hard.

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