Wishing the Best to Josh Harris and His Ex

Book covers for "I Kissed Dating Goodbye" and "Boy Meets Girl" by Joshua Harris. Image source.

Last week Josh and Shannon Harris announced that they are separating. Yes, this is Josh Harris as in "I Kissed Dating Goodbye", as in, here are God's rules you have to follow when "courting", don't kiss before the wedding, don't fall in love, don't have sex before marriage, and this will guarantee you have a perfect marriage that lasts forever. He literally wrote the book on purity culture. And now he is getting divorced.

All of us ex-purity-culture people have a lot of feelings about this. Here are some things I want to say:

First of all, divorce isn't necessarily bad. Sometimes it is the healthiest choice that one can make, in their situation. I hope Josh and Shannon's decision to separate will turn out to be a healthy thing for them, and life gets better.

In purity culture, though, divorce is The End of the World. It's The Worst Thing Ever. The whole entire goal of purity culture- which Josh Harris promoted in his books- is to make sure that no one ever gets their heart broken because they fell in love/ had sex/ "gave their heart" to another person, and then didn't stay together with that person forever.

Harris's books "I Kissed Dating Goodbye" and "Boy Meets Girl" are about how to make sure you never ever go through a devastating breakup. While dating. While not married. All these rules to follow to avoid ever experiencing a breakup, because that would just be The Worst Thing Ever. And, in purity culture, if breaking up with someone you've only dated for a month or so is The Worst Thing Ever, then divorce is simply unimaginable.

It was all about a guarantee, about avoiding risk. Just follow "God's rules"- ie, do what Josh and Shannon did- and then you'll DEFINITELY have a perfect godly marriage that lasts FOREVER, just like God wants.

Well real life isn't like that. In real life there are no guarantees. Life happens, and we all just do our best, and sometimes you end up in a situation where the healthiest option is to divorce. It sucks; nobody wants to be in a situation like that. It's painful for them, and it's painful for their kids.

But... yeah that's reality. All those Christian leaders who gave us a list of rules to follow and promised that if we were good enough Christians, God would reward us with a perfect marriage- well, they were wrong.

And another thing: Society says a marriage "failed" if it ends in divorce, and it is "successful" if it doesn't. That's nonsense. What actually matters is whether or not the partners involved are happy and healthy. If you're in a bad situation, admitting that fact and making the decision to separate is not "failure." It can make things much better, in the long run.

There are ex-purity-culture-followers who have gone through the pain of divorce as a direct result of Josh Harris's teachings. They followed "the rules" but had no clue what actually makes a relationship healthy, and a while after getting married, it fell apart. That's not my situation, but I understand how you might have a lot more feelings about this if that happened to you.

But now Josh and Shannon are going through that too. I can't help but think they're in the same situation as us- he was only 21 when he wrote "I Kissed Dating Goodbye"; he didn't know any better, just like we all didn't know any better when we accepted those teachings.

And they must have felt enormous pressure to stay married, just because he is such a huge symbol within Christian purity ideology. If purity culture says divorce is "failure" then imagine how much more of a failure they'd think you were if your entire claim to fame was telling people how to acquire a "perfect" marriage. So good for Josh and Shannon, having the courage to make the decision that's best for them and announce it publicly.

(I'll throw on a disclaimer, though: When I say Josh and Shannon are a lot like all of us who grew up in purity culture and suffered from it, I realize that there is a huge obvious difference- the fact that Josh profited financially from selling his books. Whereas the rest of us are over here, years later, paying money for therapists to tell us our natural desires aren't evil. So yeah I have compassion for Josh but obviously let's not buy any of his potential future books or documentaries or whatever.)

So. That's all I have to say, I guess. It sucks, but hopefully in the long run it gets better. I wish the best to Josh and Shannon and their kids.

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Update: A few days after this announcement, Josh Harris made the statement "I am not a Christian." Some of my thoughts on that are in this post.

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Related:
So I Watched Josh Harris's Documentary 
I Can't Write Wedding Vows Without Thinking About Divorce
Yep, That's Exactly What a Perfect, Godly, Pure Relationship Would Look Like 

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One of the most highly-voted topics in the 2019 Reader Survey was "purity culture"~ so that's the topic for this post.