44 - Amanda's Courtship Story

[00:00:01] Hi everyone, welcome to The Cult I Left Behind podcast. I'm your host Amanda Briggs and I'm here to tell you my stories of growing up in the IBLP cult, which you might know from the Dougher family.

[00:00:15] And I'm your other host, Kyle Briggs. I'm Amanda's husband and I have not heard most of these stories before, so stay tuned and we'll all get traumatized together. Alright, welcome back to the next episode. There's lots of questions to be answered with courtships

[00:00:36] still, so we are on to part 2 now. What do we want to do? I still have plenty of questions from last episode, so we can get to that.

[00:00:44] So are we going to keep going through IBLP material in the next one and we'll like answer your backlog of questions from the last episode? Is that what we're doing? We can answer some of these questions.

[00:00:57] Okay. And then we'll see if we get into your experience through all of this. Oh, this time we can be really fun. Pretty yes. But I have sure people are going to, I'm sure people are curious about this though because there's, um, yeah.

[00:01:16] I'll get to hear the story of you and your ex and it'll be fun. You know, we fund. Who is this going to be worse for me or you? I don't know. It's going to be awkward for me and probably worse for you. Oh, cool. Fine. Okay.

[00:01:32] So one of the things you talked about last episode was giving up your heart was mentioning. Gosh. We didn't get back around till what exactly that meant. So basically, there was this belief within purity culture which extends beyond the cult. This wasn't just IBLP, H.I. Bill Gothard.

[00:01:54] This was out there in the world. There was this belief that like, you come into the world with a whole heart and everyone you romantically love takes a piece of your heart that you never get back.

[00:02:06] So you have to reserve your whole heart for your one true partner. And this is just sexually like, you know, it's like emotions romance. Okay. You, I don't know what they like, do they think the human heart has no resilience? I don't know. I don't understand.

[00:02:22] Like as someone who's been in multiple relationships now, obviously I've been married twice. I feel like you have my whole heart. So just in the little science experiment, I've done with myself based on how my life went or has gone so far. I find this to be incorrect.

[00:02:43] Wait, I don't feel like my ex or other people in my life. I've loved our walking round with pieces of my heart and my heart is fragmented and when I met you, I gave you the shattered broken remnants of my heart.

[00:02:58] Like a broken heart and then my heart healed. And then my whole heart was still mine, not just randomly wandering the earth with people. I've cared about in the past. But the, the, very much, they called it being a one woman man and a one man woman.

[00:03:18] And that was romantically and sexually though. So not just like you only had sex with the one person after you married them. It was also like you never gave your heart away to anyone who wasn't God's intended partner for the rest of your life.

[00:03:33] So you couldn't fall in love. That's why it was so important not to form emotional attachments until you were engaged to be married because you weren't supposed to give your heart away to the wrong person.

[00:03:45] And you know, woe unto you if you gave your heart away to the wrong person. Which is why courtship was a whole airway to do relationships because it guarded your heart and it protected it from being fragmented.

[00:03:58] If you liked that person and then did not marry them because you weren't allowed to like them or have an emotional connection with them until it was determined that you were to be wed on men. I think that makes sense.

[00:04:12] I guess I didn't think about that until we saw this. Wait, it makes sense logically? In the context, it makes sense that that's why they were like so protective.

[00:04:22] I would say maybe that's not the right word but like they had this ideology that we're going to not let you form any sort of connection with this other person because it's gonna take a piece of your heart. I don't agree with that but it makes sense.

[00:04:38] And also as a woman, as a woman if you have sex with a man, your body will release hormones that will forever bond you to that person and then if you don't marry them, oh no.

[00:04:51] And I know that there is like a scientific medical thing where yeah, like is it oxytocin that gets released? What's the love hormone? I was always bad with those. Like if you hug or you kiss, there is a hormonal reaction but I don't think it's just women.

[00:05:09] I think it's just females. And as someone who has been in previous relationships, I don't feel like I am forever bonded to those people which is another science experiment because of how my life went. And I find it to be false.

[00:05:30] Yeah, in normal church as I put it, he was only like if you had sex with somebody else that they would say this like,

[00:05:38] well you're gonna lose a piece of you or you're giving a piece of yourself away every time you have sex with somebody like that's how there was that part of it. There was that part too. But the quote added that dimension of emotional attachment.

[00:05:51] Right and that's like you couldn't love them. Yeah, the emotional and connected kids then they had a piece of your heart. Right but that's a big difference because in like normal churches, you know, they don't advocate that you don't date or... You don't fall in love.

[00:06:06] Right, there's no trying to prevent you from doing that. They just don't want you to have sex with multiple people or, you know, obviously wait until your barrier is pervert method there. So that is an interesting concept though. Yeah, so don't give away your heart.

[00:06:24] Don't love anyone until you're married to them. Then love them. And then your heart will not be fragmented and you all, oh man, that was another thing like... How do they phrase it?

[00:06:35] It was something about like again, I feel like women were targeted more with this than men. Young women more than young men, but there was a whole like, well do you want to be up there at the altar on your wedding day?

[00:06:49] With your husband, your brand new husband offering him the fragments of your heart. Like it was bad. It was a whole thing and it...

[00:06:58] Again, like we talked a bit in the last episode about like saving your first kiss for the altar and how men's bodies might have a reaction to a first kiss that would be potentially embarrassing in front of a whole congregation of church people attending your wedding.

[00:07:15] And it associates a lot of like shaman anxiety with physical intimacy with your new partner. I feel like the same thing applies emotionally. Like it was... it was scary and bad,

[00:07:26] deform an emotional connection with someone because you were giving them a piece of your heart that you could never get back. Kyle, ever. You could never get it back. So I think it took like the cult took and purity culture continues to take.

[00:07:43] Things that are normal and natural and organic human experiences and just like be them and dose them in shame and anxiety.

[00:07:52] And I personally think that's a lot more harmful than like going through a couple relationships and potentially being in love with more than one person in your life.

[00:08:05] And it's there was there more to have like what would happen if you were known to have had a relationship with somebody else. You had to confess to your potential partner or your new husband, wife, whatever.

[00:08:22] You know that you had given part of your heart away so that you could not show up to the marriage with your whole heart.

[00:08:29] And as I just follow you around forever, like a you forever marked as like, well she was somebody else and then like she can't give her whole heart to her husband and this never gets hurt.

[00:08:41] And the more extreme circles I think yes, I think in the in the circles where like, you know how I talked about I knew some women who called off court chips and then there were some who were like no worshiping you off for multiple years to like do the Leah and Rachel thing.

[00:08:59] I think in the more moderate circles, it was more like a little trip and like a full you fell on your face and ruined it. Okay.

[00:09:10] So it kind of just depended really on who your dad was because the father was like so we kind of talked about this with the courtship commitments but to get into it more because I still I want to find the actual courtship commitment wording.

[00:09:25] But that's the virginity pledge where you are like giving your heart and you're like pledging your heart and your virginity to your dad. And your dad was in charge of your relationship as a female in particular.

[00:09:39] So a lot of like how bad it went for you was dependent on your dad because your dad was in charge of you, your body or sexuality, your heart and your relationship. So creepy. Yeah, that's a very creepy thing. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

[00:09:55] And so this guy just running into the next question here and this maybe related or not but you'd mentioned chewed up gum on this. So I mean this is related. So y'all have to help me out was this more than just the call.

[00:10:08] I think this was I think this permeated purity culture but there was this thing that particularly in the cold females were told that if you, you know, gave your heart away to some boy. Or you kiss someone or had sex with someone or whatever.

[00:10:23] You it was like, your piece of gum that had just been chewed up now are you going to give your husband the chewed up piece of gum? Who wants a chewed up piece of gum? No one wants a chewed up piece of gum.

[00:10:34] You put it in the trash. Oh, that's a little aggressive. That's extreme. Yeah and I, you know, in being an almost kid I guess if you want to put it that way. I didn't notice that as much in the church like, You're also male.

[00:10:54] Well, hold on so it existed when I feel like it was extreme like if it was like, oh, that person slept around like 10 different people. And but I feel like I've witnessed that more and just like the public school system like in your classes and it's just like,

[00:11:15] Oh, that person gets around is what they would call it and like it was the extreme cases that or people that you know they they were they had many boyfriends or girlfriends and they just got around. That was kind of where they came from.

[00:11:29] I'm sure that's still some sort of purity culture, but that was just in the public school systems which again, I grew up in the Bible belt so maybe those two are very tied together that we're used to post you going the trash. No.

[00:11:44] Oh, I don't think it was ever that bad. It was just kind of a stigma as opposed to life sentence. Mm-hmm. Did I, did I talk about the trampled garden last week? That was the next question I had the trotting garden is how you worded it.

[00:12:00] The next thing, you know in case being a chewed up piece of gum and what do you do with chewed up gum you put it in the trash. You don't give it to someone in case that wasn't enough, you know, shame-dum and glue him.

[00:12:12] Then they were like imagine a beautiful flower garden and then someone stomping around in it. You are a beautiful flower garden, but if you, you know, like someone loves someone kiss someone, have sex with someone, you are a tripled flower garden.

[00:12:29] Did you want to be a tripled flower garden? Let's get a check, make their appearance once again. Mm-hmm. Got to have those. Yes.

[00:12:39] I feel like we need a t-shirt that says can't have that because I feel like we say that a lot when I listen back to or I say that a lot in particular. So if you're like we need a t-shirt that's like can't have that.

[00:12:51] But then so then we should also start saying, God, I have that about, you know, cold approved stuff. So fear tactics got to have that. Oh my gosh. And I mean it worked. Oh, it worked well because it,

[00:13:07] I've talked before about how hard it was to be a young woman in the cold, how hard it was to be female. And since like guys did get purity culture, but there was also the boys will be boys thing and that, like, That one, that was my mind.

[00:13:25] Well, those were my, that shame culture was so permeated the cult so much. But then there was like, but it doesn't count for the boys. Like you shouldn't sleep around, but like if the boys do, boys will be boys. Yeah, like that doesn't make sense to me.

[00:13:41] So there was, there was a lot of difficulty in pressure being a young person, a young female in the cold and You're already nothing, right? Because you belong to your dad. Heart, mind, body, soul, sexuality, like it all belongs to your dad.

[00:14:01] And so you're already kind of worthless in the hierarchy of things because you just, you just stay home and you don't have a career and you don't have an education and you just have the babies make the meals clean the house, raise the children.

[00:14:15] So there's already a sense of like being less than. And then of course, just the way you're talking to and treated your less than. But then you put on that well like your trash and you're all trampled up if you do anything wrong like you're ruined.

[00:14:30] That was really it. That was that was the word ruined. How did you take that? Like were you just scared to death of like even being in a relationship at all? Or like the thought of like how did that impact you that there was that

[00:14:44] much pressure that like if you missed that but all in romance. You're done. I mean it made it a very witty thing for me because I'm a role of father who takes these things. I'm serious.

[00:14:56] So instead of like a first love being a fun light, hearted, happy thing It's like this intense experience of okay, I cannot mess this up. I cannot get this wrong. I can't like this person too much. I can't have flutter.

[00:15:10] You've asked me before like did I notice guys and get a fluttery feeling stuff like no you turned that off. For me it just made it like very serious and very solemn and very wavy. It's it's so much fun. You should try it. No, don't recommend that.

[00:15:30] So what happened when you finally open that door and start going into courtship. Not doing courtship. So I didn't actually have a proper courtship because I was a rebel as it turns out. I'm very surprised like this. There's a lot of stuff that like, I don't know.

[00:15:51] Obviously not everybody knows you like I do but you're a rule follower to the tea but like everything about and I'm sure people can glean this from listening to the podcast but like you bucked at all of it which is like the old. It was so logical.

[00:16:10] But just like the only thing I've ever known you, you know, hearing all your stories and knowing you like it's the only thing that I've ever known you to just like vehemently rebel against. Well it was a cold. I know it's too big. I know.

[00:16:27] I think that's just a test of how bad it was because everything else you're like military, fallen line do this. These are the rules we must obey. Public services. The mission. Yeah. Yeah. So. Oh man. So how did my young and ill-fated relationship plan out?

[00:16:46] So did you get the knock? No. Okay. I know this go. Gosh. So it's sad because I'm going to tell this story and it's going to be like, how sweet and cute romantic and then it goes up and flames reference divorce in the cult.

[00:17:05] So, but I'm going to. I don't know. I guess I'll tell it from the like happy perspective initially so that you can see kind of like what it was like from my ex. Yeah. Yeah. From my point of view. Yeah.

[00:17:19] So when we were kids, my ex and I met at a baseball field. He and my brother, one of my brothers, played on the same like community softball team.

[00:17:33] And I mostly just noticed that there was this boy with green eyes who is like staring at me a lot. And unbeknownst to me, his mother and I had a whole long conversation when like during their practice while the kids were practicing.

[00:17:51] And my ex stopped playing softball because it was you know too easy. He played baseball instead. So he left that team and I didn't see him anymore. And I just, I didn't think of him. We were a little kids like it didn't. I don't know. I don't really.

[00:18:09] You're roughly. We would 10 12. Okay. And then I forget. I think it was a couple years went by and he was home schooled. We were home schooled. And his mother decided to start a home school basketball team that was like,

[00:18:26] I don't know whatever they went through the process so that they could actually compete and like play public schools. And all that kind of stuff. So my brother joined the team and then they were on the same basketball team again, my ex and my brother.

[00:18:40] So I started seeing him like just coming and going practices whatever and I was like, Oh, that's the same you know green eyeed kid. And he was still staring at me. So then he and my brother became friends. And he was over at the house all the time.

[00:18:59] And my family would tease me because my ex like his voice dropped pretty young. So he'd be like, well he would he would find me whenever he came over to play with my brother and be like,

[00:19:10] Hello Amanda and his like really deep voice is in this like tiny child body. And we all laughed and whatever they would tease me around the dinner table about him.

[00:19:21] And they're like, oh he was a crush on you or whatever, which because it was so young I guess it was okay to tease me about instead of you know call me as letting Harlet. I don't know. We'll get there. We'll get there.

[00:19:33] And yeah, so he was just like over all the time for years and years and years. Because he and my brother played on the same basketball team through senior year of high school and their team actually did quite well.

[00:19:42] They went to like national championships and stuff and did well. So I saw a lot of him and we would all hang out in like a group as kids.

[00:19:53] And then okay, this is like, I don't even know how to talk about this because we're going to we're going to meet like righteous teenage Amanda here for a minute. So one of the local public schools when I was when I was like 16.

[00:20:11] One of the local public schools did a play. I don't remember what it was but it was like super scandalous and the whole community was outraged and people were like, how dare they these kids this play? I don't know.

[00:20:26] So right just in mind, it was like I need to give teens my community a better option to participate in the arts without sinning. So I formed a dramatic society and I got right well first I wrote a musical and I like started a whole thing.

[00:20:43] It was a Bible story musical of course. What other kind of play would you as a righteous young person right answer nothing but Bible stories? So we dramatized Bible story and I mean it was it was me so like it was pretty intense.

[00:21:00] I had informational packets that I put out but that I put together and mail to all the homes school families locally based right now.

[00:21:08] And we had our own low and letterhead and yeah, all of this stuff and I mail them out and vanilla envelopes because that looked more professional. And I had special like address stickers. What are those called?

[00:21:24] Like the, yeah, the little labels with like I forget what I called it. It was something Christian dramatic society. It had Christian in the title because obviously righteous. My ex's family obviously got one of these packets.

[00:21:40] And I found out later that my ex auditioned because he had a crush on me and he thought it would be a great way to spend more time with me. So he participates in a musical. Okay, like musical. I think he was 15 at the time.

[00:21:54] Basketball jock musical and I don't think he had a singing part but he played two characters because we had a limited number of righteous kids Kyle. We had to like, don't love on some characters there.

[00:22:07] So he played one character who got killed in the beginning and he came back as like the villain bad guy later.

[00:22:14] And I mean, it was like, you know, we had these star-struck moments where we would like walk past each other behind the stage like behind the curtains and he would like look at me intensely. And I would think like, well, this is probably sin.

[00:22:31] And he started like emiling me which, you know, he had an excuse. So I start, you know, getting a, I had kind of had a crush on him before I had and like I'd gotten to know him then I was,

[00:22:42] I don't know, probably secretly even to myself and love with him at that point. But I know I know. But I was being righteous with the play, you know, Bible story and stuff. So did you give him parts because you had a crush on him or did he?

[00:23:02] No, I desperately needed righteous kids to be in the fight. This was a more body. And I mean, they were pretty significant productions. Like it was in the newspaper. I was interviewed for that. We rented out a place to do it.

[00:23:16] And the first one like we made it the best we could. I got the culture to fund it. I think. And I didn't charge the families anything. The culture just, I had to go before all of the fathers who were like the elders and explain the whole concept.

[00:23:32] And it was righteous. So of course they funded it. Because we had to save teens from the public school system. Give them a different option to participate in the arts. You could tell there was no kissing in the fair. Obviously.

[00:23:47] So yeah, we should do a different episode on the plays because there are a lot of funny stories about how I handled like romance and sexuality that were righteous and holy before God anyways.

[00:24:04] So that was the first play. And like we did the best we could with the thing. And then it was a pretty big success in all the families when I made it do it again.

[00:24:11] So I doubled down and I got even, I was like, it's got to be even more professionals. I started charging people to participate. There was a feed to be part of the dramatic society. I got at least the culture to sponsor it. And I think a couple others.

[00:24:23] I don't know. We had several sponsors for the second one. Run it out of theater. Had a light crew like we hired them. I hired them. It had a paintable stage. So you could like paint the backdrop.

[00:24:37] They let everyone who came in paint their own backdrop and then you could put a set on it as well. So so my ex gets this brilliant idea because his dad's a carpenter. Well, I could build the set and then I can spend more time with Amanda.

[00:24:51] Of course, I find this all out later. But at this point, I'm 17 and I have right justly confessed to Rick that I have a lot of time.

[00:24:58] So I'm so impressed to Rick that I had a crush and Chris is freaking out calling me as letting a whore the whole time. So so now suddenly I'm not allowed to talk to him but also he's starring in my play again.

[00:25:10] And I think he had two roles again. I think I killed him again in the first chart and then he back in the back guy again later. He was just it was just really good at that. I was really tall. It's just worked to make him the villain.

[00:25:25] I'm just thinking how this actually played out and I know. I know. You haven't killed anybody right? No, okay. So so that would be an ethical Kyle. How could you even ask that? So he starts building the set so he has to email me more.

[00:25:42] We have to be in more communication than he has to start making phone calls about how to build the set. You know, so we're like on the phone. So we're like, you know, high schoolers kind of falling in love. But we can't have that.

[00:25:56] So so Chris is freaking out and oh my gosh. I don't even remember everything but like I could communicate with him about the play. But nothing else. And he couldn't see me except at the rehearsals. And like we couldn't talk to each other and we couldn't touch.

[00:26:10] And like not that we were gonna because he was pretty righteous too back then. And like I don't know, there were just so many rules and regulations. But then there was like a moment during one of the plays.

[00:26:21] One of the production so it ran for several nights and one of the sets started falling over back stage. So I like rushed to hold it up because the play was like happening. It was live and we couldn't have this big collapse.

[00:26:31] And he came like running up behind me and like slammed into me into the set. And like had his whole body pressed up against me and we like helped the set up and we're like, wow, something in this is really unholy.

[00:26:42] So I had to get out of there. I keep his bone the right just so I can get out of there and then. So Chris is all mad about all of us, right? So at the end of it because I was like the writer director producer.

[00:26:55] This was the second one was based on a novel. I got rights to adapt and rewrote. This was me as a teenager. What can I say? It just got worse from there in terms of my intensity level. So I think I still have the letter from the author.

[00:27:12] And the legal paperwork and granting me permission to adapt it for my Christian dramatic society. Anyways, so at the end of it like the very last production I went out on stage to like take a bow or whatever

[00:27:27] and Chris had gotten flowers for the cast to give me. And she made sure my ex couldn't be the one to give it to me because she didn't want him giving me flowers because then it might look like he liked me and we can't have that.

[00:27:41] So after that I always told I was not allowed to talk to him anymore and we were not to spend time together. And there are so many other details that I'm just like glossing, it was really bad.

[00:27:53] Like the control, the manipulation, the slut shaming because I like the boy how dare I, you know, all the stuff. And I'm not allowed to talk to him anymore. And then Rick changes it and says, well, if he emails you then you can email him back.

[00:28:07] And this was when AOL, like the chat thing just meant, well, I wasn't allowed to get that. But I could email if he emailed me so he didn't know I wasn't allowed. Oh, did he not? I don't know.

[00:28:18] He may have known that I wasn't allowed to get AOL. But he would email me and then I would email back and then he would email me back and then I would email him back and then he would email me out.

[00:28:27] Then he would send me a reply to me he would refuse me so I could just go on. And sometimes hours at a time. So we're basically chatting but it was always theology or the play or something righteous and wholly because obviously. And he stayed back in Wisconsin.

[00:28:45] I went to Illinois, he stayed in Wisconsin. And since I was not allowed to initiate contact, he thought I didn't like him that I just like gone off to school and forgotten about him and blah, blah, blah. So everyone's in a while.

[00:29:00] He would email me and I would email him back. But I was not allowed to reach out first and being obedient and holy. I did not reach out first. And instead I just cried a lot. So even though you weren't at home anymore.

[00:29:12] No, because I was under a thwart. I didn't want to say it's fire starts to come get. Yeah, I mean that's the point. That's how far it extended. You were away from home had a crush and you're still like I cannot.

[00:29:27] I always love with him at that point in a new way. So you've asked before like was like interested in guys at school and I said like, uh, I noticed a couple people I had a few passing crushes.

[00:29:37] But like no, because I was kind of waiting around for him. But also he was on holy because he had different beliefs than the cult. So I wasn't allowed to like him because of that too, because he was a sinner. How dare you go outside the cold? Exactly.

[00:29:54] And I was supposed to marry a music major so that he could be a music minister at a church and I could be his help. That was, that was Rikken Chris's plan for my life. And you know, how dare I like someone who was not that

[00:30:10] and also was a sinner because he wasn't part of the cult. So this goes on for years. I'm at school, not a lot of talk to him. I see him when I, you know, sometimes when I'm home for

[00:30:20] the summer or for holidays and I had a job at home depot that was my summer job. I worked in the Garden Center and his dad's a carpenter and a remodeling contractor. And my ex worked for him through the summer or since stuff.

[00:30:37] So he would like come find me at the Home Depot, at the Garden Center anytime he and his dad were there to pick up supplies. And I would get like the little butterflies in my stomach and then I'd be like, sinful, you know,

[00:30:51] and have to shut that down real quick. And then I started getting help for all the sexual assault. And that was the first time people had ever told me like, hey, maybe your parents are like kind of messed up.

[00:31:08] And then like what they believe in the control they have over you and how they silence you and how they've run every aspect of your existence. Like maybe that's not healthy. You're an adult. Like, have you considered this might not be the best?

[00:31:21] So extrapolating that outment that maybe they were wrong about like controlling and coercing my romantic life too. So again, being wholly I started having really intense theological discussions with the theology department, faculty to figure out if indeed honoring mental being.

[00:31:38] Because in the cult you had to honor your parents which equaled just unquestioning obedience, even as an adult until you were married off and then you had to give unquestioning obedience to a husband. So I eventually, and during this time, oh, oh wait. So I'm 20 now maybe 20, 20, 20.

[00:32:06] And my ex and I had been talking more, yeah, okay, hang on. So I have all those conversations then I go home for a summer and I see my ex a lot more just because circumstance is and we kind of like reconnect

[00:32:18] after several years of barely speaking barely seeing each other, barely talking anyway and in no communication just about. I think we played on a volleyball team together or something, but we started seeing each other all the time

[00:32:32] and it was like we picked up right where we left off as high schoolers. And I was like oh wow, and I'm still at feelings for him like this is bad, this is serious, sinning, you know? So we start talking and he never,

[00:32:48] I don't remember at this point, this was so long ago. I don't remember if we kind of like told each other, we like each other in so many words or if it was just like we both kind of knew. But I go back to school in August.

[00:33:02] Like the first week I'm there, he drives from Wisconsin to Illinois to visit me just for a day so that we can like go sit and talk about us. So we sat in a park for like eight, 10 hours, I don't know, literally nothing happened.

[00:33:15] Oh, he put his arm around me, which was obviously like super unholy and unchased. And then I walked him back to his car and I thought he was gonna kiss me and I told him he couldn't because we were on campus

[00:33:29] and there was a rule that you can't kiss. So what is there? Yes, I do a faith or rules, I don't know. So he didn't, he hugged me goodbye which was also like, you can't hug. You can't, but he told me he loved me that day.

[00:33:47] So this was like super serious. Yeah. So he goes home and tells his parents who freak out, who tell, and then I have to confess to my parents because I can't keep secrets from them. And they've agreed to the fuck out.

[00:34:01] And oh my gosh, I was like the worst sinner that ever existed on the planet. And then he decided he needed to step away and figure out religion because we had different beliefs. And again, he was a high school kid. I was very righteous

[00:34:19] because I wasn't gonna proceed with anything because we didn't have the same beliefs. And I didn't want him to change for me, which was mature of me. I'll give myself that. And I was like this has gotta be independent of me. Like I'm not gonna be the reason

[00:34:32] for your, you know, whatever religion decisions. So then it was a combination of he was like, I need time to just like go think about this and making Chris freaking out saying I wasn't allowed to have any contact with him.

[00:34:45] So we didn't talk for like nine months, 11 months. It was long, it was really long. And we said I love you and then it goes for nine months. Well, and I also had to go. Now I think he got back in touch once

[00:35:01] to say he had figured out religion stuff but we still weren't allowed to talk because Raking Chris had said no. So it continued for like maybe five more months after that. And then I had more conversations with the theology faculty.

[00:35:15] And this, oh, this was the end of my junior year when I got really sick, which was obviously God punishing me for liking him according to Chris. So I get like rushed back to a hospital a couple weeks before it falls semester. ends my junior year.

[00:35:34] Emergency room, lots of doctors appointment, all this stuff. I go back for the whole spring semester. I finish out my junior year. I'm a junior in college, okay? Taking care of all my own finances, everything. Anyways, Raking Chris were still controlling my life

[00:35:49] and my relationship and I was in a lot of to be in one. So I decided, because it was all tied to like their household. If I was under their roof, I had to obey them even according to my theology faculty.

[00:36:01] Even though you aren't technically under the roof because you were living on campus. Right, but I lived there over the summer. Okay. So you're around authority? Yeah. So I was so sick that I had to take time off school. Anyways, I actually like moved across the country

[00:36:18] and moved to Massachusetts just to get away and have some space to think and my ex and I stayed in touch. And I forget when we formally started a relationship. I think right around like my 21st birthday, we started an official relationship.

[00:36:34] But we had tried to court before that. Oh man, I forgot so much of this. We tried to court before that and Rick said that we could have supervised conversations. Oh, I think I remember how it all went down. Okay, okay. Okay, I forget how it happened.

[00:36:54] I totally forget how it happened. But somehow Rick said we were allowed to court. I was gonna ask like did he go ask Rick? I think so. I think there were multiple conversations with Rick you know before this. And then we were allowed to have supervised conversations

[00:37:10] like he could come over to Rick and Chris's house and we could sit in the yard and talk. Also, we're watched. Yeah. Or we could go over like where his parents had a house. There was a park like literally across the street

[00:37:24] from them so we could sit there in his mom would watch us with binoculars and we could we could talk there. We'd known each other for almost a decade at that point and we knew we loved each other and all that stuff.

[00:37:38] It was never like if we were gonna get married it was when, just the way that relationship went. So I'm really saying like okay this is getting more serious I need to tell him about Andy and my family and my past and all of these things.

[00:37:53] So I don't know oh I had to ask permission anytime I wanted to see him. Like I had to say I would like to see him and we would like to talk and he come over and we sit in the yard whatever.

[00:38:03] And so I told Rick there was something really important I needed to talk to now my ex about and Rick figured out I was gonna tell him about Andy. So Rick flips his shit and said that if I tell my ex anything

[00:38:17] then it's liable in slander and Andy consume me. So I better not say a word which is false by the way listeners, that's totally untrue. But I didn't know that at the time. So I decided you know what? If this guy's gonna be my husband

[00:38:30] he needs to know that so I'm gonna tell him anyways. So I tell him and like it should have been a red flag because my ex made it all about him somehow. But back then I didn't know that was a red flag.

[00:38:40] Like the narcissistic tendencies were already there. I just didn't know that that's what it was because I was so used to it with my bio family and the selfishness was already there but I didn't know because I was used to all of it with my family

[00:38:53] and he wasn't as bad as my family. So obviously he was like not like them and he was better indifferent. This is just how a trauma times he was brain works. And that's what I was at the time. So yeah, he made the whole thing about him

[00:39:08] and then Rick tells Andy that I've told this guy and Andy decides to reach out to my ex with this whole thing about how he loves me in a way he could never understand blah blah blah Big brother your face right now oh my god.

[00:39:23] Like Andy's there to protect me and blah blah well I don't know it was and threatening stuff and it was just all mess. And that I think that was the turning point where I decided to like nope, I'm pulling the plug-on and core chip.

[00:39:34] Like this does not work. They are sabotaging this relationship and they are controlling it and they're controlling me and this is not healthy and okay and not okay so I moved away. That's when I moved to Massachusetts and we kind of transitioned from

[00:39:51] courting under Rick's authority to going rogue and dating Oh, dare you. Like it's so funny because even talking about this I'm like, shame. All these years like not cause I think that but because like trying to remember all of it is not just my brain that's remembering stuff

[00:40:12] it's like my body is remembering it too so I'm feeling like very troubled and like oh the shame. So we were supposed to get married January of 2011 and my health was really failing or struggling so you were still in therapy through like all of this.

[00:40:33] I hadn't started there. Well, I had been to like Christian counselors who had not done anything except focus on forgiveness and how that would set me free from everything and not even like they did not diagnose me with PTSD. They probably didn't even know I had PTSD.

[00:40:49] They're not of no one PTSD was but whatever. So I wasn't like making any progress or healing or anything. Like I was still having night terrors and all that kind of stuff like severe PTSD. Oh, and my doctor wanted me to go through this treatment

[00:41:05] that was like a natural version of chemotherapy for all of the stuff I'd been missed diagnosed with. Yeah, interesting. And I did it because I was still missed diagnosed with all this stuff that ended up being PTSD so we knew it was gonna be really intense

[00:41:21] so we decided we wanted to be married for that so that he could be like, we glee my emergency person instead of freaking Chris. Legally being my emergency person. So we moved our wedding up like six months and like got engaged and planned it real fast

[00:41:37] and got married and the minute there was gonna be a wedding and I don't remember if my act asked Rick if he could marry me. Like I don't know. The minute there was like an engagement and a wedding in the works like Rick and Chris were like,

[00:41:52] but we need to be part of planning it and Rick wanted his name on the invitations and he wanted to walk me down the aisle and like all this stuff I think we've talked about in the past somewhere. And suddenly they were back in control of everything

[00:42:01] and my ex's mom threw like crying fits about everything. We were broke kids, like we were broke college kids, right? And so we were having like this tiny little wedding which is hard to do with like I'm Irish Talian. He's Italian, I forget what else

[00:42:20] but like huge extended families. And oh German, Italian German. And so we were trying to keep it under 100 people which is sounds big but in our context like I think my siblings had like 300 plus people at their weddings and stuff.

[00:42:37] So or at least the older siblings, you know, I knew when they got married. And his mom was like sobbing because we weren't inviting some you know, afe cousin 82 times removed that my ex had never even met and stuff.

[00:42:52] So she just like our family just made the whole thing so miserable, it was so bad. And then his mom cried in a corner through the reception and I mean, I've talked about what Rick did and Chris was screaming at me until I walked down the aisle

[00:43:04] and I just remember thinking like I made it after we got married like I made it and now I'm not under ricks authority and then that marriage blew up. Yeah. So was there ever a transfer of authority there in line with courtship?

[00:43:23] So Rick walked me down the aisle and then the pastor asked, you know, who gives this woman to be married to this man and he said I do. And I think it's more like these days, they'll say oh her mother and I do

[00:43:36] or whatever note it was I do. And according to her ex beliefs like the minute the pastor said your man and wife, like he wasn't my authority anymore, my new husband was. How did that play out? Well I told you about the father daughter dance

[00:43:52] and how he was like trying to course me and I said no and he had to like shut up and accept it and like there were other things they tried to do and I just be like no and they had to accept it. Like they stopped hitting me.

[00:44:03] I didn't get hit anymore after I was married. Chris still said horrible things and like screamed at me and stuff. It's still crazy to me that it's just like light switch. They were just like, well, we have lost authority. Like for a controlling group of people

[00:44:20] for that to just be like for them to even accept that it's weird to me. They wouldn't still try to maintain authority some way, somehow, especially for you and everything that happened. And they would just still try to find a way. So it's well,

[00:44:39] they did other things like I wasn't allowed to be around my younger siblings because I was a bad influence and because my younger siblings were several of them were still minors. You know when I got married then they were still under waking Chris's authority

[00:44:54] so I had to like respect that and I couldn't tell them and I couldn't be around. Like I couldn't tell them about him and I couldn't be around them and that's why Abby never heard it from me because she was 14 when I reported

[00:45:05] and I was a bad influence and I had not seen her much in years. And then like they would do other stuff. They just made you an outcast because that's what they could control. Yeah, yeah, it did stuff like that. That was the quick lost over version.

[00:45:23] Like there was a lot of heartache. There was a lot of sorrow. There was a lot of sadness through that whole like failed. We tried their courtship thing into dating engagement because I was just sad the whole time because I was losing my family.

[00:45:37] Which was gonna happen with her without my ex and I can see that now. It didn't know back then. I thought it was like, oh, you know, it's because I'm choosing and I'm rebelling that I'm losing my family in retrospect. It's like no, I was leaving a cult

[00:45:52] and you can't do that, you know? So it was gonna happen regardless of, how I married him or not but at the time I thought it was all like, you know, my punishment for rebelling. I felt bad. I still feel bad for me and my ex

[00:46:12] that that was our experience. It wasn't like happy and exciting. It was like, all right, now I gotta put out this fire. Okay, now this person's yelling and screaming at us. Okay, now we gotta put out this fire. Okay, now this person's horrified with us

[00:46:25] and it didn't matter that we were like good purity culture kids and didn't do anything until we got married. First of all, I don't think anyone believed that. I don't think either of our parents believed us. Chokes on them because I'm trying to decide if

[00:46:41] I should tell the really horrifying story I have about like... Hmm. Okay. You're going to that, say we're for another day. Well, it might never make sense anywhere else with me. Okay. This is like embarrassing, Lee horrible because, you know, sex ed wasn't a thing. Okay.

[00:47:08] So obviously I'd been raped, but a little bit of like topic, topic disclaimer here. I'm gonna talk about kind of round about about rape for a second. My brother would make me close my eyes for certain parts of it. So there were some things I didn't know

[00:47:27] like because I didn't see. And then when you have really like powerful story telling from the cult, even if it goes against your lived experience, like it's still influence is your mind or at least what it did with me.

[00:47:46] And I was also not even there was a lot of stuff I didn't understand. So like there was a couple at my very conservative Christian school who got pregnant, which they weren't married, we can't do that. They insisted that they'd never had sex.

[00:48:02] So I'm like, so apparently you can get pregnant from contact that's less than penetration. Holy shit, that's always super careful. Oh no. So we like made out and stuff, but that was about as far as it went. But then like one time my period was super late

[00:48:23] and I was like whatever happened to those kids at movie like it must have happened to us. Like I must be pregnant. I actually went to the doctor and had a pregnancy test. I'm just gonna melt through the floor right here right now.

[00:48:35] So you did know, well, I thought that there was something, yeah, well, and it I'm just being stressed because I didn't know that was an indicator of being pregnant though. No, I did know that it was an indicator of being pregnant.

[00:48:49] I thought that because I'd never had a sex talk and stuff, we got the book after that I think that we run together as an engaged couple. But because of other stories I'd heard from other cool kids, I was like, okay, there's gotta be like,

[00:49:03] otherwise you get pregnant then like you can accidentally get insominated? I guess like I don't know. I hate so the poor nursing did the pregnancy test. She was like, honey, are you afraid you've been accidentally in some of the need to know something?

[00:49:19] I was like, I don't know. Oh no. Oh God, these are the problems you have when you grow up like that and you there's just so much you don't know. And then we got the book and the book was very clear on.

[00:49:39] Like nope, this is the one way. You're fine. Geez. I can't imagine it should be in a fight. And it wasn't just me, like he was in the same boat where we were straight up and they came. I feel like, why do we didn't know?

[00:50:00] Like there's another, what else could it? Why do we jump? Oh the shelteredness. Yeah. He didn't know about periods. I had to teach him about periods. That was really fun. How old are you at this point? Oh, you're in our 20s. Okay. Surprise that nurse didn't be like,

[00:50:27] here's a book or let me explain something to you. I have my doctor. So the nurse and then I charge the doctor. And I've never been afraid of asking questions when I need information. And I like that about myself and I'm like,

[00:50:41] my ego is not so big that I won't just be like help me. I don't know. Like I will always say help me. I don't know when I need it. And so I went to her before our wedding

[00:50:51] and I was like, she knew about the sexual assault history. And I was like, I've never like as an adult essentially had sex. Can you tell me how to do it? Mm-hmm. Like what do I need to know? And she was so sweet.

[00:51:06] She was like the sweetest sweetest person. And she just sat there and like told me everything and like all of it. Yeah. How'd you react to that? I was like, okay, I was probably taking notes. You know, being the, of course.

[00:51:23] And like she explained about stuff to prevent you to eyes and like all, so she did it very medically but it was almost like having a mom. She was like the right age to be my mom and she was so sweet.

[00:51:38] And I like, I felt like I had a mom that day. She was really nice. Yeah. God, that's horrifying. Yeah. It's a little light to be having that talk. No, I mean like the whole, just a little bit. It's all just bad for bad.

[00:51:54] So bad, especially the part where like I thought there were other ways you could get pregnant and was like straight up convinced and like repenting before God. Oh. We did, we were like praying. Oh my gosh. No. Oh. This is what happened.

[00:52:14] Like you grow up and it could open no one knows anything. And then you all come up and like there were, there were some like public school kids at the Moody Bible Institute but a lot of us were like Christian.

[00:52:23] There were a lot of other homeschool kids there. So like it was just, you know in the women's dorm like whispered conversations because we weren't supposed to talk about sex. So like there was a lot of misinformation that God's bright is no one really knew.

[00:52:36] And what they'd been to public school and had sex said or been to a school that taught them sex said like a lot of them like we just didn't know. So like when people were circulating stories like yeah they never had sex but they're pregnant.

[00:52:49] How does that happen? You know, thanks. Like mention we've watched Bridgeton in season one when they're trying to figure out how the nurse or how the maid got pregnant, to Nellope and Lowe's. Oh, Larry is dialogue. You guys should go watch it throughout the season one.

[00:53:08] There was like this whole situation where Lowe isn't Pnellope are like these very virtuous young women of the upper cross society who are trying to figure out how on earth a lady falls pregnant as they put it. And like that was us.

[00:53:25] That was, you know the righteous virtue was crowded at the moody babblins too. Oh and then when women got engaged like it just went up to a whole other level of they were terrified because they didn't know what was gonna happen to them.

[00:53:38] Like how do I prepare for something I don't even know anything about? And you know, did you ever have the thought that like as soon as you got married? Like that, that was it. Like you were pregnant, you were just gonna get pregnant. Like no.

[00:53:53] I needed something had to happen. Okay. Like inner course but also apparently there were other ways it could happen. Oh okay. Which is like false obviously. But I didn't know that at the time because you know, we couldn't speak of such things. So.

[00:54:16] Is there a real rough time? Is there a real rough time to be me? Feel alive. Oh well, we can end on that event of story and lived experience through courtship. Sort of. And then you're for a dating center. So sinful. Everyone just have a moment of silence

[00:54:39] for younger me. It's fine, it's fine, I'm fine. Just you know, tell the world on the inner webs. Mm-hmm. Most horrifying parts of my past and all aspects. It's okay. Ha ha ha. I need to drink. That's gonna get a drink. Yes.

[00:54:58] Well, thanks for telling us your story. Your world, my sin. TBD on if this is something I'll regret later. I mean, it's from an outsider's perspective like it's interesting to know how how. How messed up it can be? Well, how messed up it can be.

[00:55:16] But like how deep the brainwashing goes and like the impacts of that and like how in the dark you were about all the stuff on top of, you know, the shame. It was associated with all that and you just not set up for success at all.

[00:55:31] No, which is the point because then you would know that I still can't have that. Yeah. I just don't understand how it's like you must eat the whole queer or full thing. You must have 10 kids, 20 kids. Or not going to tell you how to do that though.

[00:55:47] Ha ha ha. It doesn't make me sense to me like we're going to leave out the most important part of how that actually happens. But you must do it. So yeah, thanks for letting us through that and big. Very vulnerable with that one. Traumolis. Yes.

[00:56:07] So right up here and join the podcast, please drop us a line. There's links in the description if you want to support the show. Those are also in there and don't forget to leave us some reviews and it will be back next week.

[00:56:22] Thanks for listening to another episode of The Cult I Left Behind. Until next time, don't join a cult. If you enjoyed this podcast, please like, share and subscribe and we will catch you on the next episode.