Just posted the latest installment of Millipede’s story up on our new Patheos space at http://www.patheos.com/blogs/nolongerquivering/2012/05/millipede-part-3/

Our space at Patheos is a work in progress. As you can see there are no links to our suggested reading list, or our forums or pictures of Vyckie or anything remotely like what you see here.  It’s not because we’re doing away with those things, not at all, but because Vyckie and I are still in the process of editing the new space, trying to construct a more user-friendly version of NLQ. We really want NLQ to be an easy to navigate site chock full of information on leaving dangerous situations of spiritual abuse.

I don’t know if any of you have tried to grow grapes but if you don’t watch what you’re doing, both with grapevine horticulture and web design it’s easy for it to spiral into a large disorganized heap. Grapevines have to be carefully pruned and shaped all the time during the growing season or you end up with a big mess that hasn’t produced the amounts of fruit you could have had. It’s the same with websites, you have to keep things pruned, updated and moving forward or you end up with mess that is hard to find the information.

My passion and vision for the new version of NLQ is to help as many women coming out of harmful fundamentalism as possible.  Especially in these times when it seems like many different parts of society are attacking women in some form.  We seek to bring hope, healing, a sisterhood of support to those that will be finding our site in the coming months. Both Vyckie and I are committed to this goal.

What about the forum? I keep getting asked. There will be some changes going on in regards to the forum. We will no longer be posting threads in the “NLQ Blog Posts” section. Patheos encourages it’s members to keep discussion of content on the actual posts in the comments section. This is particularly important with engaging new readers, particularly quiverfull-minded people.  The best way to keep an actual give and take conversational exchange is on the blog.

The “Hot Topics” and “General Chat” sections will make up the majority of the forum for now. Those will be linked to as we keep making changes to our new site. We will be closing the “QF Survivors Corner” for now. The reason behind that is that we have had a mole in that section for some time that has shared some of the personal information members have posted in that section. It’s not safe to continue posting in that section and we really want all of NLQ to be a safe and supportive environment for our readers.

Thanks for making this one of the most supportive and encouraging sites for hurting people! You all rock!

Peace and love,

Calulu

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Comments open below

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Please update your bookmarks

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Be sure to correct your bookmarks for NLQ to our new address at Patheos – http://www.patheos.com/blogs/nolongerquivering/

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by Calulu

We’ve moved! No Longer Quivering has moved over to Patheos starting today. The old site will still be accessible for the remainder of the week but be sure to change your bookmarks to our new address – No Longer Quivering

As time has passed at NLQ keeping the site uploaded with fresh content has become about as easy as racing a rusted out old Pinto with flat tires in the Grand Prix. Lots of crashing. Lots of burning. Hours of wasted time. Add in the hacking every time we discussed the Duggars and you can see we needed to move. Patheos has a dedicated staff that will make sure that NLQ runs smoothly.

We’re working to make sure that NLQ is an easy to use resource for those seeking information about the dangers of Patriarchal Fundamentalism and other repressive spiritual abuse.

Remember always, Jello should quiver, jelly should quiver, weak knees quiver but you don’t have to.

As always, comments open below.

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by Millipede

Eventually, the church building materialized. At first, we had a larger group. Soon however, there was a falling out with a group which had comprised most of those from the Patriot group. Part of it was personality and some of it was viewpoint. Some wanted to the place to be a patriot type meeting house while some wanted it to be a church. This belied a rift that plays itself over again and again in this end of the spectrum.

On one hand there are what I would call the “political types”. This is simply for lack of a better term and is not indicative of a lack of Faith. People within this group were most often led into church via ideological means. Their religious views are part of a larger concert of views. I heard a pastor bemoan such people, saying that they simply added Christ onto a long chain of train cars of belief. One car might be their position on gun control, another states’ rights and so on. With the “religious question” answered they move on to continue to build the train. He stated that they needed to make Christ the locomotive, not merely regulate Him along a set of beliefs.

On the other hand you have those for whom Faith is the primary motivation. They often come from a strong Fundamentalist background. Not from in a distant childhood past either, but often having recently come from various conservative churches. for these folks, ideological issues are important, but they are subordinate to questions of faith.

At first both groups over lap in various organizations, but over time, they unwind. As one pastor said, there were the “beans and bullets” types and the “folks who wanted to have church”. Those outside the political spectrum might not notice. At face value, these two groups look identical. In fact they often proclaim identical or closely related viewpoints.

NOTE. This is a socio-cultural observation only, not a measure of sincerity or depth of belief. Both groups view themselves as being both committed Christians and as being sincerely dedicated to various ideological causes.
My husband and I along with our new circle of friends belonged to the “church goers”. In our view, a lot of patriot types liked the high ground that being a Christian presented, but were not really committed to the Faith. for a lot of them having church was really having a group of people sitting around discussing political issues. They had a “to each his own” when it came to theological views. We, on the other hand, were committed to pleasing God, in spirit and deed. If the Bible forbid something, we would abstain from it and would not hesitate to proclaim that truth even if it offended would be allies.

Soon, the church had a split with the more “political” group going off on its own to hold its own version of church. I saw people I considered my friends leave with that group. Even after the split, we remained on friendly terms, but we were not close. Our new circle, however was tight, both a result of personality and of viewpoint.
We enjoyed fellowship not only in church, but as friends. In the first couple of years, I enjoyed our time together. They were friendly people and we spent a lot of time together.

Our faith was a growing thing and with each new turn, we molded our lives around each new truth. My life had changed quite a bit. we went to church regularly and attended various conferences, often traveling hundreds of miles.
I made a great deal of personal changes. I had been dissatisfied with my job in the past and things came to a head when when we were getting heavily involved in our faith. when I told my husband that I was going to look for another job, he suggested that I stay home and we could start a family. When I replied that I was worried about our financial stability, he said that we should step out in faith. So instead of changing jobs, I simply put my two weeks notice in with plans to stay home. Not long after that a fortuitous event occurred that met our financial concerns, a sure sign of a blessing.

So I stayed at home and we tried, without success, to have children. This didn’t concern us. although we didn’t believe in birth control and were for having large and often home schooled families, no one was legalistic about it. It was between a husband and his wife about the number of children they should have. Also, if a woman abstained from having more children due to health concerns, no one looked down upon her. In this respect, I feel that our group was very balanced, there was no pressure or condemnation concerning the bearing of children. Even though I now take issue with other stances, I feel that we as a group had a healthy take on the issue. There was none of this “having children at any cost” or “maternal martyr” mindset. Indeed it was not beyond the pale, if the medical issue was grave enough, for a woman to have her tubes tied.

On the other hand, there were views that we adapted which proved harmful in the long run. They started with little baby steps at first which made it easier to swallow. Little things…

To be continued…

Discuss this post on the NLQ forum. Comments are also open below.

Part 1

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This is a new series that I’m starting. I actually started writing about my history with the one person that impacted me the most during my days at the old church. I’m flip, I’m sarcastic in this series but mostly I am processing what happened to me because it seems like a plot straight out of the recently cancelled series GCB (Good Christian Bitches). After telling my therapist years ago about this man I was encouraged to write it all down. I did and if I didn’t laugh and poke fun I’d be crying right now. It was the most corrosive relationship I’ve ever been in and I didn’t even have the common sense to run from it. I’ve changed names and some small details because until recently this person still stalked me in an effort to make me return to my old beliefs. I have to believe his extreme inner hurt drove his behavior.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

If there was one person that affected my journey both into and out of a Patriarchal Fundigelical church that man would be Tom Smith. He was there at the start and he still haunts me like a cackling insano Captain Ahab chasing Moby Dick around an endless ecclesiastical sea. He has a monomaniacal desire to either force me back into our old borderline fundamentalist way of life replete with a submissive attitude or to hound me about going to hell. Sometimes he seems to spit at me “ … to the last I grapple with thee; from hell’s heart I stab at thee; for hate’s sake I spit my last breath at thee. “ but it sounds more like, “You are going to HELL for going to THAT church with homosexual abortionists and unGodly UNSAVED!!!!” Eleventy1111111!!!!

Back when the husband and I were new believers we ended up going to the same church as he back in 1995, PCC. He and his wife pounced upon us at once, inviting us over to watch movies, play cards, or share a meal. We didn’t know anyone else in the church at that time and they, Tom and Tina, had four boys ranging from just older than our son to the same age as our daughter. The kids loved to get together.

From the first I was put off by Tom’s fake-seeming Jesus Freak persona. He would do things like stop in the middle of a movie or game to lecture about Jesus. He prayed very publicly in almost a showy fashion at the drop of a hat and constantly had Christian rock and roll playing at full blast. These things set off my internal bullshit detector but since we were newly minted kool aid drinkers I thought I was the wacky one.

But it always gave me pause. It was like the minute anyone was around Tom put on this Ned Flanders false self. But I swallowed hard and thought well, I’m the baby Christian, he’s been a Christian for more than twenty years, what do I know.

Around the same time our pastor at our new church pulled me aside and told me not to be so friendly with the Smiths because they ‘had issues’. Pastor didn’t tell me what those ‘issues’ were and I could not see anything besides Tom’s Olympian attempts to be “Super Christian – Savior of the Unwashed Masses of Sinners.” I wondered about that but I didn’t do anything. Even as my internal Lost in Space Robot was shouting ‘Warning Will Robinson!” every time we socialized with the family. But… I checked my common sense at the door because the kids loved hanging out with their boys and Hubby really liked Tom and Tina.

After awhile I noticed that Tom would do and say things to his wife Tina that just rubbed me the wrong way. Tina had progressive serious muscular skeletal disease very badly, had trouble walking and sometimes functioning in simple things. She also seemed to be one of the meekest, kindest ladies I’d ever met. Tina acted always like Tom was her knight in shining armor that could do not wrong.

Did Tom treat her well? No. He sometimes would ride her like a mule, ordering, whining, nagging her over some small things. I clearly remember one night when she was having a lot of trouble walking he ordered her to make a banana split for him. He didn’t offer to help, he just keep sitting there like king turd on a mountain of crap waiting to be worshiped. I thought this was pretty harsh behavior but it was nothing compared to what he did next. Tina brought him his ice cream, acting very servile, like a whipped dog sidling up to it’s master wanting mercy but expecting to be beaten. Tom started to berate her for forgetting to put wet nuts and cherries on his ice cream. She told him that they were out. His response was to order her out of the door in the freezing sleet that was coming down, drive to Wal Mart right then (around midnight) and get his cherries and a jar of wet walnuts in syrup.

Woman!!! Get me my wet nuts and cherries right now!

She did it. I so wanted to visit violence on him that night, give him real wet nuts, but again, what did I know? Tom was a MUCH more mature Christian than I.

Tom spent the rest of the night either telling Tina what a failure as a wife she was between telling Hubby that I needed to learn to be subservient like that. It’s Biblical, don’t ya know.

On the ride home that night I told Hubby exactly what I’d been itching to say all night, that it wasn’t Biblical submissiveness we were witnessing, it was a power tripping assclown verbally abusing his disabled wife. Hubby, bless his soul he always tries to see the best in folks, said that just because their marriage and way of dealing with each other was different than ours it was just their way. Sure, he said, if Tina was being abused she’d leave.

So time marches on, I grow enough in my religious faith that I become more and more uncomfortable with the treatment of Tom towards Tina. I befriend her and discover that she’s about an intellectual as a kumquat or a lump of coal for all her niceness and sincerity. I also discover that she really believes that she should be submissive to Tom in all things and all ways. She says if she were a better person or a better Christian that Tom would love her better, be happier and not have to correct her all of the time.

We still got together with the Smiths but I became even more disgusted with Tom’s high handed behavior and his superior judgmental attitudes. I only tolerated him because I worried for Tina and we were friends now. I tried and talk to her about the way he treats her but it’s like talking to a someone that’s been brainwashed by a cult. Hubby and I make other friends at church and start to withdraw from the Smiths quite a bit.

.During all of this time Tom wastes no time or tact telling me when he thinks I’ve screwed up, have a wrong attitude or don’t treat Hubby with proper Christian womanly deference. I grit my teeth and for the sake of both Hubby and Tina I don’t knock Tom’s block off or curse him out like I secretly itch to do. Maybe I’m the wicked one that needs Christ and Christian love I’m not feeling, I think.

Also two other couples came into our circle of friends. Mike and Cathy, from Vermont. Mike works at in federal office in our town and Cathy, like Tina and most of the women at the church doesn’t work. Mike and Cathy squabble a lot over dumb things but Cathy is feisty and smart, plus we both love antiquing and interior design. The other couple, Sam and Alice, are brand new at church and also have kids in the same age brackets as ours and the Smiths. Sam is a insurance agent and Alice is studying for her masters in arts. I tried to be friends with Alice but I kept hearing warning bells in the back of my mind about her for no reason I can see. I remember one get together when Alice, Cathy and I were dancing, taking turns swing dancing with Sam and Tom got very angry before declaring dancing a sinful tool of the devil. Yep, he was being a tool once again.

About three years after we start going to church my father has a stroke and I have to leave town with my Hubby for our far-away hometown. Because I trust Tina and know she’s a great mother regardless of Tom and I knew that my father’s death would create massive family drama I leave my two kids with Tom and Tina Smith.

When we come back ten days later something has happened, something no one will tell us about. Alice and Cathy were always in a huddle whispering, cutting me out of the conversation. Tina was clueless as ever along with Sam and Mike. Tom, oh Tom, kept acting like an egg-sucking dog looking for another hen house. It was just a very weird time, strange vibrations. It was a very strange time, I felt uneasy, that robot shouting “Danger Danger!!!” again my mind but I kept mentally berating myself for having a suspicious mind.

A couple of weeks later I run into Sam in town and he asks me how I enjoyed the Vermeer exhibit in a nearby big city. I tell him I don’t know what he’s talking about. He tells me that sure I must know because Alice and I spent last weekend in Big City before going to the exhibit. Sam tells me how night it was for me to treat Alice out to a hotel room at the Four Seasons and exhibit tickets. Unfortunately I have to tell him that Alice was not with me, I didn’t spend the night in the city and I’d seen the exhibit last month before my father passed.

Tina calls me and references the same thing except she tells me how nice it was that I met Tom in Big City for the exhibit and that I didn’t have to give him the hotel stay for the night. One of the hotels near the museum was giving out those hard to get exhibit tickets for the Vermeer show. I make vague noises and get off the phone without telling her I was no where near the exhibit last last weekend.

So I call up Tom and Alice separately, confronting them about why each of them used me as an alibi. Alice bursts out crying and tells me it’s nothing, just a platonic friendship. When I reach Tom he tells me to my horror that he’s deeply in love with Alice, they are going to both leave their spouses and be together living the hipster outre life of artists.

Now this is a guy I’ve known for 3 or 4 years and never once heard one word of interest in art before. He starts babbling out that Tina has the mind and intellect of a 12 year old, that he doesn’t love her and never did. His life is crushing him, blah blah blah… and it gets worst.. to be continued.

Discuss this post on the NLQ forum. Comments are also open below.

Calulu lives near Washington DC , was raised Catholic in South Louisiana before falling in with a bunch of fallen Catholics whom had formed their own part Fundamentalist, part Evangelical church. After fifteen uncomfortable years drinking that Koolaid she left nearly 6 years ago. Her blog is Calulu – Roadkill on the Internet Superhighway

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by Permission to Live

This post is part of a series of nine posts. Please click here to start with the series Introduction.

It had been a year since my spouse had come out to me. It felt like it had been much longer. So much had changed and yet nothing had changed. We still hadn’t decided how Christianity tied in with our changing reality: I was leaning further and further away from the idea of God but my spouse still believed. We felt like there were no real answers anymore. Life was not as black and white as people wanted it to be. My spouse was talking more and more about transitioning and I felt like there was no one-size-fits-all in gender identity. Maybe my spouse would become comfortable living as a man and wouldn’t need to transition, but maybe he wouldn’t. Maybe he would transition to living as a female someday, but again, maybe he wouldn’t. The idea just wasn’t that scary to me anymore. My spouse was already living as such a feminine person as he had grown more comfortable with who he was, transition would just be a natural next step if it happened.

In fact the only fear that still clung to me was how this would affect our children, and that made me wonder if my spouse should try to put off transition until the kids were grown up. The faith and culture that I had been brought up in told me that children had to have parents of both genders to be happy, healthy, and well-adjusted. Wouldn’t our children resent us for having grown up with two female parents? How would society treat them? Would they always be the kids with the weird dad? Was it even possible to raise kids without a “manly influence?”

Despite my fears and doubts, I couldn’t deny that my spouse was happier than I had ever seen him. He was relaxed and involved. He was dressing more and more femininely at home, and the kids didn’t mind at all. They were starting to figure out that their daddy was a bit different than other daddies, but they were happy to have a peaceful parent who loved them and cared for them, talked with them and snuggled them and listened to them. It was as if a huge burden had been lifted off his shoulders, like he no longer had to spend the majority of his time struggling to constantly tread water and keep his head above the surface and stay alive. Instead, all of the energy that had been consumed in that struggle could be spent on parenting and living. The conversation about transition “someday” started to change into transition being a real option in the near future, and I couldn’t come up with a reason our kids should have to go back to having a depressed repressed parent who lived as a male and struggled to survive with the help of anti-depressants instead of a happy relaxed involved parent who lived as female. A guy as feminine as he was turning out to be was going to out of the ordinary anyway. Why was I questioning this at all? To please a god? Who had played this gender joke on us in the first place? A god I wasn’t even sure existed?

So, to combat my fear of my children growing up with gay parents, I once again turned to education. I started reading about non-traditional families and one of the stats that startled me was that over 50% of families today did not fit the traditional standard that I had been led to believe was the only healthy family. There were many children being raised by single moms or single dads. Often parents divorced and children spent time living with either parent at different times. Children today are being raised by grandparents, foster parents, and widowed parents. My kids certainly wouldn’t be the only ones with a “different” family. Studies showed that the child’s emotional well-being and healthiness had more to do with how they were respected and loved and cared for as individuals than the exact set-up of their families.

I began reading more and more about LGBTQ parents. I read the stats on how their kids did in school, and how they matured emotionally. I read books written by people who had grown up with gay or lesbian or transgendered parents, and listened to their perspectives. The stats were encouraging, and most of the hardships involved with growing up with LGBTQ parents seemed to come from the pressure from society to conform and the prejudice that created, not the parents themselves. In fact, the divorce that commonly took place after the revelation of sexuality or gender identity questions seemed to have more impact on the children than the sexuality or gender identity questions themselves. The parents and the kids seemed to have the normal range of personality traits and issues that any family would have. Why would our kids be any different? We didn’t hit them, we would accept them and love them whoever they were or whatever they wanted to be. Their emotional health and well being was a top priority for us, and would continue to be so. Did it really matter that their dad would have a unique story? Normally, if a parent had a medical condition that hampered their ability to be happy and productive, society would bless and encourage their seeking treatment. Why should my spouse’s condition be any different?

One of the things I had to consider was that if my spouse did end up completely transitioning to living as female, the medical treatments for gender dysphoria would mean an end to fertility and further genetic children. I had already come to the conclusion that I did not want as large a family as I had grown up in, but the idea of limiting children or being done was still relatively new to me. We now had four beautiful children, whom I loved dearly and who had kept me from getting a full night’s sleep for five years straight. I knew I needed a break and I did not want to become pregnant again in the near future. I also knew I wanted to have the time and energy to be there for each one of my children. But because I had spent most of my life believing that my main purpose in life was to produce children it was hard for me to imagine any other reality.

I kept thinking about it, determined to get to the bottom of my feelings and make sure that I really was OK with a future with fertility limitations. Slowly I started to see that I had value outside of my fertility. I asked myself if my spouse had any other medical condition, would I demand that he refuse treatment because it could affect his fertility? I also learned more about the range of options available for people who are undergoing treatment that may compromise fertility, including sperm banking. And I wondered if perhaps there could be a space in our family for adoption or fostering children someday, a dream which seemed so impossible back in our Quiverfull days of having a baby every 18 months.

As the idea of transition in the near future became more real, we talked at length about our children and our marriage. We asked ourselves if was divorce something that needed to happen? My spouse wanted to make sure I was really OK with him going ahead with gender transition. He insisted that he would understand completely even if we needed to part ways, and that he would continue to provide us financial support regardless. We talked about our children, and asked ourselves if they would they be better off if we separated? But divorce still didn’t make sense to me. I was happy with our relationship and thrilled with my spouse’s new involvement in our children’s lives. Even if for some reason we decided that our relationship wasn’t going to work out, I knew I would still want him involved with parenting our children. I was attracted to him now, and I couldn’t see that changing. He had been the first person to love me unconditionally, and had been there for me all along my journey of questioning and healing from my past. He was a caring, empathic, patient and passionate person, and I wanted to continue my life-story with him. And as I’d begun to unwrap my own sexuality for the first time, I was starting to feel that if we were to separate for some reason, or if my spouse were to die, I would be romantically interested in women anyway, so I had nothing to lose by staying together.

It was better for our kids for our family to stay intact,
and it was better for us,
even if that meant going through transition together.

Discuss this post on the NLQ forum. Comments are also open below.

You can read more about Permission To Live at her blog – Musings of a young mom.

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(Or not, there is something to be said for sneaking away to be childless for the day and get a pedicure or go fishing..)

Please share your greatest mothering triumphs, times when things went a little screwy or just whatever you’d like to share in our comments below. We’ll resume regular posting tomorrow.

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This post is part of a series of nine posts. Please click here to start with the series Introduction.

Even though we had hoped that it would be enough for my spouse to simply be more authentic to his feminine self, it seemed that the idea of transition was coming up more and more. My spouse talked about how frustrating it was to have this battle raging in his head every single day, his brain telling him again and again that he was really a woman. He told me how the idea of becoming an old man terrified him. It was bad enough being trapped in the body of a young man, but to be old and helpless and cared for by people who would treat him as a guy was dreadful to him. Sometimes he cried, all of the bottled up fear from the years gone by pouring out along with fears of the future and living life day after day fighting this never ending battle.

When the talk of transition initially came up, my heart sank. Were we losing the battle? Was I wrong to have let the conversation continue this long? Should I have told him to be quiet and put his head down and fight it alone? I told my spouse again and again that he didn’t need to change anything, that he had me in his life, and I loved him exactly the way he was. Except that as time went on I realized that I was contradicting myself in that very statement. Transgender WAS exactly the way he was, and if I really loved him regardless, transition wasn’t going to change that.

Talk of transition was a natural progression of the ongoing discussion we’d been having. Right alongside the growing contentment and happiness, my spouse would have periods of days or weeks where he slipped back into despair. It was usually triggered by some conversation where we discussed the future and how we were going to continue to handle this question of gender.

The societal pressure was so intense, usually he would talk about what a horrible person he was to be “putting us through all this” and that surely he could figure out some way to make it through life as a man. And then he would get quiet and moody again, and go back to wearing the old polo shirts I now knew he hated. It scared me seeing him like that, I knew he was trying to spare us from the prospect of gender transition, but also I knew how happy and carefree he could be, and it was hard to see him so miserable. We seemed to be going in a slowly recurring cycle. He would push himself to be more “manly” and get more and more depressed to the point of saying that “would all be better off without him”, and then I would tell him that he needed to get help, and he would start talking about getting on an anti-depressant to help him cope. And then we would talk again about self-respect and self-acceptance, and just letting go and being ourselves and seeing where life took us. And things would get better again. It was almost magical, how putting aside the guilt and shame would free him up, suddenly becoming the open, peaceful, lighthearted person I knew he was. The more we relaxed and stopped stressing about who we were “supposed” to be, the less frequent the down times were. Slowly, the conversation started to change.

Maybe he should get involved with a support group, with other people like him. Maybe we could go out shopping sometime with him dressed as a woman, just us together as a treat. Maybe someday when the kids were grown up, we could go on vacation together as two women in a place where no one who knew us would see us. Maybe after the kids were grown up and living their own lives he could transition to living as a woman full-time. Maybe someday he wouldn’t have to fight this battle every day.

Maybe, someday, he could just live.

One interesting development was realizing that the actual thought of him becoming a woman someday did not scare me. I had always known I was sexually attracted to women, but I kept asking myself “shouldn’t I be a little more freaked out about the idea of my spouse changing sexes?” The fact is, I wasn’t. The theoretical transition was still years away in my mind and my spouse was still my spouse. Throughout this whole process he had only gotten healthier and happier overall. We loved each other and we were a good team.

I started to talk about my own journey a bit, talking for the first time about the girl I had had a crush on in my early teens, saving a sticker she had given me in my jewelry box after she moved away. The times I had fought the sudden urge to kiss several different girls I knew, totally confused as to where the strong feelings had come from. How I had watched as friends talked about this or that cute actor and felt that they all looked alike to me, so I picked the hairiest and “manliest” actors I could to hide the real truth. How I had asked my mom what she had found attractive about dad, and when she said it was his broad shoulders, that became what I told people when they asked what “my type” was. How I had asked my parents about same-sex attraction and received answers that made me feel even more alone. How I had patted myself on the back with purity culture pride for being so completely in control of my interactions with and feelings for men. I knew that the only path that was acceptable was to get married to a conservative homeschooling Christian man and have his children, and I had felt so despairing of all the young men I met, none of them seemed right for me. But somehow my spouse and I had forged a relationship despite it all.

The more we talked, the more we realized how our secrets had affected our marriage as well. The evangelical marriage books I had read about how to serve my husband best and discover “what he truly wanted” had completely backfired since he was nothing like these books insisted men were. All of the behaviors and mannerisms he had tried to keep up because he had been told they were manly were now gratefully dropped. We started communicating about what we liked and who we were and longtime sexual hang-ups in the bedroom began to collapse. We laughed about the times I had pointed out an attractive girl to my spouse in the past, and times I thought he had been being silly when he put on an article of my clothing and asked how he looked. How had we not realized these things about each other sooner?

Despite all the new questions
our relationship was closer than ever.

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You can read more about Permission To Live at her blog – Musings of a young mom.

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