Respect them as children of God? Of course. And I know that it is impossible to really KNOW what anyone's circumstances are--the way they were rasied, what the totality of their life experiences are--therefore we cannot judge.
Well, how generous of you. You respect them as “children of God”. Of course, this phrase becomes less meaningful when you realize that, under Mormon theology,
every human being on the face of the earth merits that kind of “respect”, even Hitler.
But they were “unwise”. This is another one of your statements that leads me to doubt you’ve studied abuse in particular. Abusers are predators, and, like any predator, are very cunning about choosing their victims. They’re going to target individuals whom they sense may be easier to manipulate, train, and control. Was it being “unwise” that led these future victims to this state?
Of course, you rush to include that we can’t KNOW life’s circumstances – after all, there may be something in their background that means they shouldn’t be JUDGED for ending up the victim of abuse. For example, maybe their culture, say in the form of their religion, teaches them to forgive over and over and over, and teaches them that divorce is very close to sin, if not actual sin. Perhaps they are taught, by their culture, to look for advice from other authority figures, and maybe those authority figures actually don’t have the slightest clue about the cycle of abuse, so give horrendous advice. Maybe they’ve been taught that their marriage covenants are the most sacred promises made before God, and should not be disregarded even there is any hope for marital redemption. And, of course, they keep being assured by the abuser that THIS time they will change, it won’t happen again, and besides, some of it really WAS their fault.
Implicit in your statement that one should refrain from JUDGING the victims of abuse is the idea that some could
rightfully be judged, by God, at least.
I have to say, it’s very easy for someone who has never experienced abuse to be glib about the “unwise choices” of those who have experienced it. Patricia Evens, in her books on verbal abuse, made clear that, in her research, there are no common factors in victims of abuse that one could call “unwise choices”. But I guess it makes you feel better to tell yourself it’s due to their “unwise choices”. But since you’re big on accountability, will you hold the authority figures who have given horrendous advice to victims of abuse accountable as well? Or how about institutions that place them in positions where people are
encouraged to view these authority figures as having the insight and ability to help them with difficult life issues? Or the highest leaders in those institutions? And how about God? Are you going to hold God accountable for the fact that he apparently wasn’t willing to convey
clear information to those people who act in his name, in order to help alleviate such vast human suffering?
Do I think they have made unwise decisions? Of course, I do. Research indicates that abuse begins very early in a relationship. Long before marriage, children. Do I think there was the opportunity early on to get out when getting out is relatively easy? Of course.
Oh, do tell me. Why would women make the “unwise decision” to stay with an abuser before having children, when the ‘getting out is relatively easy’? I really want to know why you imagine they do this.
The only mixed message comes from the victims. They want out but they choose to stay because they want other things more. I am not saying those other choices are not valid. Protect the children from abuse, they want to keep their present financial status rather than ADC,etc.
You are giving mixed messages about victims of abuse right now, and have done so throughout this thread. You “respect” them as “children of God” – just like you would have to respect their abusers, by the way – and you generously refrain from “judging” them because you don’t have all the information you need to judge.
Let me tell you, charity, these victims of abuse are stronger than you could ever imagine from your patronizing perch as someone who has never experienced abuse. They find a way to survive every single day, and to help their children survive. They aren’t weak. They always had a spine. They – like the rest of our culture, including YOU – just don’t understand the dynamics of abuse and keep hoping they can do SOMETHING to make it change – OR they realize the risks of exit are too great.
It’s almost a form of magical thinking, like child victims of parental abuse often develop. To accept that you have NO CONTROL over something so horrific that keeps happening is a fate worse than death. So they pretend they have control. They pretend if they’re perfect enough, then it won’t happen. Or if they do X, Y, and Z, it won’t happen. To really accept that the person who supposedly loves them more than anyone else in the world would do this to them for NO GOOD REASON is just too frightening a reality to accept. So they prefer magical thinking.
I’m going to share more of my own story, in the hopes of helping you understand. Up until my marriage, I had not experienced abuse, so knew nothing about how it works. When I became LDS as the age of 19, I became immersed in a culture that highly praised marriage and children, chastity, and the possibility of repentance, change, and forgiveness for ALL sins. I became immersed in a culture that taught me to view certain men as authority figures, who had the God-given “right” to be a steward of some sort over me. I became immersed in a culture that valued marrying other believers, in the temple, and viewed the covenants made the temple as the most serious promises one can make in this life.
Living in the “mission field”, there weren’t many eligible Mormon boys to begin with. So our dating pool was very small. My ex-husband actually counseled with the stake president and got names of eligible females in the stake, since there weren’t many in his hometown. My name was the top of the list, so he called me. I was quite willing to go out with him. He was a worthy Mormon, RM, temple recommend holder, and the stake president obviously thought he was a decent guy, else why give him my name? So we went out, had a great time. He was charming, very easy to talk to, very committed to the church and God. The attraction between us was incredibly strong, so strong it was difficult to refrain from going beyond kissing to touching. We decided, with the approval of our parents and church leaders, to expedite getting married to avoid sinning beforehand. We were madly in love, we were both active and temple recommend worthy, and according to what I’d been taught by the church, that was good enough. We knew each other exactly three months by the time we got married in the temple, and
such brief engagements are not unusual in the LDS culture. In fact, young people were encouraged by their leaders to avoid lengthy engagements. Like I’d been taught to do, I fasted and prayed about marrying him, and had incredibly strong, good feelings about it. Every now and then he’d say something that troubled me, but I didn’t expect perfection in a mate, and was eager to forgive and love.
He began verbally attacking me on our honeymoon. Yes, our honeymoon. Why didn’t I have the sense to leave him THEN and THERE? Because of everything I’d been taught by the LDS culture. I’d made the most serious promises of my life in the temple, and I was going to break those promises so easily??? No way. This was just a “trial”, I could “endure”. Plus, I could pray and God would help me. I loved my husband. I didn’t want to abandon him. I thought he had abandonment issues (he did) and if I could love him steadfastedly enough, he would eventually stop this behavior. I prayed and prayed. I received “revelation” telling me it was better to love than BE loved, and God would reward me for my patience. I did not understand abuse, and neither did anyone else around me. I kept hearing that the first years of marriage can be hard, and you just have to stick it out. How did I know what “hard” meant? I went to bishops for help, and none of them indicated that what was happening to me justified ending the marriage. Of course they didn’t, they knew nothing about abuse, either.
So I kept trying, and then accidentally got pregnant. I already could not visualize divorce, so there was no reason not to have children, anyway. I wasn’t going to leave him, I wasn’t going to abandon him, spit on the covenants I’d made before God. No one said it was going to be EASY, only WORTH IT.
You know the real irony? My ex-husband was unusual in that he normally didn’t “honeymoon” me after abuse. Of course his situation is complicated by untreated bipolar, (another thing I had never heard of) as well, so who knows what he really remembered about his own behavior. But when I left the LDS church, he suddenly tried to shape up and began treating me better, began “honeymooning” me between episodes. When I first left the LDS church, he told me “I’ll be the next to go.” So he decided, apparently, that he could not abuse me at will without even trying to behave in between times, because he knew
I would never leave him as long as I was a believer in the LDS church.
The LDS church was my effective jailer, in his eyes. Ironic, isn’t it?
In retrospect, the unwise decision I’d made that enabled me to be trapped in the cycle of abuse was joining the LDS church.