Topic : 06/05 Conception Deception

Judy 

Since I see you're here, there's something I've been wanting to say to you but haven't had the right words for it...bear with me on it.  You mentioned a few days ago about being against women's rights campaigns and for traditional values (at least as I understood it). 

I wanted to make sure you understand that women's rights issues is not in competition with traditional values--it encompasses it.  The right to choose to form traditional relationships and act according to traditional models is a choice also protected under women's right to choose...and to be equal.  As much as our politicians trumpet traditional family values rhetoric, they don't value the work that an at-home mom does.   

In order to escape the abuse of my ex-husband, I had to opt to live in severe poverty (not mild, not moderate, but severe--they have gradations for all that).  Because of multiple medical conditions, I am not able to work or be functionally 'good' on a consistent basis, and so I am on disability.  The fact that I qualify for this is the only reason I am able to live on my own and not with my abuser, or have to move in with my mom and (still verbally abusive) dad. 

However, because I chose to be the one to stay at home and take care of my three boys, be the one who trained them, disciplined them, taught them reading and math and social skills before they ever entered kindergarten and to continue that work once they were in school--because the work I did all those years (hard, and rewarding, as it was, and my kids are all excelling now, thank you very much!) did not draw a paycheck...I do not qualify for regular disability benefits that most people get. 

I qualify for the welfare version of it--and get a fraction of the amount that other disabled adults I know with disability receive, because the work they did drew a paycheck that put money into social security.  I worked just as hard as any paid worker (harder! than many!), and especially so when you consider how much I accomplished while enduring the circumstances and health limitations I was (am) dealing with.  I won't brag here about their scores, though I'm tempted to (proud mom and all)...but my kids are all at the top nationally academically--and it's not because I was such a lazy, neglectful mother.   

Traditional values need to be recognized as having a role in women's rights issues too, especially since politicians routinely tap into the VOTER vending machines by picking one or two hot-button issue selections as serves them best.  There are so many issues besides this one that could be brought up...  Just a thought.  Hope you don't mind my sharing.   

the reported incidence of domestic violence has 40% of the reports being women assaulting men 

however in the study for the university the reporting was shown to have a long history of abuse before the first assault 

http://www.oregoncounseling.org/Handouts/DomesticViolenceMen.htm 

So in your "walk to healthy life and relationships," has this now included dating and/ or beyond with other guys, nonabusive, and how have you navigated your way through that?  --Sifting through the signs and getting past being wary, etc.   

In the last two years since I started to 'emerge' after the divorce was finalised (the year before that), I've had A LOT of guys ask me out (from young twenties to mid-fifty...people think I look younger than I am).  I've made it clear that I'm only ready for friendship, and most have been respectful of that.  Some have been pushing for other things (either toward physical or actual, real "potential"-type relationships).   

I'd had to learn to recognize some signs that I wouldn't have in the past and to be able to draw a hard line--walking away completely in some instances--but you know what!  I'm learning...!  What kinds of things have you noticed and either had to steer clear from or made concerted effort to gravitate toward while searching for healthier connections? 

Good for you in extracating your self from a bad situation. 

First off.. I do not get dragged off on tangents,  another poster said that my not believing her story was akin to those people who do not believe in the holocaust.. I did not start that. It is a sophmoric debating tactic.. and a way to bully someone into accepting your point or being silenced so i called the poster on it. 

The fact that people here claim to have "shared experiences" does little to remove the credibility gap between their individual stories and the show guests claim. No poster to my knowledge has claimed that they shared the experience of becoing pregnant as a result of sleep rape.. nor has anyone claimed it happened twice or three times. No one posting claims to have had three kids unwillingly and without ever changing their matrimonial status of birth control method as a result. So without being mean to anybody.. no one has a "shared experience" we may have a few with a snippit here or bit there of a shared experience. The reason I have a credibility issue is the bits and pieces of shared experience may all have credibility on their own, but the story taken together strains belief. 

Now we all may call this then a dead horse, but it is in fact  a real problem for the guest on the show, and for anyone else who may read this area looking for help with their individual problems if they are similar. 

If the story IS TRUE then this woman should not have been allowed to leave the stage with her rapist husband, but it would seem that she was allowed to . 

If the story is not true and she is not accepting her responsibility for the things that happen to her. Not accepting that responsibility means she is training all her children to not accept responsibility for their actions and her mental state is both not conducive to a happy productive life for her, her husband and her family. 

Children should not have to live with a downtrodden mother.. even if she herself orchestrated her situation. Children should not have to live with a father who has no respect for the mother of those children, and lastly and probably most contestedly, the husband should not have to endure a sexless marriage to a woman who is hanging on to victim status. 

Now understand, many people on this area desperately want to have this all be the mans fault, it is way easier that way. The strain of credibility is what we all know about this case, it is not one child, it is four. The question no one wants to answer is how many pregnancies will it take before the strain is too great to be believable.  While people are willing to say " it happend to me" so "it must have happened to her".. we have  very few people trying to sort out the " why" did it happen.  

As you would normally hear a therapist ask.. I want to know why the status quo is " working for her". I have presented my opinion that remaining the "victim" in the relationship is working for her.. cant tell you why. She seems unwilling to leave, she seems willing to sleep in the same bed as he, she seems unwilling to take birth control, she seems willing to not only have the kids she has, but possibily chance having more.  The only way to maintain the status quo of "victim" status is to steadfastly stick to the story of " i was asleep". hope this helps.   

I was actually stuck on this one for a time...again, the 'my-own-perception-is-not-good-enough-on- its-own'  trap.  I once sought help from a congregation elder who outrightly told me that he believed I cared more about J.'s feelings than J. did about mine.  [my ex-]     

When I told him my thoughts about leaving, I kept saying, But then J. will say that I [blah, blah, hlah...some objection/ shortcoming so that the marriage failing is my fault]--or, If I do that then J. will say [....]   The elder finally stopped me and simply stated, "You don't have to have J.'s permission to leave." 

That stopped me in my tracks.  I wasn't  fully ready to believe that its truth applied to me yet (that I had a right to act on it!)--though I fully accepted its truth toward other people.  --Realize, too, that I had already tried leaving multiple times before this, just not premeditated.  Each time led to an escalation and his confiscating access to finances as well.  [I did not then know that this, too, was illegal!]   

...But the statement stayed with me.    

"You do not have to have J.'s permission to leave."     

The elder was patient, concerned, and nonjudgmental toward my dilemma.   

And the statement stayed wth me.     

Eventually I got there. 

And with the right supportive voices there to buoy her along...Mary will eventually get there, too!