Christians Suck at Consent, Part 2

It gets worse.

Chuck II

The same day all that other stuff happened, another guy messaged me. We'll call him Chuck II, because, again, I don't know anyone named Chuck. Unfortunately for Chuck II, I was on an honesty kick, because of a lack of sleep and what had just transpired with Chuck I.

So when Chuck the Second sidled up to me via facebook messenger and said he was also interested in the project I was working on (translation, "Heyyyyyyyy there"), I told him the truth:

That I felt like he was physically pushy when we dated (we went on two dates total) and that it made me feel disrespected.

His response wasn't great. In fact, it may have filled me with inchoate rage.

Let's go back in time again to a few years ago.

On our first date, we went to coffee. So far, so normal.

At the end of our second date, Chuck II tried to shove his tongue into my mouth after we hugged goodbye. I was taken aback. Again, it felt like it had very little to do with me or with us having a "moment" (I've had moments before. This was not a moment). There were no signals coming from any direction that said, "Now is sexy, sexy make-out time." Was it the bright sunlight of a Hollywood afternoon? The ambiance of the brick walkway in front of my rent-controlled apartment? Who knows.

I pulled away in surprise and soon texted him that I "just wanted to be friends," because apparently things were escalating quickly. He apologized and said he wanted to take things at my pace. I think we settled on something like friends with the potential for more.

The next time we hung out, he was all over me. And when I went to hug him goodbye, he didn't let go of me at first, but instead held me tightly and said, "What if I ask this time?"

And then he pressed me about why I just wanted to be friends as I was about to get into my car to leave.

THIS. This is why.

So when I told Chuck II that I felt like he was physically pushy and he didn't respond well, I got angry.

His response? He wasn't physically pushy—not from his perspective. In fact, he is "hyper-aware of [implied: all] the choices and moves" he makes. Respecting me had been really important to him because he liked me. And I had judged him too quickly.

Not only that—he was hurt that I felt disrespected

Come again? He had violated my personal boundaries—violated my body—but it was his feelings that truly mattered. I had misjudged him. I was wrong, and it was all my fault.

When I said that the conversation was upsetting me and I was ending it, he blithely suggested we meet up for coffee so we could "make amends." And that's when I really lost it.

Again, I felt like a face and a body that a man had projected his wishes and desires onto, not a real person. Hyperaware though he may have been, Chuck II made no mention of being aware of what I was thinking or feeling. I guess he meant, "I was hyperaware that I wanted to kiss you. And so I did."

I felt like a non-entity—Chuck II didn't think he was disrespectful, Chuck II thought he was very respectful. In fact, Chuck II was extraordinarily confident and wildly intentional about all the choices he made during the brief time we dated.

To put it graphically:

Chuck II was more confident about sticking his tongue in my mouth and pressing his boner up against me on a second date than I have ever been about anything in my entire life, ever.

It feels like I'm mocking him (which isn't nice, I know), but I'm actually dead serious: I wish that I had that much confidence about anything—ANYTHING at all—choosing which mismatched socks to wear in the morning, my career, my decision to live in Los Angeles, anything.

With credit to Sarah Hagi for the original version of this

Lack of dating experience or something else? 

It's not like I met these guys on the internet—we met through mutual friends and still have many, many mutual friends. We met in "Safe," "Christian" contexts. They are "nice guys."

It's easy to look at these incidents and think, "Well, maybe he just doesn't have a lot of experience."

I've dated Christian guys like this. They're not always good at dating. They make mistakes. Obviously, not all of them are this bad.

But there's something deeper going on when a guy corners me in his car and almost demands that I give him a chance and go on a date with him (Chuck III?) or when a guy takes my picture after a couple of dates so that he can show his friends a picture of his "girlfriend." Or when a male friend tells me I'm too closed off and judgmental because I don't automatically assume that a stranger who approaches me in parking lot, at night, is safe (because what if he's just a nice guy, standing in front of a girl in the parking lot of Sprouts, asking her for her number, even though all she wanted was to buy some Brown Cow maple yogurt because that sh** is delicious?).

I feel like something is deeply wrong when I'm expected to educate men in their 20s, 30s or even 40s about the fact that women are people too, or when I'm expected to "give a chance" to someone who doesn't even respect me as a real person entitled to make her own decisions.

What doesn't seem to factor into any of these situations is me—my thoughts, my desires, my body, my decisions, my judgment, my intuition.

And I'm tired. I'm tired of feeling like I have to scream "NO" at the top of lungs to get someone to leave me alone. I'm tired of feeling like my pain doesn't have any meaning or significance unless I'm literally bleeding to death or dying of cancer.

I'm tired of being so disconnected from my own body that I only feel the rage of physical violation weeks, months, or years after the fact.

Consent isn't just about sex

Consent is about treating the other person like a person—not a body, not a good-looking accessory, not a blank canvas on which to project fantasies of marriage and children, not a character from a movie—but an actual person.

And these two stories in particular (though kind of funny) have been painful to write about—I've had to sit in it and think about why I felt so violated in the first place.

I've thought about how scary it is for a man to physically grab me out-of-nowhere, against my will, and start tipping me backwards. I've thought about how f***ing scary it is to have someone you don't know very well not let go of you (restrain you) and pressure you for something sexual that you don't want to give. How out-of-control and terrifying it is to feel like in that moment your body is not your own, is out of your control, is in the hands of someone who doesn't even see you.

I don't know how to describe it except to say that it cuts you off from your own physical being. That when you do start to tune back in from the numbness, all you can feel is pain.

It feels like sh**. That's what.

Christians Suck at Consent, Part 1

We've all heard (and in my case, written) about how weird Christians can be about dating.

But I believe it goes much deeper than that.

A couple weeks ago, two different guys messaged me on Facebook after I posted about a project I've been working on.

One of these guys, we'll call him Chuck because I don't know anyone named Chuck, was someone I've had on my DO NOT ENGAGE radar for a long time, ever since I moved to LA five years ago.

You see, we kind of had a thing. Except that this thing was exclusively one-sided.

I had just moved to LA and didn't have very many friends, but somehow Chuck was always available to hang out. I can't really remember the first time he hit on me. He was the brother of a close friend, so I assumed he was safe.

I explained I just wanted to be friends and left it at that. Except, that wasn't enough for Chuck. It wasn't enough the first time. It wasn't enough the second time. Guess what, it wasn't enough the third, fourth, fifth, sixth or seventh time either.

You might wonder why I kept hanging out with this guy. I wonder the same thing. Was I leading him on even though I had explicitly stated that I didn't want any kind of romantic relationship with him?

One night he grabbed me suddenly and tried to dip me for a kiss (this after I had just given my semi-tri-annual "just friends" speech). I was shocked and taken aback. He explained that he was taking notes from the movie "Hitch" where the titular character explains that you go half way in for the kiss and then wait for the girl to go the rest of the way.

I'm not sure which was more disconcerting—that this guy was taking notes on dating and romance from a Will Smith/Kevin James comedy or that physical contact bordering on sexual assault was now somehow considered a move that you pull on someone who has just turned you down.

I stopped hanging out with him (finally). And yet still, he would call me, wanting to go to an event that I had posted on Facebook. Or he would text me, referencing a show that I liked and suggesting that we watch it together.

I felt threatened and alone—how could I explain to anyone else, especially my friends, that I felt harassed by the sweetest, gentlest guy in the world?

It took me a long time, but I eventually got angry. How dare he disregard my stated wishes and boundaries. How dare he GRAB ME AND TRY TO KISS ME.

Back to the present: he messaged me on Facebook asking about working on the project together—and I said, "No." He apologized for his immaturity. I said that I didn't think that not taking "No" for an answer was simply "immature." He apologized for not respecting my boundaries, and then...

HE HIT ON ME.

I kid you not—after I referred to his actions as "more scary than anything else"—he told me I was "beautiful," and wrote, "I never want to take myself out of the running for more." He ended with:

"I will always think of you as a friend, Mulan."

It was too perfect. It wrapped a huge, obnoxiously pink bow on everything.

It proved to me that I could say anything to him, ANYTHING: "F*** you. You disgust me. I hate you. I never want to see you again. I will never, ever date you" and it would not matter one bit. Why?

BECAUSE I DON'T MATTER. I don't even exist to this guy. I am a fantasy, not a real person. I might as well be a two-dimensional drawing from the Disney canon.

So often with Christian men, what I think or feel or desire or say just doesn't matter. All that matters is that he wants me. I'm less a "person" and more a face and a body that he can project his own needs and desires onto.

In the end, I feel strangely justified—because so often women are faulted for "leading him on" or "Obviously, you didn't say 'No' loudly enough or firmly enough for him to get the message."

NO. He violated my boundaries. And it was not my fault.

We whittle women down into finer and finer points—Don't wear that. Smile. But not at the wrong guy—that could get you killed. Don't walk there at that hour. Don't drink. If you must, make sure it's around people that you trust with your life. Don't encourage him. Stop breathing. Why are you breathing? If you would just stop breathing, then he would leave you alone. If you could just—not exist—for a minute. Thanks.

Football, Objectification and Empty Moralism - A Critique

I read an article recently that really bugged me (yeah, this happens a lot). I can't exactly articulate why, but that's what writing is for, so here we are. Welcome. There's coffee and cronuts in the back.

The writing in question is part of a series on Christ and football fittingly titled "Touchdown Jesus." This particular iteration is about 23 year-old NFL player Johnny Manziel, recently in the news for allegedly assaulting his ex-girlfriend—another incident in a brief yet troubled career.

The writer alleges that Manziel's downfall is directly linked to something called "the altar of icon." What is the altar of icon? As far as I can tell, the altar of icon is something sports fans do to athletes when they treat them like celebrities instead of ordinary human beings created in the image of God.

When we treat famous athletes like...famous athletes, we hold them to impossible standards, then grind them down when they fail to meet our unrealistic expectations for perfection and good living.

I think there's a word missing from Dunham's column: "Idolatry." Idolatry is Christian-speak for anything elevated above Christ or the gospel (Hence "Touchdown Jesus").

We (Christians, it's implied) worship the idol of sports celebrity at the altar of icon.

So who is responsible for Manziel's moral and spiritual breakdown? We are:

[. . . ] Objectifying athletes has terrible consequences. When we do it, we neglect the fact that they’ve been created in the image of God. We apply pressure with our scrutiny and a false sense of importance with our praise—and I do mean “praise.” We take men and make them icons, and we all feign surprise when those icons crumble to reveal the decaying remains of a person. It’s a predictable, broken dance, and it yields predictably broken people. (source)

I'm getting tired of moralizing, particularly Christian moralizing, that pretends to say something profound and spiritual yet says nothing at all. Maybe I've done too much moralizing in my lifetime and that's why it irritates me so much.

But I mean, what does this even mean? That by treating Manziel like a celebrity, we drove him into domestic violence and substance abuse? That fame always has a dark side? That something in the core of Manziel's being just couldn't handle being really, really good at something?

There are so many frames of reference we could use to try to understand Manziel's downfall, like mental health, substance abuse, the sports industry, the NFL and domestic violence, etc.

But this particular narrative manages to vaguely condemn the reader as a bad Christian while erasing the real victim:

The "altar of icon" did not hit Colleen Crowley so hard in the head that it ruptured her left eardrum. How hard do you have to hit someone to rupture their eardrum? This question makes me feel sick and sad, and not just for Manziel.

Dunham's "altar of icon" is ultimately just one more form of objectification (I objectify your objectification!)—one kind of story imposed on the tragedy of a real-life human being. It's a sanctified, Christianized objectification, vaguely condemning something that the reader would be hard-pressed to actually identify, let alone fix and change. It's the Christian version of "a string of misfortunes befell a promising young athlete."

And I can't imagine the reader going home and tearing down the altar of icon they have erected in Manziel's honor.

I can imagine condemning violence, not matter what form it takes. I can imagine holding people responsible for their actions. Once again, domestic violence and substance abuse and generally bad behavior is not something that happened to Manziel. Those are his actions, and he is responsible for them.

Isn't that part of what it means, after all, to be created in the image of God?

Flippant Thoughts on Forgiveness / Pain, Part 4

I recently applied for a writing joh. When they asked for a writing sample, I realized all my writing exists at an intensity level of roughly +487,000,000.

Here at the blog, it's all pain and suffering, all the time.

So, instead of titling this "Pain, Part 4," I'm calling it "Flippant Thoughts on Forgiveness." Let's dive headfirst into the shallow end, shall we?

Moo... Photo by bertknot

Forgiveness is hard, particularly when you can barely identify the source of the pain, particularly when you can't even bring yourself to write the words, "I'm hurt" or much, much worse, "I'm still hurt."

That's not how it's supposed to work, is it? I'm not supposed to still be hurt. Forgive and forget. Deal with it and move on. Positive mantra about moving confidently into the future. Hoorah.

This is the pain that never ends, it just goes on and on my friend...

I've found, unfortunately, that ignoring unresolved pain is a lot like ignoring all that C-4 you have buried in the backyard (analogy credit to labullets). It will explode in your face. You will wonder what happened. And then you'll be like, "Oh yeah, remember that time I buried all that C-4 in the backyard? Guess it wasn't as stable as I thought."

My buried pain usually turns into anger.

But why? Why am I so angry?

I'm standing outside the dorms on the second floor landing, watching his light blue pickup pull away from the office, and suddenly, I'm filled with uncontrollable rage. I kick at everything in sight, including a bright orange safety cone. Writing this, I still wonder if it is my fault. If I am a bomb waiting to explode.

I've written before about a traumatic experience that left with me with the kind of pain that doesn't get better. About how I blamed myself for hurting the person who had hurt me.

I actually apologized to him years later for using him as an emotional punching bag. At the time, it felt good to realize and acknowledge what I had done, to have a ready-made slot that I could comfortably slide the experience into, neat and snug.

I can see now how I reframed the experience, making him the victim, myself the perpetrator. I had blamed him unfairly for causing my pain. I projected my pain onto him. I hated him instead of hating my dad. I was angry at him without justification. I refused to forgive him—worse, I didn't want to.

I could label it, "That time I took all my worst inclinations out on an innocent person because I'm broken" and move on.

Telling the Truth

Except, that wasn't exactly the truth. But it made me feel better. I didn't have to alter any of my pre-existing ideas, particularly the one where there was something deeply and indelibly wrong with me.

I mean, what was the alternative? I needed someone or something to blame, and the only person available was me. Because the alternative was too dark to consider:

That what he had done to me was wrong.

That what he had done to me was wrong, though well-intentioned.

That what he had done to me was akin to spiritual, emotional "rape." 

That what he had done to me perpetuated for years the very shame that he sought to heal. 

And in the aftermath, I was left alone, emotionally shattered and unable to breathe.

This is what makes me feel a little sick to my stomach, now that years have passed. It's one thing to drag out someone's deepest shame by force—it's another to blame them for feeling wounded and angry after the fact.

You Need Witnesses

There's that famous passage in Matthew 18 about confronting someone who has sinned. About going back, again and again, trying to reason with the person, trying to get them to see your point of view.

This passage is often used to shame Christians who don't follow this exact procedure in every and any conflict with another believer, such as Christians who complain about Mark Driscoll on the internet, as if the correct thing to do were to show up on his doorstep tomorrow with a Bible and a stack of good intentions. 

But considering it now, I wonder about the part where you bring a friend or two with you as witness.

Because what if the other person refuses to see your point of view or denies that anything happened? ("No! I did not steal your oxen. These are my oxen. I've owned them for years, years I tell you!").

If this happens, you need other people who will stand with you in your truth, who will bear witness to your grievance: 

Yes, you were abused.

Yes, what happened was wrong. 

Yes, that is Buttercup and she is your cow.

Yes, I believe you. 

Yes, you are not imagining things. You are not crazy. 

You can't forgive someone for something that never happened—

I can't forgive him or anyone else if I don't acknowledge and accept the truth of what happened. And I need someone else to bear witness to that truth, someone else who can drown out the accusing voices that tell me that I'm crazy, I'm imagining things, I'm too sensitive, I'm making it all up to get attention, a unicorn gored me and I'm filing a formal complaint.

I've become convinced that forgiveness cannot happen without truth. Healing cannot happen without truth. You don't need the person who hurt you to say, "I was wrong. Please forgive me" but you do need someone in your life to say, "Yeah, I totally get it."

This happened for me last year. And in that moment, I could finally breathe.

Two Sides to Every Story

Like every other kid who grew up in evangelical Christianity, I loved the Focus on the Family radio drama Adventures in Odyssey, an inventive and often hilarious program that taught lessons about such diverse topics as, "Handling the power of media responsibly" and "Dealing with an alcoholic parent."

I can still remember the episode entitled Two Sides to Every Story. A brother and sister are home alone when, in a series of mishaps, their TV catches on fire. Each sibling tells his/her side of the story—each painting his/her own actions in the most saintly light possible, while basically blaming the other for the catastrophe.

My childhood, right here

The episode dramatizes the brother's story, then the sister's story, then what really happened. The lesson of the episode: "Considering another person's point of view."

 It's a good lesson.

I was reminded of this principle when I saw Franklin Graham's response to Naghmeh Abedini and her revelation that her husband, recently released hostage Saeed Abedini, has abused her throughout the marriage (I say "has abused," because the implication is that his abusive behavior is ongoing).

He says,

Other than God, no one knows the details and the truth of what has happened between Saeed and Naghmeh except them. There’s an old saying that there are at least two sides to every story. I can tell one thing for sure—not everything that has been reported in the media is true.

Oh. Okay.

According to Graham, there are certain truths that are simply unknowable—it's a classic, he said, she said, would-you-do-it-if-Jesus-were-in-the-room type of situation.

Unlike God, we were never in the room when Saeed abused his wife, so we can never say for certain that he did—and should therefore withhold judgment.

Graham, however, fails at his own test. Let's break it down, shall we?

"There's an old saying" (older than God?) - Start with a cliche

"...that there are at least two sides to every story." - Transition into irrelevant but profound sounding idiom

"I can tell one thing for sure—" - Wait a minute—you know the truth? You just said it was unknowable. What happened to "Other than God"? Are you God?

"...not everything that has been reported in the media is true" - Aggressive use of the passive voice that sounds like a denial, but actually comes out as an admission: "not everything" means some of it is true, but you refuse to reveal what exactly. Why? What do you have against truth, Franklin Graham, especially since you are apparently in a special position to know it.

The original idiom and the Adventures in Odyssey episode of the same title both teach that there are two sides to every story, and that the truth lies somewhere in between.

However, when it comes to facts, there is only one side to the story. I'm going to put it in the active voice, because I can:

He abused her.
He did not abuse her.

It's that simple. They can't both be true. Abusers and those who defend them use confusing language to divert attention from this True/False binary. It's either/or, not both/and.

Potentially, Graham actually means:

• He abused her, but it wasn't that bad.
• He abused her, but there were extenuating circumstances that either justify or excuse his actions. 
• He abused her, but she deserved it. 
• He abused her, but only emotionally and mentally, not physically. 
• He abused her, but he suffered too, so it's all good.

Alternatively, he is indirectly asserting that:

• He did not abuse her, therefore she is lying.

But he never comes right and out and says that. Because that would make his meaning clear. And nothing is worse than the precise and transparent use of the English language.

Graham asks us to withhold judgment (what with the whole not being God thing), but he himself passes judgment—he goes from "no one knows . . . the truth" to "I can tell one thing for sure—not everything that has been reported in the media is true" or in other words, I know the truth, but I'm not going to say it here.

There's this false sense of balance in "There are two sides to every story," as if you are setting yourself up as the impartial judge waiting to hear both sides of a case. When in reality, Graham means that there is one side to the story, and that is his side, Saeed's side, the abuser's side.

It would be so much more honest to say some version of, "She's a lying, crazy b***."

Now that's a story I've definitely heard before.

Why is Church Cliquey? Part 5

Forgive all the exposition in this post, it feels necessary to set up the stunning conclusion—I made this part of my Why is Church Cliquey? series because this series has turned into the story of my relationship with church. The good. The bad. The heartbreaking.

This is where we're going to get specific. Are you ready? I'm not.

Exposition

Some background: I left my church in 2014 because my ex-boyfriend (who was abusive) went there and also held a leadership position. This wasn't a political statement of any kind—I walked in—I saw him—I walked out. Once I realized he still attended and was also apparently on the same volunteering schedule as me, I never went back.

His presence made a safe place unsafe.

Later that same year, I reached out via email to the leadership at my church. I objected to my ex-boyfriend being in any kind of leadership position, and I said so in my email. I never heard anything back, not even to acknowledge that it was received. 

So there you go. There's not much to it—just my moral opposition to someone that I knew to be abusive serving in a leadership role at my former church. I don't know what I expected, exactly. I have no basis for believing that he ever went on to abuse anyone else at the church, partially because I cut off all contact. 

That was in 2014—fast forward to last year. My old church got a new pastor. I've never met the guy, but I have many friends who still attend the church—let's just say we have a lot of mutual fb friends.

So I was stalking his fb page (like I apparently do) and I saw that he had recommended the book "Love and Respect."

Reader, I got angry.

I know, I know, anger bad. But seriously, I saw red—or more accurately the red and white color scheme of the Love & Respect franchise.

I had never read the book, but I was familiar with its ideas. I had written about how its precepts disproportionately place burdens of shame and fear on women.

Rightly or wrongly, I was angry that the new pastor of my old church was recommending this as a "good Christian book" about marriage, knowing how it skewed toward the subjugation of women.

Then, it got worse.

I talked to my friends about this and they brought up that not only had the pastor recommended the book on his fb page, he had also preached about Love and Respect from the pulpit and AND—he was leading a premarital group that used Love and Respect as the focus.

Clearly, this guy was not just a fan (Love and Respect "liked" his post on fb, so I guess Love and Respect is a fan of him)—he was an acolyte, an evangelist for this particular ideology.

This felt too personal to ignore, like someone bursting into my living room and launching into a diatribe about how all half Asian half white women recklessly abuse semicolons, so I finally read the book. Insert ALL THE SWEAR WORDS here.

It was too perfect, too much of a cosmic coincidence—the church I had left because of an abusive relationship had hired a pastor who preached an abusive ideology.

Why?

On the one hand, I mean, it kind of makes sense. The Christian church has long had a misogyny problem and Christian men are probably just as likely to be abusive as anyone else. I realize, counter-intuitively, that not even my ex-boyfriend's misogyny was "personal"—he likely views all women the same way, not just me—I wasn't the only "bitch," after all.

On the other hand, it makes no sense at all because this is f***ing 2016 and I live in Los Angeles, California. This is the same church that regularly had a woman—yes, someone with ovaries—preaching from the pulpit (much to the chagrin of some members of the congregation). This is the young, hip, hipster church filled with artists, musicians, actors, writers. This is MY church...was my church. How could this happen?

Think about it: this pastor is leading couples who are dating or engaged through the book "Love and Respect." Dating—they're just dating and already they're being inculcated into these ideas of "what marriage should be" and "what male/female relationships should look like" and "how wives should appropriately (and unconditionally!) respect their husbands."

Young women are already learning that they should continue to "respect" the men who abuse or betray them, that they should lower their expectations for intimacy and equality, that they are especially culpable for any current or future problems in the relationship—and all this presented as the biblical secret to a good marriage.

Meanwhile, young men are taught that they are entitled to unconditional respect from their girlfriends.*

Yeah, I would say that makes me pretty angry.

Love and Respect is a Religion

And it's like, of course—of course this pastor doesn't just like the book "Love and Respect," he lives and breathes it—because that's how these kinds of ideologies function. You don't just read the book and go, "Hmm, that was good."

You buy the DVD teaching series. You infuse an unsettling power dynamic with casually sexist yet charming jokes and anecdotes from your own marriage. You lead seminars on its principles. You directly quote its ideas and concepts in your sermons without citing your source, implying that this is straight from scripture. You lead multiple book studies. You are one step away from buying special underwear with the Love and Respect logo.*

That's the thing about "Love and Respect." It's counter-intuitive—it has the quality of a "special revelation" given straight to prophet Emerson Eggerichs—this "truth hidden in plain sight" that God chose to reveal, but only to him!

Joy Eggerich (daughter of Emerson) writes in her blog about the concept of unconditional respect: "This was something I struggled with for years as my father was unpacking the powerful truth of respect for me."

"Struggled with"

"for YEARS" (emphasis mine)

And she's HIS DAUGHTER

If you read Joy's blog, you can tell that she's a fairly intelligent person—and yet she struggled with this concept for years? Bullsh**.

This is just one example of women twisting themselves into painful hermeneutical, political, and emotional positions in order to obey God's "command" to demonstrate "respect."

I can certainly understand how someone like Joy might end up in this position—she would have to basically renounce her entire family, risking their disapproval and rejection, in order to break out of the system. So she buys in, 100%—at one point even dating a man who uses her own father's concept of "respect" to cow her into submission.

Love and Respect takes the questionably biblical prescription for female subjugation and male dominance and places it on par with the gospel of Christianity.

Biking My Way to Freedom

I don't know how other people find the strength to leave an abusive relationship, but my moment happened on my bike, pedaling through the streets of Los Angeles on my way home.

I was crying, a total and complete mess. But as my entire body strained against the resistance of the pedals, something broke through the pain and the grief, overwhelming me—

It was a single word: No

That's what I feel now when I think about misogyny and the church. My church. My former church.

No. Just no.

This is not a polite, "No thank you, I would not like any misogyny with my Christianity." This is a declaration, a boundary line, a scream.

No.











*You could argue that the gender roles within Love and Respect are only meant to apply to heterosexual married couples, but in Christian culture, dating is meant as preparation for marriage, so dating relationships should mirror the eventual marriage relationship. Furthermore, you are communicating that in the most significant and central relationship of her life, a woman must always operate in a one-down position. Tell me this doesn't influence her other relationships with men. 

*Things that I know happened and are not just hypothetical: No. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. No.

Jessica Jones, Sex Robots for Jesus, and the Love/Respect Binary

I. SEX ROBOTS FOR JESUS

What causes someone to voluntarily become a sex robot for Jesus?

I once listened in horror to a podcast subtitled A Good Woman's View of Sex on the Love and Respect Podcast that appeared to answer just this question. 

She doesn't need your respect. Photo via collider.com

If you're not familiar with Love and Respect, it is a popular Christian marriage book written by Dr. Emerson Eggerichs. The book purports to rescue and redeem marriages through the universal application of a simple gender binary: 

Women need love; Men need respect ("desperately"—his word, not mine). It's all based on this verse:

However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband. (Ephesians 5:33)

Although Eggerichs repeatedly says in the book and throughout the "Love and Respect" franchise that both men and women need both love and respect, his application of these two concepts proves otherwise.

Essentially, he places any need or desire women have for respect and puts it under the heading "love." He places any need or desire men have for love and puts it under the heading "respect." A woman's core need is love. A man's core need is respect. If you put a gun to a man's head and asked him to choose, he would choose respect; if you put a gun to a woman's head and...you get the idea. If I just keep saying this over and over again, you'll eventually buy into it, right?

The truly "revolutionary" concept in "Love and Respect" is not the idea that husbands should love their wives (which as Eggerichs points out, is old hat by this point), but the idea the wives should unconditionally respect their husbands (109). 

Yeah, you heard that right. Husbands deserve unconditional respect, especially when they are undeserving. 

It's important to emphasize here that in this context respect has everything to do with power. The key to respect is for the wife to consistently demonstrate by word, deed, and tone of voice (or even better, silence) that her husband is in a hierarchically superior position within the marriage. 

A man's power is his God-given right. A woman's power lies in respecting her husband—she gives power away (unconditionally) in order to get it back. Make sense? I didn't think so. 

Now, back to A Good Woman's View of Sex, which is, now that I think of it, demonstrably the worst possible title for this podcast. 

In the podcast, a good woman writes in (we'll call her "Martha") to describe a painful marriage. Martha believed that in order to honor God and be a good Christian wife, she needed to make every effort to meet her husband's sexual needs.

Therefore, she went from "never saying no to sex," because that would be sinful, to initiating sex with her husband every third day, without fail, although he continued to treat her poorly. Basically, he came to expect regular sex. He refused to ever initiate, but would subtly punish her if she didn't offer herself up to him every third day.

In her letter, Martha describes weeping uncontrollably in the shower, knowing that sex would be expected of her that day—knowing that if she did not initiate as expected, her husband would treat her with even more coldness and contempt than usual.

This story is upsetting—this wasn't just a woman submitting to unwanted sex with a selfish and emotionally distant husband because "that's what Jesus would want," but a woman who took it a step further and became the only person in the marriage to initiate sex—emotionally (possibly physically) painful sex that she did not want, but believed God required of her.

In essence, she became a sex slave within her own marriage.

Okay, now we get to the good part. How do Eggerichs and his son Jonathan Eggerichs respond to this letter? Do they mention the concept of self-respect? Do they tell Martha that no, Jesus does not require her to die emotionally every third day in order to meet her husband's sexual needs? Do they perhaps suggest that Martha's husband might want to be married to and have sex with a fully realized, equal human being with thoughts, feelings, inclinations, or a will of her own? And if that doesn't interest him, she should think about getting out of what sounds like an abusive marriage?

No. No, they do not.

Instead, Emerson Eggerichs says stuff like, "I honor you for your obedience to Christ" and "If you worship Christ in the sexually intimate area, [. . .] you are touching Christ's heart" and "this is a good-hearted woman" (refer back to the title of the podcast). At one point, he calls a wife like Martha a "goldmine" for sexually starved husbands everywhere. Most husbands would kill for such regular sexual activity. Who cares that she has to shut down every other aspect of her humanity?

"Love and Respect" the book devotes an entire chapter to "Sexuality—Appreciate His Desire for Sexual Intimacy." Because everything in this book is drawn along a gender binary, men have sexual needs and women have emotional needs. For men, "sex is symbolic of his deeper need—respect" (250). Eggerichs equates respect with sex, and let us not forget the oft-repeated phrase "unconditional respect."

Although Martha's story might seem like an outlier, it's hard not to see it instead as the logical conclusion of "unconditional respect": unconditional sex, or "Sex Robots for Jesus."

Now, let's talk about Jessica Jones.

Watching the new Netflix series was as bracing as the Atlantic ocean in December. I've never seen the issue of abuse tackled like this before—somehow it takes a woman with superhuman powers to show the effects of mental, emotional, physical, and sexual abuse. Jessica is nobody's fool, but even her superhuman abilities and dour wit don't save her from the harrowing trauma of an abusive relationship.

What the show makes plain is that mental and emotional coercion can be just as powerful as the threat of actual physical violence.

Kilgrave abuses Jessica through the use of mind control. He wines and dines her as his perfect, ideal woman, going on and on about how much he "loves" her even as he turns her into his sex slave. As the show demonstrates, the worst kind of emotional and mental abuse eventually destroys a person's will. It breaks down their humanity. Over time, they have no willpower left to resist the abuse, no ability to say, "No."

Christian marriage advice, on the other hand, uses spiritual coercion to guilt women into unwanted sex. It's essentially a form of mind control—the woman submits her will to the "will of God," losing some of her own humanity in the process.

If you tell a devout Christian woman, "This is what God requires," you don't need to put a knife to her throat.

So when you encourage a woman to treat herself as less than human—when you praise her for making herself into a sex robot whose only purpose is to "respect" her husband by meeting his sexual needs—when you tell her that Jesus is pleased—then yes, you are encouraging and enabling abuse.

II. RESPECTING YOUR ABUSER

Ending an abusive relationship (that I initially didn't recognize as abusive) has caused me to more carefully examine words like "love" and "respect."

I've learned that if someone does not respect you as a human being, they cannot love you. Lack of respect, not lack of affection or care (often confused with love) is the cause of abuse. And as bell hooks puts it, "Love and abuse cannot coexist."

In "Love and Respect," Eggerichs addresses the question of whether his conception of "respect" will cause abuse:

Will the concept of biblical hierarchy lead to abuse? [...] Yes, this is possible, but because it is possible does not mean a woman should refuse to allow her husband to be the head. If a husband is evil-willed, the abuse will happen anyway, no matter what the family structure is. Any hierarchical role given to him has nothing to do with the abuse. The evil-willed man always treats those around him abusively (207).

I absolutely disagree. Shrugging and saying "Evil be evil" or "Abusers gonna abuse" is both misleading and f***ing irresponsible. 

Eggerichs fails to admit that he is putting powerful, ready-made, "biblical" (his word) tools into the hands of the abuser. Will reading "Love and Respect" turn an ordinary man into an abusive jerk? Doubtful. But an abusive man would have a field day with the concepts presented, and could easily use them to further control and manipulate his wife or girlfriend.

Here's why:

The words "love" and "respect" are deliberate. They are words favored by abusers.

I can't stop hearing Kilgrave's voice in my head:

"Jessica! Jessica! I love you!"

Nightmares for days

My abuser said the same thing (minus the Jessica part). He told me, "I still love you." And then he indirectly threatened me (but only because he was trying to help me and he didn't want to see me suffer!)

Hearing "I love you" from an abuser creates a huge amount of cognitive dissonance: "But he told me he loved me! Over and over again with tears in his eyes!"

Only when I began to see that the "love" itself was abuse did the fog start to lift.

And then there's that other word: respect. I've written about how another abusive man in my life used to repeatedly say, "You don't respect me!" By "respect" he meant exactly what Eggerichs means in "Love and Respect". He meant, "You don't submit your will to me. You don't treat me as being above you. You won't give in to me."

You see, respect as Eggerichs conceives of it—that is, the respect men "desperately need"—is always a hierarchical value. Men need this kind of respect in order to feel like men. It's an odd setup, where men are the more powerful entities (by God's design), but without a woman following them around all the time telling them how much they respect them, men collapse emotionally, spiritually, and probably sexually (Eggerichs writes that "respect beats a dose of Viagra any day!"). It's a spiritual variation on a common theme: men need women to prop up their fragile egos.

I can still remember the time I told my ex-boyfriend that I respected him. He lit up like a Christmas tree. I don't even know why I said it—maybe the love/respect doctrine had trickled down to me somehow. I had just confronted him with some things that he had said and done that troubled me—so perhaps this was my way of restoring equilibrium in the relationship.

I wonder whether I used "respect" like Trish Walker does with Kilgrave in "Jessica Jones"—to prevent him from turning, and tearing me to pieces. Now, this is a type of respect that I can relate to—the kind of respect that I pretend with men so that they will stop hating me, stop abusing me, stop treating me with contempt, or just simply leave me alone. Did my "respect" keep my ex-boyfriend from treating me abusively later on? No. It didn't.

Joy Eggerichs, the daughter of Emerson and Sarah Eggerichs, talks candidly on her website (billed as "Love and Respect" for the current generation) about being in an abusive dating relationship where the guy would tell her she was being disrespectful in order to manipulate her. By her own account, she went to her parents and asked them if she was really being disrespectful.

Luckily, she got out of that relationship. But here's my question: Why would Joy (as an adult, presumably) need the outside validation of her parents to confirm that she was being manipulated? Why would the progeny of the love/respect dynasty fall prey to a common tactic of abusive men?

Perhaps because the only guidance that "Love and Respect" gives about abuse is that we need to somehow discern between "good-willed" people and evil people, without giving any real guidance on how to tell the difference.

III. LOVE AND RESPECT AND ABUSE

Eggerichs grants that at times, women might need to submit to God instead of to their husbands, for example, in cases of physical abuse.

Later on, however, he relates the story of one woman who went back to her previously abusive husband (he repented), but was still struggling to show him respect. She writes:

My heart's desire is to win my husband to the Lord through my respectful behavior. I must admit I have to "mull over" some of your teaching, but it IS biblically based, and the Holy Spirit keeps revealing my rebellion, contempt, disobedience, etc. I keep asking the Lord for strength to implement your suggestions, and He is so faithful!

This letter creeps me out.

Basically, the husband abused his wife, but she is the one who needs to work on her rebellion, contempt, and disobedience. This reeks of Stockholm syndrome. Any time a thought arises within this woman's mind that even hints at self-respect, anger, or, I don't know, boundaries around being abused, she beats it down as a sign of rebellion—against God!

And this is not the first abused wife in the book jonesing for more ways to unconditionally respect her husband. In another story, a woman emails Eggerichs wanting more resources and guidance about respect, but fails to mention how her husband once threw a dish at her, cutting her face.

Eggerichs' response to her selective account of her marriage: "What a woman!"

I'm not kidding. Her husband threw a plate at her face and she needed to learn more about how to respect him (he apparently repented while sitting in jail).

The connection between "Love and Respect" and abuse is not a coincidence. The false binary between love and respect is textbook spiritual abuse—"scriptural" mind control.

IV. CONTEMPT IS FOR WOMEN

Eggerichs deliberately uses the word "contempt" only in the context of a wife having or showing contempt for her husband—as if contempt, the opposite of respect, were a gendered phenomenon.

Women treat men with "contempt" (the word or its variations appears a total of 48 times in the book, always gendered female), while men are "harsh" (20 times, gendered male). Notice that women are described as contemptuous more than twice as often as men are described as harsh.

Men are never described as having or showing contempt for their wives. Why is that? My theory: It is impossible to show contempt for someone who is already beneath you, see also the phrase "beneath contempt." Eggerichs encodes his own misogynistic attitudes into his use of language.

It goes further: women are overwhelmingly portrayed as the ones responsible for marital problems and strife. I believe this is also deliberately gendered: women are the ones expected to buy the marriage books. They are the ones who should shoulder the emotional burden of improving a troubled marriage—see the previous two stories from women who were abused. 

Eggerichs' overwhelmingly gendered use of the word "contempt" sends women a clear message: It's your fault; it's your responsibility.

On the Love and Respect Now blog, writer and former missionary Alece Ronzino writes about her husband at the time literally throwing the book "Love and Respect" at her and saying, "Maybe this will teach you how to respect me like you should instead of accusing me of having an affair."

What do you know. He was having an affair.

Mindblowingly, Alece concludes this story by affirming her own ongoing struggle to respect her ex-husband despite his manipulation, abuse, and infidelity.

Yes. The moral of the story is: How do I continue to show respect to a man who has betrayed me and treated me with overwhelming contempt?

In a way, I appreciate the incredible effort Joy and Alece make to shoehorn even this traumatic story into the love/respect binary.

But on the other hand, someone throwing a book titled "Love and Respect" at you is the equivalent of a gigantic, neon, glowing sign that reads, "GET THE F*** OUT OF THIS ABUSIVE RELATIONSHIP", not a gentle suggestion that maybe you need to learn some respect.

Trying to demonstrate unconditional respect to a person who is only interested in manipulating and abusing you is, needless to say, a very, very bad idea. Telling an abuser or a controlling person, "I respect you," doesn't tend to make them less abusive or controlling. Instead, as I found in my own personal experience, they are more likely to escalate the abuse.

If you are in an abusive relationship, the last question on your mind should be, "How do I respect my abuser?" That's hyperbolically equivalent to asking during an attempted murder, "How do I show my murderer that I genuinely admire his skill with a knife? Perhaps a mid-stab compliment is in order."

Notice that I used the "C" word to describe how a man treated a woman. I think my use is perfectly valid, and anyone who tries to convince you that it is impossible for a man to have or show contempt for a woman is either delusional or has a deeper agenda at stake.

Going back to Martha's story, I can't imagine a greater expression of contempt for another human being than to use her body but reject everything else about her.

What Eggerichs and Eggerichs fail to acknowledge in their podcast is that this woman's supposedly godly and praiseworthy behavior only caused her husband to treat her even more like a sexual object and less like a human being.

V. SEX ROBOTS AGAIN

As far as I can tell from reading Joy's comment on Alece's post, women can potentially save "disobedient" men by showing them respect. But it doesn't always work. Sometimes people are just evil (there's that helpful advice again).

Wives saving their disobedient husbands through unconditional respect is a huge theme in "Love and Respect," based on these verses:

In the same way, you wives, be submissive to your own husbands so that even if any of them are disobedient to the word, they may be won without a word by the behavior of their wives, as they observe your chaste and respectful behavior. (NASB, 1 Peter 3:1-2)

Which Eggerichs shortens to:

The apostle Peter reveals that husbands who "are disobedient to the word" (meaning they are undeserving of respect) "may be won . . . by . . . respectful behavior."

Notice that the burden is on the wife to save her husband. And how does one save a husband? By having sex with him as often as possible—um, I mean, by respecting him.

Eggerichs' comments in the "Good Woman" podcast make so much more sense now—Martha is literally worshipping God by having sex with her husband. She may be dying on the inside, but all that matters is that her vagina is winning him to the Lord.

Eggerichs claims that it's not like she's being "tortured" or "crucified" or anything. I feel like the fact that he even uses these words implies the opposite. She is crucifying her own will. She is crucifying her emotions. She is crucifying her body. She is emotionally tortured every three days over a two year period.

And to be consistent here, isn't that what women are supposed to do? Be Jesus for their husbands? Die a little more each day so that he might "live"?*

Sex Robot = Sex Martyr

VI. LOVE AND RESPECT AND JESUS

I have yet to read a single story in the entire love/respect canon that describes a woman standing up for herself and saying, "No." No, I will not abused. No, I will not stay in a situation that puts my life at risk. No, I will not stay in a marriage in which I am emotionally and sexually degraded.

Women are being counseled to trust the love/respect doctrine over their own self-preservation instincts—and I'm not just talking about life-threatening situations, though of course those exist.

I'm talking about preserving your life—your emotional, spiritual, rational self—precisely the self that abuse seeks to destroy. Precisely the self that, according to Christianity, Jesus died to save.

And that's probably the primary reason that "Love and Respect" the franchise makes me so f***ing angry, and what makes it so spiritually abusive at its core:

"Love and Respect" uses the gospel of Christianity to keep women enslaved in hierarchical, if not abusive, relationships, where they are told to subjugate their anger, their intuition, their analytical abilities, their desire for meaningful work and a career, their sexuality, their bodies, their voices, and their facial expressions* to the overriding goal of "respecting" their husbands.

So I'm going to call "Love and Respect" what it is: a false doctrine. Idolatry. A dangerous, misogynistic, and abusive ideology masquerading as the biblical, magic pill solution to all male/female relationships.

VII. LOVE WITHOUT RESPECT IS ABUSE

It feels ironic to read a book about how much men need respect when I've been writing about how disrespected I've felt in relationships with Christian men.

Usually, love or romantic feelings are used to justify or gloss over disrespectful behavior—so that the men who have treated me the most abusively or disrespectfully are also the ones who have expressed the most love, affection, and attraction.

When a man tells me that he "respects" me, it's usually after he has treated me in an incredibly disrespectful way—this seems to indicate that men understand how manipulative the words "I respect you" can be.

I've struggled with how to characterize this lack of respect for women in the Christian world. It's more than a simple lack of respect. It's not even contempt, because "contempt" implies that you actually see the other person.

I think it really comes down to the idea that women are less human or not fully human. This is the only way I can explain the abuse, especially as it coexists with "love." It's the only way I can describe a man who violates my boundaries even as he sheds crocodile tears over the depth of his love for me.

"Jessica Jones" captures just how terrifying it is to have such a man tell you he loves you.

Give me respect any day.









*Eggerichs makes a huge meal out of the fact that men are willing to die for their wives. He uses this willingness to die to justify a man's inherently superior station in the marital hierarchy. I once watched a baffling video clip of him telling women something like, "Remember that your husband would die for you. He may never open up to you emotionally, but he would die for you" as if this were somehow sufficient consolation for having an emotionally distant husband. I just picture lonely women rocking themselves to sleep every night saying over and over again, "He would die for me, he would die for me, he would die for me..."

Given the statistical probability of a man ever having to die for his wife, what about the slow death of living in an abusive or unloving relationship? What was that saying again: "Death by 1,000 Cuts."

*"A simple application is that a wife is to display a respectful facial expression and tone when he fails to be the man she wants" (43)

*"Right or wrong, men interpret their world through the respect grid, and a wife's softened tone and facial expressions can do more for her marriage than she can imagine."

*"Love and Respect" includes two letters from wives who have learned how to control their facial expressions (191, 302) and the glowing effect it has had on their marriages.

All pages numbers are from the Kindle edition of "Love and Respect."

Interview with a Therapist: Anonymous, Part 2

If you missed it, here's Part 1 of the interview.

In Part 2, we talk about the stigma of going to therapy and taking medication, the definition of mental health, the role of spirituality in the therapist/client relationship, and more.

This interview has been edited for clarity.

Photo by Eje Gustafsson

Q. Any thoughts on the social stressors that might lead to a mental health crisis, such as losing a job, unemployment, divorce, abuse, trauma, etc. and how the church might address these?

All those things are considered losses—it's the same as losing a person in your life. Divorce can affect you as much as the grief of losing a loved one and so can losing a job. They impact you in the same way as far as pain and the loss of who you are, your identity.

I think the church should address [divorce]. I feel like no one likes to talk about it. People get divorced. People lose their jobs. There are a lot of freelance [workers] who are constantly without work—that can affect you.

Luckily, if you find a good community group where you're able to discuss [these things] and be vulnerable, hopefully they'll be supportive. That's happened in one of our small groups. People have started opening up about their trauma and the group has been very supportive.

Q. In your experience, are Christians more or less resistant to seeking professional help?

They're more resistant. Because they feel like God is going to heal them already, or if they go to a therapist there is something wrong with their spiritual faith.

Some people feel like going to a therapist is very taboo, like dating someone who works for the IRS. No one likes the IRS.

Usually, it's seen as a last resort [in] getting help. And it shouldn't be. It should be one of the first things that you do if you feel like you're not being the person that you want to be.

"If you go to a therapist, then there's something wrong with you."

And that's not what it is. You're going to someone who has experience and can help you achieve your goals.

The worst thing I've heard was someone who was sexually abused (the family was Christian) was told, “God will make you forget that and make it go away.”

Forgetting about it is not really dealing with it.

Q. Any thoughts on integrating your spiritual life with your practice?

I think for me, it's being open. People think that psychologists aren't Christians, and that's not true. I've prayed for some of my clients—not in the room. But I've been open spiritually to whatever they bring into the room.

And that really helps me get a sense of what's going on. Because we have all these senses and a spiritual sense is something that I feel like people leave out. [But] it's a part of you—you can't leave yourself out of the room.

You bring your whole self into a room to help integrate what the client wants to do—what their goals are, what they want to achieve—and they sense that.

I never talk about God in the room unless my clients ask me:
“Do you believe in God?”
“Yes.”
I'm not going to lie.

I've had [times] where I was going through a spiritual process, and the client started a random conversation, just talking about God. So you never know.

If you incorporate every aspect of yourself into a room, your client will see that and they'll connect with it—because you're being your most authentic self. You're being vulnerable to them, so that they can be vulnerable to you.

Q. Any thoughts about the intersection between being a therapist and being a Christian?

I will say that there was a moment where I was very rational and I didn't incorporate that—especially in my early years in clinical work. I didn't incorporate that because I didn't understand how to.

And then one day I was like, “Well, it's a part of me, why am I leaving that out?”

Once that clicked, I was able to work further with my clients than just at the superficial level. I was able to do deeper work because they sensed that I'm bringing myself into the room wholly—I'm there and I'm present.

And then we were able to share more—without me having to disclose anything [about religion]. Just that open energy and being able to share and be vulnerable actually helped me help them in their work. It's so weird. But it did.

Q. It's interesting, because I've gone to therapy, and I don't think my therapist was a Christian (that I can tell). It makes me want to know, [laughing] I wonder if they believe in God?

I mean, you can ask them.

But that's the thing—you have to be in a place where you feel comfortable asking your therapist—It's a very personal, private relationship, it's very intimate. It's very strange, but it's an intimate relationship that you have with someone.

If you're not able to ask them these types of questions, then what is going on in the room?

Yes, therapy is focused on you, but I think there's nothing wrong with asking your therapist a question. It might actually surprise them.

Q. Sometimes I like it when therapists tell you something about themselves, because it feels a little less one-sided.

It feels authentic.

Q. How do you help a friend you think might be going through a mental health crisis?

If it's just something that's been going on for a couple of days, then you might want to wait a month or two to ask them about that again. But if it's been going on for years and someone hasn't been getting any help, then you can be like, “Have you thought about therapy?”

Oh, I almost forgot: there is also a huge stigma against medication.

And I think being open, “Have you thought about medication?” I don't think there's anything wrong with it, some people do need it.

I don't think everyone needs it, but that's for a psychologist and a psychiatrist to assess. So just being open about it and supporting your friend if they're taking medication—like I said, “If it helps you, that's great.” But I don't hear that from many people.

Q. Because you don't want to be like, “You should be on meds!”

But just being supportive of their struggle. 

The medication part is always [about] whether the client wants it or not. No one is ever going to force them to take it.

It's like, “Hey, this is an option for you. Therapy is an option for you. Different types of therapy are an option for you, what do you think? Do you think it would help, would you even try it?”

Even suggesting things like this without judgement is so important—having friends feel comfortable talking about these things.

Q. I feel more comfortable suggesting therapy because I go to therapy, but the medication thing I feel like I don't know much about it. But taking away the stigma—thanks for bringing that up.

I almost forgot about it, but I'm like, “That one's big. That's really big.” [laughing]

Q. Especially in the Christian world.

“Your healing will come from God,” but what does that look like?

Q. "You're not supposed to take medicine"—

But maybe I do, people take antibiotics.

Q. Right, they take it for physical stuff. Anything else you want to add?

I think that mental health is not exclusive of the church, it's part of it—it's there, people are struggling. And I think it should be taken into account when someone comes to you for advice or help.

It's just like [any other] field, like a doctor who's a Christian or a therapist who's a Christian. I don't think that you have to pick one or the other.

Spirituality is just as important as mental health and together they really help a person have breakthrough [in their life]. I use spirituality in my own individual life along with mental health practices, just to maintain mental health.

Q. What's your definition of "mentally healthy"?

It's not having a perfect life—that's not what mental health is—it's being able to cope with difficult things in your life. And even being able to be happy. [laughing] Yes, it's very hard. It's very hard.

Three Reasons Christians Make Dating Weird

We had been dating for a few months when he brought up the question of whether we were "boyfriend and girlfriend."

Does this mean we get to hold hands now? [Photo by Brett Sayer]

This was soon followed by, "So should we call my parents? Book a flight back home so you can meet them?"

I was confused—it felt like something we might do if we were engaged, not just officially exclusive.

We had gone on two dates (different guy, because I really get around) when he tried to shove his tongue down my throat when we hugged goodbye.

I was confused—we had seen each other in person exactly three times. Was there some memo about making out on the third meeting that I hadn't received because of a glitch in the Christian worldwide dating protocol server?

Christians. They make dating weird.

It feels like I'm stating the obvious, but dating while Christian can feel like swimming in a pool full of jello, snapping turtles and dynamite—except that getting out with all your extremities is the least of your problems.

From side hugs to guys who won't date you but will let you wash their socks as they pour out their hopes and dreams, Christian dating is just weird.

Why? Here are three reasons:

1. Traditional gender roles

I have heard so many Christian women say some version of either, "No one asks me out" or "I want to be pursued" (including me). Unfortunately, this can extend to every phase of dating—if no one asks you out, then you don't date.

Ever.

Even expressing interest in a guy is suspect—because isn't he supposed to pursue you, as God meant for male/female relationships to play out, from the Garden of Eden on? Adam didn't have to pursue Eve, and look what happened to them.

In this construct, Christian women have to come up with extremely roundabout and sneaky ways to communicate interest in a guy—signals that the guy is somehow supposed to pick up on.

"Would you like to, um, go to Bible study together on Thursday?"
or
"I would love to get your exegetical take on 1 Corinthians 13."

This is all very confusing and great for angsty, 2AM conversations with friends. Not so great for actual dating.

2. Sex

I don't know if I can really explore here all the ways that sex makes Christian dating weird.

There's this idea floating around that if you hold out for marriage, you will have (amazing) sex. No wonder Christians are marriage-obsessed.

Awesome married sex is predicated on how much I save my body for my future husband or wife. If I hold hands with you and we don't get married, does that mean I'm cheating on my future spouse? What if we kiss? Every act of physical intimacy is potentially cheating.

On the flip side, I've encountered guys who grab me and try to kiss me when I've given no indication of interest. At best, it's awkward. At worst, I feel like my boundaries are invisible or irrelevant. The guy has no interest in my comfort level or what I want.

3. Marriage

The threat of marriage hangs over every, "Will you go to coffee with me?", every tentative flirtation, every first, second, 20th date.

Marriage plus gender stereotypes mean that every girl is gunning for a dress, a cake, and a husband in that order and every guy is too scared to actually ask anyone out.

Because marriage is everything, we ask the wrong questions at the wrong time.

At the beginning of a relationship, instead of asking, "Do I like him?", "Do I enjoy her sense of humor?", "Do we have fun together?"—

We ask, "Could I marry her?", "Do we want the same number of kids?", "I wonder what he thinks about living on a farm in New Zealand and raising llamas?", "Do I like her laugh or will it drive me insane after 45+ years?", "OH MY GOD WHAT IF I HAVE TO SPEND THE REST OF MY LIFE CRINGING EVERY TIME WE WATCH THE OFFICE GET ME OUT OF HERE I CAN'T BREATHE."

Ahem.

It's enough to make any sane, commitment-phobic girl bolt.

How do we make Christian dating less weird? I feel like that is fodder for a different post.

More about dating:

Undateable: Why Single Christian Guys Are All Dented Cans - Anger

10 Reasons You Should Think Twice About Dating Someone Who Goes to Your Church

Interview with a Therapist: Anonymous, Part 1

Next up in the series on The Church & Mental Health where I interview Christian therapists to talk about the intersection of spirituality and psychology:

Today's interview is with Anonymous Therapist. We talked about what the church can do to support mental health, dealing with depression, suicide and abuse, the stigma of seeking help and taking medication, integrating spirituality with therapy, and knowing when to call the cops.

This interview has been edited for clarity.

Q: What can we do to de-stigmatize mental illness within the church?

AT: By being open—for instance, I noticed that bigger churches—I think it was Saddleback or another Christian church in Orange County—they offered mental health services—referrals. Our church doesn't really do that, as far as I know, unless you ask around specifically. 

I think a lot of it—certain issues like trauma, sexual abuse, depression, the church doesn't really want to address. I've had friends who have been suicidal and they didn't know who to turn to. So, being open that healing can come from different avenues besides the church.

Photo by Eje Gustafsson

Q: Do you have any ideas or concrete ways that the church could do that?

AT: Sure, there's another issue—domestic violence—how is that addressed in the church? It happens. How does the staff deal with that? Do they refer anyone? 

That one church that I was talking about, they had domestic violence classes and they offered a list of things for the congregation. 

Just being open: “Hey, if you have an issue, come meet with us. And if we're not the appropriate person we can refer you to someone else.” But there's nothing ever said about that, at all.

The one positive thing that I've seen is when Erwin Mcmanus [pastor of Mosaic] did his talk about being severely depressed. Because no one really wants to talk about that. No one wants to talk about, “Well, okay, you're a Christian, but what happens [when] you're depressed, what happens if you get prayed for and, “I'm still depressed.” 

Everyone wants that instant healing, and it doesn't happen that way. People deal with depression for years, on their own, without any help.

Q: How can we as individuals talk about mental health in a way that respects individual experience and takes away the stigma? Not, “There's something wrong with you"—

AT: Yeah, like “You need to get prayed for,” “You don't believe."

The best example I heard was from Erwin: We don't look at mental health issues or illness like physical illness, we treat it like, “You'll get better,” “Don't feel that way,” “Just pray.” And that's not how things get better.

Someone has an issue that they're dealing with and it's internal—and it's like [telling] a cripple, “Hey, you can walk, if you just believe enough.” 

It may not happen for him—he may be crippled for the rest of his life. That doesn't make him less of a person, it's just a part of him that he has to deal with. 

That was the best experience that I've had as far as the church being open about mental health issues.

I think individually we need to stop saying, “Hey, don't feel that way.” I do it sometimes and I have to stop myself, and I have to be like, “No, they're coming from a place—they feel this way."

“Okay yeah, I understand what you're saying.” And trying to give them advice like, “Have you prayed, have you done this—”

They may have done all of those things and it didn't work. Their healing may come from multiple sources. And it all goes back to God. But how it comes about, it might be through different people or experiences. I don't necessarily think it just has to be one thing and that's it.

Q: What resources should the church offer and invest in related to mental health?

In general, the church should attach itself to some type of psychologist or Christian [therapist]—people that they feel are going to be able to handle this type of work—it's specialized work. 

There are some programs where pastors also take therapy classes and they have a dual role as a psychologist and a pastor, but not everyone does. 

And what we're seeing now is a [greater] need for mental health services because of drugs, prolonged trauma...and you do need specialized care for this, someone to work with you who understands these issues without judgment.

Even referring people, [saying] “Hey, we don't have the expertise in this area, but we want to support you. Here is a list of people we work with that we would recommend to you for these certain issues.”

M: So basically just having a list of referrals—any church could do that.

But if you notice very few churches have it on their website.

I honestly don't know if our church—I'm sure that they do, but I don't want to say that Mosaic has it. It's mostly word of mouth and I don't think it should be like that. 

Because people find it hard to open up to others about their issues and sometimes they just need a referral, “Who can I go to?”

A: What helpful or not helpful things do you think churches do?

If someone is suicidal, prayer is great, but you need to call the cops. [We both laugh]

Don't just leave them there and pray for them, you need to call the cops—[prayer] is not enough, it's so not enough. 

If you know that if you leave them alone and you walk away that they're going to hurt themselves and they have a plan, then you have to call the cops. Even I would. 

It's a crisis—if you're in a crisis situation, that's the only thing you can do. Even if you're a therapist. The number one issue right there is safety—safety for yourself, safety for your client. 

Q. What if a friend is not suicidal, but you can tell that something is wrong? If you don't feel that they're going to hurt themselves, but...who do I talk to?

It doesn't hurt [to call the cops]. Some police officers have been trained in assessing suicidal clients or clients who are in harm's way—they don't know where they're at, they're unaware of their surroundings and someone can hurt them. 

The emergency operators have a feel for the situation. That's always your best option.

If someone's just depressed—

There's a difference in the type of situation that becomes a crisis versus someone going through a very difficult time. 

The intensity is different. And if you're in a crisis mode where you feel like they're in danger—immediate danger, there has to be a sense of immediacy—then I would just call the police. 

Because there's nothing that you can do without having law enforcement help you. I would say that law enforcement is good about at least taking them in if they're suicidal, and then they get assessed by someone. 

It sounds a little scary, but in the end you have to think about safety and what you can do.

[To be continued...]