I'm a member of two Facebook groups that have been tremendously healing for me, both related to getting out of fundamentalist religion. Both groups are full of pretty or even highly progressive people. They affirm LGBTQIA people and rights. Their politics are mostly Liberal. They support Black Lives Matter. And so on.
Most of the members of both groups - most of us, I should say - are still slowly unpacking former belief systems and deconstructing our way out of our former worldviews.
Today, on this day of the Women's March, there have been several posts about difficult marriages. And several posts about marriages in which one partner has been "deconstructing" while the other partner still holds tight to old fundamentalist beliefs.
On woman posted to express some of the major changes she's making in her life and in her family's lives as a result of her deconstruction. She currently homeschools her children but has decided to try to get them into a charter school. She's been a stay-at-home mom for 8 years but is entertaining the idea of going back to work. As she says, "I seem to be turning our lives upside down. My identity. My interests. My parenting. My marriage. I'm not sure my hubby is going to like all this."
Other women responded to the thread to talk about similar changes they're undertaking in their lives as a result of their new found freedom after coming out of fundamentalist religion. Some are going back to school to pursue a new career after being in the home for years. Some are exploring their sexuality in new ways. As another woman put it, they are "discovering, recovering, and claiming their autonomy."
What I suddenly realized as I was reading was that Larry and I crossed paths with one another while I was walking OUT of fundamentalism and he, apparently, was wanting to walk further INTO it. Or at least, he DID walk much further into it after we broke up, whereas I just kept on walking further away.
His wedding 9 months later took place in a church. That's not how I would have designed our wedding.
His wedding photographs (which he made sure to post where he knew I would see them) show his bride standing in a prayer circle with her hands and the hands of her friends raised in the air to Jesus. <shudder>
When the Skagit River Bridge over the I-5 freeway collapsed in 2013, he wrote a prayer in their church newsletter (I saw it online) that he and his wife were praying for those who were struggling to get to work because of the collapse.
When armed anti-government protesters took over Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon, he posted to a local group we're both in to scold people for being against the thugs, calling them "freedom fighters." (Reading that was a hugely dysphoric moment for me because I realized I have no idea who I was really involved with for 8 years. But he always did turn his chameleon colors "red" whenever we were around religious people.)
After we broke up, I very quickly became strongly feminist. I think I had been in many ways for a long while but didn't know it. And "feminism" was an evil word in my fundamentalist upbringing.
The very first thing I ever told Larry about myself when we met was that I didn't go to church anymore and that while (at the time) I still considered myself to be a Christian, I wasn't an "in-the-box" sort of Christian or I wasn't what most people at that time would have thought of as Christian (nowadays what I was then is called "Progressive Christian").
I was already L&G affirming and on my way toward affirming all the rest of the alphabet.
I couldn't tolerate Christianese or the way churches are so cookie-cutter I could finish the sentences of every Evangelical pastor anywhere.
Listening to sermons made my skin crawl.
I couldn't even pray out-loud anymore, though always enjoyed when he prayed out-loud for us before our meals. I was on a journey away from and trying to heal from spiritual abuse, indoctrination, mind control, and cult participation.
He bugged me and bugged me and bugged me to go to church with him, even though he himself wasn't a regular attender and said he only wanted his daughters to go "for the morals." I relented on several occasions and went with him, but was so triggered by the experience each time that I left in tears (while he sat in the pew falling asleep). It didn't seem to bother him to subject me to further traumatization.
He pestered me numerous times to attend the "marrieds" ministry at the church. He wanted us to have "couples" friends (he was never very supportive of my intentional efforts to maintain friendships with the friends I'd had while I was single before meeting him). I told him repeatedly that I was fine with pursuing "couples" friends but that we needed to find them via some other context other than church.
Once when a church person asked us why we weren't married yet, he replied that we were "waiting for the Lawwd (Lord, pronounced in an in-group churchy way) to tell us when to get married." (I was like, "WTF?!? No we absolutely are NOT doing that!" It was such an incredible misrepresentation of our situation and I was floored and deeply disoriented by how easily the lie rolled off his tongue.)
He reinforced "Purity Culture" with his two daughters and thoroughly fucked with my mind, which had already been so thoroughly fucked with by Purity Culture, by making us pretend around them that we weren't sleeping together - when I had wanted to wait until we were married to sleep together but he pushed and coerced me and I capitulated. How many ways could I get twisted in that relationship?
The crazy part is that, with his mathematical and science degrees, it was some of his observations to me about the natural world that actually contributed to my deconstruction from some of the fundamentalist Biblical theologies I had been indoctrinated in. And he was actually much more non-practicing and un-Christian than I was. So confusing!!
So, today while thinking about the Women's March and reading about women who are coming into freedom and autonomy, I was struck by the realization that I walked out one door while Larry walked in through the door just beside it.
I'll have to blog separately at some other time about the "box" (of Patriarchy) I was in the midst of struggling my way out of and how he worked very hard to try to shove me back into it.
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