For Young Couples in Patriarchal Wastelands

This post could be considered an extension of The Only Advice I Know To Give. In that post, I dealt with the issue of young women leaving patriarchal homes - whatever their reasons. In this post, I want to deal with young couples in situations like the one I was in - desiring relationship and marriage against the will of the patriarchal fiefdom.


Nothing that follows is said lightly...



My advice in a nutshell - If you love each other and want to spend your lives together, go get married. You're already blessed. If you're satisfied in your own faith about the relationship, go get married. Go to the courthouse or go to Vegas if you have to, but go get married.


No amount of discussion, reasoning, or "talking it out" is going to win you the "blessing" of the patriarch. Only the complete submission of the young man involved will do - and even that's no guarantee in a system founded on tyranny, religious paranoia, and knee-jerk reaction (if the patriarch - or matriarch in some cases - doesn't like him, he's out, submissive or not). Rest assured the patriarch and patriarchal family will desire and request numerous "meetings". These meetings will be full of religious guilt, emotional manipulation, chock full of the symptoms of religious addictions, and their purpose is definitive: subdue and/or destroy. Let me repeat that: The purpose of these meetings is to subdue and/or destroy.


This is where I may part ways with some of you...I suggest the couple have ONE meeting with the patriarchal parents - to announce intentions. If this announcement meets with resistance, trust me when I say there's no hope for a peaceful resolution, and at this point the couple must become the adults, the "parents", in the situation, and set FIRM boundaries (something along the lines of "This is how it's gonna be. You can either be a healthy part of it, or get left out of it, but you aren't changing it, because this is how it's gonna be."). The tricky part of this is that it requires the young woman to stand strongly upon these boundaries. She'll have to be firm in every way she's been indoctrinated to believe is wrong. This has to come from her. From the young man alone, it'll simply be dismissed. 


If FIRM, solid boundaries aren't set, and even worse, if additional meetings are planned, the couple is opening the door to an enemy that seeks only their destruction as a couple. As long as you give them your ear, as long as you give them a platform to voice their opinion about your relationship, you're saying without saying "It's still possible for you to destroy us." You ARE saying that. You're enabling their religious addiction and inviting emotional abuse. Don't give them even a GLIMMER of hope that they can move you. Shut them down. Shut them down entirely.


Reminder: Their ONLY goal is to subdue and/or destroy.


They'll recruit others to spread their message to you, covering you with religious guilt and emotional manipulation. SHUT THEM DOWN IMMEDIATELY with "This is how it's gonna be. You can either be a healthy part of it, or get left out of it, but you aren't gonna change it, because this is how it's gonna be."


Reminder: Their ONLY goal is to subdue and/or destroy.


Never, ever, enable your enemies to fight you. Never. And make no mistake, regarding your relationship/pending marriage, they are its enemies.


Enabler: one that enables another to achieve an end 


Remember, your relationship with your beloved is about the two of you and God. Don't play games. Remove the power of all opposing voices by reminding them of as much. The only power they have is that which you give them. Give them none. They have no right to stewardship over something that belongs to you and God.


{CLA}They will want this to become a power struggle, to use a crude term - a game of "Who's the bitch?" - willing to reduce every person involved to the lowest primal forms of humanity if necessary to get their way. Patriarchy is built on a power/authority structure. For patriarchy to survive, that structure must be protected. You are now the enemy. They'll do whatever they have to, to whomever they have to, raising whatever emotional hell they have to, to get their way. The truth will become fluid and expendable, right and wrong will become malleable and expendable, and your heart and desires (which are expendable from the beginning in this paradigm) will be expended. Everything you've never thought your parents would be, they'll be. Everything you've never thought your parents would do, they'll do.


Reminder: Their ONLY goal is to subdue and/or destroy.


You aren't gonna have a storybook, fairytale wedding involving all of the people you've always hoped to have involved. The religious addiction of the patriarchal parents assures this. It's likely the patriarch will refuse to walk the daughter down the aisle. These are things you're gonna have to accept. You can still have a beautiful ceremony, if a ceremony is what you want - as long as you can come to terms with the fact that much, maybe most, of the bride's family and circle won't be involved. Young couples...remember, your wedding is about the two of you, not about your families.


It's a MASSIVE mistake to delay the wedding until peace or healing can be achieved. Why?...


Reminder: Their ONLY goal is to subdue and/or destroy. Never enable them.


If you love each other and are committed to each other, you, as a couple, are the priority. Keep your relationship on solid ground, defend it against ALL comers, solidify its health, and stand firmly in the liberty of Christ before pursuing healing with opposing parties. Go get married, solidify the relationship, and only then can you legitimately work on healing. Healing may be possible (some family situations have improved after the marriage), or it may not be possible - and you need to accept that it may not be possible.


Keep in mind that I'm not telling you to devalue the individuals in your family and life. I'm suggesting that you recognize things as they are, recognize evil as evil, wrong as wrong, regardless of who it may manifest through, and devalue the perceived and false power over you that these people will make every attempt to claim and cling to. Be led by the Holy Spirit. Not by guilt, not by addiction, not by daddy, not by daddy's friends.


Don't be an enabler. My ex was...and it destroyed something beautiful. It will. Everytime. Guaranteed.


Regarding continuing discussions with opposing patriarchal parents, I've written about Religiousness and Imbibling in the past, and recently, I posted the piece on the symptoms of Religious Addiction and on what an Imbibled Marriage looks like. Patriarchy and Alcoholism are kissing cousins. Many of the behavioral patterns are the same and most of the dysfunctions are the same. Today I came across a 12 question "Are you an enabler?" quiz that dealt with alcoholism, and one of the questions literally leaped off the page when I read it...


"Have you tried drinking with the alcoholic in hopes of strengthening the relationship?"


Take that same question and apply it to Imbibling. To debate the bible with an imbibler is a waste of breath. You won't move them. Ever. For starters, where patriarses are concerned, they would have to betray the paradigm to which they've sold their souls to admit that you, who should be submissive to them and an underling, have a better understanding of the scriptures than they do, and it'd be like trying to take their bottle away from them. Biblical debates are the nirvana of the legalist. It's like trying to hold an intervention for an alcoholic in a bar - at happy hour. Wasted effort. Despite your good intentions, you become an enabler.


Nothing, NOTHING, good will come from attempting to "talk things out" with patriarchal parents. There's only acting against their will or submitting to them. There's no in between. They have a religious sickness, and unless God miraculously heals them...just go and get married.


Reminder: Their ONLY goal is to subdue and/or destroy.


Don't enable them.


To young women in these situations, you're gonna need to be strong, and in many instances, take the lead in dealing with these things. To young men in these situations, if the young woman absolutely won't stand strongly with you, the relationship has no chance, and you should end it for your own sake.


More information about enabling addiction can be found here, here, and here. While these deal with drug and alcohol issues, the behaviors, dysfunctions, and co-dependencies are much the same.


Standing up to your parents' unhealthy addictions is in NO way dishonoring to them.