Later she says this...

I apologize to my readers for the lack of warning there. The damage to your JetSki will likely buff out, though. I do hope your passengers were wearing life jackets, as they always should.

I hate this part, because it's kind of true, and since it's kind of true the part that isn't true is misleading. The fact is that, yes, a fulfilling sexual relationship is something that glues a couple together, and it is something that improves a relationship, and smooths out the rough spots. But that's because the relationship exists to begin with.

This is like saying that varnish is something that adds luster to your cabinets, and may even protect the underlying furniture from damage. Well, yes, that's true, but there has to be furniture under there for the varnish to add luster to and protect, doesn't there?

This author, and writers like her, would have wives frequently varnishing a collection of rough-hewn boards, in the hopes that somehow, once enough varnish has been applied, a Regency armoire might somehow spontaneously arise. And the answer, when this doesn't transpire, is always "more varnish."

Adding more sex to a marriage that doesn't have a good relationship at its core is like adding more spice to the pot of boiling water on the stove. You're just gonna make the water cloudy. You to add need some potatoes of compassion, and some ground beef of gentleness, and perhaps some pinto beans of sacrificial love, too. (I dunno, I'm bad at making analogies, and soup.) But I think you get my point.

Sex is good. But it can't make your pile of pallets into furniture, and it can't make a pot of water into soup. You need LOTS of other ingredients first.

Look, I realize that accidents happen. (Again, sorry about the JetSki.) But, this book never suggests even the slight possibility of birth control. Maybe they have a conviction against it, but it really feels like some of these problems could solve themselves. And honestly, if your kid is keeping you up all night, how on earth are you finding the energy to invest in sex, and making it good? (The mountainous burden this places on a woman's shoulders makes me exhausted as I type these words.)

And then there's this...

"Hello? CLP? Is anyone actually reading this stuff before you hit print?"

The clear implication here is that if a husband feels like his wife is complaining that the sex doesn't feel good, but he also feels like she is just doing it to make excuses, well, in that case, he can feel free to just plow on ahead without trying to make sure her sexual needs (or even comfort needs) are met.

This paragraph literally justifies husbands not taking the comfort of their wives into account. It's treated like an option. Something that he does as a perk, after she was done everything she can do.

I keep looking at the passage to see if I'm reading it wrong, and I don't think I am, but I certainly wish I were.

It's not as though she is saying, "Sometimes sex isn't comfortable, and there are ways to make it feel better, so that you both can enjoy it." Even better would be to say, "Sometimes, it's OK to take a break from sex, especially when it's painful after having a baby. Your body needs time to recover, and a loving husband will understand and support this." She assumes that women are making excuses not to have sex, and because of this, husbands should feel comfortable in ignoring their needs. I'm guessing there aren't many complaints about headaches in this home.

To be fair, she does suggest that sometimes it's OK not to have intercourse.

The problem here is that when a woman is recovering from surgery, she shouldn't have to worry about keeping her husband satisfied. She should be worrying about getting better. This idea that men have to have their sexual needs met all the time, or bad things will happen is really bad. And it teaches men to lack self-control. It teaches and trains men to be entitled.

A number of years ago, I read a book that discussed fasting, and it explained how fasting sets us free from the desire to always be comfortable. He described how, after fasting one day a week for some time, he realized that he didn't need to be comfortable all the time, and it was OK to stand on the bus, rather than have a seat, and he wasn't bothered when the temperature wasn't absolutely perfect. Fasting had freed him from that bondage. And I think of that book now, and of men who are in bondage to their sexual needs. Yes, men (and women) do feel sexual urges, and yes, God designed marriage as a place for those sexual urges to be met and expressed. But He didn't intend us to be in bondage to them. They are not our masters, and this type of teaching encourages us to enthrone them as supreme.

This post has been plenty long, but I think I want to finish with this subject now (it's been really, really emotionally draining these past few days), so I will cover some of the passages from "When Your Love Is Betrayed" chapter of the book, and address one of the biggest lies there.

I will not cover all the passages I thought that I might, because honestly, it's all blurring together at this point. The general idea promoted here being that if a woman is pure sweetness and light to an unfaithful husband, then he'll hopefully feel ashamed and stop cheating on her, whereas the truth is that if he had the ability to feel that kind of shame, he wouldn't be behaving in that way to begin with.

But then there's this...

I'm splitting this passage into two parts, so that I can deal with them separately. First, I don't think it's fair to equate unfaithfulness and angry words. And I think that this betrays the kind of sin-leveling that is so common in relationships. (If you snap at your wife, you're the same kind of person as someone who cheats on her.) It's this kind of thing that helps unfaithful husbands to justify what they are doing.

Also, and I've said this before, sex is an expression of mutual love and connection, so if the husband has broken that connection, and still wants sex, it's demonstrating that either he doesn't realize that he has hurt his wife, or else he doesn't view sex in that way. (Sometimes, it is true, husbands don't realize that their words have hurt the relationship. However, even the primitive spore people of the Crab Nebula know that unfaithfulness hurts your wife, so ignorance is no excuse there.)

And there's nothing wrong with a wife saying, "Hey, what you said earlier today hurt, so I can't really give myself to you right now. Can we talk about what happened?" This is the path to healing. Having sex and pretending everything is OK when it is not is merely papering over the problems in your relationship, and virtually ensures that improvement will not happen.

A mutually fulfilling sex life is something of a canary in the coal mine of your marriage.

And then this...

This is basically the equivalent of saying that you can easily avoid being raped by simply consenting. It's horrible and soul-killing and it's not even what the Bible says.

You need to read the whole passage, because here is what is going on.

1) Paul is living in a culture that views women as sexually promiscous, while men are viewed as self-controlled. (Some Roman writers encouraged men to keep their wives from moving around too much during sex, because she might be enjoying it too much.) In this culture, especially as Christians, there was a question if marriage and sex were even OK. And Paul says, "Don't cheat yourselves of the joys of sex. Married couples should be enjoying one another, unless they have chosen to set it aside for prayer and fasting, but then, they should continue to love each other in that way." My understanding of "Defraud not one another" is "Don't cheat each other out of a good time." 

2) Paul makes it very clear that in marriage, you stop belonging to yourself, and you belong to the other person now. Both partners in the marriage now live for the pleasure of the other. And this is a sword that cuts both ways. Yes, the wife's body now belongs to the husband, but the husband's body now belongs to his wife. So they only way that both bodies can be rightfully used in the act of sex is if both of them are consenting together to use them in that way.

The husband has no right to use his body in ways that harm his wife, whether that's being unfaithful to her, or using it to have sex with her in ways that are not pleasurable to her.

It's like a safety deposit at the bank. Unless both keys are present, the door cannot be opened.

This verse is used by men all over the place to harrass, and hound, and guilt their wives into having sex with them, but the fact is that just as surely as a wife's body belongs to her husband, his body belongs to her, and he is absolutely barred by the Word of God from using it against her will. It is God's will if your wife does not want you to have sex with her, that you do not have sex with her, because your body is now hers. (It's kind of shocking that I have to put that in writing.)

Many modern Christian marriage writers would have us to believe that the wife belongs to her husband, so that he now possesses himself and her, but the fact is that husband and wife are now bound into one body, each mutually owning the other, and so "he who loves his wife loves himself," because she is part of him.

Yes, I know that when she said "I do," she promised to blah, blah, blah...

I've read the articles. I've read the rationales. I've heard it all.

You need to stop reading the articles and start reading the Word of God.

Husbands, you belong to her now, and your job is to take as much care of her as you want her to take care of you. That's what the will of God is.

Go and do thou likewise.

One of the things that horrifies me the most about this passage is the idea that women are interchangable sex receptacles.

The reason that a man is supposed to sexually desire his wife is more than the fact that she is physically attractive and turns heads everywhere she goes. The reason a man is supposed to desire his wife is because she is his and he is hers, and they've experienced life together, and they are on the same team, and the idea that somehow she has to compete for his sexual affection based on some kind of objective external standards is soul-crushing.

I suspect some of my readers may find it difficult to understand how wicked and ungodly and soul-crushing this idea truly is, because we are fish swimming in the water of female objectification.

So, imagine, if you will, that we would take this same idea into another realm. 

I want you to imagine that this little girl is your daughter, or your niece, or your granddaughter, and she just picked some flowers for her daddy. Now, if you look at the flowers, maybe they're dandelions or some other common flower, maybe they are a tad wilted, maybe she crushed them a bit in her chubby little fists as she brought them to him.

Now, imagine someone (allegedly well-meaning) telling her that she needs to step up her flower game. After all, there are florists out there that Daddy could buy exotic roses from. There are fields out there, full of flowers, ripe for the picking. And they aren't dandelions. They're buttercups, and tiger lilies, and violets. If you really want to get Daddy's attention (because Daddys do love flowers), you need to focus on bringing him more flowers, more often. Because there's a lot of other flowers out there competing for his attention, and other little girls out there who have flowerbeds, instead of just weeds from the yard. And if your Daddy one day goes out for milk, and doesn't come back, well... just saying. Maybe you could have done more with the flowers thing.

Can you imagine anything more wicked than that?

The flowers that your little girl brings to you are important and matter because they come from her, and they are a token of love from her, and no flowers could be more precious, no matter where they come from- because she gave them to you. And anyone that would compare those flowers with something you could get from a florist online has the soul of an ogre forged in the very pits of Hell.

Yet, we tell women this all the time about the sexual intimacy between them and their husbands. Sex isn't a tool. It's not some way of keeping the guy around. It's an expression of love that, maybe, is sometimes like a fistful of wilted flowers, but if you're focusing on the flaws of the flowers instead of the love that's being shown, than maybe, just maybe, you need some serious help.

I was going to write more today, but I think this concept is important enough that it needs to stand alone.

Talk soon!

Overall, this is a pretty good opening, with one concern: The underlying message that sex is something for men that women cooperate with. The fact is that sex is designed to be something for men and women.

In all fairness, she does state this later, saying that God designed both men and women to enjoy sex. But, in a sad turn, what the large print gives, the small print takes away. Witness.

The whole tone of this paragraph indicates that sex is for him, and that her pleasure is incidental to the exchange. The fact is that if sex is good for both parties, and he is making sure that she is being taken care of as well, it's not going to feel like a duty. Why would it? People don't go to King's Mountain or Space Point or Cedar Island or whatever those worldly amusement parks are called, and say "Boy, I certainly am feeling obligated to ride those rollercoasters, even though I don't feel like it."

The rest of the passage continues to push this point home. The main thing that you as a wife should be concerned about is your attitude.

Here's the problem. "Choosing your attitude" just papers over all these other underlying issues. If you keep having sex, while deep down feeling embarrassed, or like sex is bad, or whatever, and ignoring those problems, you are making the problem worse.

Oh, and frequency matters. And this is one of the big problems here, which isn't talked about nearly enough in conservative circles, and here's another shout-out to Sheila and her Great Sex Rescue (seriously, go read it, everyone!) Obligation sex will kill everything nice.

I don't even know what to say to this. I mean, I've heard of couples who are intimate every day, but I think it's kind of a bad idea to posit that as a normative thing. And frankly, that sounds a tad like a sex addiction to me.

Don't get me wrong. If you're both into it that often, go for it. But as an expectation? There are so many yikes on bikes that there is no more room for cars on the road!

I have a few other concerns as well. Doing sex well takes time. Placing this level of expectation on a wife means that you are urging her to put her feelings and needs aside most of the time. If she was arguing that couples should make time to share physical affection every day, I wouldn't take issue with that. And I think it's meaningful to point out that if we believe sex to be important than we should prioritize it. But it feels like there's a big thing missing in what sex actually does in a marriage, which is to bind the two into one, and that takes more than just frequency.

And comparing getting coffee with friends or cleaning the house to having sex is kinda weird. They require completely different activation energies and mindsets, and effort.

Let's go find them.

And I think that it's super ironic that the crowd who is always on the defensive against error, and always giving warnings about how a few bits of poison in your TV shows, or movies, or books, or whatever are enough to poison the whole thing, are suddenly super concerned when we apply that same set of standards to one of their books. (How many of us have heard about how rat poison only has a tiny bit of poison in it, but it knocks them rats right dead, so how much more is that flash of ankle in Little House on the Prairie going to lead you right down the slippery slope to SmutTown?) That's a sword that cuts two ways, folks.

Secondly, I'd like to address it with this post, and highlight some of the places where Dorcas really does have good advice. I want to be clear that I don't think that Mrs. Showalter is an evil person. And, with everything I've written here, I don't want to hurt anyone. And I, a mere blog writer who comes up with jokes about religious nuttery in my spare time, have some sense of the monumental effort it must take to produce a book like this. The hours of sweat and labor, and editing and rewriting, and proofs, and whatnot. So to have your work thoroughly shredded as I have done, is probably painful. And that sucks.

But what sucks worse than that is the fact that women all over Mennodom and in other conservative settings are being told that this kind of life is normal. What really sucks is women, (Christian women-- Mennonite women, even) are being maritally raped and told that they have no agency, that they have no say in the matter, that when they said "I do," they have no more right to say, "not now," or "not that," or "not here," or just plain "no." When I hear stories of women agreeing, because "if I did, then he wouldn't force me." And when you see a book that's promoting all these ideas, while also having some really great secondary points, it brings to mind the Golden Rule of Advertising my father taught me: "What the large print giveth, the small print taketh away."

Today's post is going to spend some time looking at some of the "large print" in the book. I'm going to spend some time looking at quotes that are really good and wholesome. But, fair warning, I'm also going to point out how the small print takes it away.

Here's an example of one of the good passages in the book. Almost anyone who is married has experienced this and has to navigate it. In fact, John Gottman says that this is the deciding issue that divides successful couples from unsuccessful couples: how they handle conflict.

According to his research, 69% of a couple's disagreements are unresolvable. They are on-going disagreements based on who the couple are as people, and when you marry a person, you marry their set of problems.

And she is correct about the nagging and criticism and so forth. Gottman identifies criticism, stone-walling, defensiveness, and contempt as the Four Horseman of the Apocalypse, as far as marriage is concerned. If a couple is going to have a successful marriage, the information in this passage must be reckoned with.

However, this comes at the beginning of a chapter entitled "When Your Love Is Betrayed," and the very next paragraphs discuss actual unfaithfulness, dishonesty about prior relationships, and untrustworthy actions.

The problem here is that there is a conflation of the marriage problems everyone has and abuse. (Because infidelity is abuse.)

The author doesn't make it clear that this is not a difference of degree, it is a difference of kind. And a woman in an abusive relationship with an unfaithful husband reading this is likely to put herself on the marriage continuum, just toward the Bad Marriage side, rather than realizing it's not the same thing.

(As shown on this handy-dandy change I made just for you.)

And without a clear understanding of this key difference in the nature of relationships, even good things can be really damaging, because if you are on the Abusive Marriage continuum, none of the "rules" work. The rules are merely tools for greater control and dominance, rather than for life and flourishing as the Lord intended.

It doesn't help that later in the same chapter, she quotes the verse, "Servants, be obedient to your masters" as a template for relating to difficult husbands.

Now let's look at some other passages from the chapter entitled "Intimacy in Marriage."

Seriously, this right here is downright wholesome, and it lines up with the best relationship science currently available. Couples who take time to remember the roots of their relationship often find the spark to rekindle that old flame, and one of the antidotes to the Four Horsemen is fondness and admiration. This is truly good stuff!

And so is this... (mostly)

I could have done without the part about physical satisfaction making him grateful, and just hearing, "You're the woman he loves, because he loves you." But overall, this passage is also really wholesome.

She goes on to discuss simple ways to make yourself feel pretty and attractive.

Once again, though, the problem is that this is in the middle of a chapter that explicitly suggests that a woman is, at least in some sense, responsible for keeping her husband from straying to cheap, unsatistfying relationships or pornography, and the means for that prevention is keeping him sexually satisfied at home.

I will probably quote some of those troublesome passages later, but today, I'm trying to demonstrate my twin theses, namely: 1) No, the book isn't all bad, and 2) But the good stuff is overwhelmed by the bad stuff.

Anyhow, so here's the problem I have. I'm truly looking for more good stuff, and so much of it is standard fare, and there's a good point tucked in here or there, but it's nothing really new, and there aren't really passages I can find. (Also, I keep getting distracted by the really shocking stuff.)

Here's a highlights reel:

Social media makes you discontent. Yeah, maybe.

Reading mommy blogs is bad, because it gives you mom guilt, and you'll be tempted to stop hitting you kids, and besides, women should likely not have blogs anyhow. (Mommy guilt is real, and the worst.)

And there's a theme of slowing down and taking time for yourself and spending it with your kids, which is wholesome, too.

Once again, there's really good advice here, and I think it's a necessary corrective to much of the literature in conservative Anabaptism that pushes women to do more, sacrifice more, and minimizes the value and importance of self-care.

Yes. This book has good things in it.
But I feel, as I have already expressed, that the good things are far out-weighed by the dangerous things.


For a wife in a healthy marriage to read this book might actually be beneficial, because she could sort through the problematic areas, and she's on the Normal Marriage Continuum.

But for the woman who really needs a book on how to flourish in her marriage, this book is pure poison.

Until next time!

The HFKAP gives us only one actual surprise in his behavior as described here. He doesn't use it as an excuse to cheat. But that's possibly because he was already doing that.

Sometimes, as I peruse this book, I ask myself, "If this is supposed to make her husband look good, what on earth would the book say if she wanted him to look bad?"

She goes on how to describe how confused her husband was as she wanted him one moment, and shoved him away another. This is typical of emotional distress, and difficult in the most stable of relationships, for sure.

Then...

Can you feel it? That sense of impending doom? She's actually coping, right? She's holding it together, she's not crying all the time, spilling hot tears all over his freshly burnished armor, she's doing what she needs to around the house. You know this can't last, right? You know what's gonna happen?

Warning: To those of you who are sky-diving, please pull the ripcord before reading this next paragraph. (I like to imagine that 1) my readers have more exciting lives than I do, and 2) my readers love my articles so much that they can't stop reading them. I think probably one of those it true.)

You wicked, vile, perverse son of Belial! You know why you're a son of Belial?
I'll tell you why, you son of Belial!

1) When she cries, you don't like it.
2) When you behave badly, you want her to ignore it.
3) When she's depressed and weepy, it baffles you.
4) When she doesn't keep up with the housework it angers you.

And, of course, this is all her fault.

So then, when she
1) starts smiling again, and stops crying
2) actually ignores your bad behavior, and isn't fazed by any of it
3) is able to keep up with life,
you don't like it, because it's fake.

You wicked son of perdition, that's all you've ever wanted is a fake wife, who pretends everything is OK, when it isn't, and doesn't show you her true self, and doesn't inconvenience you in any way, and if that's all you were, you wouldn't be a son of Belial, just an immature boorish human being, but there would be some kind of hope for you, because there's some shred of humanity there, but you?

You're different. You know how?

Because, when she finally is happy and actually stops doing all the things that supposedly drove you into the arms of another woman, instead of being happy about it and for her, you want her to go back into the darkness.

It's like you want a broken wife, and that's sick, and that's why you are a wicked, vile, perverse son of Belial.

Anyhow, after she gets off the pills, her kid falls, and CPS gets involved, and their kids get taken away until it gets sorted out. And then they get ordered into marriage counseling and...

And this is why there are a lot of people out there who don't have a lot of faith in marriage counseling.

And then things get worse. So bad that I don't have the guts to do anymore today.
Sorry for the paucity of jokes. I hope the blog was what it needed to be for you.

Yes, you read that right! (I hope you weren't sipping your morning coffee when you read that part.)

This whole thing was her husband's idea.

Now, I don't know about you, but if I was this kind of person, and my wife was planning on writing a book about her experiences, I would either move to the Moon, or ask her not to. I certainly wouldn't encourage her to show my entire hindquarters to the aggregate Mennonite population of North America.

Yet here we are.

Also, I have to point out how jarring and disassociative the switch from first person to third person is there. 

Challenge accepted.

And that's the end of the introductory fairy tale.

This next section drops the Maiden/Prince thing, and talks in a little clearer detail about the first few years of marriage.

And, it honestly feels that when they were booting up the Marriage Game program for the first time, they picked the "Hard Mode" right out of the gate. Multiple moves, multiple kids, changes galore. Difficult even for the well-adjusted people, and HFKAP doesn't strike me as particularly well-adjusted.

For the rest of this series, I'm going to be pretty selective in my direct quotations for a few reasons.

Reason 1: I'm only on page 9, at this rate, we're looking at (checks calculator) 112 posts, and my dopamine stores are gonna run out long before that. 

Reason 2: Typing out long quotes from the book is the most boring part of writing these articles. 

Reason 3: I want to focus on the overall flow of the book, and its abominable errors, and there are key quotations that bear that out, so I'll use those, but there's a lot of extraneous details that don't add to my overall goal here. 

Reason 4: If you want to read the book, just go get a copy of your own. Be sure to get a jumbo bottle of ibuprofin and a pillow to scream into while you're out.

But, there are some things that are so absolutely insane, that I must give them to you as printed in the book. As always, these are in quote boxes. OK, let's continue.

Testimony Time:

The author describes her experience with God, and some of her spiritual struggles with devotions before marriage. She says she hardly opened her Bible, except to go to church. And then, after being married, what with housework, the HFKAP and his myriad demands, and three babies in three years, there just wasn't the emotional space.

This is monumentally sad, but it's also kind of hilarious, because it's like a surfer writing, "Somewhere on the ocean that day, as I floated past the Hawaiian Islands, I realized I was drifting further and further from Seattle."

She describes wanting to be kind, and wishing her tears would dry up, and her frustration that tears and nagging didn't work to change her circumstances. (Because nothing will make an abusive person change unless they want to change.)

And she came, eventually, to see herself in serious need of help and repair. And this is the problem. Because most of us are in need of those things, but it's not an excuse for people to mistreat us, and when they do, wrong on them.

Apparently there was a Warring Prince out there someplace that she never mentioned?

This is the result of that wicked pernicious heresy that all sin is equal in the eyes of God. And this fuels abuse like almost no other teaching I know.

In essence, the author is saying that because she was not perfect in every way, she had no right to take issue with her husband's unfaithfulness to her. And, as best I can tell, the only "disrespect" she showed him was that she wasn't OK with him breaking his promises to her.

If you are cheating on your wife, you are not the one in the relationship that is doing a better job following God. Some of y'all haven't read the book of Malachi and it shows:

"You cover the LORD’s altar with tears, with weeping and groaning because he no longer regards the offering or accepts it with favor from your hand. But you say, “Why does he not?” Because the LORD was witness between you and the wife of your youth, to whom you have been faithless, though she is your companion and your wife by covenant."

And again:

You have wearied the LORD with your words. But you say, “How have we wearied him?” By saying, “Everyone who does evil is good in the sight of the LORD, and he delights in them.” Or by asking, “Where is the God of justice?”

The Lord doesn't delight in you and your unfaithfulness to your wife, you wayward, faithless Romeo!

So she decides to take stock of her life, because she has failings, too. Like (checks notes) listening to secular music. Which is, I guess, just as bad as texting other women you aren't married to. (And if you actually believe that all that was going on with Warring Maiden was some light texting, I think you're probably too young to be reading this blog. Go ask your mom to put on some Octonauts, ok, buddy?)

But this would come at a price.

As I write these blog posts, I frequently am forced to fight the very real temptation of typing the very first words that come to mind, because this stuff is so wicked, and perverted, and vile, and ungodly, that there are very few words in the English language that are not obscene that express the obscenity of these ideas.

Yes, definitely, a husband who is living in open sin against God, his family, and his wife, has a lot of cause for concern that "his wife might grow more spiritual than him." And, of course, that might make him drift further from what he knows is right. I dunno how you get further from what you know is right, when you're already smashing them Ten Commandments, buddy.

And, of course, such a husband is a very reliable source for what makes a wife Godlike. And notice that there's no discussion whatsoever about what makes a husband more Godlike.

How to become more Godlike as a husband:

Step One: Quit Cheating on Her

Seriously, that's it! One simple step will immediately improve your Godlikeness as a husband, and unless she was cheating on him, too, she was already more spiritual than him, before she started her Bible reading endeavors.

If you are a husband who is not cheating on his wife, I apologize. I can't tell you how to be more Godlike, except to read Ephesians 5, where it says that husbands should "love their wives as Christ loved the Church, and gave Himself for it." That should keep you busy for a few months at least.

And can we talk about how this view of men, and the expectations that this society puts on men is degrading and destructive to everyone around.

It's like that Right to Jail guy from Parks and Rec.

Wife cries too much?
Right to cheating.

Wife doesn't have sex on demand?
Cheating.

Wife acts too "spiritual?"
Right to cheating. Right away.

Laundry not done?
Cheating.

Gives you the cold shoulder?
Cheating.

Meals not cooked?
Believe it or not. Cheating.

"We have the best marriages in the world... because of cheating."

As if men are some frail, fragile, weak, pathetic, powerless sex-bombs, who, if not handled with kid gloves and showered with deepest worshipful admiration, will lose biological, emotional, spiritual, and moral control, and go off in a explosion of rampant cheating- like a manic bull elk in rut, running down every available "Warring Maiden" in the tristate area. But, paradoxically, they are also God's Choice to run the home as Godly Headship Leadership Leaders of Leading and clothed with immense power and dignity from on high: princes, every man Jack of them.

Yes, dear reader, a much better marriage is one in which the wife quietly acquiesces to her husband's coldness and unfaithfulness. As if.

Living in a fetid hole with rabid badgers while your husband is off hunting emus in southwest Australia is preferable to what she's been dealing with. (And it gets worse.)

OK. New rule.

I'm gonna try to make these posts as regularly as I can, because this abyssal swamp of darkness needs a lot of light shined down into it, but I get to quit when it's time to quit. Even if it's really abrupt, and I think I'm about done for today, because if I keep trying to write this, I'm either going to post something I regret later, or else I am going to start throwing things and screaming incoherently.

WHAT IN THE HARRY MEGAN AND MOE IS THIS UNMITIGATED HOGWASH?

For all her Bible reading, she missed all the stories of people's lives being improved by getting criticism, even from women, and sometimes even from their (shocking, I know) OWN WIVES.

If you can't be criticized and critiqued by the person closest to you who knows you best, lest you become bitter and broken-spirited, perhaps you are beyond help.

And then, this...

You're not supposed to be scared of being second place to any woman, if you're married. If your husband is making you feel that way, everything that you feel about it and him is the way God wired you do feel. He's wrong! Not you! Always and forever!

The fact that this came out of a respected publishing house without so much as a raised eyebrow, muttered oath, or coffee-laden spit take is beyond belief. Especially when I read later that (and I know I'm jumping ahead a bit, but my mental health my rules,) 

After all the articles I have read from CLP and similar publishers about how social media and texting are an existential threat to our lives because of how it breaks down the sense of proper reserve between the God-given sex genders, or whatever, where do these guys get off publishing this, and suggesting that any response other than calling what he is doing gross sin in the eyes of the Lord is appropriate?

Where's the church? The bishop? The deacons? With their brows deeply furrowed in kindly concern for his wayward soul? Or do they only show up if it's Netflix on your phone?

This man's frequent, habitual, gross violations of the most basic tenets of Christian marriage are on flagrant display throughout this book, and "ye are puffed up, and have not rather mourned, that he that hath done this deed might be taken away from among you."

It's totally completely beyond me. And there's some deep repenting that needs to be done nationwide, as far as I'm concerned. (and not just Nationwide, either. Pilgrim, Western Fellowship, Beachys, and maybe even BMA could use some too.)

Until next time.

Whoa, camel! Whoa!

Yes, ladies, I want you to listen very carefully now. When your husband is being emotionally unfaithful to you, and physically and emotionally unavailable, and that makes you feel bad, and you respond in less than ideal ways, you need to realize how Oh So Wrong you are.

She never identifies the book as far as I know, but I would bet a significant sum that it was something like Created to Be His Doormat, by What's-her-Face Pearl. (I can't be bothered to look it up right now.) Debby or Diane or Deborah. I think it's a D-name, anyhow.

And this is so typical of the whole schtick. When your husband is wrong, don't focus on that, focus on YOU. Because YOU could always do better, because you are a fallible human, and fallible humans are fallible, so you can never say anything, because you need to do better, mmkay?

Meanwhile, the husband is out cavorting around with Warring Maidens, Conflicting Lassies, Pugnacious Damsels, and Belligerent Senoritas, without so much as a "Wrong on You" and you have to keep schtum, because otherwise, you're making the marriage worse by not showing him the respect due to his reverend name.

And it's really gross.

Now, I think it would be a super garbage argument to make here, but if this book were making the argument that the HFKAP had a bunch of emotional and mental baggage, and didn't know how to handle tears, and so she was trying not to let that be a barrier to increasing their closeness or whatever, I would at least say that this makes a bit of sense. But instead, this is stated as a fact, that women should cry before the Lord, not their husbands, because only unmarried men are attracted by tears.

The problem is that in Ephesians 5, the husband is commanded to love his wife as Christ loves the church, and gave himself for it. So if GOD is wiping away her tears, so ought the HUSBAND to also wipe away her tears. "So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies," the Apostle says, "for he that loves his wife loves himself."

So this teaching contradicts the very framework that it purports to be based on. Wives should be able to share their tears and sorrows with their husbands, especially when he's the cause of them, and if it isn't safe to do that, and if it creates distance, than he's a very insecure little man, and it's not a safe marriage, and hiding the tears just makes it worse.

The unspoken lesson here is that if your husband is being unfaithful to you, then it's your fault, because if you are lovely enough, if you can be sweet enough, then you will draw him back, and, like Loretta Lynn, tell the Warring Maidens in your life that "you ain't woman enough to take my man."

I could go on typing quotes from the fairy tale here, but frankly, it's more of the same.

A few patterns keep repeating themselves. Here's an example.

Step 1: The HFKAP does whatever the heck he wants.
Step 2: Maiden smiles and agrees.

Seriously, they live in six houses in six years, which isn't wrong in and of itself. I've come close to that at times. But the decisions are all depicted as unilateral.

Examples of actual quotes:

"Prince decided they should move again."
"One fall day, Prince announced that they would build a new house."

The inescapable message of this whole story is this: If you have no expectations, if you are willing to have no boundaries, if you are willing to let your husband do what he wants without a peep, even being involved with other women, and using you as a living breathing sex doll, then you can one day smile and say that you have a happy marriage.

The author, at one point, says that she loves being married, but honestly, having read what it took her to get there, I can't help but feel like it's akin to Winston's declaration at the end of 1984 that he loves Big Brother.

Until next time.

OK. One of the things I try to do on this blog is spend a lot of time leavening these heavy subjects with humor, because sometimes laughter is the only thing that truly helps us heal from the insanity of these things, but this right here is freaking heartbreaking, and it's pretty hard to be jokey about any of it.

Here's this woman who's been uprooted twice in less than two years, and had two babies in about that amount of time, far away from almost everyone she knows, with a sick baby who cries non-stop, and her husband chooses this time to start flirting with another woman, and she has to justify it to herself. Tell herself it's just a mistake. He doesn't know how bad it is. He really loves me. Doesn't he? I know he really loves me. It's Warring Maiden's fault for enchanting him. It's my fault for crying and being sick. It wouldn't be this way otherwise, right? Cuz he loves me.

She's not trying to convince us, the readers, of his love for her. In the end, it feels like she's trying to convince herself. Because, and I realize that this is a controversial position to take in some places: If you love your wife, you don't do that kind of thing.

Look, I understand they were young, maybe they didn't believe in birth control, maybe they didn't expect things to be quite this difficult, maybe the second baby was an honest surprise. And yes, many husbands and many couples deal with stresses and strains in their marriages with the arrival of babies, and that's part of growing into it, and I'm open to the possibility of mistakes, because many people make them. But emotionally abandoning the woman who you promised "to love and to cherish from this day forward" and to "forsaking all others keep yourself only unto her as long as ye both shall live" in favor of another enchanting Maiden is not loving your wife.

I'm someone who likes to see both sides of the picture, and give people the benefit of the doubt, but homeboy here doesn't get any benefit of the doubt from me. He gets a great big "Wrong on you!"

Let's assume ad argumentum that Prince was truly as innocent and naive as he's made out to be here, and that his intentions in regard to Warring Maiden were pure and wholesome, and his wife truly was making a mountain out of a mole hill. (If you believe this, it is highly possible that you also still believe that a fat man who lives above the Artic Circle flies his herd of magical caribou around the world and delivers presents in honor of the solstice, ho ho hoing all the way.)

But let us set aside our cynicism for a few brief moments, and consider this possibility. Even if that's true, this man looked into the tear-streaked face of his overwhelmed exhausted wife, the woman he loved, as she begged him to walk away from Warring Maiden because she didn't like it and it made her anxious, and he ignored her. And then he (directly or indirectly) blamed her tears for increasing the distance between them.

OK, I'm gonna need that cynicism back now. This guy is horrible.

If he were truly acting in good faith, he would have told her, "Look, you don't have anything to worry about. She's a good friend and that's all. But I know things are really overwhelming for you right now, and I'll back off from my friendship with her if that will help you feel better, because nothing in the world matters to me more than you, and it looks like you need some extra attention right now." Or words to that effect.

The story goes on to describe that eventually the baby stopped crying all the time, and things got better and they were happier, but...

Sorry to break out so soon, but have you noticed that not even once ever has she mentioned Prince fighting for his marriage? Like, why's she got to be the one fighting for it, especially what with him being the Prince and all.

This is unprecedented, but I am going to have to award Prince a second "Wrong on you!" for this one. 

Never in the history of By Thy Words have we awarded two "Wrong on Yous" in a single article, but that's unfortunately necessary with this level of wrongness.

Let's continue.

I could have plainly affirmed that the reason they moved the last time was to find a church and friends, and now they need to move to be closer to those things. This is all weird. But maybe the story is complicated and there's good reasons for it, so we'll not speculate too much.

But that's not the worst of it. Oh dear friends, it is not the worst.

This princess makes matters worse by crying. Yes. You read that right! She sheds tears, and when she does it makes the prince Big Mad. And so, as the story tells, the prince begins to build himself a suit of armor to protect himself and his heart from her tears and associated scary emotions.

The fairy tale doesn't come right out and say that it's the princess's fault, but it's heavily implied. And so, dear readers, it would behoove us amid the relationships in which we find ourselves, to hold back our tears, lest we harden the hearts of those who love us best.

And then, when the baby was just a few weeks old, the husband (I can't do this fairy tale thing anymore, OK?) tells his wife that they are going to move, and that she has to go through everything that they have, because what doesn't fit in a trailer has got to go, because they are going to move from Ohio to Oregon. And so, in about eight weeks, if I understand the chronology correctly, they did.

Now I have moved a lot, including with fairly short notice, and I can tell you that it is not a fun time. And, far be it from me to be too critical, but what's up with that? His wife had just come out of a difficult pregnancy, and now he's going to make her pack up the house and move? This vignette gives us an example of the kind of thoughtful decision-making that this princely man uses as he leads out in the home.

While they are on the way to Oregon, the job falls through (as they are wont to do), and so the husband "took charge" (the book tells us), and decides that they will live in Idaho at his sister's empty house, while he figures out what to do next. It just SO HAPPENS that this is the area he grew up in, so it's all cool, and they settle in.

I do not wish to put too fine of a point on this thing, but I cannot help but find this whole tale just a tad convenient. The sudden move, the disappearing job, and the conveniently available house?

I am not going to come right out and call him a narcissist, but I am going to point out that I have noticed similar behavior patterns in people who were and leave it at that.

Anyhow, the new house apparently didn't have Internet, because surprise! they soon discovered that there was another baby on the way. And again, our heroine was sick, but this time she was isolated and alone, far from family and friends, with no one close at hand, but her princely husband and his family, and she often found herself, in her sick and weak state, lying on the couch and weeping.

And you know what happened then. Her prince of a man got Big Mad and started putting more layers of metal on his armor. Also, he pointed out that a) she had joined him on the journey out there, and b) it wasn't his fault the job fell through.

I am sure that this is something all of us are aware of, but for those who may not be, I want to use this as a teachable moment. If something happens that makes you sad, and it is not someone else's fault, then you should not cry. This is why there are no tears at most funerals.

Yes, he loved her! Of course he did! But "those tears did things to him that he did not like." (That is what the book says.)

And then the book says, (and here, I would like to recommend that you pull over and put the car in park before you continue reading) "Maiden became so wrapped up in the sadness of missing her friends and her mother and the effort of taking care of Baby. She was so wrapped up in herself that she didn't realize that her tears were making trouble in Paradise. In fact, that was the reason Prince started spending longer days and more evenings with his two brothers."

Yes. Maiden Princess Author Lady was definitely wrapped up in herself, in stark contrast to her sacrificial husband, and if only she had made a more sincere effort to be a complete doormat, their happy days of marriage may have continued. This is basically the overall message of this entire book, as we will continue to see again and again.

Then, that princely hunk of a man she was married to decided that it was time to move again, after four months in Idaho, which is really messing with my mind, because they moved to Idaho when the baby was ten weeks old, and shortly after they arrived in Idaho, they discover she's pregnant and then they move four months after arriving. Is anyone noticing some things about this timeline?

If I didn't have the book to tell me what a great guy this husband was, I'd be forced to conclude that he was kind of a jerk.

Our author lady is too sick to pack, so her sister-in-law and her brother-in-law's girlfriend come pack up the house for them. The reason for this move is so that they can find "a church, friends, and a doctor for Maiden," which strikes me as weird, unless her husband's family didn't go to church. I realize people's lives are complicated, but I'm just blown away by the amount of stress this marriage was under from the very beginning.

FORTUNATELY, the book puts out in the very next paragraph that they were still very much in love, which was honestly a relief, because she really had me worried there.

Sadly, there were dark clouds looming on the horizon in the form of (dun dun DUN!) WARRING MAIDEN. The book describes her as "another younger maiden with evil intentions trying to enchant Prince with her charms."

And unfortunately, it is here that I must leave you. Hopefully, the suspense of waiting for the next edition of this series isn't too much for you! Let me leave you with assurances that the Prince totally definitely really loved his wife, so you probably don't need to worry. Right?

Until next time!

As you can see, Ed doesn't mind using the Bible to establish his own authority. His beliefs barely differ one whit from the teachings of the churches that he left. It's merely a matter of who gets to wield the power.

Ed claims to believe in the individual conscience, but refuses to honor Rosemary's conscience, or to ask her what she feels God would have her to do.

And this is another bitter irony in this book, and in these church dynamics. Ed has left the church's "scriptural authority" to follow the dictates of his individual conscience, and the church is appalled by it. And if Rosemary were to leave Ed's "scriptural authority" to follow the dictates of her conscience, he would have the same reaction as they did.

In this exchange, Ed becomes what he claims to hate. 

In the next chapter, Paul and his sister Joy visit Rosemary in Florida, after she has lived there about four months.

Look at what's going on here.

Submission (defined as rolling over and playing dead) is depicted as the ultimate good here.

Despite the fact that Ed is acting like a petty tyrant, and refusing to let his adult daughter make her own life decisions, due to his own financial considerations (he needs her to work at their bakery), and the wholesome beautiful thing for Rosemary to do is to quietly submit herself to that, and to put her own life, and her own personal development aside and bake cookies for the family business.

And Paul encourages it.

If I were a cynical person, I might point out that maybe Paul realizes that should their relationship result in marriage, she will offer him the same feudal deference. (Oops! I guess I'm a cynical person.)

And (pardon the spoilers), the worst thing about it is that the story makes it abundantly clear that it isn't God's will for Rosemary to stay in Florida.

Later on (and we'll get there), God makes Rosemary so sick that she almost dies, and it isn't until Ed promises to let her go to Hope Haven that she recovers at the very door of Death. (It seems like it might have been more just to make Ed sick instead, but far be it from me to question the workings of the Almighty.)

So this whole submission to "the will of God" is just submission to the dictates of a tin-pot tyrant quoting Bible verses to shut her up, contrary to the will of God, and God has to majorly intervene so that she can actually do His will.

And this is always the logic that they use. "Well, it's God's will that you submit to your authorities, and you can trust God to intervene if He has a different thing in mind."

Submission is foremost, and following God is secondary. Yet, the Muslims, the Baptists, the Catholics, the Mormons, and the Presbyterians are supposed to stop submitting to their unbiblical church leadership, and become Mennonites, without waiting for their church to be OK with it, so as always, submission only applies when you are submitting to them.

I think it's pretty obvious that Ed is one of these tedious people who is making up different ways of doing things just to establish himself as more spiritual than the next person. The world is absolutely full of people like this.

And I don't know exactly the kind of veiling that Rosemary's mother is wearing, but I can't imagine it's any less like the veilings worn in Biblical times than semi-transparent, cap-shaped, pleated, organdy coverings worn by modern Mennonites. You honestly think the Corinthians wore European cap-style coverings?

But, of course, any departure from the EsTaBLiShEd PrAcTiCe cannot be OK.

A true Mennonite horror story

The story now leaps ahead to show Rosemary's parents in the hospital, desperately afraid. Rosemary has spinal meningitis, and has been sick for weeks. It's clearly a supernatural occurrence, because the doctors are mystified. She isn't responding to medication, and they've given up all hope.

The doctor leaves, telling them to pray, because that's the only thing left to be done.

This view of God is so prevalent and so weird.

Bad things are going to happen in life, and if you are conditioned to believe that they are the result of God's displeasure, every time something bad happens, you will suspect the last uncertain decision you made was the one that set Him off.

Also, the God who behaves this way is so strange and capricious. He could have done any number of things to get Ed's attention, or even prevent the whole situation to begin with.

He could given Brother Oscar meningitis, or he could have talked to Ed in a dream and set him straight, or He could showed Ed the perilous path his family was on by having Curtis get a rash of tattoos and start trolling people online. But instead, he smites the ONE PERSON in the WHOLE FAMILY who is really trying to follow Him with a life-threatening illness, to teach her dad a lesson.

Rosemary has begged God to intervene, and wished desperately to be showed the way, and all the people in her life have been thorns in her path, and God smites her.

This isn't really that God of love I keep hearing people talk about. And this isn't really the way God operates.

But we all write out of our own beliefs, and this is the God they serve.

In the movie version, the Kathryn walks out of the room, Ed (played by Eugene Levy) staring out into the distance, whispering unintelligibly. The camera zooms out to take in the hospital room, with Rosemary lying still. The beep of monitors blends with the frantic whispers, before the scene fades to black.

Till next time.