Atheists & Agnostics
In reply to the discussion: What Happens When Evangelical Virgin Men Get Married? This Secular Female Sociologist Found Out. [View all]Heddi
(18,312 posts)is that he wasn't allowed to ever *ever* be alone with his future wife prior to being married. Never. He said even when they talked on the phone, it had to be in a setting where they were in a room with someone else.
Not a single private conversation ever. Not about what their true feelings were about anything.
Intimacy, it appears, goes far beyond sex and sexuality.
So he never got to find out what her ideas were about sex, and she never got to hear his plans for post-wedding-night coitus.
I think, like this very short article shows, there isn't any preparation for the reality of human bonding and sex an intimacy---the good and the bad---by these "abstinent only, no hand holding, only satan likes to have private conversation" bullshit artists. It's like "Once upon a time you were born then you got married, the end"
The issue, as Warpy points out above, isn't that the sex wasn't 24 hours a day after marriage---Yes, that's not a reality for most couples. The issue is that there was no way for the conversation of sex, sexual desires, sexual limitations, sexual expectations, to even be discussed prior to marriage. And now that they're married, it's too fucking late. Too fucking late to do anything about it, and too fucking late because there STILL isn't any way for them to talk about it.
I feel like they never knew an "intimate" relationship. Every aspect of their courtship and getting to know you bullshit of dating was all within the confines of another person within armsreach and earshot. Maybe that's a metaphor for God in their lives? Who the fuck knows.
But they never got to fight. They never got to say what they really felt. They never got to say the nasty, unacceptable, rude, fart-in-public shit that people generally SAY when you're engaged or when you're dating.
That's what I think is the problem with this---not just Jake or whatever fake name I gave him---but to all these relationships like this. They're unrealistic. And they set you up as if the person you "Dated" (not really dated, just hung out with while other people were around making sure you didn't get any hanky panky going on) was the TRUE person you were going to marry.
My husband and I had relationships before we met each other. We had long term, short term, long distance, live in, one-night-stands, friends with benefits....by the time we met each other, we at least knew what we wanted out of our partner. We were still young and figuring out what we wanted out of life, but we were able to spend time together. To see each other's bad sides, and good sides, and every-other-day normal side. We were able to have arguments and fight and find boundaries. We spent the night together and eventually moved in together. We were able to see whether one of us snored too loud (that's me!) or doesn't flush after a number 2 (deal breaker!) or likes some freaky kink.
In the end, when we decided to get married (3 years after dating), it was with utter confidence that we could theoretically spend the rest of our lives together. We had seen each other at our best, and at our worst, and at our most mediocre. We had been through tough things, and through good things, and through easy things. We knew how to make a budget. We knew how to argue.
And we knew we were ready for marriage because we were willing to look at that whole big picture of talks and late nights and things I'd never told anyone and things he'd never told anyone and the good and the bad and say "yeah, I can deal with that part, I like that part, I'm willing to overlook that part, and we're working on that part."
I feel like Jake and his wife---and millions of other couples like them---had none of that. They had a facade of what each other was like. And their "marriage" is what I consider dating. The REAL getting to know you. Only now they can't. They don't know how. Too much to lose if they do.
It's unhealthy, I think. It's setting yourself up for failure, or misery, or both