The Damage of Courtship/Emotional Purity

[alba]

http://darcysheartstirrings.blogspot.co ... y-and.html

I came across this series of posts entitled "How the Teachings of Emotional Purity and Courtship Damage Healthy Relationships". It's a really interesting read (ETA: well, the first two installments are; the third is more heavily Christian).

One comment in particular stuck out at me:

It was Josh Harris in I Kissed Dating Goodbye and the Ludy's in several of their books that popularized the idea that everytime you fall in love or get "emotionally attached" to someone, you give away a piece of your heart. The more pieces you give away, the less of your heart you have to give to your spouse someday. He even went so far as to say that each of those former flames actually have some sort of hold on you. This has got to be the most bogus and the most damaging teaching of this entire movement. Love doesn't work that way. The more you give, the more you have. My 3rd child doesn't have less of my heart just because I've loved two other children before him. And, really, I haven't given them "pieces" of my heart. I've given them each all of my heart. The miracle of love is that it multiplies by being given.

(bolding mine)

I find this interesting because QF families like the Duggars go on about how you can never have too many children and their love multiplies, but at the same time pull the rhetoric about giving away pieces of your heart. If you're giving away pieces of your heart by dating more than one person, then surely you're also giving away pieces of your heart with each successive child, and should therefore restrict yourself to one child, as you restrict yourself to one romantic partner.

[Juliakitty]

Yes. I've read that oxytocin works like sticky tape, if you have sex with too many people you can't bond with anyone any more. The people who promote this point of view mention that oxytocin is produced during birth and breastfeeding, but they don't seem to think that women who have more than one child fail to bond with each subsequent child. I wonder why that is.

[Julie B]

Seriously interesting article. I can't imagine how hard it is to have to de-program all the fundie crap that these people have internalized.

[bananacat]

I've heard similar arguments about FLDS polygyny and it still doesn't hold water. I remember some documentary where a sister wife insisted that her husband had a big enough heart to love many wives. But why didn't she have a big enough heart to love a second husband? It's really just grasping at straws.

[Elle]

Who knew my exes still own a part of me and that my child and my husband each only have fragments of a damaged heart, so I must not be capable of love. Well, if what they get are battered pieces, it's lucky they don't have it all because I am fiercely protective of my family, especially my daughter who can't yet protect herself, and I would get violent to protect her.

But as pointed out, if each person you love means less to go around to new people, then these fundies can't possibly love all of their children fully. Yet they'll all argue they do! Can't have it both ways. Either the heart is limited, or it's unlimited.

[Glass Cowcatcher]

My crazy ex is still out there and it scares the crap out of me thinking he might come back one day to harass me and the offspring. In that sense he has a piece of my heart, but I believe that I *never* would have gotten with him in the first place if I hadn't been raised in a fundy-lite environment that discouraged dating and had a better idea of what red flags look like.

[Mela99]

I refuse to believe love can be divided like that. Only multiplied.

I found my soon to be hubs after 25 years. There were loves before him. But I don't love him less. I love him more for seeing what an amazing man he is in comparison.

Life is meant to be a journey, not a one stop shop for all important events.

[Elle]

I found my soon to be hubs after 25 years. There were loves before him. But I don't love him less. I love him more for seeing what an amazing man he is in comparison.

This is how I feel. I appreciate my husband more because of bad relationships before him. His loved helped heal me, and because of what I've been through, I have direct comparison to know how lucky I am now.

[Anise]

I found my soon to be hubs after 25 years. There were loves before him. But I don't love him less. I love him more for seeing what an amazing man he is in comparison.

This.

Also, Darcy (the blogger) is seriously awesome.

[desertvixen]

Life is meant to be a journey, not a one stop shop for all important events.

QFT.

[luckystone]

Yes. I've read that oxytocin works like sticky tape, if you have sex with too many people you can't bond with anyone any more. The people who promote this point of view mention that oxytocin is produced during birth and breastfeeding, but they don't seem to think that women who have more than one child fail to bond with each subsequent child. I wonder why that is.

Haha so true! I'd never realised that before...they are all like "wooo oxytocin" and say it's causing automatic, inescapable bonding with sex...but only with sex. Lol

[SimplyMe]

I've often thought the same thing- how can they say that love multiplies with more children, but fragments with more than one boyfriend/lover. It doesn't make sense to me, but I had a fundie friend "explain" to me (and I imagine the Duggars would give this same explanation), they are two different kinds of love. Romantic love is different from the love you feel for your child. Which of course it is, but I still don't think that means the heart is incapable of romantically loving more than one person in your lifetime. Where do they even come up with this stuff?!

[Kitty]

I've often thought the same thing- how can they say that love multiplies with more children, but fragments with more than one boyfriend/lover. It doesn't make sense to me, but I had a fundie friend "explain" to me (and I imagine the Duggars would give this same explanation), they are two different kinds of love. Romantic love is different from the love you feel for your child. Which of course it is, but I still don't think that means the heart is incapable of romantically loving more than one person in your lifetime. Where do they even come up with this stuff?!

I think that before they were fundies, they bought into that fairy tale Hollywood bullshit that when you find the Right Person they are the only person you are meant for. Generally the first person of the opposite sex as the main character will be the one the main character ends up with, without ever dating anyone else. Of course when you apply this to middle-aged adults, you just haven't seen the exes so it seems like they only find one person, and of course it gets justified by "I've never loved anyone like you!" Fucking really? You're 36 years old and never loved somebody "like them"? I call bullshit.

Now that they are fundies, they still believe that bullshit and pretend it's Biblical. I'd like to see them explain how King Solomon loved 300 wives (let's not even bring up the concubines) equally.

[MamaJunebug]

Haven't read the linked article(s) yet, but having read a Daily Kos article on how there's a vast fundie conspiracy to take over the world (I'm only being fractionally ironic), I will say that this part of their "doctrine" (and it *is* doctrine, since it's all about how-you-live that gets-you-to-heaven-at-death with these people) is coldly and carefully calculated.

They lob these messages - hard - at kids just beginning the process of puberty, hitting them with even more rules and regulations at a time when the body and mind are reeling from changes and new phenomena that are stunning at best, frightening at worst.

Their goal must be to make the kids even more off-balance than they already are - never let their state of uncertainty/confusion improve, make it worse if at all possible and then, providentially!!! (scoff) appear on the scene with The Answers! The feelings are BAD! Acting on them is SINFUL! Even letting yourself daydream about one boy or one girl is DANGEROUS TO YOUR ETERNAL LIFE!

(The all caps: too much, for this early in the morning? I'll go back and edit to bfiulc, if so.)

Anyway, I don't believe for a minute this has to do with guiding the youth and helping them grow up strong and without major errors in judgment. I believe it has everything to do with keeping them Under Control.

[genericJname]

Oh I've heard the "sticky-tape only binds once" argument. (But what happens when you try to keep things stuck together with tape for years and years and it starts to degrade and you learn that sticky tape is not enough.) In my abstinence-only education, it was a gendered argument. Boys have no trouble ripping off the tape and going on to screw someone else. Girls, on the other hand, are totally devastated by the tape being removed, because they are blinded by oxytocin fueled love bonding.

[Talitha Cumi]

Oh I've heard the "sticky-tape only binds once" argument. (But what happens when you try to keep things stuck together with tape for years and years and it starts to degrade and you learn that sticky tape is not enough.) In my abstinence-only education, it was a gendered argument. Boys have no trouble ripping off the tape and going on to screw someone else. Girls, on the other hand, are totally devastated by the tape being removed, because they are blinded by oxytocin fueled love bonding.

Love is not sticky-tape. Their argument is invalid. :)

[Terrie]

If you form an instant love bond due to oxytocin, then how do you explain those people like the woman who "married" the Eiffel Tower? It would make more sense if she wanted to marry her vibrator.

[Patsy]

your breasts are sticky tape! Once you use them on one baby they're defective, somehow, and you can't nourish a second baby!!!!!111 milk purity! don't give pieces of your uterus away!

[B5SnowDog]

Oh I've heard the "sticky-tape only binds once" argument. (But what happens when you try to keep things stuck together with tape for years and years and it starts to degrade and you learn that sticky tape is not enough.) In my abstinence-only education, it was a gendered argument. Boys have no trouble ripping off the tape and going on to screw someone else. Girls, on the other hand, are totally devastated by the tape being removed, because they are blinded by oxytocin fueled love bonding.

That's similar to what we were told in my high school sex ed class. We were also told that girls couldn't orgasm unless they were in love.

[Elle]

I think that before they were fundies, they bought into that fairy tale Hollywood bullshit that when you find the Right Person they are the only person you are meant for. Generally the first person of the opposite sex as the main character will be the one the main character ends up with, without ever dating anyone else. Of course when you apply this to middle-aged adults, you just haven't seen the exes so it seems like they only find one person, and of course it gets justified by "I've never loved anyone like you!" Fucking really? You're 36 years old and never loved somebody "like them"? I call bullshit.

Now that they are fundies, they still believe that bullshit and pretend it's Biblical. I'd like to see them explain how King Solomon loved 300 wives (let's not even bring up the concubines) equally.

Have you seen the movie Enchanted? In it Giselle, in the animated world, was raised believing in love at first sight, all that bull. She ends up ejected to the real world by an evil witch. She meets a man who thinks she's off her rocker and he tries to help her, and then to convince her that her idea about what love is is really screwed up. She knew nothing about the prince she was "in love" with and who she was so desperate to return to. Basically she had the fundy view of love.

In the end, she stayed in the real world with the man she got to know before falling in love with, and even opened her own out-of-home business.

Fundies hate this movie with a fierce passion.