The back story on this is that a 16-year-old fundamentalist girl married an 18-year-old she barely knew and hadn't even been in the same room with alone before. Unsurprisingly, things turned bad very quickly.
As soon as 2 days after the wedding, Jon was a different person. He was
quiet, mopey, irritable. I was confused. Why would he be like this only 2 days
after our wedding? He was verbally abusive, putting down everything that I did.
Nothing I did pleased him. No matter how hard I tried, nothing was good enough.
Soon enough, the verbal abuse turned into physical abuse. I will spare you of
most of the details of that- he was pinning me to walls and floors, even going
so far as to head to the closet for a gun.
. . . .
I held it all inside. I told everyone that we were doing wonderfully. But
mom knew that something was wrong. She would ask if I was ok, and I would assure
her that everything was fine. I would always come up with one excuse or
another.
Eventually, I couldn't take it any more. I told mom. Everything. She
was very concerned and upset, and advised me to talk to the church elders so
that Jon could get help. A meeting was arranged.
This man is threatening his teenage wife with a gun so the answer is to meet with church officials? I can't tell you how much fundys piss me the fuck off sometimes. If you are being abused, you need to leave. If your loved one is being abused, you need to help them leave, as quickly as possible. A meeting with the church elders isn't going to fix anything, but the time spent waiting for the meeting could mean injury or death for the victim.
Some people told me that I wasn't even abused. That they treated
their own wives this way. The first year of marriage is hard for everyone- every
couple goes through this exact same thing. There are so many problems in the
world- did I really think I had something to complain about?
Be a good little fundy wife and submit, submit, submit until I stop hitting you. You know how I know Jesus isn't coming back? Because he hasn't come back yet to put a stop to the horrors carried out in his name. Also, somebody used the starving kids in Africa argument as a reason to suffer abuse? What is wrong with people?!
He has since admitted to the church session that he lied about his virginity.
Finding this out was just as hard as the abuse. To have trusted someone so
completely, and then to find that nothing about them was as you thought, is
heartbreaking.
Deuteronomy 22 states this as a reason for a biblical
divorce. Matthew 1:19 also states that Joseph was a just man and was going to
divorce Mary. Our church session agrees with this. The church has given me
grounds for a biblical divorce. Everything was finalized 2 weeks ago.
So, threatening your wife with a gun is not a reason for divorce, but lying about being a virgin is. Well, good to know what's important in life.
A few people have made the comment that I am now, "damaged goods." I do not feel
this way at all. I do not feel impure. I did nothing wrong. I was married- if,
down the road, I get married again, a good, godly man will see no wrong in what
I did.
Sweetie, there is no such thing as human damaged goods. You are not damaged goods. You are a human being as deserving of love and respect as any other human being. You married the wrong person (hardly surprising considering that you were 16 and hardly knew the man), you suffered horribly and now it is over. Experiences, good and bad, make us who we are, and that is never damaged goods. If you had prostituted yourself for drugs, you still wouldn't be any less worthy of love and respect.
Please, just give yourself a hug for me.
I hate religion for things like this. A girl- not a woman, a girl- suffered terrible abuse, abuse that was helped along and supported by religion, and now that she is out of that situation, she is made to feel bad for saving her own life. Because escaping abuse makes baby Jesus cry.
Ugh.
Oh, this makes me want to cry. I want to hug this poor girl. I really hope she will be OK.
ReplyDeleteI do, too. She is just a kid and this is going to affect her forever.
ReplyDeleteJust horrible! And the saddest thing of all is that she feels that she is damaged because of it.
ReplyDeleteThis is heartbreaking.
ReplyDelete"The first year of marriage is hard for everyone- every couple goes through this exact same thing."
Guh?
I'm very happy she got a divorce.
ReplyDeleteThe most disturbing thing for me was the mother. We'll hook you up with the elders? WTF? If my family ever found out that a man was hitting me, they would be there in a flash to remove me from the situation and he'd be lucky to make it out with his kneecaps intact.
(And I'm not exaggerating on the violence).
That mother should be ashamed of herself. She was willing to put her daughter's safety in danger in order to go with 'corrent protocol'.
it's not *just* christians who do this [obviously].
ReplyDeletehell, i've seen PAGANS use their religion to justify shit like this. [so, i mean, how bad is it when you *believe* that your abuser is AlSO your one and only soul-mate, from the beginning of time until the universe dies, life after life - and you might wonder, as a friend did, if the abuse NOW was because of some "sin" committed in a previous life, that you DESERVE to be punished for? i mean, for fuck's sake, it should be HARD to make wicca a reason for abuse :( :( :( ]
but not enough frowny face in the world.
patriarcy, how i hate thee. let me count the ways i would kill thee...
I suspect that the virginity issue is really just an excuse. That is, I suspect that at least some of the Church Elders understood that this need to stop, but needed a "Biblical" justification and used the obvious one.
ReplyDeleteStill stinks and is wretched, but I'd give them some tiny credit for at least doing what they can.
The fact that she now feels like "damaged goods" though is just disgusting. One sees this sort of attitude in a lot of different religions. Orthodox Jews have very similar problems although thankfully it is much easier in Judaism to get a divorce than it sounds like it is in whatever form of Christianity this person practiced. Afterwords, however, the stigma of being divorced is very severe.
Ugh. Thinking about this sort of thing just makes me very angry.
Joshua -
ReplyDeleteof *course* it's just an excuse. i have yet to meet a fundy who didn't say, on one hand, that "purity at marriage is wanted" without THEN saying "but boys will be boys! but they'll want to MARRY the girs who "stay pure" and that's all you silly girls need to know - stay pure, and soon your "perfect match ordained by God" will be done being a pre-married man, and ready to settle down and rule your life"..................
*gag*