Love this idea of a series of letters to your younger evangelically married self!
I evangelically married three days before my 22nd birthday, and when I look back at that younger self who stayed married for 20 years before recognizing the abuse, I’m so proud of her too.
I love this for you, friend! Lately I've been reading a lot of time travel / alternate timeline novels - this sounds like a setup for one of those stories.
Evangelically married at 28. Our happy ending is that we pretty quickly started deconstructing out of that together. We consider ourselves stupidly lucky for it.
Similar here - also married in an evangelical church at 28, have been happily sliding down the liberal slippery slope together ever since. I think it helped that we got married OLD for evangelicals, after dating way longer than most evangelicals would (~4 years)...but yeah, also lucky for sure.
Same here - I was married by 21 🤯 I had my first glass of wine on my 21st birthday to celebrate our engagement & we were married 4 months later 🤪🤣 it’s crazy we’ve made it at all, but we’ve both slid the slippery slope together!
So evangelically married, 18 years ago next month. The hardest parts all stemmed from, well, evangelicalism. Surprise. And my mother in law, hilariously. lol
Ohhhhh my ex-MIL is a piece of work. There’s a whole chapter about her in Blushing Bride that I rewrote after the original manuscript hurt her feelings. Wish I’d left it as it was. 😆 Several letters reference her interference and coddling of her son.
Oh yes, 1991, I was 23 and he was 21! And we stayed in for….. a lot longer than you’d think. Fortunately we both questioned, we both deconstructed, and over the years we both rebelled. Still together now, but no longer evangelical.
Married at age 18 (he was 24 and a half and no one around me had a problem with that; it was just get married so you don’t have sex outside of marriage!) He was financially, sexually, spiritually, emotionally and psychologically abusive all while playing the nice conservative Christian guy facade. It took me a while to figure it all out since no one I was sharing the problems with was giving me correct information (parents, siblings, pastors, counselors.) I ended up escaping that one when he died.
After that I thought I could find a non abusive Christian man but that did not turn out to be the case for me…after 1-2 years, their mask would slowly fall and I began to see gaslighting and stonewalling. Thankfully I knew what those were at that point and left as soon as I saw them.
The last guy I dated for two years proclaimed himself a feminist, progressive, etc. but turned out to be the same: a male desiring hierarchy, full of skilled deception and lack of empathy/conscience.
I wish I had known before all of this that a large majority of men are abusive. Education on the topic of abuse is so vital!
We were 22 when we were married in the evangelical church and fully drank the Kool-Aid! I knew that he was angry and could be verbally abusive, but I didn’t think of myself as an abused woman because he didn’t hit me. What I didn’t know was that my husband was living a double life. I didn’t know that until 32 years later. At that point, I asked him to leave. I was in a church at the time that did not believe in divorce and re-marriage, even for infidelity. Because I trusted my pastors and still was drinking the Kool-Aid, I decided to stay the course with separation and see what happened. Fortunately, my husband sought the help that he needed, genuinely this time as opposed to all the other times that he gave lip service to it. He got into 12 step programs for some of his issues and earnestly worked those programs! Slowly, we started to “date“. I could see the change in him and started to trust it. 18 months after our separation, we move back in together and we’re still together today. However, we’re both unchurched and while I’m very deconstructed, he is becoming more deconstructed. We have definitely slid the slippery slope towards liberalism together! So I’m pretty sure my 63-year-old self would be totally unrecognizable to my 22-year-old self. Funny how that works! We should all grow in so many ways and be different than our younger selves but some of us would have a whole lot more to talk about with them! Sorry so long and thanks for reading!
Love this idea of a series of letters to your younger evangelically married self!
I evangelically married three days before my 22nd birthday, and when I look back at that younger self who stayed married for 20 years before recognizing the abuse, I’m so proud of her too.
Write those letters!
Thank you for sharing, friend! I’m glad you woke up. 🩵
I love this for you, friend! Lately I've been reading a lot of time travel / alternate timeline novels - this sounds like a setup for one of those stories.
Ooooh if I thought I could pull off a time traveling novel, I might do it.
Evangelically married at 28. Our happy ending is that we pretty quickly started deconstructing out of that together. We consider ourselves stupidly lucky for it.
I’m so glad there are couples like you!! I know a lot too. 🩵
Similar here - also married in an evangelical church at 28, have been happily sliding down the liberal slippery slope together ever since. I think it helped that we got married OLD for evangelicals, after dating way longer than most evangelicals would (~4 years)...but yeah, also lucky for sure.
Sliding down the liberal slippery slope together sounds delightful!
Same here - I was married by 21 🤯 I had my first glass of wine on my 21st birthday to celebrate our engagement & we were married 4 months later 🤪🤣 it’s crazy we’ve made it at all, but we’ve both slid the slippery slope together!
Me! 18 years this summer. Thank goodness my marriage survived deconstruction.
So happy for you!! Mine survived deconstruction (at least I thought it did); it was the cheating that did us in. 😅
So evangelically married, 18 years ago next month. The hardest parts all stemmed from, well, evangelicalism. Surprise. And my mother in law, hilariously. lol
Ohhhhh my ex-MIL is a piece of work. There’s a whole chapter about her in Blushing Bride that I rewrote after the original manuscript hurt her feelings. Wish I’d left it as it was. 😆 Several letters reference her interference and coddling of her son.
I’m learning so much about the MIL I don’t want to be!
RIGHT???? I only have daughters so the dynamics are different but whew. 😅
Oh yes, 1991, I was 23 and he was 21! And we stayed in for….. a lot longer than you’d think. Fortunately we both questioned, we both deconstructed, and over the years we both rebelled. Still together now, but no longer evangelical.
Love this for you!!
Can’t wait to read along and this also reminds me a little of Liz Gilbert’s “letters from love” - it’s inner child/self compassion work 🩷🩷🩷
Ahhhh I love this!
Married at age 18 (he was 24 and a half and no one around me had a problem with that; it was just get married so you don’t have sex outside of marriage!) He was financially, sexually, spiritually, emotionally and psychologically abusive all while playing the nice conservative Christian guy facade. It took me a while to figure it all out since no one I was sharing the problems with was giving me correct information (parents, siblings, pastors, counselors.) I ended up escaping that one when he died.
After that I thought I could find a non abusive Christian man but that did not turn out to be the case for me…after 1-2 years, their mask would slowly fall and I began to see gaslighting and stonewalling. Thankfully I knew what those were at that point and left as soon as I saw them.
The last guy I dated for two years proclaimed himself a feminist, progressive, etc. but turned out to be the same: a male desiring hierarchy, full of skilled deception and lack of empathy/conscience.
I wish I had known before all of this that a large majority of men are abusive. Education on the topic of abuse is so vital!
I am so so sorry. Thank you for sharing. ❤️🩹
We were 22 when we were married in the evangelical church and fully drank the Kool-Aid! I knew that he was angry and could be verbally abusive, but I didn’t think of myself as an abused woman because he didn’t hit me. What I didn’t know was that my husband was living a double life. I didn’t know that until 32 years later. At that point, I asked him to leave. I was in a church at the time that did not believe in divorce and re-marriage, even for infidelity. Because I trusted my pastors and still was drinking the Kool-Aid, I decided to stay the course with separation and see what happened. Fortunately, my husband sought the help that he needed, genuinely this time as opposed to all the other times that he gave lip service to it. He got into 12 step programs for some of his issues and earnestly worked those programs! Slowly, we started to “date“. I could see the change in him and started to trust it. 18 months after our separation, we move back in together and we’re still together today. However, we’re both unchurched and while I’m very deconstructed, he is becoming more deconstructed. We have definitely slid the slippery slope towards liberalism together! So I’m pretty sure my 63-year-old self would be totally unrecognizable to my 22-year-old self. Funny how that works! We should all grow in so many ways and be different than our younger selves but some of us would have a whole lot more to talk about with them! Sorry so long and thanks for reading!
Wow, friend. You've been through a LOT. Thanks for sharing!