I was married for 17 years to an emotionally abusive alcoholic man who was a beloved physician in our community. I felt I couldn't talk to anyone about what was happening in our home for fear of ruining his livelihood--I didn't have any income as a stay-at-home mom to our three children and my oldest from a previous marriage. We all created coping mechanisms and navigated life on tip-toes as we tried not to set him off, and even after he stopped drinking after hitting rock bottom one night, his sober self was still horrible to us. When all of our kids were in school full-time, I started working outside of the home and bringing in a little bit of money. I was patiently waiting for the kids to turn 18 so that I could find a way to leave the marriage without damage to them, and then I got a promotion at work that meant I would have enough money to survive on my own--as long as I could get child support for the 3 kids who were still at home. When I sat at my new desk for the first time, I noticed that the person who had been in that job before me (and who was and still is a friend) had left behind a laminated quote from Eleanor Roosevelt on the otherwise empty bulletin board in the office, "Do the thing you think you cannot do." And so I did. 6 months later, our divorce was finalized.
I grappled with the guilt of having to let the kids be in his home half the time, I messed up by choosing speed over getting everything I could have out of the divorce, I saddled myself with half of the debt we had accumulated over the years in order to not make him even more angry during our divorce discussions, and I dealt with him dragging my name through the mud in any way he could in our small community. I lost some friends, but I gained an understanding of who my true friends were.
My kids and I survived and eventually thrived once we weren't in a toxic environment 24/7, and I'm now 12 years removed from that hell.
I relate to so much of this, especially the guilt of having to let the kids be in his home. For what it's worth, I opted for getting everything I could out of the divorce, and that has been miserable too. It's one thing to get awarded everything. It's another thing to spend years trying to actually get what you've been awarded. There are definitely advantages to the path you chose too! I'm so glad you and the kids are thriving.
I've watched a couple of friends opt for the less speedy path, and they have had other challenges--including actually getting what was agreed upon. I kicked myself a few times along the way for "giving in" so easily, but prying decent child support from him was exhausting enough. I'm not sure I had it in me to do any more than that. I hope you and your kids are in a good place now, too!
I'm also sad that so many people find this relatable. We have a ways to go to upend what we were taught to think was our fate. I'll keep doing the work to upend it!
Thank you Kristie. Your story creates new pathways for other new stories. Also you did the thing, and it’s impossible not to make mistakes when the stakes are real.
Thanks, Renee. I share my story as much as I can so others can maybe find strength in it. I'm also learning to forgive myself my mistakes and focus on the ultimately positive outcomes for me and my kids.
Thank you, Caitlin. Sometimes I think about those times and I'm amazed I could do it. I have four kids though, and I didn't want them to think that our situation was in any way normal or what they should expect for themselves--especially my daughter.
I left a month ago. The logistics of doing it were terrifying: I have a job that pays well, but it's a 2-hour commute each way, and I live in a very high cost-of-living area. I've got three kids: 10, 8, and 6.
We'd been together 20 years (since college), and married 17. We'd always talked about how great it was that we got together so young, but I'd come to realize I had no idea what a healthy relationship looks like, and bit by bit, my life had ossified into something I didn't want. Things had gotten emotionally abusive, and everything was about the importance of a tight-knit nuclear family. I did the majority of the childcare because he worked (from home) a lot including weekends, but any consequential parenting decisions I made that he didn't like got overwritten. It felt more like being an unpaid babysitter than a parent.
We had almost no local friends, just friends elsewhere. One of the tipping points for me was actually the piece in Culture Study about reorganizing your life around friendship. I realized THAT was something I wanted. I wanted to have friends nearby. I wanted to show up for them, and model that for the kids. I even forwarded it to my now-ex, but it didn't seem to click at all for him.
He suggested an open relationship a year ago, but we agreed at first we only wanted something casual, and didn't have the time or emotional energy for something more serious. One thing led to another, though, and I ended up with a girlfriend. Having to explain so many things about myself and my marriage to a new person -- after so many things had just been a given for so long -- was eye-opening. As were her observations on the situation. Through her, I got to see for the first time what another life might look like. What it could look like to have a group of friends nearby, and go and do things with them.
I also came to realize that my moderate drinking for 20 years was essential to make my marriage sustainable. All we did together involved drinking. When I stopped (and he didn't), things got uncomfortable. When I did an experiment and drank with him again one night, everything felt suddenly better. I panicked; I didn't want to be the bad guy here. But a friend pointed out that even if it's uncomfortable for him, too, he's not ever going to leave. If I want a change, it has to be on me to make.
Two weeks later, I'd gotten the paperwork together to file with the courts while he was out of town, and a few weeks after that, he was served with the papers. I was terrified; I'd moved everything I'd have been really sad to lose to my office or my girlfriend's. I didn't know if I'd be able to go back to the house after that, and would have to fight for custody. But he was shocked into silence in the conversation, for the first time ever, and I got to say my piece. And a funny thing happened: suddenly a reasonable, pleasant, polite, and even deferential person showed up in our interactions since. I never would've believed it, but that broke through something. To be honest, it was annoying: I'd told myself he just didn't have it in him to be that person, and it turns out he did, but had chosen not to. But the end result is still much better than most scenarios I'd prepared for.
The kids are doing just fine; they knew about divorce from the "Baby Sitters Little Sister" graphic novels by Ann M Martin and haven't seemed particularly upset about it. They weren't shocked to hear we were divorcing, but were over-the-moon excited about the prospect of having TWO SETS OF HOLIDAYS.
I've literally never felt this good in my life. Several things that I thought were just chronic medical issues suddenly disappeared the week after serving papers. There's lots of things still to figure out (e.g. I can't afford to keep the house) but several times a week I'm suddenly grateful that of all the possible worlds, this is one where I actually made the choice to leave.
Divorce for sure is super hard on kids (in ways they might not realize until into adulthood) but in my opinion, it's no contest between that and living with parents who SHOULD be divorced but aren't. I'm so glad to hear that you are out of there!
My decision to leave my marriage a year ago was informed by so many tiny epiphanies I’d had in the past several years, and one of the most important ones was thanks to another Culture Study thread on divorce that was FULL of people who expressed this exact same sentiment. It was a revelation to me—someone who grew up in a very conservative community and family where divorce was seen as supremely selfish and harmful to children—that maybe taking this step wouldn’t doom my child or render me a monster. The past nine months since I’ve moved out have been the most peaceful of my life. It’s been hard on my kid, and will continue to be, but I’m confident that she’s going to be better off in the long run. Thanks, Culture Study community, for giving me (and surely others) the courage and the inspiration to do the good and hard thing.
For sure-- I imagine this is just the start of a conversation that I'll be having in different ways with them for the rest of my life. But I'm grateful that at least in the beginning, when other pieces were really hard, that one at least went over pretty smoothly and they latched onto the bright side.
Absolutely! I did not at all mean to be raining on that parade of a win! I'm so glad that part, at least, went better than it might have, and alleviated some stress from an extremely stressful situation.
They’re going to be ultimately in such a stronger place in terms of their overall happiness, comfort, and understanding of healthy relationships. I don’t feel haunted by my parents’ divorce at all, but I did learn a lot about what relationships could (and shouldn’t) look like. Opening up that discussion will be so good for your kiddos. So happy for you all.
One month! Look at your strength, the community you're working to build, the really hard choices you're making, and what you're modeling for your children. I wish you so much joy in the future.
Oof. While not Mormon, I left an extremely controlling marriage to a catholic Italian-American who believed my purpose was to bear 12 children for him. He himself was one of thirteen and thought that his mother did it all right. He threatened to call off the wedding a week before if I didn’t promise him a dozen offspring. I was 24 years old and, at that time, nothing could have been more terrifying to me :/. Without going into too much detail regarding the emotional abuse, I somehow lasted ten years with him. However, because I am a dentist, I had the financial resources to leave. It was the emotional and social side I had to navigate. He and his large family did anything and everything for literal years to destroy me and my reputation but I did it somehow. If I can do it, others can too.
A reputation is everything for a dentist, so their attempts must have been terrifying. My father was a well loved dentist in a conservative, immigrant community and I remember my mom freaking out about my older sister acquiring a boyfriend and what it would do to my dad's business. Well done to surviving and riding your ex-in laws out.
I don't have an answer or solution to the problem of marriage=patriarchy but I am noticing a growing comfort amongst my women friends (educated, 50-something, some work outside the home, some don't) with acknowledging and talking openly about the fact that the construct of marriage doesn't work for women in a way I've never heard in my adult life. I don't know if this is a post-pandemic phenom (everyone references the pandemic as a turning point in their relationships) or a new general post Me-Too consciousness, or simply what happens after 15+ years of marriage. Several of them (including me) have told our husbands that the status quo is no longer possible and at least three women I know are now living separately from their husbands while still technically married, in arrangements that give them autonomy and freedom from domestic labor and caretaking that they didn't/couldn't have when living with those men. The rub: these women are educated and privileged and there's enough money for this to be possible - and for their husbands to fear the economic consequences of divorce enough to agree to their terms.
I am sad that so many American women are trapped in marriages that deplete them rather than lifting them up. I think marriage can be wonderful especially for women in ideal circumstances. Like in terms of sexual satisfaction, I’ve never had better sex than with my husband of 12 years with whom I am completely comfortable to voice my desires and who knows exactly what I need. Financially, we’ve both been able to take risks at various points in our careers because we know we have the other to rely on. It’s a built-in support system for aging parents (as an only child, I need this). Someone to encourage you in all your endeavors. To be invested in your health and success. But I also married a man who is not originally from the US and did not grow up here, and we don’t have or want children. I don’t have all the answers but I think I know the problem, and it’s American men.
I was just talking about this cultural shift with a friend. I'm a Zillennial, and have been with my partner for 7+ years, but the idea of marriage just doesn't really appeal to me? Like there's romantic reasons and also logistical benefits (taxes, yes, but also medical emergencies). But I love hearing about (particularly hetero) relationships that change over time as people identify new needs, such as staying together but moving out, or opening the relationship, or the man taking a leave of absence from work to be a house spouse, with or without kids. Your point about certain women having power in these relationships is critical; and I think part of me feels, accurately or not, that it's easier to retain that power/agency/whatever you want to call it without the legal institution of marriage. That said, would love to hear arguments the other way on this.
in almost all of the conversations I've had with Gen X women, they are the unhappy ones who demand change, while the husbands seemed to have been under the assumption that things in the relationship were fine. in these cases, the husbands also are the ones desperate to "save" the marriage when the wives are ready to leave - which, ironically, gives the women more power. this may be a function of economic class or maybe it's because men intuit that their lives would be so much worse in every way without the comfort, security, and social benefits of a wife that they'll do almost anything to keep their wives from leaving. obviously, there are also men who just say "see ya" and agree to a divorce and go find another wife and start all over again...
That's fascinating to hear. I wonder if there's a subset of men and male-socialized people (because this includes my partner) who think, "yep, good enough," and not go deeper than that, maybe in part due to the intuition that you describe. Whereas women and women-socialized people, especially in the past couple of decades, have (in some spheres) heard narratives around not settling, getting your needs met, etc. So that's what motivates them to advocate for more, and be willing to leave a non-abusive but also dissatisfying relationship in a way that their husbands and partners wouldn't even consider? This coming from someone who is more inclined to deal with conflict than their partner is, and on (infrequent) low days, worries that we stay together out of convenience and inertia more than how it feels on more days than not, which is intentional, desired partnership.
I think another aspect of this is the quality of women’s friendships vs. mens - I hear women talking a lot about how they’d prefer a “golden girls” living situation with a group of other women than ever remarrying/living with a man. I don’t think men have that same fantasy - or maybe they do?!
Yes, this does seem to be a gendered thing, at least historically. I wonder why - does it have something to do with generally women living longer than men, for a variety of reasons? Or is it that women are socialized to have intimacy in their friendships in a way that many men are not (because toxic masculinity)? Personally, I would love to be among a queer cohousing community in my golden years; but I think many queer folks (also a generalization) have a different understanding of relationship, whether romantic or otherwise, and chosen family, than a lot of hetero folks do, at least until recently.
I mean, you don't have to ever get married! For us we decided it would be more romantic (and more tax advantageous) to not get married and we have children & a house and I don't think it really has any negative impact on us - the positives are I do not carry the cultural baggage of wife.
Yes, I definitely see this perspective. We also have a layer where we’re both queer, but to the uninformed we look like a typical hetero couple, and I worry about the invisibility of that part of our identities that might come with the connotations of marriage. I’m curious, what makes it more romantic for you? And also tax-advantageous, lol, as that’s one of the practical reasons I hear a lot of people cite?
It's more romantic in the sense that we have to be intentional about our roles and what this is, we cannot rely on "tradition". Every single day I am free to choose this person and he is free to choose me and no god or law can compel us. I think of it as love without coercion, while people enter marriage freely - it legally binds them for better or worse. As for the tax issues - spouses of similar incomes experience a "marriage penalty" https://www.investopedia.com/terms/m/marriage-penalty.asp#:~:text=Marriage%20penalty%20is%20a%20term,federal%20and%20state%20tax%20implications.
I read that and it was interesting but I felt too damning of marriage as an institution and not open enough to the idea that it can be reimagined to work for women. The other thing I forgot to say was that these Gen X women are talking about this issue with their teen/20-something daughters in a way that's far more sophisticated and nuanced than the conversations I was hearing when I was that age. I am fascinated to see how this plays out in the next 10-20 years.
I’m an elder Xenniel (just turned 41) and I have to say, I’ve been watching Gen X women my whole life for life cues and I have really been informed by this willingness to openly talk about marriage and child rearing and the good and the bad. I have decided against kids for myself, not because I dislike kids in general but because I was able to make a much more informed evaluation of the commitments and emotional work involved and think through whether I wanted that. I’ve been partnered most of my adult life but haven’t yet decided that I’ve found someone marriage-worthy, largely because I’ve thought much more deeply about the institution based on what I’ve watched from women slightly older than me. I really feel great about these choices. So I think the effects of Gen X’s cultural conversations are already having an impact amongst women in my demographic.
that is gratifying to hear - sometimes it just feels like talk with no impact! the issue of taking care of children is at the heart of the inequality in modern marriage partnerships and I'm hoping that as we slowly work to redefine the institution, women will feel that their decisions around having kids are unrelated to how much heavier the burden will be on them.
I haven't watched this show, and I don't have a direct personal connection to Mormonism, but I was struck by a line in this piece about staying in abusive jobs for the same reason people don't leave oppressive marriages or communities. The principle trauma in my life that I'm working through right now is 10 years spent in a job that eroded my sense of self-worth to nothing and had me contemplating ending my own life. I felt like I couldn't leave, because I'd never find another job that would pay as well and support my family (I'm the breadwinner). No other place would have me and even if they did, is it even possible it would be any better? Better the devil you know, right? I'm happy to report I eventually did get a better job but I had to move cities and rearrange my whole life to do it and that was *hard.* So hard I questioned whether it was even worth it several times during the process.
Yes. We need a broader conversation about how toxic and life-destroying jobs can be. I have found that most bosses are toxic, if only by virtue of their power over you and your livelihood.
Then there's neurodivergence, where everything that can be held against you WILL be held against you. I think I'm still traumatized by my four years as an employee, even though they ended five years ago.
We need more work co-ops, and better protection for freelance workers.
This is my partner right now. Stuck in a blech job, underpaid, and not enough time left over to look for other work and also be a human with hobbies and rest. I appreciate when people are honest that change from the inertia is hard and also necessary, because both really are true.
I was 19 and given three hours to pack up my stuff and be out of my abusive stepfather's house. Because of the scramble to fit my entire childhood into my Honda Accord, I showed up late to work that morning and was fired on the spot. In a daze, I distinctly remember driving to a Waffle House, sitting down to a cup of coffee, and the reality sinking in that I had nowhere to go, nowhere to be. At first there was a real fear, but because I had money saved up and only weeks before I could go back to living in my campus dorm as a sophomore, I also felt a deep rush of freedom.
I never stayed another night at my parent's house. The next few years were hard - my college allowed me to live on campus during winter breaks, I slept on friend's couches. By 20 I managed to figure out how to establish residency in the state I was going to school in, get my own apartment, and slowly start to figure out how to build life on my terms.
I felt like my early adult years were me feeling my way through the dark on how to get a job, have friends, manage my finances, be a part of a community. I never did any of it well, but the current underneath it all was that I was getting to build something entirely on my own terms.
My childhood was so heavy and limiting - I saw how miserable my parents were and how they tried to box me into that misery as well. I see today how my siblings are still stuck inside that box in their own lives. In retrospect, getting kicked out was the best thing to ever happen to me, because it pushed me to decide who was going to control my life - me or my family. To this day it is the the decision I am most proud of.
Ohhh, but this: "I never did any of it well, but the current underneath it all was that I was getting to build something entirely on my own terms."
Even at 20 years out from hearing 'you're not a daughter I want to know anymore' it's so easy to feel like I'll just always be behind the curve, scrambling to catch up, learn things I should already know or have someone to help with, half-assing my own resources, a little late to everything. But my little life being truly mine, all mine, in whatever form that takes, is the most precious thing and something I'll never take for granted. Solidarity :)
My problem was small - my first white collar job out of college was everything I wanted on paper and miserable in so many ways in reality. I didn’t feel trapped but I did feel overly responsible for making it work out to suit my dream of it. One day I was running an errand in a city building and there was a performance artist working there, a serene older woman knitting a giant rug out of plastic bags. I stopped to talk to her and she said something I can’t exactly recall but that struck me like a bolt of lightning—something like that her project was to turn something most people thought of as garbage into meaning and beauty. [ETA: It's coming back to me a bit more, I think she said that her work was a commentary on the government work being done in that building, lots of people toiling to create something meaningful of the wrong materials, maybe? Whatever she said, I started sobbing and ran away.]
I quit my job the next day in an unprofessional rage and threw myself a business attire themed “retirement party” (I was 26) where I vowed to never stay in a terrible job again. I’ve had many good and bad jobs since then (this was still in the era of abundant low level work), but the party worked to inoculate me against staying in a bad situation. In retrospect, I think it helped to make it a part of my identity, so that superseded a bad job filling that role, if that makes sense.
I wish I’d applied that same breakthrough to dating, but I learned that lesson a few years later in a different way.
I love that you left in a rage. Bad bosses do not deserve to be spared our wrath, professionalism be damned. 'Let the bridges you burn light the way ahead.'
It was, but then my friend who had worked there with me told me that my sudden ragequit was taken out on him and my other colleagues. Not my fault but I did feel bad.
That is the definition of an unintended consequence! Hopefully your colleagues got their own rage moments later on. I've done the opposite in my life, where even ten years later, I rarely ever share my experience because the leader is still well-respected (and now a politician) and I don't want to risk any blow back despite the fact that it's very unlikely at this point.
Thank you! I wish I remember who the artist was, or what she said exactly. It's starting to come back to me, that I think she said her piece was a commentary about work itself, and it really resonated with me, that I was also working really hard to create something meaningful out of materials that weren't really right for the job. Anyway, never let it be said that art can't change your life!
I went to an extremely patriarchal, conservative college that catered to wealthy southern families. 2,000 students, 80% Greek, in a small rural town that offered no other social life for students besides drinking in frat houses. Girls were at the total mercy of those frat boys’ desires, despite largely being smarter and more driven. (A professor told me that they had to lower the standards for boys to keep the school close to 50/50.) Male students rolled their eyes at girls like me who participated too much or too enthusiastically in class.
Slut shaming kept us women walking a line of looking for a boyfriend in a “good” frat while not doing anything too sexualized or promiscuous. We could never report SA because then we would be blacklisted from all social functions. Any gay students were closeted, black students were reluctantly tokenized, and international students of color were sidelined.
Like many students, I was miserable and beat down. But no one ever transferred. We were told we were so lucky to be there, that we would emerge with the skills to work a cocktail party and move through a world of success that was the only real place we would ever want to be. That world looked white, male, and dressed in a blue sports coat and Vineyard Vines belt. Transferring was admitting that you were a social failure and would never make it in law, finance, etc., or would never find a suitable husband who would buy you a big home and then a big second home and squire you into these halls of power.
It seemed, back then, that there was no other way to be “successful” and that it was either nod along to a boorish man name dropping his boating companions at cocktail parties for the rest of my life, or end up poor and miserable and lonely, rejected by society for not being feminine enough.
I figured out pretty quickly once I moved to New York that there’s a whole world out there there full of different types of success. But some of my sorority sisters (or more accurately, the girls from the "good" sororities, we were misfits in mine) are still trapped in bad marriages, wearing those Lily Pulitzer dresses to their summer homes, shamed out of their sexual desires, and desperately trying to keep their husbands from wandering off with the secretary.
Did we....go to the same college? And join the same sorority? Except for the fact that my college had only 1100 students at the time, I'd swear we did. My personal road to recovery involved staying in the region, but marrying a slightly older midwestern-raised academic who already had a divorce and a small daughter. That daughter is in college now...at the same small school I attended 20+ years ago. I guess the good news is that it's much less greek, less white, less straight, and less uptight these days. She's a queer artistic weirdo (I say with all the love in my heart) and seems to be flourishing with a solid peer group of like-minded folks. But I definitely know the women you speak of - still with their boorish dude bro husbands, still sighing that "that's just how men are," and still doing everything "right" while feeling like nothing in their life is.
I am also quite confident that I went to this school and maybe was in the same misfit sorority! Your post has been bouncing around my brain for the past few days. I’m coming up on my 20 year college reunion (elder millennial here). The more time and distance I have from this very particular college experience, the more I wonder how this culture appeared perfectly normal to me at the time (partial answer: a pretty conservative upbringing in a mostly white and affluent community in Texas).
Reading the bama rush tok series here had me thinking back to my rush and Greek life experience. Many of the cultural pressures and dynamic were so similar even in the early 2000s (minus the social media elements which sound like an added layer of hell mixed into an already toxic hierarchal process). AHP’s coverage of KA at bama and the white supremacist mythologizing of the confederacy also brought up lots of memories. It made me wonder how much of the dynamic between Greek life and university administration described at bama is replicated or likely heightened at this small yet oddly influential college where the Greek system has such a strong hold on the campus culture.
I am confident we did go to the same college. It has astounded me in the years since graduating that no one around me did transfer though nearly all of my closest friends considered it. I did too but felt that same luck you mentioned for being a student *there* as that would propel a corporate career many dream of. We will see about that, but I know I am lucky for the friends I made there even if some of our connection stemmed from challenges in that environment.
As an ex-Mormon, I was married to a closeted gay man for 27 years. I do think of myself as culturally Mormon, though I was a very pious believer in my earlier life. My Mormon friends are offended by the portrayal of their religion on this show. Do viewers realize early on that there is a clear hierarchy within the church? I haven't seen the show, but my friend's reaction shows that the 'good' members all are sensitive to this. To them you cannot drink or have extra-marital sex and be "Mormon" - it is binary.
This post made me subscribe to comment because despite being college educated (well at BYU - the mormon mating college) and an 80s gal all my training (indoctrination) WAS all around my highest good/use in the world being around my ability to bear children and raise my family as a homemaker. I blithely gave up my career as an editor to stay home. And I stayed in a marriage with a man, I knew "struggled" with what mormons call same sex attraction because I was naive and unaware he was more than struggling, but actively cheating and lying. I was so naive that even when he gave me crabs, I didn't suspect anything amiss.
I was once fired from a 'calling' as a seminary teacher when I became pregnant with my first child as the stake president (higher up church muckety muck) thought I should be resting instead of teaching teenagers every morning (this is an unpaid DAILY job!) I was angry at the time, but I guess the relief also at not having to get up at the butt crack of dawn to teach sleepy teenagers outweighed my outrage.
Now I am 8 years post divorce, but I still struggle with a sense of failure that I think stems from the long years of indoctrination and the societal shame that still exists around divorce. And living abroad, the 'where would I go" question stayed my hand many times as leaving would have involved getting on international flights with 3 children. I was also unaware of my husband's infidelity, so I felt it would have been selfish to disrupt my family simply because I was unhappy at times (not all the time) and his gaslighting was a factor too as I was made to feel all of our marital issues were due to my attitude and actions or lack thereof.
Moving to Idaho during Covid after 24 years living outside the USA, has made me see the USA in such a different light. We are so much more religiously oppressed as women in this country, but my view could be because I live in a largely Mormon community and work as an acupuncturist, so I see so many women trapped in cycles of self-blame for not living up to the impossible standards that require high levels of attractiveness, compliance and self-sacrifice. I see so many mental health issues like depression and anxiety that, as I hear their stories, are really rooted in the fact that they are being oppressed and limited which is making them angry which they turn against themselves rather than the society/relationship that is causing it! So glad that this show is exposing the crazy that is harming so many women in this high-demand and oppressive religious cult.
“Now I am 8 years post divorce, but I still struggle with a sense of failure that I think stems from the long years of indoctrination and the societal shame that still exists around divorce.” —>
I was raised in a devout Catholic family, married at 24, and still subscribed to everything until the age of 30 when I realized I absolutely did not want to raise my daughter with all of the indoctrination and general shame I grew up with. Completely left the church and divorced at 32. I’ve been divorced for 10 years— and what you wrote is seriously my lightbulb moment for why I still have generalized feelings of failure, even though divorce was absolutely the right decision.
I am so happy you can see it isn't YOU. I struggle and I think some of it is that I tend to minimize my husband's part because so much of the indoctrination is that you have to WORK at it....that YOU can somehow FIX things.... BUT that emotional and spiritual work of relationship can never be unilateral, it takes TWO people to make a relationship! I look back and see how I was so overcompensating. Now I feel so much rage at the levels of energy that I expended/wasted on trying to repair that relationship that could have been channeled into my own work - rather than trying to solve a problem that my husband didn't really want to solve!!
NO sometimes you absolutely need to take control of your life and let that relationship GO!!! It is so scary. I had a Buddhist teacher tell me something helpful. She said "Sometimes we walk along the path of life with someone and then the paths separate and you have to walk your own path." That really hit me as I knew that my path was diverging as I became more invested in my work and my children grew up and became less dependent. Kudos to those women strong enough to do it with younger children...
Thank you for sharing your story! I agree on the mental health issue. Our focus on individualism in America coupled with the LDS church's oppression of women make women feel like it must be them, they must be crazy, not that the system is broken. And it keeps women from talking to each other about these issues. One of the things I hated most in Utah was the small talk and the refusal to really talk about deeper issues.
Yes, that superficial level of existence is what I think contributes to the overwhelming numbers of boob jobs, botox and hair and lash extensions that I see here in Idaho too. All surface alterations and values, while NOT talking about the super problematic nature of the Mormon church's origin story that involved so much manipulation to normalize the marriages of dozens of young women to its founder, Joseph Smith and so many more unspoken abuses during that time in this church's history.
I grew up in a low-control religion (Christian Science) but under a high-control family centered on my narcissistic mother and her rather fundamentalist (and thus very high-control) version of CS. So at 33, in therapy after a brutal divorce, and having struggled with the tension between wanting/needing therapy/doctors/medicine and the teachings I had been raised with (not all of which were actually CS), I finally admitted out loud the scariest thing I had ever, ever faced: that I had not ever had a physical healing in CS, which is one of its most important principles. To utter that out loud, and thus begin to question the foundation of my entire life, was heartrending, much more so than my devastating divorce. It unraveled everything I thought I knew, all the way down to, is there even a God? But the only reason I could go there with myself was because of my trust in my therapist.
Five years later, I still don't know the answer to that question. I still live in a weird place with religion and CS, where I'm not willing to write it off entirely (because I do know people that WERE genuinely healed) but am not at all interested in relying on it because contemporary medicine has actually brought me the answers (if admittedly only sometimes the relief) I needed. However, therapy continues to be the best money I spend every month. My current therapist helped me see that I don't actually have to know the answers to my religious questioning to grow and love others and be happy. So, so much good has come from being willing to face the scariest part of my psyche. But my God it was hard.
My husband was raised CS. He was 3rd generation, and (like yours) his parents were high-control and fundamentalist in their practice of the religion. Although he left the church over 20 years ago, CS still has a hold on him in ways that have stifled his emotional growth and negatively impacted our marriage (particularly his treatment of me). I have begged him to get therapy over the years, but he refuses.
I think it's incredible that you had the strength to leave the church and your marriage, and you were especially brave to seek therapy to help you unpack your relationship with that religion. What stands out to me the most about CS is the deep level of shame, rejection, and denial of one's humanity that seem to underpin MBE's teachings. CS children (in fundamentalist households) learn from a very young age that vulnerability is never a safe experience. If they get sick, it's their fault for not Christian Sciencing hard enough. If they are struggling with depression, it's because they made someone angry and that person is "mental malpracticing" them. In my view as an outsider, CS interprets all of the bumps and edges and hiccups of living in a human body as abject moral and spiritual failures.
That said, it's easy to see how that belief system can become a prison from which escape seems impossible. I applaud you for taking the leap and for making so much progress in just 5 years, and I hope you find your way to a spiritual path that feels right to your soul.
I'm sorry for your husband struggling to be open to therapy and for the toll it has taken on you. That's so hard. My parents (still CS) and my brother (not CS for years) also refuse to get therapy, and it's just so hard to watch. Interesting, my mom has expressed genuine interest in couples therapy in particular, after watching my sisters and I experience significant improvements in our marriage afterwards, but she sadly shared that my dad would NEVER. Emotions are so demonized in today's CS, and so many CSers are just unable to even entertain the IDEA of facing their feelings.
Your description of CS in fundamentalist households is dead on. I feel validated and also deeply sad to hear that ours was not the only CS family to experience this. I STILL struggle with feeling guilty when I get sick, only now I'm looking to blame my actions instead of my thought. Such a hard habit to let go of. Soooo many of the CS kids I knew in Sunday School had the option of choosing CS or "the medical route," and often in fact chose medicine. I never had the option, even when I once begged. Don't get me started on the number of chronic health conditions I now have because of a major car accident, for which I never saw a doctor (despite asking). For anyone reading this, ready to go on the warpath against CS, though - be clear, that's MY MOM who made the decision not to give me that choice, NOT CS's teachings.
In fact, I feel like CS is WHY I was open to therapy and able to grow out of it so rapidly. There are so many similarities, and a lot of the mental work is remarkably parallel. You're just operating on wildly different foundations, haha. (I'm also realizing as I edit this comment that theatre training probably had a lot to do with it as well. That was a decades-long road to climb, ooof.)
The many wonderful, kind, even liberal(!) Christian Scientists I knew in church and at Principia College were also a big part of why I came out as stable and thoughtful as I did (this is a question I have been asked often by therapists), and a big reason I have trouble writing off the entire religion as crazy or cultish. Because while there are some really awful practitioners (pun only partially intended) of CS, so many of the folks practicing it are genuinely wonderful people whose version of CS is full of light and love (unlike your husband's parents or mine), and sometimes even genuine healing.
But I remember years ago, while still on the fence about it all, listening to The Dream podcast about MLMs, and the episode about toxic positivity came up. I was sitting there feeling increasingly like, "yikes, this sounds like CS" and suddenly Jane Marie namedropped Mrs. Eddy and CS in the context of Phineas P. Quimby in her historical context analysis. It was a breakthrough for me in realizing how much that toxic positivity had corrupted and corroded my experience in CS and is probably part of why I was able to make the break not long after.
It sounds like you have a really balanced perspective on your experience with CS - holding space for your loved ones while critically examining the impact the religion had on you directly. There are a lot of smart, kind, loving, and yes, liberal members of the church (my husband's family members included) so I understand that it's a tough line to walk. My husband doesn't like to speak critically of the church, because he feels like it's disrespectful to his family members. And I think he might still low key believe that he could mental malpractice them by criticizing their belief system. So much thought policing!
Mine was a situation of psychological and emotional abuse in my marriage. The distinction between options and choices resonates. It was only at the point where I felt I had no other option but to leave, in order to survive, that I left. Prior to that point, I lived in the “but where would you go?” mentality. For me, up until the moment I left, the option of leaving felt like an admission of failure - that I didn’t have what it takes to fix our situation, to fix him. As someone who learned how to be co-dependent from a young age, I channeled that into our marriage such that my entire identity was built around being strong enough to withstand the torture because I was helping him get better. But then, and this is true in my case as well as other women I’ve spoken to, you get to a point where the options become really stark. The way I’ve phrased it with others in abusive situations is to get really real about the options, because you’re f*cked either way: If you go you’re f*cked. It’s not an easy path. And if you stay you’re f*cked, because at one point you’ll probably be dead. So the options are not good but you have to choose the less bad one, the one where at least you’re alive.
To answer the question, a different way of living didn’t feel possible. It actually felt impossible. So it was really that stark reality, the primal desire to survive – and in my case, it was the primal desire to survive as my kid’s mom (saving myself wasn’t enough of a reason; it had to be about him in my mind at the time) – that pushed me to jump. I wish I could say I chose it rationally, but I didn’t. Now it’s so clear, but that’s just not how it is when you’re in it. My experience is that it’s primal.
In terms of my safety net, I was very fortunate and I was also very strategic. He had removed almost all of my access to my community. We had even moved across the country where I didn’t have any community. But I had kept my job back east, working remotely. So my son and I moved back east, moved in with my sister, and I had the stability of my job. After a couple months I was able to save up to rent my own place (with an unusually reasonable deposit). I was also really lucky in that I found a great preschool that miraculously had an opening and even more miraculously was affordable (again, with no deposit). So I’d say that I was helped by a combination of luck, my community that I finally allowed in to help me, and the fact that I was always one step ahead of my husband, methodically laying each stone on my new pathway. I’m not going to lie, though. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. We’re co-parents and are in constant contact, so the hard work continues. But 8 years later I’m so proud of how I’ve navigated it (leaving, advocating for myself and my son, how we now co-parent) – and I’d do it all again and again.
So much about what you say is resonating, but especially this: “As someone who learned how to be co-dependent from a young age, I channeled that into our marriage such that my entire identity was built around being strong enough to withstand the torture because I was helping him get better.”
That was exactly what my mother modeled and is still living. My dad has many good qualities but is also incredibly emotionally immature and gender roles within marriage are baked in hard for my parents. So I watched my mom normalize mental and emotional gymnastics to preserve the peace in our household of five kids and rationalize my dad’s shitty emotional and psychological volatility as her responsibility. “I should be more accepting I should be more accepting. He is a good man he is a good man.” Marriage is the ultimate sacrifice of self.
As soon as I had my first long term boyfriend in college, I assumed the role of bending myself to prop up an emotionally immature and verbally abusive boy. Then another and another and another and another until in my 30s I found myself love bombed into a relationship with a high level military misogynist, narcissist, amazingly manipulative, financial abuser who strategically tried to pry me apart from my support network. He eventually just broke me to the point that I was deeply depressed and lacked authentic self-worth. I remember walking around being like “joy was nice, but I guess that part of my life is over.” The relationship ended in a frantic way involving literally removing his stuff from the house forcefully. I look back on that time in wonder and disbelief that that was my life.
The practical logistics of the breakup were not *actually* that difficult in that I am financially independent and some rock solid friends have stuck with me through it. But the mental and emotional damage caused by what I would summarize as an ignorant belief that relationships are sacrifice and the more you can withstand, the stronger you are, has been a lot to unpack. I knew that last explosive relationship was not great even while I was in it, but my belief that my value is not inherent but is actually reflected in how strong I can be in the face of whatever is what kept me in it for so long. Basically “THIS man can’t break ME!”
I took a hard look at my own patterns and why they were what they were and I’ve been doing the work for the last five years and it’s been predictably difficult but my gentle and patient therapist. It’s been painful to look at my parents in their marriage with compassion for the people who raised and love me as well as they know how, while also reckoning with the damage their flawed example has caused.
I’m not going to center relationships with men as the happy ending to this comment, although I am in a really solid relationship that has also helped so much in my healing process and is hilariously joyful and nourishingly supportive. But I’ll end in saying that my perspective in the face of adversity is not “I can out-stubborn and out-muscle this” but more “I trust myself enough to know I will find a way.” It’s a much gentler perspective rooted in self-love.
Ooof . "Bending myself to prop up an emotionally immature and verbally abusive boy." I feel that deeply. I'm in the process of trying to break up with a partner who had a giant tantrum yesterday about not being able to find a parking spot.
Thanks so much for sharing. “It’s been painful to look at my parents in their marriage with compassion for the people who raised and love me as well as they know how, while also reckoning with the damage their flawed example has caused.” Compassion and reckoning for sure!
I left my abusive ex-husband during the pandemic. We'd been together for 20 years, most of them miserable, and I knew he would make getting a divorce hard. Early in the relationship I had tried to leave a couple times but came back after I realized just how hard he would make things, as he comes from a very wealthy family with unlimited resources for custody cases, etc. I knew I could never put my children in a situation where their father might win custody solely due to his ability to outspend me in court.
When, during the pandemic, I found out that he'd been cheating throughout our relationship and head even tried to involve my son in an effort to hide the latest affair, I hoped he would feel guilty enough to make the divorce a little easier. Nope. The divorce ended up taking 3 years, he took it all the way to the state supreme court despite being unsuccessful at every lower level, and between the two of us I would estimate that we have spent half a million dollars in legal bills at this point--and we are not wealthy people. I divorced him shortly after he finished medical training, and we were saddled with his medical school bills.
A few highlights from the divorce: While I was out of town attending my father's memorial, he drained our joint bank account during our separation, despite a joint restraining order, and there were no real consequences--the money was essentially just gone. I found out that while I had been financially supporting him through medical training and struggling to take care of our kids essentially by myself, he had been hiding joint ownership of an island. After I filed for separation, he unilaterally stopped paying his income taxes, hoping that somehow he could get out of paying them and I would have to do it with my separate funds. He stole my most precious pieces of jewelry--not worth a lot, but of sentimental value--and then tried to tell the judge that our housekeeper or daughter must have taken them.
I watched the Mormon Wives show and seeing the way Jen was treated--and even that she was about to start supporting HER abusive husband as he began medical training--it was all so familiar. It made my stomach hurt. I hope she is able to get out faster than I did. My life is so much happier without having to deal with the daily abuse, but I definitely worry about my daughter having to navigate life with her father without me there as a buffer during his custody time. And I know his legal abuse of me will continue for as long as I am forced to co-parent with him. The truth is that even after divorce, if you share children, the current focus on keeping both parents in a child's life, even if one is abusive, means the abused spouse will never really get to escape the abuse. I wish there were better options for women who slowly realize they are married to a monster. It seems like they usually wait until after they feel you are trapped--once you have kids together--to really reveal who they are.
My life and my kids' lives would look so different if the legal system recognized and truly punished financial, legal, and emotional abuse. It sounds like the same is true for a lot of other women who posted here.
As an active Mormon working mom who lives in Salt Lake City, this is something I have so many thoughts about! I could talk about this forever. I'm not sure how to sum it up in a comment because there are so many facets to it. But I will try. Growing up, I was told in Church lessons that I should get a college degree "just in case." Just in case your husband dies. Or just in case your husband turns out to be a dud and leaves you. I also felt like my only career aspirations could be within a realm that worked alongside also being an involved mother. And I go back and forth on whether or not this aspect is actually a bad thing—because being a mother is by far the most rewarding and meaningful aspect of my life. And I'm grateful that my remote career has allowed me to still spend the majority of my day with my children while also making six figures. But at the same time I've purposely not pushed for more at work because I don't want my career to hit a point where I have to sacrifice time with my children. And I've purposely stayed at a company that values flexibility very highly—even when the work has felt frustrating and dull—because that means I can work at night when they're asleep. Or I can move meetings around as much as I need to for appointments. Most of the time this feels like the right choice, but sometimes I wonder if I'm putting myself in an imaginary box.
Another important aspect of my situation is that my husband also chooses to stay at a flexible hybrid job where he can watch the kids and do housework during certain chunks of the day while I work and then work early in the morning or late at night to make up for it. This is not common for Mormon men to do. We also have a babysitter, preschool, and my mom who help out in small chunks during the week, but my husband is a major childcare contributor. But we've never needed full-time daycare, our children spend the majority of their day in our home, and I've breastfed both of our children for over a year. There are times this arrangement is highly exhausting and I've reached deep levels of burnout—but I feel this impossible compulsion to hold on to both. I don't want to quit my job or drop to part time. And I also don't want to hire more childcare. But I keep wondering how long I can keep this sprint up. Quitting my job feels like surrendering my freedom. And outsourcing more of the care of my children feels wrong, like I'm sacrificing their wellbeing for my personal aspirations. It is hard for me to untangle what is actually true from the societal conditioning I've experienced.
And how people in our Mormon community respond to me working could be a whole essay in itself! There is an unspoken stigma that a mother only works if she has to. And this is accompanied by the unspoken shame that her husband can't provide for their family, which is another aspect of this that isn't spoken about very often. It's often portrayed that the men have all the power in a patriarchal arrangement, and they usually do. But what many of them don't recognize is that the system doesn't serve them well either. Many of them take on jobs that they wouldn't have otherwise just to be sure they can support a large family on one income. Many of them work insane hours and miss their children growing up because they feel like it's necessary. My husband and I often talk about the "rich Mormon mom widows" in our neighborhood because they are a single mom in all aspects of the term except for the fact that their husband is supplying them with plenty of cash, comes home every other weekend, and takes them on big vacations a few times per year.
We now live in an affluent Mormon community, but we used to live in a more middle-class neighborhood. And we've found that the affluent community is much more accepting to working moms—and many of my friends here work as a choice, which is interesting. People actually ask me "What do you do for work?" instead of just assuming I'm a stay-at-home mom like they did in our middle-class neighborhood. In that neighborhood, being a stay-at-home mom was considered a status symbol for how successful your husband was. Nobody ever assumed you would work because you wanted to.
One example of this is there was a man in our neighborhood there who worked as a highway patrol officer and his exhausted wife stayed home with their five young children and homeschooled them all as well. When I told him that I work, he turned to my husband and said "I'm glad that I make enough money that my wife can stay home. I know that's truly inspired guidance from our leaders." This was insulting on multiple levels. What I wanted to say was "I know for a fact I make more money than you because your salary is public. And my husband makes more money than me. So, I'm not working for the reason you're insinuating." But to my regret, I didn't say anything—I just emphasized that my job is flexible and I'm actually home quite a bit. His wife piped up and said "That sounds like a really awesome arrangement. That's nice you can still work."
My dad also struggled to keep a job growing up and we were often in a precarious financial situation. My mom was a stay-at-home mom and was previously an excellent elementary teacher, but it was never even suggested that she should go back to doing that and my dad could watch us while he applied to jobs. Our family still tried to function in the same way—my dad would go to the computer and apply to jobs all day while my mom took care of everything else. And we weren't supposed to disturb him because otherwise we were jeopardizing the family's future. It was a miserable feeling to feel so controlled by my dad's inability to provide consistently for his family. I think that is a large reason why I hold on to my job so tightly now and am incredibly insistent that my husband does all the same domestic tasks that I do.
But then sometimes I wonder if I'm just needlessly subjecting myself to the capitalism machine—wouldn't I be happier and more fulfilled if I was just running through mountain meadows with my children and baking bread all day instead of arguing with startup bros about things I truly do not care about? When I say that to my husband, he says "That's a reality that doesn't exist." And it's true. But when it's a "reality" you've been spoon fed your entire life as the ideal for a woman in the Mormon church, it's hard for your mind to let go of it when you're feeling stressed about your circumstances. "If I just did things the way I was supposed to, then I wouldn't feel this way." The conditioning goes very deep. But I just have to remind myself that literally every situation in life comes with pros and cons. There is no golden ticket.
You said this : “And outsourcing more of the care of my children feels wrong, like I'm sacrificing their wellbeing for my personal aspirations. It is hard for me to untangle what is actually true from the societal conditioning I've experienced.”
And I’m just a 31 year old child free person in Texas but I don’t think that you’re sacrificing your children’s well being if you get more childcare!! From everything you wrote, it sounds like you value the financial stability of working and that matters!!
I find it so interesting how perspectives on childcare depends so much on the surrounding culture. In Belgium, childcare starts when babies are 3-6 months old, and my cousin was just like „of course, she needs to socialize and have other people in her life, I can’t give her everything she needs“. In Germany (and I guess in the States) it‘s more like that only the relationship with the mother counts. I grew up im Germany (and in a very conservative working to middle class village, where stay at home was also a status symbol),, and my mum was constantly criticized for working, and as a child I felt a certain pressure to fit in, not to give more grounds for critique. And at the same time, I loved to have several caregivers - I really enjoyed daycare, later I stayed after school with my „day mum“ (a common arrangement in Germany where a SAHM cares for an additional child/children) where I had three „sisters“ to play with, my day mum loved crafts plus we could watch tv shows. And at home I relished the undivided attention of my parents, when they were at home, they were really present. And then there were other arrangements, with my mum‘s best friend (who I still call a lot, and mostly I tell stuff my mum first, but sometimes it‘s her), aunts.. I don‘t feel like it diminished the time I spent with my parents, more I like it enriched it - I loved the chaos of the other family/day care… and loved coming home, snuggling on the couch with my parents, being at home home.
I am now pregnant. And even though I believe „children need a village, and that village can also constitute of paid caregivers“, I notice how I am already defensive about my decisions. In Berlin (especially the former Eastern Germany part) it‘s more common to start at one with day care. But we are thinking about starting earlier for a couple of hours a day for a number of reasons and - yeah. And my husband is now making the unpleasant discovery that everyone likes it when fathers stay home or reduce work - but only in theory
Long story short - it‘s a complex topic and I think often there is more than just one right way.
That is very true! It’s hard for me to also value that on the same level, even though it totally makes sense. My son in particular just seems to really benefit from quality time with his parents, so I worry about cutting it down.
My children are now adults, but I remember so clearly having the desire to both work and be a stay-at-home parent. This was coming from within, and not any cultural (religious) pressure. Even though my heart wanted to be 100% with my kids every day, I really needed the creative, intellectual and social stimulation of work to be the best version of myself. We handled it similarly to you with flexible work schedules and many exhausting days. And MANY variations of work and parenting schedules over the years. Our solutions changed regularly as our children got older and we adapted to the changing needs. Lots of pros and cons over the years, but no regrets.
I relate to this so much! Thank you for this. That is wonderful to hear that you don’t have any regrets. I worry that in 20 years I’ll wish I had been a stay-at-home mom since it’s such a short period in the scheme of things. I know I’ll look back on this special time with them and wish there was more of it. But I also know that I would suffer mentally if I gave up work completely, but maybe I’d get used to it? It’s always an internal struggle.
Being a stay-at-home mom is a mistake, for several reasons. The biggest are, you don't ever have adult time, and if/when you (have to) go back to work, there's a big gap in your employment history and you're not up to date on what's been happening. I was very, very lucky that I had part-time work available to me, 3 days a week, when my children were tiny-- it was perfect for everyone. Also, I am a terrible person for a toddler--I really do not care for small children. So I was glad to pay someone who LOOOOOOOVES babies to take care of mine for a few hours a week. My mother thinks I'm terrible for saying that, but my reply to her is: "I prefer teenagers. When everyone else is missing their babies and toddlers, their teenagers will be at my house, chillin'." It'll come back around; it's all karma.
I also see my sisters-in-law who stayed or are currently staying at home. They were both sad, sad, sad. My one sister in law BLOSSOMED when she went back to get her master's and went back to work, and now she's kicking ass in her union and is so, so much happier. My other sister-in-law has spiralled into anxiety and semi-hypochondria (to be fair, her family has health challenges that mine does not) and everything she posts online is negative, and she doesn't even realize it, and she's transmitting her anxiety to her kids.
And my aunts all told me--make sure you always have your own money. Every single one.
So if you can swing a little-of-this, a little-of-that while they're small, that's really the nicest.
As an ex-Mormon, divorced, bisexual, mother of 5, anti-capitalist, feminist (the list goes on), I have been unpacking SLMW for days now. Can’t wait to listen!
Hi, sorry for the very strange question if the answer is no or if we already established this and I somehow forgot, but are you a member of a book club started by your coworker Alex? I think we might have recently shared a Motel 6 room together lmao.
I want to give a shout out to ASK A DIVORCED PERSON from a few years back! It was so helpful! Especially the tag line "Leave before there is nothing left". The idea that I could leave a spouse "just" because we were both not thriving and I couldn't handle the burden of cohabitation and cleaning up after 3 other people. I left in December after announcing it in April, it was a long year but things are going smoothly. I've started living with housemates a little bit by accident in March and I love our situation. It's so much easier to share cohabitation on a more neutral basis? Also keeping house with another mom is just a dream. And having 4 kids in the house (2, mine, on a part time basis) lightens the parenting load since they are busy with each other and the parents can chat. And I even fell in love, way too quickly for my own comfort level as someone who was certain she'd not get back in a hetero relationship. It's so liberating to be in relationship with someone entirely by choice and not because I need them to achieve certain things - we're both broke and free in our own way. As someone who wanted to have children, this feels so different from dating in my late 20s. I would also say that the book DETRANSITION BABY has a few lines about divorced women that reframed it in a way that made me see the decision as one of courage and not failure.
"Peters: I didn’t always have sympathy for cos women, but as I was writing this book, I was reading a lot of books by divorced cis women like Rachel Cusk, and I was really deep into Elena Ferrante. I saw a trajectory in divorce stories, where you have an idea about yourself and what your life is going to be like until a certain point. Then there’s a break from that, and you have to reinvent yourself. You have to move, make new friends, change your name. You have to not get bitter. You have to not get resentful. And you also can’t just reinvest in some of the same illusions that got you there. Otherwise, you’re going to have a second failure."
YES! Ask a Divorced Person was an absolute smorgasbord of revelations for me, including the line about “leaving before there’s nothing left”!! Love this place. 😊
To "see the decision as one of courage and not failure" was so important for me and so hard to accomplish. You ARE brave. And it took me a while after leaving to realize that I am, too.
I'm interested in the intersection of this topic with the "men who don't like women" topic that you introduced. I didn't notice that my ex-husband didn't actually like women because he was so dedicated to the hero-provider role that I feel like the church and Disney movies said was what women needed. He was a pastor and a "good" husband because he thought I was beautiful and wanted to rescue or take care of me. Until he wasn't. He doesn't actually like women. He doesn't see the value of women besides as those who meet his sexual and psychological needs. When I couldn't do that to his liking (no matter how hard I tried in spite of a shifting landscape of expectations), then I wasn't a wife worth being faithful to. Thanks to a lot of excellent therapists (that made up for the really terrible marriage therapists) and the support of my parents I found a way out of that emotionally abusive and controlling marriage. I definitely make a third of what he provided (and the courts ALWAYS favor the men because of the belief and rumors that the courts favor the women). But I am making a way and providing a healthier environment for my kids, at least when they are with me. But I do want to figure out how to encourage my girls to look for a man who actually likes women instead of a hero/provider/prince, and (more difficult and maybe too late?) raise my son to be someone who actually likes women.
I was married for 17 years to an emotionally abusive alcoholic man who was a beloved physician in our community. I felt I couldn't talk to anyone about what was happening in our home for fear of ruining his livelihood--I didn't have any income as a stay-at-home mom to our three children and my oldest from a previous marriage. We all created coping mechanisms and navigated life on tip-toes as we tried not to set him off, and even after he stopped drinking after hitting rock bottom one night, his sober self was still horrible to us. When all of our kids were in school full-time, I started working outside of the home and bringing in a little bit of money. I was patiently waiting for the kids to turn 18 so that I could find a way to leave the marriage without damage to them, and then I got a promotion at work that meant I would have enough money to survive on my own--as long as I could get child support for the 3 kids who were still at home. When I sat at my new desk for the first time, I noticed that the person who had been in that job before me (and who was and still is a friend) had left behind a laminated quote from Eleanor Roosevelt on the otherwise empty bulletin board in the office, "Do the thing you think you cannot do." And so I did. 6 months later, our divorce was finalized.
I grappled with the guilt of having to let the kids be in his home half the time, I messed up by choosing speed over getting everything I could have out of the divorce, I saddled myself with half of the debt we had accumulated over the years in order to not make him even more angry during our divorce discussions, and I dealt with him dragging my name through the mud in any way he could in our small community. I lost some friends, but I gained an understanding of who my true friends were.
My kids and I survived and eventually thrived once we weren't in a toxic environment 24/7, and I'm now 12 years removed from that hell.
I relate to so much of this, especially the guilt of having to let the kids be in his home. For what it's worth, I opted for getting everything I could out of the divorce, and that has been miserable too. It's one thing to get awarded everything. It's another thing to spend years trying to actually get what you've been awarded. There are definitely advantages to the path you chose too! I'm so glad you and the kids are thriving.
I've watched a couple of friends opt for the less speedy path, and they have had other challenges--including actually getting what was agreed upon. I kicked myself a few times along the way for "giving in" so easily, but prying decent child support from him was exhausting enough. I'm not sure I had it in me to do any more than that. I hope you and your kids are in a good place now, too!
I’m so damn proud of you
Thank you, Niki. I'm proud of me, too. It's one of the hardest things I've ever done.
I'm also sad that so many people find this relatable. We have a ways to go to upend what we were taught to think was our fate. I'll keep doing the work to upend it!
God I relate to this so much!
I'm sorry that you've been through similar. I hope the last part is a part of you relating to it!
Thank you Kristie. Your story creates new pathways for other new stories. Also you did the thing, and it’s impossible not to make mistakes when the stakes are real.
Thanks, Renee. I share my story as much as I can so others can maybe find strength in it. I'm also learning to forgive myself my mistakes and focus on the ultimately positive outcomes for me and my kids.
Wow, you are amazing!
Thank you, Caitlin. Sometimes I think about those times and I'm amazed I could do it. I have four kids though, and I didn't want them to think that our situation was in any way normal or what they should expect for themselves--especially my daughter.
I left a month ago. The logistics of doing it were terrifying: I have a job that pays well, but it's a 2-hour commute each way, and I live in a very high cost-of-living area. I've got three kids: 10, 8, and 6.
We'd been together 20 years (since college), and married 17. We'd always talked about how great it was that we got together so young, but I'd come to realize I had no idea what a healthy relationship looks like, and bit by bit, my life had ossified into something I didn't want. Things had gotten emotionally abusive, and everything was about the importance of a tight-knit nuclear family. I did the majority of the childcare because he worked (from home) a lot including weekends, but any consequential parenting decisions I made that he didn't like got overwritten. It felt more like being an unpaid babysitter than a parent.
We had almost no local friends, just friends elsewhere. One of the tipping points for me was actually the piece in Culture Study about reorganizing your life around friendship. I realized THAT was something I wanted. I wanted to have friends nearby. I wanted to show up for them, and model that for the kids. I even forwarded it to my now-ex, but it didn't seem to click at all for him.
He suggested an open relationship a year ago, but we agreed at first we only wanted something casual, and didn't have the time or emotional energy for something more serious. One thing led to another, though, and I ended up with a girlfriend. Having to explain so many things about myself and my marriage to a new person -- after so many things had just been a given for so long -- was eye-opening. As were her observations on the situation. Through her, I got to see for the first time what another life might look like. What it could look like to have a group of friends nearby, and go and do things with them.
I also came to realize that my moderate drinking for 20 years was essential to make my marriage sustainable. All we did together involved drinking. When I stopped (and he didn't), things got uncomfortable. When I did an experiment and drank with him again one night, everything felt suddenly better. I panicked; I didn't want to be the bad guy here. But a friend pointed out that even if it's uncomfortable for him, too, he's not ever going to leave. If I want a change, it has to be on me to make.
Two weeks later, I'd gotten the paperwork together to file with the courts while he was out of town, and a few weeks after that, he was served with the papers. I was terrified; I'd moved everything I'd have been really sad to lose to my office or my girlfriend's. I didn't know if I'd be able to go back to the house after that, and would have to fight for custody. But he was shocked into silence in the conversation, for the first time ever, and I got to say my piece. And a funny thing happened: suddenly a reasonable, pleasant, polite, and even deferential person showed up in our interactions since. I never would've believed it, but that broke through something. To be honest, it was annoying: I'd told myself he just didn't have it in him to be that person, and it turns out he did, but had chosen not to. But the end result is still much better than most scenarios I'd prepared for.
The kids are doing just fine; they knew about divorce from the "Baby Sitters Little Sister" graphic novels by Ann M Martin and haven't seemed particularly upset about it. They weren't shocked to hear we were divorcing, but were over-the-moon excited about the prospect of having TWO SETS OF HOLIDAYS.
I've literally never felt this good in my life. Several things that I thought were just chronic medical issues suddenly disappeared the week after serving papers. There's lots of things still to figure out (e.g. I can't afford to keep the house) but several times a week I'm suddenly grateful that of all the possible worlds, this is one where I actually made the choice to leave.
Divorce for sure is super hard on kids (in ways they might not realize until into adulthood) but in my opinion, it's no contest between that and living with parents who SHOULD be divorced but aren't. I'm so glad to hear that you are out of there!
My decision to leave my marriage a year ago was informed by so many tiny epiphanies I’d had in the past several years, and one of the most important ones was thanks to another Culture Study thread on divorce that was FULL of people who expressed this exact same sentiment. It was a revelation to me—someone who grew up in a very conservative community and family where divorce was seen as supremely selfish and harmful to children—that maybe taking this step wouldn’t doom my child or render me a monster. The past nine months since I’ve moved out have been the most peaceful of my life. It’s been hard on my kid, and will continue to be, but I’m confident that she’s going to be better off in the long run. Thanks, Culture Study community, for giving me (and surely others) the courage and the inspiration to do the good and hard thing.
Champion work. Brava!!!
Speaking as a child of the latter situation, holy crap, yes. Can confirm getting divorced can definitely be better for the kids.
100% agree. That was my childhood, is my adulthood. Staying together for the kids is bullshit.
For sure-- I imagine this is just the start of a conversation that I'll be having in different ways with them for the rest of my life. But I'm grateful that at least in the beginning, when other pieces were really hard, that one at least went over pretty smoothly and they latched onto the bright side.
Absolutely! I did not at all mean to be raining on that parade of a win! I'm so glad that part, at least, went better than it might have, and alleviated some stress from an extremely stressful situation.
They’re going to be ultimately in such a stronger place in terms of their overall happiness, comfort, and understanding of healthy relationships. I don’t feel haunted by my parents’ divorce at all, but I did learn a lot about what relationships could (and shouldn’t) look like. Opening up that discussion will be so good for your kiddos. So happy for you all.
One month! Look at your strength, the community you're working to build, the really hard choices you're making, and what you're modeling for your children. I wish you so much joy in the future.
A MONTH! AMAZING!
Yes!!!!!
Oof. While not Mormon, I left an extremely controlling marriage to a catholic Italian-American who believed my purpose was to bear 12 children for him. He himself was one of thirteen and thought that his mother did it all right. He threatened to call off the wedding a week before if I didn’t promise him a dozen offspring. I was 24 years old and, at that time, nothing could have been more terrifying to me :/. Without going into too much detail regarding the emotional abuse, I somehow lasted ten years with him. However, because I am a dentist, I had the financial resources to leave. It was the emotional and social side I had to navigate. He and his large family did anything and everything for literal years to destroy me and my reputation but I did it somehow. If I can do it, others can too.
A reputation is everything for a dentist, so their attempts must have been terrifying. My father was a well loved dentist in a conservative, immigrant community and I remember my mom freaking out about my older sister acquiring a boyfriend and what it would do to my dad's business. Well done to surviving and riding your ex-in laws out.
Congratulations on freeing yourself!
I don't have an answer or solution to the problem of marriage=patriarchy but I am noticing a growing comfort amongst my women friends (educated, 50-something, some work outside the home, some don't) with acknowledging and talking openly about the fact that the construct of marriage doesn't work for women in a way I've never heard in my adult life. I don't know if this is a post-pandemic phenom (everyone references the pandemic as a turning point in their relationships) or a new general post Me-Too consciousness, or simply what happens after 15+ years of marriage. Several of them (including me) have told our husbands that the status quo is no longer possible and at least three women I know are now living separately from their husbands while still technically married, in arrangements that give them autonomy and freedom from domestic labor and caretaking that they didn't/couldn't have when living with those men. The rub: these women are educated and privileged and there's enough money for this to be possible - and for their husbands to fear the economic consequences of divorce enough to agree to their terms.
I am sad that so many American women are trapped in marriages that deplete them rather than lifting them up. I think marriage can be wonderful especially for women in ideal circumstances. Like in terms of sexual satisfaction, I’ve never had better sex than with my husband of 12 years with whom I am completely comfortable to voice my desires and who knows exactly what I need. Financially, we’ve both been able to take risks at various points in our careers because we know we have the other to rely on. It’s a built-in support system for aging parents (as an only child, I need this). Someone to encourage you in all your endeavors. To be invested in your health and success. But I also married a man who is not originally from the US and did not grow up here, and we don’t have or want children. I don’t have all the answers but I think I know the problem, and it’s American men.
Thank you for this perspective!
I was just talking about this cultural shift with a friend. I'm a Zillennial, and have been with my partner for 7+ years, but the idea of marriage just doesn't really appeal to me? Like there's romantic reasons and also logistical benefits (taxes, yes, but also medical emergencies). But I love hearing about (particularly hetero) relationships that change over time as people identify new needs, such as staying together but moving out, or opening the relationship, or the man taking a leave of absence from work to be a house spouse, with or without kids. Your point about certain women having power in these relationships is critical; and I think part of me feels, accurately or not, that it's easier to retain that power/agency/whatever you want to call it without the legal institution of marriage. That said, would love to hear arguments the other way on this.
in almost all of the conversations I've had with Gen X women, they are the unhappy ones who demand change, while the husbands seemed to have been under the assumption that things in the relationship were fine. in these cases, the husbands also are the ones desperate to "save" the marriage when the wives are ready to leave - which, ironically, gives the women more power. this may be a function of economic class or maybe it's because men intuit that their lives would be so much worse in every way without the comfort, security, and social benefits of a wife that they'll do almost anything to keep their wives from leaving. obviously, there are also men who just say "see ya" and agree to a divorce and go find another wife and start all over again...
This rings true to me. Men have a lot to lose. They should realize it sooner.
That's fascinating to hear. I wonder if there's a subset of men and male-socialized people (because this includes my partner) who think, "yep, good enough," and not go deeper than that, maybe in part due to the intuition that you describe. Whereas women and women-socialized people, especially in the past couple of decades, have (in some spheres) heard narratives around not settling, getting your needs met, etc. So that's what motivates them to advocate for more, and be willing to leave a non-abusive but also dissatisfying relationship in a way that their husbands and partners wouldn't even consider? This coming from someone who is more inclined to deal with conflict than their partner is, and on (infrequent) low days, worries that we stay together out of convenience and inertia more than how it feels on more days than not, which is intentional, desired partnership.
I think another aspect of this is the quality of women’s friendships vs. mens - I hear women talking a lot about how they’d prefer a “golden girls” living situation with a group of other women than ever remarrying/living with a man. I don’t think men have that same fantasy - or maybe they do?!
Yes, this does seem to be a gendered thing, at least historically. I wonder why - does it have something to do with generally women living longer than men, for a variety of reasons? Or is it that women are socialized to have intimacy in their friendships in a way that many men are not (because toxic masculinity)? Personally, I would love to be among a queer cohousing community in my golden years; but I think many queer folks (also a generalization) have a different understanding of relationship, whether romantic or otherwise, and chosen family, than a lot of hetero folks do, at least until recently.
I mean, you don't have to ever get married! For us we decided it would be more romantic (and more tax advantageous) to not get married and we have children & a house and I don't think it really has any negative impact on us - the positives are I do not carry the cultural baggage of wife.
Yes, I definitely see this perspective. We also have a layer where we’re both queer, but to the uninformed we look like a typical hetero couple, and I worry about the invisibility of that part of our identities that might come with the connotations of marriage. I’m curious, what makes it more romantic for you? And also tax-advantageous, lol, as that’s one of the practical reasons I hear a lot of people cite?
It's more romantic in the sense that we have to be intentional about our roles and what this is, we cannot rely on "tradition". Every single day I am free to choose this person and he is free to choose me and no god or law can compel us. I think of it as love without coercion, while people enter marriage freely - it legally binds them for better or worse. As for the tax issues - spouses of similar incomes experience a "marriage penalty" https://www.investopedia.com/terms/m/marriage-penalty.asp#:~:text=Marriage%20penalty%20is%20a%20term,federal%20and%20state%20tax%20implications.
Yes! Lyz Lenz has been writing about this phenomenon and wrote a book: This American Ex-Wife: How I Ended My Marriage and Started My Life.
I read that and it was interesting but I felt too damning of marriage as an institution and not open enough to the idea that it can be reimagined to work for women. The other thing I forgot to say was that these Gen X women are talking about this issue with their teen/20-something daughters in a way that's far more sophisticated and nuanced than the conversations I was hearing when I was that age. I am fascinated to see how this plays out in the next 10-20 years.
I’m an elder Xenniel (just turned 41) and I have to say, I’ve been watching Gen X women my whole life for life cues and I have really been informed by this willingness to openly talk about marriage and child rearing and the good and the bad. I have decided against kids for myself, not because I dislike kids in general but because I was able to make a much more informed evaluation of the commitments and emotional work involved and think through whether I wanted that. I’ve been partnered most of my adult life but haven’t yet decided that I’ve found someone marriage-worthy, largely because I’ve thought much more deeply about the institution based on what I’ve watched from women slightly older than me. I really feel great about these choices. So I think the effects of Gen X’s cultural conversations are already having an impact amongst women in my demographic.
that is gratifying to hear - sometimes it just feels like talk with no impact! the issue of taking care of children is at the heart of the inequality in modern marriage partnerships and I'm hoping that as we slowly work to redefine the institution, women will feel that their decisions around having kids are unrelated to how much heavier the burden will be on them.
Ooh put this in a newsletter, Amelia!
intriguing idea!
I haven't watched this show, and I don't have a direct personal connection to Mormonism, but I was struck by a line in this piece about staying in abusive jobs for the same reason people don't leave oppressive marriages or communities. The principle trauma in my life that I'm working through right now is 10 years spent in a job that eroded my sense of self-worth to nothing and had me contemplating ending my own life. I felt like I couldn't leave, because I'd never find another job that would pay as well and support my family (I'm the breadwinner). No other place would have me and even if they did, is it even possible it would be any better? Better the devil you know, right? I'm happy to report I eventually did get a better job but I had to move cities and rearrange my whole life to do it and that was *hard.* So hard I questioned whether it was even worth it several times during the process.
Yes. We need a broader conversation about how toxic and life-destroying jobs can be. I have found that most bosses are toxic, if only by virtue of their power over you and your livelihood.
Then there's neurodivergence, where everything that can be held against you WILL be held against you. I think I'm still traumatized by my four years as an employee, even though they ended five years ago.
We need more work co-ops, and better protection for freelance workers.
This is my partner right now. Stuck in a blech job, underpaid, and not enough time left over to look for other work and also be a human with hobbies and rest. I appreciate when people are honest that change from the inertia is hard and also necessary, because both really are true.
I was 19 and given three hours to pack up my stuff and be out of my abusive stepfather's house. Because of the scramble to fit my entire childhood into my Honda Accord, I showed up late to work that morning and was fired on the spot. In a daze, I distinctly remember driving to a Waffle House, sitting down to a cup of coffee, and the reality sinking in that I had nowhere to go, nowhere to be. At first there was a real fear, but because I had money saved up and only weeks before I could go back to living in my campus dorm as a sophomore, I also felt a deep rush of freedom.
I never stayed another night at my parent's house. The next few years were hard - my college allowed me to live on campus during winter breaks, I slept on friend's couches. By 20 I managed to figure out how to establish residency in the state I was going to school in, get my own apartment, and slowly start to figure out how to build life on my terms.
I felt like my early adult years were me feeling my way through the dark on how to get a job, have friends, manage my finances, be a part of a community. I never did any of it well, but the current underneath it all was that I was getting to build something entirely on my own terms.
My childhood was so heavy and limiting - I saw how miserable my parents were and how they tried to box me into that misery as well. I see today how my siblings are still stuck inside that box in their own lives. In retrospect, getting kicked out was the best thing to ever happen to me, because it pushed me to decide who was going to control my life - me or my family. To this day it is the the decision I am most proud of.
Ohhh, but this: "I never did any of it well, but the current underneath it all was that I was getting to build something entirely on my own terms."
Even at 20 years out from hearing 'you're not a daughter I want to know anymore' it's so easy to feel like I'll just always be behind the curve, scrambling to catch up, learn things I should already know or have someone to help with, half-assing my own resources, a little late to everything. But my little life being truly mine, all mine, in whatever form that takes, is the most precious thing and something I'll never take for granted. Solidarity :)
Look at you, saving yourself at 19! Sending a big hug.
My problem was small - my first white collar job out of college was everything I wanted on paper and miserable in so many ways in reality. I didn’t feel trapped but I did feel overly responsible for making it work out to suit my dream of it. One day I was running an errand in a city building and there was a performance artist working there, a serene older woman knitting a giant rug out of plastic bags. I stopped to talk to her and she said something I can’t exactly recall but that struck me like a bolt of lightning—something like that her project was to turn something most people thought of as garbage into meaning and beauty. [ETA: It's coming back to me a bit more, I think she said that her work was a commentary on the government work being done in that building, lots of people toiling to create something meaningful of the wrong materials, maybe? Whatever she said, I started sobbing and ran away.]
I quit my job the next day in an unprofessional rage and threw myself a business attire themed “retirement party” (I was 26) where I vowed to never stay in a terrible job again. I’ve had many good and bad jobs since then (this was still in the era of abundant low level work), but the party worked to inoculate me against staying in a bad situation. In retrospect, I think it helped to make it a part of my identity, so that superseded a bad job filling that role, if that makes sense.
I wish I’d applied that same breakthrough to dating, but I learned that lesson a few years later in a different way.
I love that you left in a rage. Bad bosses do not deserve to be spared our wrath, professionalism be damned. 'Let the bridges you burn light the way ahead.'
The best part of quitting was that all company communication was done by ill-natured faxes, so I got to send my own ill-natured fax that day!
I wish I had quit my toxic job in an unprofessional rage. That sounds so cathartic!
It was, but then my friend who had worked there with me told me that my sudden ragequit was taken out on him and my other colleagues. Not my fault but I did feel bad.
That is the definition of an unintended consequence! Hopefully your colleagues got their own rage moments later on. I've done the opposite in my life, where even ten years later, I rarely ever share my experience because the leader is still well-respected (and now a politician) and I don't want to risk any blow back despite the fact that it's very unlikely at this point.
I hope those moments when you do get to share are satisfying.
I love this story. Thank you for sharing it with us.
Thank you! I wish I remember who the artist was, or what she said exactly. It's starting to come back to me, that I think she said her piece was a commentary about work itself, and it really resonated with me, that I was also working really hard to create something meaningful out of materials that weren't really right for the job. Anyway, never let it be said that art can't change your life!
I went to an extremely patriarchal, conservative college that catered to wealthy southern families. 2,000 students, 80% Greek, in a small rural town that offered no other social life for students besides drinking in frat houses. Girls were at the total mercy of those frat boys’ desires, despite largely being smarter and more driven. (A professor told me that they had to lower the standards for boys to keep the school close to 50/50.) Male students rolled their eyes at girls like me who participated too much or too enthusiastically in class.
Slut shaming kept us women walking a line of looking for a boyfriend in a “good” frat while not doing anything too sexualized or promiscuous. We could never report SA because then we would be blacklisted from all social functions. Any gay students were closeted, black students were reluctantly tokenized, and international students of color were sidelined.
Like many students, I was miserable and beat down. But no one ever transferred. We were told we were so lucky to be there, that we would emerge with the skills to work a cocktail party and move through a world of success that was the only real place we would ever want to be. That world looked white, male, and dressed in a blue sports coat and Vineyard Vines belt. Transferring was admitting that you were a social failure and would never make it in law, finance, etc., or would never find a suitable husband who would buy you a big home and then a big second home and squire you into these halls of power.
It seemed, back then, that there was no other way to be “successful” and that it was either nod along to a boorish man name dropping his boating companions at cocktail parties for the rest of my life, or end up poor and miserable and lonely, rejected by society for not being feminine enough.
I figured out pretty quickly once I moved to New York that there’s a whole world out there there full of different types of success. But some of my sorority sisters (or more accurately, the girls from the "good" sororities, we were misfits in mine) are still trapped in bad marriages, wearing those Lily Pulitzer dresses to their summer homes, shamed out of their sexual desires, and desperately trying to keep their husbands from wandering off with the secretary.
Did we....go to the same college? And join the same sorority? Except for the fact that my college had only 1100 students at the time, I'd swear we did. My personal road to recovery involved staying in the region, but marrying a slightly older midwestern-raised academic who already had a divorce and a small daughter. That daughter is in college now...at the same small school I attended 20+ years ago. I guess the good news is that it's much less greek, less white, less straight, and less uptight these days. She's a queer artistic weirdo (I say with all the love in my heart) and seems to be flourishing with a solid peer group of like-minded folks. But I definitely know the women you speak of - still with their boorish dude bro husbands, still sighing that "that's just how men are," and still doing everything "right" while feeling like nothing in their life is.
I am also quite confident that I went to this school and maybe was in the same misfit sorority! Your post has been bouncing around my brain for the past few days. I’m coming up on my 20 year college reunion (elder millennial here). The more time and distance I have from this very particular college experience, the more I wonder how this culture appeared perfectly normal to me at the time (partial answer: a pretty conservative upbringing in a mostly white and affluent community in Texas).
Reading the bama rush tok series here had me thinking back to my rush and Greek life experience. Many of the cultural pressures and dynamic were so similar even in the early 2000s (minus the social media elements which sound like an added layer of hell mixed into an already toxic hierarchal process). AHP’s coverage of KA at bama and the white supremacist mythologizing of the confederacy also brought up lots of memories. It made me wonder how much of the dynamic between Greek life and university administration described at bama is replicated or likely heightened at this small yet oddly influential college where the Greek system has such a strong hold on the campus culture.
I am confident we did go to the same college. It has astounded me in the years since graduating that no one around me did transfer though nearly all of my closest friends considered it. I did too but felt that same luck you mentioned for being a student *there* as that would propel a corporate career many dream of. We will see about that, but I know I am lucky for the friends I made there even if some of our connection stemmed from challenges in that environment.
That sounds utterly miserable. I am so sorry.
As an ex-Mormon, I was married to a closeted gay man for 27 years. I do think of myself as culturally Mormon, though I was a very pious believer in my earlier life. My Mormon friends are offended by the portrayal of their religion on this show. Do viewers realize early on that there is a clear hierarchy within the church? I haven't seen the show, but my friend's reaction shows that the 'good' members all are sensitive to this. To them you cannot drink or have extra-marital sex and be "Mormon" - it is binary.
This post made me subscribe to comment because despite being college educated (well at BYU - the mormon mating college) and an 80s gal all my training (indoctrination) WAS all around my highest good/use in the world being around my ability to bear children and raise my family as a homemaker. I blithely gave up my career as an editor to stay home. And I stayed in a marriage with a man, I knew "struggled" with what mormons call same sex attraction because I was naive and unaware he was more than struggling, but actively cheating and lying. I was so naive that even when he gave me crabs, I didn't suspect anything amiss.
I was once fired from a 'calling' as a seminary teacher when I became pregnant with my first child as the stake president (higher up church muckety muck) thought I should be resting instead of teaching teenagers every morning (this is an unpaid DAILY job!) I was angry at the time, but I guess the relief also at not having to get up at the butt crack of dawn to teach sleepy teenagers outweighed my outrage.
Now I am 8 years post divorce, but I still struggle with a sense of failure that I think stems from the long years of indoctrination and the societal shame that still exists around divorce. And living abroad, the 'where would I go" question stayed my hand many times as leaving would have involved getting on international flights with 3 children. I was also unaware of my husband's infidelity, so I felt it would have been selfish to disrupt my family simply because I was unhappy at times (not all the time) and his gaslighting was a factor too as I was made to feel all of our marital issues were due to my attitude and actions or lack thereof.
Moving to Idaho during Covid after 24 years living outside the USA, has made me see the USA in such a different light. We are so much more religiously oppressed as women in this country, but my view could be because I live in a largely Mormon community and work as an acupuncturist, so I see so many women trapped in cycles of self-blame for not living up to the impossible standards that require high levels of attractiveness, compliance and self-sacrifice. I see so many mental health issues like depression and anxiety that, as I hear their stories, are really rooted in the fact that they are being oppressed and limited which is making them angry which they turn against themselves rather than the society/relationship that is causing it! So glad that this show is exposing the crazy that is harming so many women in this high-demand and oppressive religious cult.
I did tell my story on Medium years ago (https://medium.com/@ModernAcu/a-straight-spouse-coming-out-there-is-no-party-683bb97183d0) if anyone is interested in the whole shebang.
“Now I am 8 years post divorce, but I still struggle with a sense of failure that I think stems from the long years of indoctrination and the societal shame that still exists around divorce.” —>
I was raised in a devout Catholic family, married at 24, and still subscribed to everything until the age of 30 when I realized I absolutely did not want to raise my daughter with all of the indoctrination and general shame I grew up with. Completely left the church and divorced at 32. I’ve been divorced for 10 years— and what you wrote is seriously my lightbulb moment for why I still have generalized feelings of failure, even though divorce was absolutely the right decision.
I am so happy you can see it isn't YOU. I struggle and I think some of it is that I tend to minimize my husband's part because so much of the indoctrination is that you have to WORK at it....that YOU can somehow FIX things.... BUT that emotional and spiritual work of relationship can never be unilateral, it takes TWO people to make a relationship! I look back and see how I was so overcompensating. Now I feel so much rage at the levels of energy that I expended/wasted on trying to repair that relationship that could have been channeled into my own work - rather than trying to solve a problem that my husband didn't really want to solve!!
NO sometimes you absolutely need to take control of your life and let that relationship GO!!! It is so scary. I had a Buddhist teacher tell me something helpful. She said "Sometimes we walk along the path of life with someone and then the paths separate and you have to walk your own path." That really hit me as I knew that my path was diverging as I became more invested in my work and my children grew up and became less dependent. Kudos to those women strong enough to do it with younger children...
Thank you for sharing your story! I agree on the mental health issue. Our focus on individualism in America coupled with the LDS church's oppression of women make women feel like it must be them, they must be crazy, not that the system is broken. And it keeps women from talking to each other about these issues. One of the things I hated most in Utah was the small talk and the refusal to really talk about deeper issues.
Yes, that superficial level of existence is what I think contributes to the overwhelming numbers of boob jobs, botox and hair and lash extensions that I see here in Idaho too. All surface alterations and values, while NOT talking about the super problematic nature of the Mormon church's origin story that involved so much manipulation to normalize the marriages of dozens of young women to its founder, Joseph Smith and so many more unspoken abuses during that time in this church's history.
I grew up in a low-control religion (Christian Science) but under a high-control family centered on my narcissistic mother and her rather fundamentalist (and thus very high-control) version of CS. So at 33, in therapy after a brutal divorce, and having struggled with the tension between wanting/needing therapy/doctors/medicine and the teachings I had been raised with (not all of which were actually CS), I finally admitted out loud the scariest thing I had ever, ever faced: that I had not ever had a physical healing in CS, which is one of its most important principles. To utter that out loud, and thus begin to question the foundation of my entire life, was heartrending, much more so than my devastating divorce. It unraveled everything I thought I knew, all the way down to, is there even a God? But the only reason I could go there with myself was because of my trust in my therapist.
Five years later, I still don't know the answer to that question. I still live in a weird place with religion and CS, where I'm not willing to write it off entirely (because I do know people that WERE genuinely healed) but am not at all interested in relying on it because contemporary medicine has actually brought me the answers (if admittedly only sometimes the relief) I needed. However, therapy continues to be the best money I spend every month. My current therapist helped me see that I don't actually have to know the answers to my religious questioning to grow and love others and be happy. So, so much good has come from being willing to face the scariest part of my psyche. But my God it was hard.
My husband was raised CS. He was 3rd generation, and (like yours) his parents were high-control and fundamentalist in their practice of the religion. Although he left the church over 20 years ago, CS still has a hold on him in ways that have stifled his emotional growth and negatively impacted our marriage (particularly his treatment of me). I have begged him to get therapy over the years, but he refuses.
I think it's incredible that you had the strength to leave the church and your marriage, and you were especially brave to seek therapy to help you unpack your relationship with that religion. What stands out to me the most about CS is the deep level of shame, rejection, and denial of one's humanity that seem to underpin MBE's teachings. CS children (in fundamentalist households) learn from a very young age that vulnerability is never a safe experience. If they get sick, it's their fault for not Christian Sciencing hard enough. If they are struggling with depression, it's because they made someone angry and that person is "mental malpracticing" them. In my view as an outsider, CS interprets all of the bumps and edges and hiccups of living in a human body as abject moral and spiritual failures.
That said, it's easy to see how that belief system can become a prison from which escape seems impossible. I applaud you for taking the leap and for making so much progress in just 5 years, and I hope you find your way to a spiritual path that feels right to your soul.
I'm sorry for your husband struggling to be open to therapy and for the toll it has taken on you. That's so hard. My parents (still CS) and my brother (not CS for years) also refuse to get therapy, and it's just so hard to watch. Interesting, my mom has expressed genuine interest in couples therapy in particular, after watching my sisters and I experience significant improvements in our marriage afterwards, but she sadly shared that my dad would NEVER. Emotions are so demonized in today's CS, and so many CSers are just unable to even entertain the IDEA of facing their feelings.
Your description of CS in fundamentalist households is dead on. I feel validated and also deeply sad to hear that ours was not the only CS family to experience this. I STILL struggle with feeling guilty when I get sick, only now I'm looking to blame my actions instead of my thought. Such a hard habit to let go of. Soooo many of the CS kids I knew in Sunday School had the option of choosing CS or "the medical route," and often in fact chose medicine. I never had the option, even when I once begged. Don't get me started on the number of chronic health conditions I now have because of a major car accident, for which I never saw a doctor (despite asking). For anyone reading this, ready to go on the warpath against CS, though - be clear, that's MY MOM who made the decision not to give me that choice, NOT CS's teachings.
In fact, I feel like CS is WHY I was open to therapy and able to grow out of it so rapidly. There are so many similarities, and a lot of the mental work is remarkably parallel. You're just operating on wildly different foundations, haha. (I'm also realizing as I edit this comment that theatre training probably had a lot to do with it as well. That was a decades-long road to climb, ooof.)
The many wonderful, kind, even liberal(!) Christian Scientists I knew in church and at Principia College were also a big part of why I came out as stable and thoughtful as I did (this is a question I have been asked often by therapists), and a big reason I have trouble writing off the entire religion as crazy or cultish. Because while there are some really awful practitioners (pun only partially intended) of CS, so many of the folks practicing it are genuinely wonderful people whose version of CS is full of light and love (unlike your husband's parents or mine), and sometimes even genuine healing.
But I remember years ago, while still on the fence about it all, listening to The Dream podcast about MLMs, and the episode about toxic positivity came up. I was sitting there feeling increasingly like, "yikes, this sounds like CS" and suddenly Jane Marie namedropped Mrs. Eddy and CS in the context of Phineas P. Quimby in her historical context analysis. It was a breakthrough for me in realizing how much that toxic positivity had corrupted and corroded my experience in CS and is probably part of why I was able to make the break not long after.
It sounds like you have a really balanced perspective on your experience with CS - holding space for your loved ones while critically examining the impact the religion had on you directly. There are a lot of smart, kind, loving, and yes, liberal members of the church (my husband's family members included) so I understand that it's a tough line to walk. My husband doesn't like to speak critically of the church, because he feels like it's disrespectful to his family members. And I think he might still low key believe that he could mental malpractice them by criticizing their belief system. So much thought policing!
Oooof exhausting.
Mine was a situation of psychological and emotional abuse in my marriage. The distinction between options and choices resonates. It was only at the point where I felt I had no other option but to leave, in order to survive, that I left. Prior to that point, I lived in the “but where would you go?” mentality. For me, up until the moment I left, the option of leaving felt like an admission of failure - that I didn’t have what it takes to fix our situation, to fix him. As someone who learned how to be co-dependent from a young age, I channeled that into our marriage such that my entire identity was built around being strong enough to withstand the torture because I was helping him get better. But then, and this is true in my case as well as other women I’ve spoken to, you get to a point where the options become really stark. The way I’ve phrased it with others in abusive situations is to get really real about the options, because you’re f*cked either way: If you go you’re f*cked. It’s not an easy path. And if you stay you’re f*cked, because at one point you’ll probably be dead. So the options are not good but you have to choose the less bad one, the one where at least you’re alive.
To answer the question, a different way of living didn’t feel possible. It actually felt impossible. So it was really that stark reality, the primal desire to survive – and in my case, it was the primal desire to survive as my kid’s mom (saving myself wasn’t enough of a reason; it had to be about him in my mind at the time) – that pushed me to jump. I wish I could say I chose it rationally, but I didn’t. Now it’s so clear, but that’s just not how it is when you’re in it. My experience is that it’s primal.
In terms of my safety net, I was very fortunate and I was also very strategic. He had removed almost all of my access to my community. We had even moved across the country where I didn’t have any community. But I had kept my job back east, working remotely. So my son and I moved back east, moved in with my sister, and I had the stability of my job. After a couple months I was able to save up to rent my own place (with an unusually reasonable deposit). I was also really lucky in that I found a great preschool that miraculously had an opening and even more miraculously was affordable (again, with no deposit). So I’d say that I was helped by a combination of luck, my community that I finally allowed in to help me, and the fact that I was always one step ahead of my husband, methodically laying each stone on my new pathway. I’m not going to lie, though. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. We’re co-parents and are in constant contact, so the hard work continues. But 8 years later I’m so proud of how I’ve navigated it (leaving, advocating for myself and my son, how we now co-parent) – and I’d do it all again and again.
So much about what you say is resonating, but especially this: “As someone who learned how to be co-dependent from a young age, I channeled that into our marriage such that my entire identity was built around being strong enough to withstand the torture because I was helping him get better.”
That was exactly what my mother modeled and is still living. My dad has many good qualities but is also incredibly emotionally immature and gender roles within marriage are baked in hard for my parents. So I watched my mom normalize mental and emotional gymnastics to preserve the peace in our household of five kids and rationalize my dad’s shitty emotional and psychological volatility as her responsibility. “I should be more accepting I should be more accepting. He is a good man he is a good man.” Marriage is the ultimate sacrifice of self.
As soon as I had my first long term boyfriend in college, I assumed the role of bending myself to prop up an emotionally immature and verbally abusive boy. Then another and another and another and another until in my 30s I found myself love bombed into a relationship with a high level military misogynist, narcissist, amazingly manipulative, financial abuser who strategically tried to pry me apart from my support network. He eventually just broke me to the point that I was deeply depressed and lacked authentic self-worth. I remember walking around being like “joy was nice, but I guess that part of my life is over.” The relationship ended in a frantic way involving literally removing his stuff from the house forcefully. I look back on that time in wonder and disbelief that that was my life.
The practical logistics of the breakup were not *actually* that difficult in that I am financially independent and some rock solid friends have stuck with me through it. But the mental and emotional damage caused by what I would summarize as an ignorant belief that relationships are sacrifice and the more you can withstand, the stronger you are, has been a lot to unpack. I knew that last explosive relationship was not great even while I was in it, but my belief that my value is not inherent but is actually reflected in how strong I can be in the face of whatever is what kept me in it for so long. Basically “THIS man can’t break ME!”
I took a hard look at my own patterns and why they were what they were and I’ve been doing the work for the last five years and it’s been predictably difficult but my gentle and patient therapist. It’s been painful to look at my parents in their marriage with compassion for the people who raised and love me as well as they know how, while also reckoning with the damage their flawed example has caused.
I’m not going to center relationships with men as the happy ending to this comment, although I am in a really solid relationship that has also helped so much in my healing process and is hilariously joyful and nourishingly supportive. But I’ll end in saying that my perspective in the face of adversity is not “I can out-stubborn and out-muscle this” but more “I trust myself enough to know I will find a way.” It’s a much gentler perspective rooted in self-love.
Ooof . "Bending myself to prop up an emotionally immature and verbally abusive boy." I feel that deeply. I'm in the process of trying to break up with a partner who had a giant tantrum yesterday about not being able to find a parking spot.
Oh god, yes.. A parking spot, ugh, c’mon dude.
Thanks so much for sharing. “It’s been painful to look at my parents in their marriage with compassion for the people who raised and love me as well as they know how, while also reckoning with the damage their flawed example has caused.” Compassion and reckoning for sure!
You are amazing.
Thank you :)
That sounds incredible difficult. What an incredible accomplishment!
Such a good description of making the choice to leave.
I left my abusive ex-husband during the pandemic. We'd been together for 20 years, most of them miserable, and I knew he would make getting a divorce hard. Early in the relationship I had tried to leave a couple times but came back after I realized just how hard he would make things, as he comes from a very wealthy family with unlimited resources for custody cases, etc. I knew I could never put my children in a situation where their father might win custody solely due to his ability to outspend me in court.
When, during the pandemic, I found out that he'd been cheating throughout our relationship and head even tried to involve my son in an effort to hide the latest affair, I hoped he would feel guilty enough to make the divorce a little easier. Nope. The divorce ended up taking 3 years, he took it all the way to the state supreme court despite being unsuccessful at every lower level, and between the two of us I would estimate that we have spent half a million dollars in legal bills at this point--and we are not wealthy people. I divorced him shortly after he finished medical training, and we were saddled with his medical school bills.
A few highlights from the divorce: While I was out of town attending my father's memorial, he drained our joint bank account during our separation, despite a joint restraining order, and there were no real consequences--the money was essentially just gone. I found out that while I had been financially supporting him through medical training and struggling to take care of our kids essentially by myself, he had been hiding joint ownership of an island. After I filed for separation, he unilaterally stopped paying his income taxes, hoping that somehow he could get out of paying them and I would have to do it with my separate funds. He stole my most precious pieces of jewelry--not worth a lot, but of sentimental value--and then tried to tell the judge that our housekeeper or daughter must have taken them.
I watched the Mormon Wives show and seeing the way Jen was treated--and even that she was about to start supporting HER abusive husband as he began medical training--it was all so familiar. It made my stomach hurt. I hope she is able to get out faster than I did. My life is so much happier without having to deal with the daily abuse, but I definitely worry about my daughter having to navigate life with her father without me there as a buffer during his custody time. And I know his legal abuse of me will continue for as long as I am forced to co-parent with him. The truth is that even after divorce, if you share children, the current focus on keeping both parents in a child's life, even if one is abusive, means the abused spouse will never really get to escape the abuse. I wish there were better options for women who slowly realize they are married to a monster. It seems like they usually wait until after they feel you are trapped--once you have kids together--to really reveal who they are.
My life and my kids' lives would look so different if the legal system recognized and truly punished financial, legal, and emotional abuse. It sounds like the same is true for a lot of other women who posted here.
He was hiding an island?!?! Holy moly
The whole divorce felt like getting stuck in some reality tv show I never agreed to be part of! I kept wondering how it all could be real lol.
Yelling "AMEN!" for that last paragraph. And sending hugs and understanding your way.
SAME!!
Wow, I’m so sorry you had to go through that. Your children are lucky to have you - and you are lucky to have you too :)
As an active Mormon working mom who lives in Salt Lake City, this is something I have so many thoughts about! I could talk about this forever. I'm not sure how to sum it up in a comment because there are so many facets to it. But I will try. Growing up, I was told in Church lessons that I should get a college degree "just in case." Just in case your husband dies. Or just in case your husband turns out to be a dud and leaves you. I also felt like my only career aspirations could be within a realm that worked alongside also being an involved mother. And I go back and forth on whether or not this aspect is actually a bad thing—because being a mother is by far the most rewarding and meaningful aspect of my life. And I'm grateful that my remote career has allowed me to still spend the majority of my day with my children while also making six figures. But at the same time I've purposely not pushed for more at work because I don't want my career to hit a point where I have to sacrifice time with my children. And I've purposely stayed at a company that values flexibility very highly—even when the work has felt frustrating and dull—because that means I can work at night when they're asleep. Or I can move meetings around as much as I need to for appointments. Most of the time this feels like the right choice, but sometimes I wonder if I'm putting myself in an imaginary box.
Another important aspect of my situation is that my husband also chooses to stay at a flexible hybrid job where he can watch the kids and do housework during certain chunks of the day while I work and then work early in the morning or late at night to make up for it. This is not common for Mormon men to do. We also have a babysitter, preschool, and my mom who help out in small chunks during the week, but my husband is a major childcare contributor. But we've never needed full-time daycare, our children spend the majority of their day in our home, and I've breastfed both of our children for over a year. There are times this arrangement is highly exhausting and I've reached deep levels of burnout—but I feel this impossible compulsion to hold on to both. I don't want to quit my job or drop to part time. And I also don't want to hire more childcare. But I keep wondering how long I can keep this sprint up. Quitting my job feels like surrendering my freedom. And outsourcing more of the care of my children feels wrong, like I'm sacrificing their wellbeing for my personal aspirations. It is hard for me to untangle what is actually true from the societal conditioning I've experienced.
And how people in our Mormon community respond to me working could be a whole essay in itself! There is an unspoken stigma that a mother only works if she has to. And this is accompanied by the unspoken shame that her husband can't provide for their family, which is another aspect of this that isn't spoken about very often. It's often portrayed that the men have all the power in a patriarchal arrangement, and they usually do. But what many of them don't recognize is that the system doesn't serve them well either. Many of them take on jobs that they wouldn't have otherwise just to be sure they can support a large family on one income. Many of them work insane hours and miss their children growing up because they feel like it's necessary. My husband and I often talk about the "rich Mormon mom widows" in our neighborhood because they are a single mom in all aspects of the term except for the fact that their husband is supplying them with plenty of cash, comes home every other weekend, and takes them on big vacations a few times per year.
We now live in an affluent Mormon community, but we used to live in a more middle-class neighborhood. And we've found that the affluent community is much more accepting to working moms—and many of my friends here work as a choice, which is interesting. People actually ask me "What do you do for work?" instead of just assuming I'm a stay-at-home mom like they did in our middle-class neighborhood. In that neighborhood, being a stay-at-home mom was considered a status symbol for how successful your husband was. Nobody ever assumed you would work because you wanted to.
One example of this is there was a man in our neighborhood there who worked as a highway patrol officer and his exhausted wife stayed home with their five young children and homeschooled them all as well. When I told him that I work, he turned to my husband and said "I'm glad that I make enough money that my wife can stay home. I know that's truly inspired guidance from our leaders." This was insulting on multiple levels. What I wanted to say was "I know for a fact I make more money than you because your salary is public. And my husband makes more money than me. So, I'm not working for the reason you're insinuating." But to my regret, I didn't say anything—I just emphasized that my job is flexible and I'm actually home quite a bit. His wife piped up and said "That sounds like a really awesome arrangement. That's nice you can still work."
My dad also struggled to keep a job growing up and we were often in a precarious financial situation. My mom was a stay-at-home mom and was previously an excellent elementary teacher, but it was never even suggested that she should go back to doing that and my dad could watch us while he applied to jobs. Our family still tried to function in the same way—my dad would go to the computer and apply to jobs all day while my mom took care of everything else. And we weren't supposed to disturb him because otherwise we were jeopardizing the family's future. It was a miserable feeling to feel so controlled by my dad's inability to provide consistently for his family. I think that is a large reason why I hold on to my job so tightly now and am incredibly insistent that my husband does all the same domestic tasks that I do.
But then sometimes I wonder if I'm just needlessly subjecting myself to the capitalism machine—wouldn't I be happier and more fulfilled if I was just running through mountain meadows with my children and baking bread all day instead of arguing with startup bros about things I truly do not care about? When I say that to my husband, he says "That's a reality that doesn't exist." And it's true. But when it's a "reality" you've been spoon fed your entire life as the ideal for a woman in the Mormon church, it's hard for your mind to let go of it when you're feeling stressed about your circumstances. "If I just did things the way I was supposed to, then I wouldn't feel this way." The conditioning goes very deep. But I just have to remind myself that literally every situation in life comes with pros and cons. There is no golden ticket.
You said this : “And outsourcing more of the care of my children feels wrong, like I'm sacrificing their wellbeing for my personal aspirations. It is hard for me to untangle what is actually true from the societal conditioning I've experienced.”
And I’m just a 31 year old child free person in Texas but I don’t think that you’re sacrificing your children’s well being if you get more childcare!! From everything you wrote, it sounds like you value the financial stability of working and that matters!!
I find it so interesting how perspectives on childcare depends so much on the surrounding culture. In Belgium, childcare starts when babies are 3-6 months old, and my cousin was just like „of course, she needs to socialize and have other people in her life, I can’t give her everything she needs“. In Germany (and I guess in the States) it‘s more like that only the relationship with the mother counts. I grew up im Germany (and in a very conservative working to middle class village, where stay at home was also a status symbol),, and my mum was constantly criticized for working, and as a child I felt a certain pressure to fit in, not to give more grounds for critique. And at the same time, I loved to have several caregivers - I really enjoyed daycare, later I stayed after school with my „day mum“ (a common arrangement in Germany where a SAHM cares for an additional child/children) where I had three „sisters“ to play with, my day mum loved crafts plus we could watch tv shows. And at home I relished the undivided attention of my parents, when they were at home, they were really present. And then there were other arrangements, with my mum‘s best friend (who I still call a lot, and mostly I tell stuff my mum first, but sometimes it‘s her), aunts.. I don‘t feel like it diminished the time I spent with my parents, more I like it enriched it - I loved the chaos of the other family/day care… and loved coming home, snuggling on the couch with my parents, being at home home.
I am now pregnant. And even though I believe „children need a village, and that village can also constitute of paid caregivers“, I notice how I am already defensive about my decisions. In Berlin (especially the former Eastern Germany part) it‘s more common to start at one with day care. But we are thinking about starting earlier for a couple of hours a day for a number of reasons and - yeah. And my husband is now making the unpleasant discovery that everyone likes it when fathers stay home or reduce work - but only in theory
Long story short - it‘s a complex topic and I think often there is more than just one right way.
That is very true! It’s hard for me to also value that on the same level, even though it totally makes sense. My son in particular just seems to really benefit from quality time with his parents, so I worry about cutting it down.
My children are now adults, but I remember so clearly having the desire to both work and be a stay-at-home parent. This was coming from within, and not any cultural (religious) pressure. Even though my heart wanted to be 100% with my kids every day, I really needed the creative, intellectual and social stimulation of work to be the best version of myself. We handled it similarly to you with flexible work schedules and many exhausting days. And MANY variations of work and parenting schedules over the years. Our solutions changed regularly as our children got older and we adapted to the changing needs. Lots of pros and cons over the years, but no regrets.
I relate to this so much! Thank you for this. That is wonderful to hear that you don’t have any regrets. I worry that in 20 years I’ll wish I had been a stay-at-home mom since it’s such a short period in the scheme of things. I know I’ll look back on this special time with them and wish there was more of it. But I also know that I would suffer mentally if I gave up work completely, but maybe I’d get used to it? It’s always an internal struggle.
Being a stay-at-home mom is a mistake, for several reasons. The biggest are, you don't ever have adult time, and if/when you (have to) go back to work, there's a big gap in your employment history and you're not up to date on what's been happening. I was very, very lucky that I had part-time work available to me, 3 days a week, when my children were tiny-- it was perfect for everyone. Also, I am a terrible person for a toddler--I really do not care for small children. So I was glad to pay someone who LOOOOOOOVES babies to take care of mine for a few hours a week. My mother thinks I'm terrible for saying that, but my reply to her is: "I prefer teenagers. When everyone else is missing their babies and toddlers, their teenagers will be at my house, chillin'." It'll come back around; it's all karma.
I also see my sisters-in-law who stayed or are currently staying at home. They were both sad, sad, sad. My one sister in law BLOSSOMED when she went back to get her master's and went back to work, and now she's kicking ass in her union and is so, so much happier. My other sister-in-law has spiralled into anxiety and semi-hypochondria (to be fair, her family has health challenges that mine does not) and everything she posts online is negative, and she doesn't even realize it, and she's transmitting her anxiety to her kids.
And my aunts all told me--make sure you always have your own money. Every single one.
So if you can swing a little-of-this, a little-of-that while they're small, that's really the nicest.
As an ex-Mormon, divorced, bisexual, mother of 5, anti-capitalist, feminist (the list goes on), I have been unpacking SLMW for days now. Can’t wait to listen!
The way I relate to all of this but mother. 😅 Solidarity fist bump!
Hi, sorry for the very strange question if the answer is no or if we already established this and I somehow forgot, but are you a member of a book club started by your coworker Alex? I think we might have recently shared a Motel 6 room together lmao.
Haha yes! Hey Liz! Isn’t AHP the best?!
For anyone else reading- we held our book club meeting to discuss All Fours, in a Motel 6 room. IYKYK 😉
I want to give a shout out to ASK A DIVORCED PERSON from a few years back! It was so helpful! Especially the tag line "Leave before there is nothing left". The idea that I could leave a spouse "just" because we were both not thriving and I couldn't handle the burden of cohabitation and cleaning up after 3 other people. I left in December after announcing it in April, it was a long year but things are going smoothly. I've started living with housemates a little bit by accident in March and I love our situation. It's so much easier to share cohabitation on a more neutral basis? Also keeping house with another mom is just a dream. And having 4 kids in the house (2, mine, on a part time basis) lightens the parenting load since they are busy with each other and the parents can chat. And I even fell in love, way too quickly for my own comfort level as someone who was certain she'd not get back in a hetero relationship. It's so liberating to be in relationship with someone entirely by choice and not because I need them to achieve certain things - we're both broke and free in our own way. As someone who wanted to have children, this feels so different from dating in my late 20s. I would also say that the book DETRANSITION BABY has a few lines about divorced women that reframed it in a way that made me see the decision as one of courage and not failure.
Here is a quote from Torrey Peters
"Peters: I didn’t always have sympathy for cos women, but as I was writing this book, I was reading a lot of books by divorced cis women like Rachel Cusk, and I was really deep into Elena Ferrante. I saw a trajectory in divorce stories, where you have an idea about yourself and what your life is going to be like until a certain point. Then there’s a break from that, and you have to reinvent yourself. You have to move, make new friends, change your name. You have to not get bitter. You have to not get resentful. And you also can’t just reinvest in some of the same illusions that got you there. Otherwise, you’re going to have a second failure."
https://slate.com/culture/2021/01/torrey-peters-detransition-baby-interview.html
I loved Detransition Baby and never thought of it in this way. Fascinating!
YES! Ask a Divorced Person was an absolute smorgasbord of revelations for me, including the line about “leaving before there’s nothing left”!! Love this place. 😊
To "see the decision as one of courage and not failure" was so important for me and so hard to accomplish. You ARE brave. And it took me a while after leaving to realize that I am, too.
I'm interested in the intersection of this topic with the "men who don't like women" topic that you introduced. I didn't notice that my ex-husband didn't actually like women because he was so dedicated to the hero-provider role that I feel like the church and Disney movies said was what women needed. He was a pastor and a "good" husband because he thought I was beautiful and wanted to rescue or take care of me. Until he wasn't. He doesn't actually like women. He doesn't see the value of women besides as those who meet his sexual and psychological needs. When I couldn't do that to his liking (no matter how hard I tried in spite of a shifting landscape of expectations), then I wasn't a wife worth being faithful to. Thanks to a lot of excellent therapists (that made up for the really terrible marriage therapists) and the support of my parents I found a way out of that emotionally abusive and controlling marriage. I definitely make a third of what he provided (and the courts ALWAYS favor the men because of the belief and rumors that the courts favor the women). But I am making a way and providing a healthier environment for my kids, at least when they are with me. But I do want to figure out how to encourage my girls to look for a man who actually likes women instead of a hero/provider/prince, and (more difficult and maybe too late?) raise my son to be someone who actually likes women.