Author: HA Editorial Team

Our Courtship, Part Six: Courtship by Committee

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HA note: The following is reprinted with permission from Lana Hobbs’ blog Lana Hobbs the Brave. It was originally published on January 28, 2015.

< Part Five

Part Six: Courtship by Committee

The first hints of courtship drama started when Luke wrote a post that began ‘Word is getting around the church that Lana and I are engaged.’ For one, this was his way of leading into an explanation that we were courting, not technically engaged. For another, in our minds, we were practically engaged. Well in his parents’ minds, we were not. His dad called him on the phone, about as mad as Luke had ever heard him, saying he didn’t know we had gotten engaged.

Each parent had specific expectations for our courtship, and they were not clearly communicated to us or to each other, and often the expectations conflicted. It was stressful for me to be in the middle of all these expectations, one of the two people actually in the relationship and the person with zero agency in the relationship.

About a week into our courtship, there was another meeting. I was actually invited to this one, which was also attended by Luke and all four parents. This was the meeting when we were going to decide what our courtship would be like, and part of that was whether or not we’d hold hands. Yes, that was decided in committee. My parents said we shouldn’t hold hands because we would either ruin our natural sex drives by not having sex after holding hands, OR we might have sex before marriage and ruin our marriage (whereas if we waited, God would bless our marriage and we would avoid many common marital problems). Further, if we did hold hands, they probably couldn’t trust us to ever be alone together, because who knows what else we might do physically. But it was our choice. Riiiiight. Of course we decided not to hold hands. I was so disappointed — I thought that now that we were a couple, Luke could comfort me when I cried, but he still couldn’t do that, not by touching me anyways. I cried right then, feeling utterly alone. My parents were upset at me for crying.

Throughout the courtship I was still expected to email through my mom’s email account. One day, I was searching for something I had written but not sent to Luke, and accidentally found a letter she had written to Luke giving him permission to email me privately, but it was never sent. I always wondered if it was because she was disappointed with the way courtship was going.

According to my parents, Luke didn’t spend enough time with my family, and I spent too much time with his family. This is a feud that continued well into our marriage.  (At the time, Luke was coming over at least every Tuesday, or some day of the week. I was going over there to film the movie or work on the magazine, and occasionally for dinner).

I really, in my parents’ opinion, shouldn’t have been going to Luke’s house at all, because I wasn’t courting him, he was courting me.

Luke and I were deeply in love, and couldn’t express it any way but through words and gazing into each other’s eyes. It kind of upset people. Luke once said in an email that no one had ever been as much in love, and the shit hit the fan. Mom, who was still reading every email, felt personally attacked by this declaration, and I was the one that got yelled at for it.

My parents also thought that maybe we were too emotionally attached, since we didn’t even have a wedding scheduled. There was talk of transferring me to a different university.

Our families began to not get along so well. My parents were pushing for a marriage very soon, while his parents thought things were moving a too fast. My mother-in-law has said many times since that she didn’t think we should have married so young or so soon.

There was a little confusion, too, about who had authority over who, now that Luke and I were basically betrothed.

So there was another meeting. Dad likes meetings.

At this meeting, Luke and his dad showed up to listen to my dad talk. Dad had been given a revelation from the Lord. Dad told them that they were like chiefs of their little Indian tribes (yes, this is a bit racist), and that Luke was becoming a chief but he didn’t have a squaw (I’m the squaw). There was a diagram to go with this analogy. It showed Luke coming out of his dad’s ‘chiefdom’, but I was still under Dad’s chiefdom, with something like a dotted line between me and Luke. So basically, Luke’s dad had no power over the relationship, Luke had very little power, and I had none. Dad, who didn’t especially want the authority, he said, had all the power. Dad was very excited to share this message from God, to help solve all our courtship problems.

Furthermore, this dotted line connected Dad to Luke through me, so Dad had authority over Luke through me, for the time being. Dad also used this diagram to excuse him talking to me about things he really needed to address to Luke (like when Luke needed a job, and Dad asked me daily what Luke was doing to find one). Triangulation anyone?

I wasn’t at the meeting but Luke filled me in, and Dad shared the diagram and analogy with mom and me also.

The Hobbs came over Christmas evening 2007, so Luke could give me his present. We were in the dining room with our mothers, while everyone else was gathered around the computer watching a video. Luke gave me a CD he had made of songs that reminded him of us. I was a little disappointed, as my little brother had told me that he told Luke I wanted a ring, but I read the list of songs anyways. While I was distracted, Luke got down on one knee reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a jewelry box. He asked me to marry him and I was like ‘duh.’ (but I think I said it more graciously than that.)

I put the ring on my own finger; not exactly like how I had pictured it when I was a little girl.

My parents later complained that Luke hadn’t asked their permission to get engaged, or told them when so they could prepare something special (Luke tells me they knew he was buying/had bought a ring, so I’m not sure what the problem was). But of course, they didn’t complain to Luke about that, only to me.

So we were engaged. It was a little anticlimactic. The only real difference, at that point, was I had a flashy new ring, and we could refer to each other as ‘my fiance’. A week later, we set a wedding date for after the spring semester ended in May.

Part Seven >

Don’t Touch Me — A Reflection on Courtship and Purity: Merab’s Story, Part One

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HA note: The author’s name has been changed to ensure anonymity. “Merab” is a pseudonym.

Part One

We were alone on the couch at his apartment, and his hand moved down my neck, tracing it slowly. It was my fault, utterly my fault. I was the temptress, Leda lying before the swan.

I had made the choice.

I read I Kissed Dating Goodbye when I was 17, not because my parents made me read it, but because I chose to read it. My parents, although conservative in political beliefs, were not legalistic, and actually openly debated legalism and fundamentalism in our household. My mother especially did not like the book, saying it was unrealistic. My mother and father had homeschooled my two sisters and I since I was in the third grade, mostly to give us a better educational opportunity than our rural Colorado mountain school provided. We moved to the city when I was 14, and everything changed—we joined the NCFCA (the homeschool speech and debate league) after meeting some members at a Civil War Ball.

Many of my NCFCA homeschool friends had read the book, and most of the boys (including Stephen, the one I had a crush on) didn’t believe in dating. “I can’t support a wife, so what’s the point of dating anyone?” Stephen told me when we were 17. Because he felt that way, I checked the book out from my church’s library and a few days later had mentally made the commitment to save myself for marriage, never being alone with a man to avoid temptation.

In my mind, I would never kiss a man until we met at the altar on our wedding day. My future husband would ask my father’s permission to court me, and we would date in large groups. As per I Kissed Dating Goodbye, I didn’t want to give myself to a man I didn’t want to marry, and this seemed logical to me. I didn’t want men to view me as a used rag if I had kissed someone before, or worse.

After graduating, I chose to attend a local college. I soon found out that no boys held to the same beliefs I did. No guy wanted to call my father and ask to court me (weird, right?). I finally met a Christian guy who had been public-schooled, and we were able to spend time together in groups at a campus Bible study. After I informed him that I would not officially “get to know him” unless he spoke with my father, he called my dad and arranged a lunch meeting. My father, afterwards, asked me why I thought this was necessary (he thought the whole meeting was humorous). I had no ready answer. In my mind, I had linked being “pure” and “correct” in a relationship with patriarchal consent. Soon after the meeting, the guy and I started dating.

However, I soon found out an unforgivable secret: he had kissed someone before.

I could not reconcile that in my mind. If you kissed someone, you were forever giving a part of yourself, a core piece of your identity and purity, to that person. You could never get it back. He had given a part of himself away, a part I could never have. That always hung over our relationship. A respectful fellow, he agreed to not kiss me.

I also began to adopt his “public-school dating habits.” We hung out alone. We watched movies on his couch until one in the morning. Finally, during one of these movies, I found myself in his arms. He traced my face with his finger, down my neck, my shoulders, my arms. While he did it, I felt like a prostitute. I was giving something to him. What I was giving, I couldn’t say—but I was giving it. I made that choice to be there. However, I also held this against him. If he really respected me, he wouldn’t have taken that from me. It was my fault and his fault at the same time.

This drove a rift in our relationship. We held hands for the first time after dating for four months. I broke up with him soon after, not being able to handle my feelings of guilt towards myself and resentment towards him. During a discussion after the break-up (we still went to the same Bible study), he tried to touch my shoulder. I screamed, “Don’t touch me! I never wanted you to touch me! It’s all your fault.”

I ran out of the building, half-confused, half-feeling like I was finally championing my values. MY values.

Now, I reflect—were they my values, or the values I adopted to be accepted into the only community I knew? A community that gave me a scripted role to play, the role of “pure woman,” a role I internalized to the extent that I still performed it towards a different, unsympathetic audience?

Even though my parents questioned the validity of I Kissed Dating Goodbye, the culture of my local homeschooling community was so strong that I accepted what my friends thought as truth. When I went on Facebook, I saw some of my old NCFCA friends, courting each other, getting engaged, being thrown into some lake at Patrick Henry College. It was perfect for them; I should have done the same thing.

I resolved to reframe my mindset around purity, and everything would fall into place.

I never deconstructed how this mindset created a harmful image of my identity—I was only as valuable as my state of purity, and it was natural to feel a deep sense of guilt and shame for not protecting that state.

Part Two >

Thoughts on Our Second Year Anniversary

HA Editorial Team9 Comments

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By R.L. Stollar, HA Community Coordinator

On March 2013, 2 years ago to this month, Nicholas Ducote and I launched Homeschoolers Anonymous. With nothing but hopes and dreams and a handful of stories from homeschool alumni, we began a project that has — 2 years later — exceeded our most fantastical expectations. Our press release, amateurish at best, declared that we were “joining together to bring awareness to, and healing from, different forms of abuse in extreme homeschooling subcultures.” Little did we know just how significant of an undertaking it would become.

We started that day with about 20 stories in our queue — stories from close friends that we’ve known since our days competing and coaching in NCFCA, the homeschool speech and debate league. Our site now features over 1,000 stories, covering topics as diverse as purity culture, child sexual abuse, corporal punishment, courtship and betrothal, Ken Ham and young earth creationism, Oak Brook School of Law and Patrick Henry College, and so much more. We’ve broken news stories about the fall of Doug Phillips, the resignation of Bill Gothard, how HSLDA enabled and funded child abuse in the German Twelve Tribes, the cover-up of child abuse among the Old Schoolhouse Magazine and the Great Homeschool Conventions, and the resignation of Patrick Henry College president’s Graham Walker. These stories and others have been featured in mainstream media ranging from the Guardian to the Daily Beast to WORLD Magazine to Christianity Today to the Christian Science Monitor.

Our official non-profit organization Homeschool Alumni Reaching Out recently conducted a large-scale, national survey of homeschool alumni, which has been cited in various media. We created a free child abuse awareness curriculum for homeschooling communities (and have several more curriculums on other topics in development). And we will soon be announcing the recipient of our first-ever scholarship for female homeschool alumni studying in STEM fields.

Despite the naysayers, who 2 years ago said we would run out of “horror stories” to share, we are continuing to run strong. We have a slew of stories we still need to publish (in fact, we are so overwhelmed with stories that we are months behind) and we don’t see us running dry of stories anytime soon. Haters have hated from the beginning, but we — and the amazing community we have found through this project — continually prove them wrong, day after day. We are honored and humbled to have so many loving, caring people supporting our work and bravely contributing their own voices.

Since beginning Homeschoolers Anonymous in 2013, even I myself have learned so much from my friends, peers, and allies. I look back to my first contribution to the site, “Homeschool Confidential”, and I cringe when I read that I wrote, “What you might not know about conservative, Christian homeschoolers is that we are actually a smart bunch. Unlike the completely ridiculous cultural stereotype, many of us received more than adequate socialization.” Through the ever-growing Homeschoolers Anonymous community, I have realized that socialization is not a joking matter and I am sorry that I ever thought it was. There are many, many alumni who did indeed grow up without adequate socialization. They were isolated significantly, sometimes entirely, and that isolation had extremely painful impacts on their well-being — impacts that they still feel to this day.

This project has been a sharp learning curve even for me as someone homeschooled K-12. I have had educate myself about all sorts of issues, and I am grateful for my fellow alumni who have given pointed criticism that I needed to hear it. When I announced our LGBT* homeschool series, for example, I originally called it “Homeschoolers Are Gay.” But Kate Kane from Queer PHC pointed out to me that “gay” doesn’t included everyone who is LGBT* and thus can be erasing. I am thankful to be held accountable by my peers like this. That caused us to re-name the series “Homeschoolers Are Out.” It broke my heart that I had made people feel erased, but I apologized and changed course accordingly.

We’re all learning and we’re going to make mistakes. And one part of leaving fundamentalism, leaving the Generation Joshua we were so carefully trained to become, is being ok with not being perfect and getting knocked off a pedestal. It’s ok to say, “I made a mistake, I hurt you, and I am sorry for that. I will do better.” We can all do better and this amazing project we’re doing together, Homeschoolers Anonymous, is a perfect example of how we can learn from one another, learn the freedom to find our voices, and also learn the freedom to listen to others who have long been silenced.

In the 2 years since we launched Homeschoolers Anonymous, and the 1 year since we formed Homeschool Alumni Reaching Out, there have been some deeply discouraging moments. We are constantly belittled by homeschooling parents, infantilized and called “children.” We are referred to as bitter, as engaging in the “spirit of Ham” by exposing parental abuse. We have endured homophobic slurs, threats of physical abuse, mockery by HSLDA employees. We have earnestly sought to partner on several occasions with HSLDA to make homeschooling better — and have been ignored entirely. We have had hopes to present vital information about child abuse and mental illness at homeschool conventions — only to be rejected on several occasions.

We have even been called “a bigger threat to homeschooling than any teacher’s union” and “the greatest threat to homeschooling freedoms” by fellow homeschoolers.

This can be so discouraging. Sometimes we wonder if we’re actually making any difference and if there is any point in continuing. But then we hear from alumni that they thought they were the only ones, they thought they were “crazy,” and that we gave them hope to carry on. One letter in particular continues to make me tear-up every time I read it:

“I came across the HA blog through the article on The Daily Beast. Journeying as far as possible from my upbringing – involving fundamentalist homeschooling, a church cult, and an abusive home – has been a long and oftentimes lonely road. I have never found a venue that allows former homeschooled kids to share their stories like this.  So. There are certain moments in life, remarkable for their rarity, when you feel something pivoting, when a door opens and you can see a little light crinkling in. This is one such moment. I am not alone. I am not alone and I am not crazy. Now I want to start writing my story too. Thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you.”

That makes all the difference in the world to me, and that is what inspires us to continue the work we’re doing, no matter how hard it is. We are not alone. We are not crazy. And we’re not just bitter, angry kids. We are human beings, many adults with our own children now, and we are doing our best to make the lives of future homeschool kids better. That’s all we want to do. And we do it because we care.

We care about our siblings still in homeschooling and we care about the future generations.

We want homeschooling to be a safe, nurturing environment for every single child.

And we’ll keep fighting until that happens.

Our Courtship, Part Five: It Begins

HA Editorial Team2 Comments

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HA note: The following is reprinted with permission from Lana Hobbs’ blog Lana Hobbs the Brave. It was originally published on January 27, 2015.

< Part Four

Part Five: It Begins

The summer of 2007, after the first semester of college, I finally got my driver’s license. Luke, several friends, a few siblings, and I began filming a movie we had been working on writing. Mostly Luke wrote it and I made criticisms that he sometimes listened to.

I got to know some of his friends from church pretty well while filming. When he introduced me to them at the readthrough of the script, there was a distinct note of pride in his voice.

My parents knew all along I was intending to do the movie with Luke (I hadn’t realized at first that it would be a huge production, which we’d never actually finish), but apparently I never actually asked permission (I was 19 by now), so I got a few angry lectures about that, especially because Mom relied on me to be at home during the summer to help her with the housework and the kids. It was enough of a sacrifice on her behalf to let me go to school, but for me to be gone ‘for fun’ so often made her angry. I, however, was having the time of my life, spending so much time with friends.

Then came August, and the beginning of the fall 2007 semester. At some point before the semester began, another meeting that would be important to my future took place, and once again I was not present. This time it was Luke and my dad, and Luke was asking to court me ‘with intentions of marriage.’ Dad anticipated the question and bought him a watch to welcome him into the family.

The first day of school, Luke and I got lunch like we usually did. It was kind of a tradition by then, and so I didn’t even think to ask my parents. We just went about a ¼ of a block from the school — barely off campus — and got some fast food. I got in so much trouble later, because Luke and I weren’t yet courting and we certainly weren’t married, and yet here we were, going on a ‘date’, without asking permission from my parents. It was impure and inappropriate, according to my parents. Of course, Luke had already announced his intentions to court me, but I didn’t know that yet, so I couldn’t use that to justify our lunch.

At the end of the first week of school, Luke and my parents hatched a plan for him to pop the question.

It was a beautiful moment. I was in love before, but I finally felt free to feel all those feelings. I was so giddy from these new feelings of loving and being loved that I was clumsy and nearly sleepless for several days.

I thought that everything would be pretty smooth sailing now that Luke and I were an official couple. I was not correct.

Part Six >

The Dangers of Ideology: Salome’s Story, Part Two

HA Editorial Team2 Comments

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HA note: The author’s name has been changed to ensure anonymity. “Salome” is a pseudonym. Also by Salome on HA: Home for the Holidays.

< Part One

Part Two

The closest I came to real danger (and the longest relationship I had) was with the misogynistic control freak (the knife-bearing sociopath frequently did so in a crowded room, and was disarmed before he became a threat), so I wanna talk further about him. Let’s call him James.

James was everything I’m not.

He was intensely emotional, tall, slender, metrosexual, and spent more time in front of a mirror than I do. At first, everything was great. He understood me to a degree that very, very few people ever do, and accepted me for who I was. We had long conversations, joked, and played pranks together. He was extremely observant, and would go out of his way to understand what I was thinking. He quickly adjusted to my tendency to be brutally honest, and we talked about literally everything. I enjoyed our conversations, and I basked in the feeling that I mattered to someone.

I’m not entirely sure when the first warning signs started appearing. They were almost imperceptible at first, and I had no one who was close enough to the situation to point them out to me. We were lying to each other (and everyone else) about our intentions. He told me he wasn’t attracted to me, and didn’t want a relationship. I certainly didn’t want to call him my boyfriend, because then I’d have to deal with all of the baggage my upbringing attached to that label. I think I might have loved him to some degree, at least at first. I never really was physically attracted to him, but I figured I probably couldn’t do better than thoughtful, suave, and funny James.

It took me a really long time after we broke up to admit that we were dating. We just called it hanging out.

Our hanging out included sneaking out for an entire Saturday to see Act of Valor when it first came out. Today, I can’t believe I didn’t see that that was a date. Then I was too blind and too young and too repressed – and I didn’t have my mom to counterbalance my blindness. It’s really hard not to feel cheated, you know? Anyway, on top of our lies, he started making misogynistic comments. He always found a way to exclude me from his “all women are untrustworthy bitches” attitude, but I eventually started noticing that he was on dangerous ground. When I pressed him, his underlying attitudes didn’t exclude me at all. Then, he started timing how long it usually took me to reply to his messages (around 5 minutes), and if I took any longer than that, he’d freak the hell out, spam me with messages, text me, and call me, and say he was gonna come over to check on me.

He tried telling me what music to listen to (and what to avoid), and what TV shows to watch, and started regulating my caffeine intake and even my bedtime. I eventually started lying to him and telling him that I was going to bed early every night, but then staying up till the wee hours of the morning to try to get my work done free of him. Over Spring break that year, I traveled to Europe without him for a couple of weeks, and when I got back, he demanded to know every detail of every day. He then told me that he literally had not slept for 2 weeks because he didn’t know I was safe.

I hadn’t realized that I felt stifled until I was on another continent, and all the sudden James’ messages felt sinister.

My grades had plummeted (because he demanded that I spend all my time with him rather than do my work), I was intensely depressed, intensely exhausted because of my sleep habits, and intensely stressed, because I couldn’t bear the thought of being controlled by James the way my father had controlled me – and in the name of protecting me! The few classes I didn’t have with James became my solace during the week, because I had a few hours free of him.

My professors even started noticing that something was wrong, and several started going to extreme lengths to give me grace. They tried to help me, but I couldn’t bring myself to admit how bad it was. It wasn’t until very recently that I found out that the attempt to control a significant other is a hallmark of abusers. My patriarchalism-steeped parents certainly never taught me that, because then they would have had to allow me some autonomy. Soon after the Spring break debacle, I completely cut off contact with James, and have not missed him at all (even though we live in the same area still).

Let me be clear: I wasn’t in a toxic relationship because I was homeschooled.

Controlling jackasses exist everywhere. That was my screw-up, and I’ll have to live with that bad decision. But the ideologies that were preached at me from every direction left me without a security net, and kept me in that relationship longer than was healthy (because a controlling, arrogant, narcissistic, misogynistic man raised me. That’s my norm.).

Ideology led me to be dishonest about the nature of my relationship with James, which complicated the situation even further, and probably only exacerbated his urge to control me, because he had no assurance that we were exclusive (and I, being a total jackass, went to a dance with another guy to prove to my friends that James and I weren’t dating… my naivete still astounds me.).

Ideology set the stakes high, because I was not supposed to be in a relationship without the intention of eventually marrying the guy (which almost certainly would have been disastrous with James).

Ideology left me without any clue which boundaries were healthy, what was a normal expression of affection, and what was a big, flaming red flag.

Ideology left James feeling like I needed to be protected and guided, and left me feeling like that was normal.

Ideology led my parents to exercise parenting techniques which left me vulnerable, broken, and with the deeply internalized belief that I’m worthless and unclean, and no one will ever want me. It’s really hard not to feel victimized, bitter, and angry, to be honest. I missed out on – no, I was cheated out of – a beautiful and normal part of growing up.

I’m so pissed about that.

End of series.

Our Courtship, Part Four: Falling in Love

HA Editorial Team3 Comments

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HA note: The following is reprinted with permission from Lana Hobbs’ blog Lana Hobbs the Brave. It was originally published on January 26, 2015.

< Part Three

Part Four: Falling in Love

In August 2006, we started college, took a few classes together, and met each other between classes to walk to our next class together. I’m sure everyone on campus thought we were dating.

At the very end of 2006, I got sick. in 2007, I went back to school still sick. I was so miserable that semester. I still didn’t have a driver’s license, so I spent most of the day at school, because Dad dropped me off a couple hours before my first class, and picked me up at the end of the workday. Luke came to the rescue though. On MWF, we shared our last class of the day, so he took me home every day that he could for the whole semester.

I gave him gas money because he went out of his way to take me home. I slipped it into his backpack once a month when he wasn’t looking. He saved it up and gave it back to me on my birthday in late April, with a note that all but said I love you. Of course I didn’t read it that way at the time; I wouldn’t allow myself to see what should have been obvious, because I was so invested in making sure there was nothing romantic between us. I kept the note anyways. If that’s not a thing ‘just friends’ do, I didn’t want to know about it.

He was there for me that semester like no one ever had been. He loaned me his coat on a cold day (I didn’t have a coat). He listened to my problems. He bought footlong subs to share with me because I wouldn’t have eaten otherwise (self-care was not something I was taught). He even carried my backpack when I was too sick to carry it without a great deal of pain.

He was there the day I failed a paper around midterms and cried about it all through the next class. In fact, I later learned, that was the day he fell in love with me. Sitting next to me while I was crying, he was wishing he could do something to make it better. He realized he loved me and wanted to marry me.

Of course, he didn’t SAY anything to me about it at the time, or to my dad, so the conversations with my parents about me being ‘too far into the woods with Luke to go back now’ continued.

During that semester, I always said goodbye to him before his class in the music building. And every day before his class, an attractive girl would come sauntering out in her high heels, bat her eyelashes and say ‘hi Luke’ in what I thought was a flirtatious tone and sashay away. I hated that girl.

Also that semester, I got red highlights in my hair over spring break. They looked super coppery at first but i knew they’d tone down and look amazing in a few days. Well, I didn’t know I’d see Luke during spring break. “What have you done to your hair?” he hissed when he saw me. When we went back to school, a classmate complimented it. I think Luke turned green from jealousy — I felt triumphant. Then after class Luke told me it looked good — the first compliment he’d ever given me. He’d been in love with me for weeks at this point so you’d think he’d have been pouring on the compliments, but he actually seemed slightly more distant. It was very important to him that I not know he was in love with me until we were courting, because of purity and all that. It seems so silly now.

One day, at the very end of the spring semester, I was feeling particularly stressed and vulnerable about something. We were sitting on a little wall outside by the library — our wall. I told him what I was worried about, and he just listened. And then I don’t know exactly what happened in my heart but suddenly I knew I wanted to spend the rest of my life with him. That was the moment I think I fell in love, and I both felt guilty and wonderful, but I was also in denial about how deep my feelings went, because I simply wasn’t allowed to be in love before courtship.

Part Five >

The Dangers of Ideology: Salome’s Story, Part One

HA Editorial Team2 Comments

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HA note: The author’s name has been changed to ensure anonymity. “Salome” is a pseudonym. Also by Salome on HA: Home for the Holidays.

Part One

My family, my church, and my homeschooling group were up to their eyeballs in purity culture.

My youth pastor used to say that if he could tell you were dating, you were doing it wrong. That meant no holding hands, no hugging, and no kissing. He’s since relaxed a lot, but the damage was done. Later, we realized just how badly our purity culture had screwed us over when a significant contingent of my grade (most of whom were also members of my homeschooling group where the courtship model was also wholeheartedly embraced) got pregnant out of wedlock, and most abandoned Christianity because of the judgment and the pronouncement that they were now unclean. Some were subjected to epic parental freak-outs, which did nothing but deprive their parents of a meaningful relationship with their child and grandchild.

Most of my friends were homeschooled — well, the few that I had; I have always been extremely introverted, and due to the level of emotional abuse I suffered, I have always been angry, blunt, and kept everyone at arm’s length. Such friends belonged to the same homeschooling group I did. Our parents were all close, and all shared books.

This, unfortunately, included Eric and Leslie Ludy and Josh Harris.

(Interesting side note, here. Years later, I got to know the Harris twins. One of them, I believe it was Brett, informed me that when Josh fell in love, he found out his advice sucked. He ended up ignoring it himself, and didn’t ask his wife’s father for permission before he married her, because his wife didn’t have a good relationship with her father.)

My mother and her friends, however, took it as the gospel truth. My mom regularly told me that she wished she hadn’t had her heart broken by any of her pre-Dad relationships. She admitted that she still occasionally thought of her other boyfriends. Now, years later, I think that she was just unfulfilled and bored as well as supremely unhappy, because I was her confidante multiple times when her marriage was on the rocks (when I was wayyyyyy too young to healthily process any of what she told me). Then, my innocent little mind filed away all of that information, trusting that my mom knew best.

My parents also stigmatized normal relationships.

I don’t think they purposely created an environment where it was unsafe to bring someone home, because they’re pressuring me to settle down, find a guy, and give them grandkids. They were partially victims of their own assumptions – that Dad was somehow gifted with more wisdom than normal (which is bullshit. He’s a fool.), that he had the right to exercise absolute control over us, that his job was to protect me from myself and all of the depredations of lustful young men (even though when I was victimized he attacked me instead of protecting me, and ended up “protecting” me from people I didn’t need to be protected from, while ignoring the real threats), that I had to “guard my heart (a phrase I internalized too well, because I can’t fall in love for the life of me.),” and that anything less than their ideals of modesty, purity, and emotional distance was too “worldly,” which is a criticism my father leverages against literally everything he disagrees with… I still wince whenever I hear it, whether it’s warranted or not.

Thanks a lot, Dad.

They’re also ridiculously awkward and almost Victorian about romance and sex, and they deal with that by joking about it. It’s impossible to have a serious conversation about it. I literally have never brought, and never plan to bring, a guy home with me, because I’m just not sure if my family will chase him away at gunpoint, will be terribly awkward, or will accept him with open arms. And the worst part? They don’t know any of that, and aren’t open to being told, because they hear every criticism of their parenting skills as a judgment of them personally.

My parents also tried (and failed) to enforce rigid gender roles for awhile. 

Since I have never been the most feminine woman ever, my parents lectured me more about that than basically anything else. I wear whatever the hell I want, don’t cook unless I have to (and have cussed my father out when he tries telling me to make him dinner), and swear like a sailor. I’ve never been meek and submissive. I’ve never accepted my mother’s demands to show respect to men (which means meekly assenting to whatever they ask me to do and never standing up for myself – which would have been disastrous in my relationship with James.). However, I’ve still internalized those lectures. I still feel like my body is dirty, and my modesty somehow a coat of armor.

I still feel guilty for loving more traditionally masculine things.

Instead of protecting me, the environment I have described led my sister and I to go behind our parents’ backs and seek emotional fulfillment without calling it dating, while taking away the support structures which could identify warning signs early and save us from dangerous situations. In my sister’s case, it ended with a call to the cops, because she was involved with a bad apple.

My experiences are a little more complex. I have consistently attracted psychopaths in every sense of the word (including one knife-bearing sociopath, a drug addict, a patriarchal scumbag, and a raging misogynistic control freak… and those are just the ones I ended up having a close relationship with – with the exception of the drug addict. He was scared away fairly quickly. There are a few more who made unwanted sexual advances, including one who then threatened to kill me when I turned him down. My parents still don’t know.). I swear, they can smell blood in the water, because good God they swarm around me. This tendency is only made worse by the fact that I tend to be emotionally and mentally attracted to someone before I’m physically attracted, and thus tend to want to heal broken men.

Maybe that’s because feeling compassion is the closest thing I feel to tenderness anymore. I don’t know.

Part Two >

Our Courtship, Part Three: Missing Him

HA Editorial Team2 Comments

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HA note: The following is reprinted with permission from Lana Hobbs’ blog Lana Hobbs the Brave. It was originally published on January 23, 2015.

< Part Two

Part Three: Missing Him

In order to do the magazine, Luke and I had to email back and forth.  Luke got to use his own email, as his parents had no problem with him having a private email address, but I had to use my mom’s email. She read every single email I sent and received, as a way of chaperoning us/making sure things didn’t get romantic, I guess. Our words were scrutinized and sometimes used against me.

Luke and I finished our first issue of our magazine at the end of 2005, the middle of our senior year of highschool, and in January 2006, I went on a mission trip to Puerto Rico for 9 weeks. I talked to Miss S on the phone regularly, but sometimes called when she was too busy so I talked to Luke instead. I was lonely so I just yakked his ear off. He talked very little. We were not particularly close at this point, but I think we grew a little closer while I was gone. The Hobbs all sent me mail when I was away, and Luke and I continued work on the magazine from a distance.

At some point in the spring, after I got back, I took the SAT, and was thrilled to see a familiar face. Luke and I sat at the same table, and finished the last part of the test at about the same time.

I couldn’t drive yet, so I had to call someone to come pick me up when the test was over. Luke waited with me and I felt so safe and cared for. He didn’t offer a ride home because I wasn’t really allowed to ride with other teens at that point (though mom complained to me that he could have just brought me home if he was going to wait with me, so I was puzzled).

A couple weeks later, we went to a preview day at our future university together, a couple homeschool students in a sea of public schoolers. He’s tall, I haven’t mentioned it yet. I’m only average height. I would have felt intimidated by all the unknown people (I hate crowds), except I stood right by Luke the entire time. His presence was large and it made me feel safe and I treasured that. We were starting to get much closer. I had a major crush by this point.

I turned 18 and we graduated from high school in April. Our homeschool group did a graduation together. In late June, I went on another mission trip, this time to Bogota, Colombia.

I read some book on purity on the plane, I think it was Before You Meet Prince Charming, and I felt very ashamed to have such a strong crush — it wasn’t holy and pure to give so much of my heart to someone else before we were even courting.  The trip was only 2 weeks, but I missed Luke so bad it hurt, and I hated myself for it. I didn’t feel like I was allowed to miss him, since we weren’t courting (which is silly, because even in that culture, people are allowed to miss their friends). I didn’t really miss my family, things were often stressful at home and if you haven’t noticed by now, my parents were somewhat controlling. Being far away was a nice break, I just wanted someone to share it with.

I also felt ashamed of missing Luke so bad, because I didn’t know if he missed me. I knew I’d be brokenhearted if he ever married anyone else, but I didn’t know if he felt the same way. So I knew I was in trouble deep.

While on the trip, trying not to be so attached to Luke and trying to make friends, I flirted with some of the guys at our host church. One night, near the end of the trip on the bus, one of them that I had gotten kind of close to reached out and took my hand. I felt cared for. Safe. So I let him hold it until I had to get off the bus. And then the guilt and shame came. I had never held a boy’s hand before (unless you count the awkward dance when I was twelve). I had meant to never hold anyone’s hand until I was courting, maybe even until the wedding (I had read some books about no-touch courtships), and I had ruined it. I felt like I was trash.

When I got home, I confessed to my parents. They were livid. They wailed, ‘Where did we go wrong?’ They threatened not to let me go to college since I obviously couldn’t control myself around boys. Dad asked me ‘What will Luke think of this?’ What would Luke think of me now? I was basically a slut — if he had ever wanted me, he might not want me now. But amidst my shame, I felt a little indignant. After all, Luke and I weren’t a couple. He didn’t own me.

It was around this time, both before and after the trip, that my parents started talking to me about being too close to Luke. They weren’t sure exactly what I should do about it (and Dad’s frequent talk about how I should marry Luke was NOT helping anything), but it was bad, and it was apparently all my fault. If I married him eventually, it would all be ok. But he hadn’t said anything yet, and of course as the woman, I couldn’t say anything (please remember, Luke was still 17 at this time, I was just barely 18). If I didn’t marry Luke eventually, I was basically dooming my future marriage because my parents were convinced I was in love with Luke — which according to purity culture, meant I was impure in my heart. I don’t actually think I was in love yet though. I probably could have been, had I let myself feel it, but I hadn’t. I certainly cared about him a great deal and loved him as a friend, and but I wouldn’t say I was ‘in love’. That came later.

Even so, I felt a great deal of shame and frustration over my emotional attraction to Luke, even over our friendship. But that was mostly when my parents were fussing at me about it. And it didn’t stop me from scheduling classes with him or continuing the magazine. (Not that my parents requested that I stop either of those things. I think they just wanted to vent their frustrations at me.)

Luke, by the way, had no idea any of this was going on.

Sometime in that time period, I had a dream. Luke and I were alone, and he was holding me up in the air, like I was pretending to fly, and I felt so peaceful and so happy. It was a simple little dream, but I woke up with a smile on my face. I felt embarrassed, but I treasured that dream, like it was a prophetic thing.

Part Four >

Wanting to Date, Being Told to Wait: Adah’s Story, Part Three

HA Editorial Team3 Comments

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HA note: The author’s name has been changed to ensure anonymity. “Pearl” is a pseudonym. Other names have been changed to obscure identities.

Content Warning: Descriptions of emotional, physical, sexual, and religious abuse.

< Part Two

Part Three: Me and My Dearling

I am one of the fortunate females in the fundamentalist/patriarchal culture to have attended college, albeit under my parents’ watchful eye.

In school I had caught the attention of one of my classmates who refused to leave me alone. Despite giving him the cold shoulder, Dearling decided to be my friend, no matter what it took. He was irresistible, and in a good way. He understood me and my background, and he had the most enduring patience I have ever encountered. I didn’t want to have a romantic relationship with him though. I was deathly afraid of what my parents would do this time. I had met the man of my dreams, but I was paralyzed.

Slowly but surely, Dearling melted my heart from the inside out. I tried to break up with him preemptively multiple times, but we couldn’t stay away from each other. I told my parents he was just a friend. They made it clear that he better remain that way. When they realized that we were more than friends they tried to break us up. They put impossible rules on us that even by courtship standards would be seen as ridiculous. I was their daughter, and they were not about to let me be wooed by my Dearling.

We tried to keep the rules to show a spirit of cooperation. Instead, seeing that the rules were failing to make us hate each other, my parents made them worse. So we got engaged. But we kept it a secret because I was still afraid, living under my parents’ constant scrutiny. I lost weight and became borderline anorexic. I lied to be with my Dearling but I was dying inside.

I had to choose between my parents and my Dearling.

I thought choosing my parents was they only way to obey God. I had been guilted into obeying my parents by a fundamentalist interpretation of the Bible so many times that I didn’t know I had true choices as an autonomous adult. I was at a breaking point. I tried to give the ring back, by my Dearling’s love for me overcame my fear. We told my parents. They played nice for a while, but then things started getting much, much worse. After a few more months of hell—verbal, physical, emotional, and spiritual abuse, I moved out. Not with my Dearling, because that would be wrong, according to what I believed at the time.

Finally, we could date and love each other they way we had been longing to for months. And then we eloped.

My Dearling and I have been married for a while now. I don’t talk to my family anymore. I can’t do it without extreme anxiety and panic attacks. We tried to reconcile with my parents but they never could see what they did wrong. They just tried to manipulate us more and more. So we had to close the door.

Maybe one day they’ll see that they didn’t fail in raising their children just because they rejected their version of “right.” Maybe they’ll learn, like I have, that consent is important, that individuals have autonomy and are not owned by anyone else, that love is a choice and cannot be stopped or force, that feminism and birth control are not inherent evils, that it’s okay to ascribe to different brands of religion, and that at the bottom of good relationships is one thing: respect. My Dearling and I respect each other and we are happy. We dated, wouldn’t be forced into courtship, and we are okay.

In fact, we are more than okay, we are ecstatically happy.

End of series.

Our Courtship, Part Two: Boy Meets Girl

HA Editorial Team3 Comments

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HA note: The following is reprinted with permission from Lana Hobbs’ blog Lana Hobbs the Brave. It was originally published on January 22, 2015.

< Part One

Part Two: Boy Meets Girl

When I was 15, I met the Hobbs family when they came over to our house for lunch one day. The way my family generally did friends, my mom would make friends with another mom, and the kids would be our friends, whoever was nearest in age to each of us, usually.

I became friends with the middle child and only girl (I was at the time also an only girl), Hannah, and wanted to become friends with the oldest boy, about a year younger than me, named Luke (spoiler: I married him).

He seemed quiet and distant and intelligent.  He seemed like a Darcy type and I, like most homeschool girls, thought Pride and Prejudice was quite possibly the greatest love story ever written.

He also seemed lonely, so over the months that followed, I took every opportunity to befriend him. I didn’t really have a crush on him at this point, although I did consider him a prospect for marriage, because I considered pretty much every intelligent Christian guy near my age as a prospect.

At this point, I think my parents were intending I marry one of the Hobbs boys – Luke has a brother 2 years his junior – at least my dad certainly talked about it a bit. It didn’t seem to matter to Dad which one. Also Miss Susie, Luke’s mom, seemed to like me a lot and Luke’s youngest brother, who was two at the time, loved me. So there was the potential for a perfect match (after all, in courtship, you basically date the family).

At some point I did start crushing on Luke but I didn’t really talk about it (guarding my heart, remember?) and I can’t really remember when, because I was pushing those feelings away so hard.

At some point in 2005, I got the idea to start a Christian magazine for teens — none I had seen were radical enough for me. Brio by Focus on the Family was way too liberal.

Luke wrote a family newsletter and I was impressed, so I enlisted him as my co-editor. We were very devout fundamentalist Christians, extremely entrenched in purity culture, and hesitant but sincere evangelists, both being shy and extremely introverted.

I soon learned, after beginning the magazine, that Luke’s parents had fallen in love while working on a Christian magazine. I was a little worried after this, that maybe the magazine would lead to something romantic if we weren’t careful (and maybe I was secretly excited about it) but my devotion to emotional purity was steady.

We started the magazine when I was 17 and Luke was 16.

Before our first issue was written, there was a night our families got together and our parents went out for dinner. Our brothers played while Hannah and I cooked dinner and watched the littlest kids. The patriarchy was strong with all of us.

I found out years later that when the parents had gone out, they were actually having a secret meeting to determine if all parents were okay with Luke and I getting married eventually.

Apparently they were. I guess if it wasn’t okay, they would have pulled us apart — let me reiterate that we knew NOTHING about this meeting that basically determined our future. Also we were teenagers.

As it was, we continued being pushed together (not that I’m complaining, we liked being together). Knowing my parents, this meeting was probably all their idea. Dad is big on meetings.

I believe that, from this point on in my dad’s mind, I was basically Luke’s property that he was holding on to for awhile. Many future conversations made it clear that Dad felt it was his duty to present Luke with a emotionally and sexually pure wife.

Part Three >