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As strange as it seems, that may have been her identity.
Doesn’t sound like it, but we can’t see inside her psyche, and if the “training” on her began when she was vey young, she might not even realize what happened.
I currently have a friend who has followed her husband's advice while he has sabotaged her career. I believe it's because he's afraid she'll leave him..
perhaps she put her own needs and career on the backburner to support him?
Location: Stuck on the East Coast, hoping to head West
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Religious indoctrination and upbringing are hard to overcome. I was raised in a christian fundamentalist church by a traditional, miserable mother. I was told over and over that my role was to care for my future husband and future kids. I was taught that caring for my husband = showing God how much I loved Him and that it was an honor to do so. I was taught to use my virginity as currency: you know, to buy a husband and to give up ownership of my own sexuality to my husband. In other words, when he wanted sex, I was to do it. I should pursue a husband and not an education or independence. Until then, I should listen to my father or brother (!).
Not listening to a man just wasn't an option offered in my raising.
Fortunately for me, I saw my mother's misery and inaction and left home at 18 and never went back. I am now happily married and have 3 grown kids. I got my degree and am a professional and I love my life. But it took a lot of work on my part to overcome that. It basically cost me relationships with family. I was willing to pay that price. And it was a huge price. But I can understand why some women wouldn't.
To the poster who told the sad story about the woman he worked with: I think she was brave in taking the steps she did take. For her, those steps were probably huge.
To those who want to help women (who want to be helped), it is hard, if not impossible. I do hope that you'll give her the attention and care and patience that she's probably not giving herself.
Doesn’t sound like it, but we can’t see inside her psyche, and if the “training” on her began when she was vey young, she might not even realize what happened.
I don't personally try to see inside anybody's psyche. Observable behavior counts for me unless they share what they are really thinking.
Religious indoctrination and upbringing are hard to overcome. I was raised in a christian fundamentalist church by a traditional, miserable mother. I was told over and over that my role was to care for my future husband and future kids. I was taught that caring for my husband = showing God how much I loved Him and that it was an honor to do so. I was taught to use my virginity as currency: you know, to buy a husband and to give up ownership of my own sexuality to my husband. In other words, when he wanted sex, I was to do it. I should pursue a husband and not an education or independence. Until then, I should listen to my father or brother (!).
Not listening to a man just wasn't an option offered in my raising.
Fortunately for me, I saw my mother's misery and inaction and left home at 18 and never went back. I am now happily married and have 3 grown kids. I got my degree and am a professional and I love my life. But it took a lot of work on my part to overcome that. It basically cost me relationships with family. I was willing to pay that price. And it was a huge price. But I can understand why some women wouldn't.
To the poster who told the sad story about the woman he worked with: I think she was brave in taking the steps she did take. For her, those steps were probably huge.
To those who want to help women (who want to be helped), it is hard, if not impossible. I do hope that you'll give her the attention and care and patience that she's probably not giving herself.
I don't want to oversell matters. I was very careful and circumspect in our few conversations on it over the course of ten years. For example, I certainly did not critique anything she mentioned to me. I only answered questions she posed, and I did not delve deeply into the nature of her marriage. In many ways her husband was a good guy. Personable, smart, hardworking, and devoted. So if I created the impression that it he was some abusive monster, then that's on me.
However, the few times she mentioned it, I knew that she was speaking from a place of deep frustration with what she wanted in life versus what her husband-led marriage allowed.
Now that I'm reading this, I am reminded of the conversation I had with her sister several days after the funeral. In Kellie's last week or two, she called to keep me updated, so we had developed a rapport. After the funeral, she called to say thanks for the dinner my wife and I sent for the family. It wound up being a two-hour conversation about Kellie's conflict between her desire to be one thing in life and what was set out for her in her upbringing and marriage. Her sister said that Kellie absolutely loved working with me because I saw her talent, encouraged her, and actually asked her opinions on important client decisions. You know, what a conscientious boss should do. I got the impression that her opinion just didn't matter so much in other arenas of her life.
The sister had gone down a similar path, divorced her husband, and remarried outside the fundamentalist Christian tradition. She now led a much happier life, one where she and her husband had a true partnership and was happier for it. However, she was now at odds with her mother--A Church of Christ kind of woman who considered Southern Baptists too liberal for her tastes--and only saw her at holidays and funerals. So, yes, we are very much the product of our upbringing, and it's often difficult to break those chains.
Last edited by MinivanDriver; 10-12-2019 at 12:04 PM..
My husband is a social/educational scientist that studied under James Gee who studied under Noam Chomsky A nice, reputable academic lineage. I read some of his mentor's work (Gee) who studied linguistics, discourse analysis and identity. In Gee's view, the sense of identity is constantly "negotiated" through language. I don't mean only by the words, but all interpersonal communication.. not just the tone of our voices, the words, the structure of our sentences, the context of when we say things (or don't) but also in our non-verbal mannerisms.. how we hold our bodies, how we dress them... all of it is done, in union with others, to define ourselves as individuals and groups.
Our identity is nothing more than the amalgamation of our continuous communication signals. So her identity WAS in fact both her actions as a modern working woman AND as a fundamentalist Christian. But this doesn't mean she didn't live in constant conflict of being both.
She could have made different choices and taken on different identities. She could have chosen not to behave like either the modern working woman or the fundamentalist Christian or she could have leaned into one of the two completely. The reasons why she didn't doesn't matter ultimately (and it's a moral and value judgement on us if we try to give them).
Take it at face value: she was a wife and she was a worker. Those were her identities (and I'm sure she had more).
I would leave her alone. Really doesn't appear she suffered and I believe if she had really wanted something different she would have gone and done get it.
I was raised in a fundamentalist-ish family and church. My parents did not hew strictly to the husband as boss in the family stereotype. My DH was raised the same but his mom put up with no nonsense from anyone. He does not expect me to obey him. We talk over all of our major decisions. Neither of us spends large sums of money without consulting the other.
Many years ago, when I was visiting my mom and dad, I attended their church and was there for a class. An older guy stood up and lamented to the attendees that preachers no longer preached about the man being the head of the family, and that he was the spiritual head of the house, etc. He was quite intense, and honestly unattractive as he raved on. Later I asked my mom, "Who was the crazy guy raving in class?" She said, "Oh that's so and so. He has trouble staying married."
I am sure there are dominant men in many marriages, not just Christian marriages. Men are quite dominant in Muslim homes, I think. Probably they are not all tyrants though. We cannot know why women stay in difficult marriages, or why men do the same. Men making financial decisions that harm a woman's career are stupid. You need both incomes these days, to be able to educate children and plan for retirement. But I don't know motives. Perhaps the men have ulterior motives, or perhaps the women lack confidence in their ability to make career or financial decisions.
I do feel very sorry for "Kellie" though. She sounds miserable in her life. I would hate to live like that.
This isn't particularly shocking, it's is doctrine for fundamentalist Christian families, not some wacky aberration. I take it you don't live in the South?
Maybe your South is different from the one I lived in.
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