Pearls 2: Michael, Shoshanna, et al

[JermajestyDuggar]

3 minutes ago, Ozlsn said:

Subjection was what was lacking. They had no idea that abusive marriages were out there! Debi is basically in deep denial about her own marriage, and the lacking was only from Michael's viewpoint that he should be deferred to and worshipped. I am petty and vindictive enough to hope that Michael is incapacitated and discovering powerlessness from the other side

Has Shoshanna come out and said that her marriage was abusive, or is it being heavily implied? 

I think she has only implied it so far.

[noseybutt]

45 minutes ago, Ozlsn said:

Subjection was what was lacking. They had no idea that abusive marriages were out there! Debi is basically in deep denial about her own marriage, and the lacking was only from Michael's viewpoint that he should be deferred to and worshipped. I am petty and vindictive enough to hope that Michael is incapacitated and discovering powerlessness from the other side

Has Shoshanna come out and said that her marriage was abusive, or is it being heavily implied? 

I have seen her talk about in her IG stories but it’s confusing because she also tells stories of “other women” and “friends” and it’s garbled as to who is who. 

I may have overreached in saying she was abused. Who really knows. She has a tenuous relationship with truth, at best.

40 minutes ago, JermajestyDuggar said:

I think she has only implied it so far.

This. 
 

ETA Also, this family denied that blatantly abusive behavior was abuse for so many decades that I am not sure I trust their definition of anything. 

Edited May 15 by noseybutt

[TrueRebel1]

42 minutes ago, Ozlsn said:

Has Shoshanna come out and said that her marriage was abusive, or is it being heavily implied? 

She's used the words abuse and darkness but hasn't detailed specifics or physical abuse. 

It's interesting to me that the court saw fit to give James 50% custody of the kids, and that he held enough sway to win the choice of public school. I'm not saying that there couldn't have been abuse, especially emotional abuse, but the way Shoshanna has painted the narrative is that he was so abusive that the stress gave Jeremiah seizures and that he was abusive enough to warrant divorce which should (according to the Pearl's beliefs) basically mean he was beating her within an inch of her life. 

[JermajestyDuggar]

The thing is her parents are emotionally and physically abusive. And they write books teaching it. So who knows what she considers abuse. When you grow up surrounded in normalized abuse, how can you see abuse for what it is?

[Giraffe]

3 hours ago, JermajestyDuggar said:

This makes me much more angry than just ignoring the usual criticism. They are gaslighting, denying, and pretending like they had no idea there were men who beat the shit out of their wives when writing their heinous books. 
 

Debi, “what?!? You mean there are men who beat women? I’ve never heard of such a thing!” 
 

Fuck off.

That's what makes this worse than if she were trying to actually soften their earlier teachings. She's not. She's outright claiming now, in 2024, men are beating their wives and those abused wives aren't who their books were written for. Those abused wives - THOSE DEAD CHILDREN - are literally who they wrote their books for! 

How many women did they privately shame into staying with their abuser? How many women over the DECADES did they tell to "just try harder," and "open your legs more often," and "if you were as submissive to him as you're telling us you are he wouldn't have beat you. You need to stop lying to yourself and to him and god will bless your marriage"?

HOW. MANY. WOMEN?

How many women did you, Debi, counsel to accept being raped as a normal part of marriage? 
 

And how many more abused children that never died and so we never heard your book was found in their parents bedrooms? HOW DARE YOU LIE AND MAKE YOURSELF SEEM INNOCENT!

Edited May 15 by Giraffe

[noseybutt]

16 minutes ago, JermajestyDuggar said:

The thing is her parents are emotionally and physically abusive. And they write books teaching it. So who knows what she considers abuse. When you grow up surrounded in normalized abuse, how can you see abuse for what it is?

There is complexity here in that she is deeply self-centered and probably unable to recognize abusive behavior in herself and in others, both.

I may have the story wrong, but it sounds like she returned to her parent’s property after her divorce which is…bizarre. Her enmeshment with her oldest son is also bizarre. 

And now this rewriting of history that crosses over from bizarre to totally enraging.

It’s a mix of poor boundaries and a diva complex that IMO makes it impossible to believe what she says. (And I say that recognizing there could have been abuse. There could also be a husband tired of the crazy and pushing back for the sake of the children and that might have felt abusive to her. Or some mix of both.)

 

30 minutes ago, Giraffe said:

That's what makes this worse than if she were trying to actually soften their earlier teachings. She's not. She's outright claiming now, in 2024, men are beating their wives and those abused wives aren't who their books were written for. Those abused wives - THOSE DEAD CHILDREN - are literally who they wrote their books for! 

How many women did they privately shame into staying with their abuser? How many women over the DECADES did they tell to "just try harder," and "open your legs more often," and "if you were as submissive to him as you're telling us you are he wouldn't have beat you. You need to stop lying to yourself and to him and god will bless your marriage"?

HOW. MANY. WOMEN?

How many women did you, Debi, counsel to accept being raped as a normal part of marriage? 
 

And how many more abused children that never died and so we never heard your book was found in their parents bedrooms? HOW DARE YOU LIE AND MAKE YOURSELF SEEM INNOCENT!

I want to add that most of the dead children were adopted. They were kids already traumatized. I share your rage.

[hoipolloi]

Mike seems to be OK, judging from Shoshanna's FB & IG posts. A number of NGJ articles have his byline which fits with what is shown on social media. Who knows what's really happening. IIRC, Mike & Debi didn't hesitate to seek fairly conventional medical care when they themselves needed it for his stroke or her back surgery a few years ago. Debi might write a bunch of shit about herbal cures in NGJ but I bet you won't catch her or Mike spending $50+ K on a Mexican health spa run by quacks.

31 minutes ago, noseybutt said:

she returned to her parent’s property after her divorce

She & James were living in that same house for some years before their divorce - the same one where she is now and where her "friend" Eric seems to be doing a shitload of home improvements for her. Maybe heʻs getting paid with Plexus swill.

1 hour ago, JermajestyDuggar said:

The thing is her parents are emotionally and physically abusive. And they write books teaching it.

All of this. Their abuse manual for infants & children - TTUAC - is designed to produce adults that will either inflict or accept abuse from others. Michael & Debi Pearl are monsters. 

[Ozlsn]

It's impossible to always know from the outside what is going on in a marriage, especially through social media. It does occur to me though that divorce because you've grown apart, are unhappy or disagree on fundamental issues like schooling and religion is not acceptable according to her parents, and under their rules her only option in those circumstances was to submit to what her husband wanted in the hope he would change his mind and ignore her own unhappiness. (What do you do under those rules when your husband tells you you're divorcing btw? Agree I suppose? If there's differences in religion and he's become less fundamentalist then you have to also become more liberal and/or atheist? This sect is nuts.)

It is also entirely possible that it was an abusive marriage, and she left to go back to the more familiar family abuse. Which is really sad.

[noseybutt]

37 minutes ago, Ozlsn said:

(What do you do under those rules when your husband tells you you're divorcing btw? Agree I suppose? If there's differences in religion and he's become less fundamentalist then you have to also become more liberal and/or atheist? This sect is nuts.)

 

Someone please correct me if I have this wrong, but I believe there is a story in Created to be his Helpmeet about a husband who left his wife for another woman and his wife responded by never complaining and dutifully caring for the house and children. And, of course, in this (likely fabricated) instance the husband returned home. 

I think that is one of many reasons why there is so much anger over the revisionist history.

Because according to the book, Shoshanna should be dutifully carrying on, speaking respectfully of her ex, and remaining joyful throughout this trial in order to glorify God and win her husband back.

Which is nuts.

 

 

 

 

[TrueRebel1]

1 hour ago, noseybutt said:

Someone please correct me if I have this wrong, but I believe there is a story in Created to be his Helpmeet about a husband who left his wife for another woman and his wife responded by never complaining and dutifully caring for the house and children. And, of course, in this (likely fabricated) instance the husband returned home. 

I think that is one of many reasons why there is so much anger over the revisionist history.

Because according to the book, Shoshanna should be dutifully carrying on, speaking respectfully of her ex, and remaining joyful throughout this trial in order to glorify God and win her husband back.

Which is nuts.

 

 

 

 

Exactly. Instead she gets to live a "free" life and "breathe" and chase after some new guy (in a very non-Pearl approved non-courtship way). If that makes her happy, great, but if she cared at all about other abused women in the same position she was supposedly in, she'd renounce her parents and former beliefs. 

[Ozlsn]

4 hours ago, TrueRebel1 said:

Instead she gets to live a "free" life and "breathe" and chase after some new guy (in a very non-Pearl approved non-courtship way).

Well she can't do courtship as remarrying is banned, so she may as well cut straight to leaping in the sack (which is not, technically speaking, banned.)

[MariaariaM]

13 hours ago, Ozlsn said:

I am petty and vindictive enough to hope that Michael is incapacitated and discovering powerlessness from the other side

If Debi wasn't such an awful person herself Roald Dahl's short story "William and Mary" would be the perfect future for Michael.

[JermajestyDuggar]

This is bad news. 

[marmalade]

So they're FINALLY getting some real medical care? This could have been avoided with proper care in the first place. 

[JermajestyDuggar]

2 minutes ago, marmalade said:

So they're FINALLY getting some real medical care? This could have been avoided with proper care in the first place. 

I think that if they get this fixed with a real surgeon, they are still planning on finishing the woo treatment. 

[marmalade]

1 hour ago, JermajestyDuggar said:

I think that if they get this fixed with a real surgeon, they are still planning on finishing the woo treatment. 

That's disappointing. 

[Ozlsn]

1 hour ago, JermajestyDuggar said:

I think that if they get this fixed with a real surgeon, they are still planning on finishing the woo treatment. 

I sincerely hope they get talked out of it. I watched the video linked earlier, and it was so depressing.

[MariaariaM]

I'm sure the sunk cost fallacy is in full swing: after putting that much money into something it's really hard to admit it was absolutely useless. Plus what the quackery center probably felt quite nice while what's going to happen at the hospital (if anything can be done) will likely be unpleasant so even if surgery can be performed successfully that still doesn't mean they'll believe it's the real doctors that worked the magic.

[Columbia]

On 5/15/2024 at 9:35 PM, noseybutt said:

Someone please correct me if I have this wrong, but I believe there is a story in Created to be his Helpmeet about a husband who left his wife for another woman and his wife responded by never complaining and dutifully caring for the house and children. And, of course, in this (likely fabricated) instance the husband returned home. 

I can't find it in the edition I have, but there's this story from a woman who writes Debi because she's concerned that her husband is watching inappropriate TV shows around the children. This is Debi's answer, so it wouldn't surprise me if suck it up and submit is her response to abandonment as well.
 

Spoiler

The whole 2004 edition of the book is available on the Wayback Machine.

 

[JermajestyDuggar]

33 minutes ago, Columbia said:

I can't find it in the edition I have, but there's this story from a woman who writes Debi because she's concerned that her husband is watching inappropriate TV shows around the children. This is Debi's answer, so it wouldn't surprise me if suck it up and submit is her response to abandonment as well.
 

  Hide contents

The whole 2004 edition of the book is available on the Wayback Machine.

 

That’s basically the shittiest answer possible. She’s going to leave her husband over a tv show? He’s going to leave her over a tv show? What the fuck? That’s the only possibility? There are SO MANY other ways to fix this problem. I know this was 20 years ago, but taping tv shows was still a things. The wife could have gone out and bought tapes for him to tape his shows. Then he can watch him after the kids go to bed. Or mom could come up with a fun activity every evening while the worst shows were on. Or she could have a fucking conversation with her husband about appropriate tv shows. But just to tell her, “be glad you have a husband.” Is not an answer. It’s that will fix nothing and will make the problems worse. Such a marriage expert that Debi! 

[hoipolloi]

10 hours ago, MariaariaM said:

I'm sure the sunk cost fallacy is in full swing: after putting that much money into something it's really hard to admit it was absolutely useless...the quackery center probably felt quite nice while what's going to happen at the hospital (if anything can be done) will likely be unpleasant

Sadly, both of these things are probably true. There's a reason that the quacks run H4C like a spa.

Shalom has been doing an additional ask for $ on social media - why, you can even make a donation directly to Justin's account at the quack center. 

Edited May 18 by hoipolloi

[JermajestyDuggar]

Justin had a large amount of fluid removed from his lungs for the 3rd time. It sounds like a painful procedure and the last time it was done was a little over a week ago. The fluid keeps building up. I’m wondering if they are trying to do anything to slow the fluid build up. I assume there are medications that should slow down the build up. That way he doesn’t have to keep doing this painful procedure. I just wish he was in a real hospital. 

[Giraffe]

Wow. So not only is he not getting real treatment but it sounds like he's dying a brutal death because...godly?

[Jasmar]

Ugh, sounds like my mom’s stay while trying to get her stage 4 heart failure under control. Just that alone is life threatening, and then you add in the complications from his cancer, and it just sounds brutal.

[hoipolloi]

1 hour ago, Giraffe said:

So not only is he not getting real treatment but it sounds like he's dying a brutal death because...godly?

The H4C quacks are criminals.

There may well be no cure ahead for Justin no matter what he does but the way H4C is dragging this out while charging them up the wazoo is plain evil.