1.How China Built the Most Extreme Metro Ever (June 18, 14-minute video) This is really cool! It's about the subway system in Chongqing, China. I've been to Chongqing before- very mountainy.
2.You and translator microbes (June 19, via) "Serious multilingual nuances and complexities, which the real world offers in abundance, are cordoned off into a one-line tech explanation and forgotten. Category mismatches, unaligned conventions surrounding conversational maxims, and the fact that different languages have different approaches as to which grammatical features to encode explicitly and which ones to leave unspoken (unspoken, yes, but still very much mutually understood amongst a speaker population) are all things that will inevitably arise occasionally in multilingual communications, even with maximally competent interpreters present." !!!!! This! All of this!
3.The Fungus behind King Tut’s Curse is a LIE (July 10) "As best I can tell, some microbiologists thought they were being cute with 'the pharaoh hypothesis' and the general public just saw the title and said, 'Aha! It’s real and the cause is fungus.' No!"
5. ‘Biblical grounds’ for white Texan divorce (July 10) "That’s how divorce works in white evangelicaldom — it’s completely unacceptable unless you can demonize your former spouse and put 100% of the blame on them for sinning like a sinful sinner."
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Links related to the antichrist:
1.Save Our Signs (via) "Join our effort to build a community archive of the signs, exhibits, and texts that could soon disappear from our national parks."
3.Judge blocks Trump's order restricting birthright citizenship (July 10) "'Every court to have looked at this cruel order agrees that it is unconstitutional,' Wofsy, the deputy director of the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, said in a statement announcing the lawsuit in late June. 'The Supreme Court’s decision did not remotely suggest otherwise, and we are fighting to make sure President Trump cannot trample on the citizenship rights of a single child.'"
And related to that: It must be amazing to be a Supreme Court justice (June 30) "Leaving parents hanging on the question of whether their newborn children have citizenship here, or somewhere, or nowhere; issuing abstract rulings opining that while presidents should of course strive to not do plainly criminal things, they can do plainly criminal things so long as they do it from behind the right desk; hurling grenades that blow up centuries of established law on the last day of the term and than getting the hell out of Dodge before the ink is dry, booking it at top speed to go off salmon-fishing or island-hopping."
4. Federal judge orders stop to indiscriminate immigration raids in Los Angeles (July 11) "In her order, Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong, of the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, said there is "a mountain of evidence" to support the claim that agents are arresting people solely based on their race, accents, or the work they're engaged in, in violation of the Fourth Amendment's protection against unreasonable government seizure."
1.Southern Trans Youth Emergency Project (via) "In response, the Campaign for Southern Equality has launched the Southern Trans Youth Emergency Project (STYEP), a new regional effort which provides rapid response support directly to the families of youth who are impacted by anti-transgender healthcare bans in the South. Through STYEP, and in close partnership with state and local organizations, we are providing grants, patient navigation support, and accurate information to impacted families to ensure that youth can access the care they need and deserve, even in the face of oppressive laws."
2.At a Loss for Words (2019, via) Wow this is WILD- apparently there is something called the "three-cueing method" for teaching kids to read, and it tells kids that when they come to an unfamiliar word, they shouldn't ACTUALLY READ THE ACTUAL WORD, they should use other incidental information to kinda guess what the word could be (picture, first letter of the word, etc). !!! WHAT!
The article is from 2019- maybe the situation is different now? Anyway the article says that instead, kids should be taught phonics. I guess that's how my school taught it when I was little- I remember spending a lot of time on how this letter makes this sound (or sometimes makes this other sound, etc) and how combinations of letters together would make a certain sound. I guess that's phonics. Mostly, though, I didn't need to use the "sounding it out" strategies, after memorizing how all the words are spelled. I just sometimes can't remember the spellings of "choose" and "chose" and so then I have to think to myself that the "oo" makes an "oo" sound and the "ose" has a silent e at the end that causes the single o to say "O".
4.Death, Lonely Death (February 19, via) "Voyager kept going for another 34 years after that photo. It’s still going. It has left the grip of the Sun’s gravity, so it’s going to fall outward forever."
5. Reflecting on interdisciplinary journal clubbing (February 21) "While some of the [ace] journal club participants have backgrounds in social science, more broadly, we’re experts of a different sort, in that we’ve been directly experiencing it and have been discussing it with other people who directly experience it. We can tell when an argument doesn’t ring true, or if there are additional factors that the authors ignored."
6."A man will say he's a feminist but he doesn't wipe the counters": Lyz Lenz on the beauty of divorce (February 20) "So who does that work when he 'forgets?' It was me, always me, coming in and being hit with the smell of rot and garbage. Sometimes it would fall, and there would be trash on the floor. We would have these fights and he would say, it's just a bag of trash, let it go. I cannot let it go. You show complete disregard for me as a person because you're not thinking about who has to do this."
8. The Reformation Project and Queer Theology (February 24) "But to take revolution permanently off the table is—I don’t see how to avoid this conclusion—to chose the system over the wellbeing of individual marginalized people and that strikes me as contrary to the Way of Jesus."
Matthew Vines and The Reformation Project put out a statement that they do "affirming theology" rather than "queer theology." I am not a fan of this (and I'll probably write my own post about it). Here's a really good response from Billie, a trans woman.
1. Study that found husbands prone to leave sick wives was flawed, researchers say (2015) and Authors’ Explanation of the Retraction (2015) There was a study, which I'd heard about many times on twitter and various places, that found that it's MUCH more likely that married couples divorce if the wife has major health problems, than if the husband has major health problems. Popular wisdom on the internet took this to mean that men abandon their wife if the wife gets sick, society doesn't expect men to keep their marriage vows, patriarchy is the worst, etc.
Well I'm just finding out now (even though it happened in 2015) that the study had an error in analyzing their data, and actually those results weren't correct. I'm not sure if there have been other studies since then with better data, or what the current academic consensus on this is. But it's important to not keep repeating this claim, now that we know the study was flawed.
2.Samsung caught faking zoom photos of the Moon (March 13, via) "The test of Samsung’s phones conducted by Reddit user u/ibreakphotos was ingenious in its simplicity. They created an intentionally blurry photo of the Moon, displayed it on a computer screen, and then photographed this image using a Samsung S23 Ultra. As you can see below, the first image on the screen showed no detail at all, but the resulting picture showed a crisp and clear 'photograph' of the Moon. The S23 Ultra added details that simply weren’t present before. There was no upscaling of blurry pixels and no retrieval of seemingly lost data. There was just a new Moon — a fake one."
3.Infinite Fractal Mazes (October 21) "Fractal mazes contain infinite paths, but the only solutions permitted are finite. Some people find that disappointing. What’s the point of all that extra maze if we don’t get to traverse it?" Oh this is so cool.
4. The Infamous 1981 Lee Atwater Interview School for Government at Liberty University (October 20) "By choosing to name their school for government after Helms, Liberty University is endorsing all of that — admitting, and even flat-out bragging, that everything they’re packaging as 'today’s conservative movement' and 'traditional values' is just a euphemism for saying 'N—-r, n—-r, n—-r.' They may as well have simply named it The Infamous 1981 Lee Atwater Interview School for Government and carved that entire quote in granite on the side of a campus building."
Also from the Slacktivist: Get sick, get fired (October 24) "And she reminded my wife, repeatedly, that the salon was 'a privately owned business,' which she said exempted her from the kind of labor laws governing large, publicly traded companies. And which also, apparently, exempted her from common decency and basic humanity."
I'm interested in watching this... I've written about Chau a bunch of times here on the blog, because of how his story so completely matches the "ideal" actions that American evangelicals believe missionaries (and, really, all Christians) should take. And also I relate to him a lot... believing in something so much that it becomes so big and overtakes your whole life- well, that's kind of why I moved to China.
6.Did Legalizing Abortion Reduce Crime 20 Years Later? (October 24) "So there are a lot of issues with the abortion-crime hypothesis, but one I rarely see brought up is the fact that there’s a very good chance that Levitt based this entire idea on an initial premise that is simply not true: that legalizing abortion drastically alters the number of abortions women get. Levitt calls this 'true virtually by definition.' It is not."
7. Feel free to not click on this one- I'm sharing it specifically because it's bad: Andy Stanley’s ‘Unconditional’ Contradiction (October 4) It's an article from Christianity Today, about the "Unconditional" conference, hosted by pastor Andy Stanley. The good Christians at Christianity Today are unhappy that Andy Stanley's conference wasn't as anti-gay as it could have been. Stanley's position seems to be, [and I'm paraphrasing this, it's not a quote from anywhere] "marriage must be 1 man and 1 woman, but still there are things we can learn from gay Christians- even gay Christians in same-sex relationships- so we should listen to them." Well, Christianity Today is here to tell you that's not good enough. I'm posting this link here so y'all can see what Christianity Today is all about.
But hey, here's one cool tidbit from CT's article: "The most controversial conference speakers were Justin Lee and Brian Nietzel, whom Stanley described as 'two married gay men' who are also 'Christ-followers today.'" Wow, I hadn't heard Justin Lee got married- good for him! I read his book, "Torn," way back in 2012, and it definitely had a major influence on my journey along the "hate-the-sin-love-the-sinner" to "ally" to "queer" pipeline. Anyway, very cool to hear he's married now, very happy for him. (I don't know who Brian Nietzel is, but I suppose I'm happy for him too.)
Are our friends at Christianity Today happy for Justin Lee? LOL. Of course not! They know no details about his marriage, besides gender, and that's enough for them to conclude it's BAD and WRONG and nobody should invite him to speak at any conferences. This is what Christianity Today is about. Like, why can't you just be happy for people? Why do you have to make sure you're judging them enough?
Why do you follow a god who requires you to judge people in order to maintain your Christian cred?
And this is why, in my opinion, it's pointless to even try to "pass" as a good evangelical in order to work for change from the inside. Any little deviation from "God's design for gender"/ "God created everyone to occupy the exact same place on the Kinsey scale" [uh this is also my paraphrase] and the good evangelicals are ready to cancel you. Andy Stanley isn't even saying it's okay to be in a same-sex relationship- he's just saying that his church welcomes people who are, and believes they have things to say which are worth listening to. If he wants to keep his status as a real Christian in evangelicals' eyes, he needs to backtrack on that and throw queer people under the bus. It wouldn't be the first time that a straight cis Christian made a statement about accepting queer people, and then got such nasty pushback that they immediately reversed their position, like "oh no, no of course I didn't mean that, of course I believe what the bible says, marriage is 1 man and 1 woman."
The cool thing about not being evangelical is you can stop playing those games. You can just simply accept your queer friends, just be a normal person with them, rather than constantly trying to judge them in a "loving" way, constantly walking that fine line between "hate the sin" and "love the sinner." You don't have to do any of that. Come into the big queer world. Love people like Jesus did. Be free.
A world map, with a heart in the US connected to a heart in Europe. Image source.
I'm a US citizen; my husband is a Chinese citizen. We got married in China, we live in China, and we have a son who was born in China. A few days ago I wrote a post called Why Marriage as a Private Contract is a Bad Idea, which included the idea that people don't think about the fact that marriage is an actual legal arrangement which comes with certain rights/obligations/restrictions- they just think inromantic terms like "we want to spend the rest of our lives together, so, we get married." This post will be about how that relates to my situation as an immigrant who got married in China.
When we got married, the legal process of it worked thusly: I had to go to the US consulate in Shanghai and get a document that states I wasn't already married. (If I had been married before, I would have had to bring proof of divorce or death, when I went to get this document from the US consulate.) I just had to swear that I'm not already married, and the US consulate didn't do anything to check if it's true or not, they just believed me and wrote up a paper that says so.
Then we had to go to my husband's hometown, because his hukou is from there. What is a hukou, you ask? Ah. Well. The hukou system is very important in China, so let me explain it. A hukou is a document that all Chinese citizens should have, that states what city in China you are officially a resident of. In the city where your hukou is, you enjoy some rights that non-locals don't have- things related to access to public services like schools, health care, buying property, etc. Some hukous are better than others- for example, a Beijing or Shanghai hukou is seen as really valuable to have, whereas a hukou for some little city in the middle of nowhere, like, who cares.
It's not that each individual has a hukou- it's the household that has the hukou, and all the family members' names are on it. So for many people (such as my husband) their hukou has their parents' names on it, and their name. And the actual physical document is in the parents' possession, in their hometown. Lots of people in Shanghai are in this situation- they live in Shanghai, but their hukou is a hukou from their hometown rather than a Shanghai hukou, and they don't actually have it physically, their parents have it in a different city.
In China, lots of people move from small cities to big cities to find jobs. But just because you move to another city, and live there for a long time, doesn't mean you can change your hukou to that city. Each city has requirements about what you have to do to get a hukou (for example, how many years you have to work and pay taxes, how high your salary has to be, what level of education you should have, etc). I know people who, after living in Shanghai for a long time, were able to get a Shanghai hukou, and remove their name from their parents' hukou.
Anyway. So. When Chinese people get married, it has to be in one spouse's hukou city. They can't just get married anywhere. So, we went back to Hendrix's hometown, brought all our documents, and got our marriage licenses there. (We later held the wedding in the US- in China, getting legally married is a completely separate event from the wedding.)
Okay, so that's the legal aspect of getting married in China. Also, we have to be a man and woman because China doesn't allow same-sex marriage. (Same-sex couples would have to go to a different country to get married, I'm not sure on the details of this, sounds complicated.) Beyond that, I didn't think about the legal aspects at all.
Later, we started the process of applying for a US green card for my husband (but now we're not sure about the timeline for moving to the US, so we're currently not really moving forward with it). That's a very significant legal benefit that comes from marriage- if you're married to a US citizen, there's a straightforward, reasonable process to get a US green card, and eventually US citizenship. If you're not, well... it might not even be possible.
In China, my status as a legal immigrant is dependent on my job, not my marriage. If you're in China on a marriage visa, you're not legally allowed to work, so that's why I don't have a marriage visa. But it is nice to know that if I lose my job, and I can't find a new job before my residence permit expires, I can do the paperwork to change to a marriage visa, rather than being forced to leave China. (A "residence permit" is basically the same thing as a visa but if it's long-term they call it a residence permit instead of a visa. Also, I know that "marriage visa" isn't the correct technical term here, but I am trying not to get this blog post too bogged down in the minutiae of Chinese bureaucracy.)
There are things that are much more inconvenient for me than for a Chinese citizen, and even some things that I can't do at all, so I just ask my husband to do them for me, which works out well. For example, when buying imported products online, it's often a requirement to have a Chinese ID card, and the seller needs to use your ID card number for some customs bureaucracy stuff. If you don't have a Chinese ID card, you could either ask a Chinese citizen to buy the thing for you, or you can message the seller and explain that you don't have an ID card, and ask if they have a workaround. (Sometimes the seller will use their own ID card for it.)
Also, my husband has a bank account with a better interest rate than mine. I tried to open one, but it required a Chinese ID card. So, we keep a lot of our savings in this account, which only he has access to. But I am the organized one who tells him when to put money in, and when to spend money from that account. And I also have my own bank account with my own savings. (In China there aren't joint bank accounts.)
So, that's an overview of the ways that the legal aspects of marriage- where he is a citizen and I am an immigrant- have affected our lives. ("Hey babe I'm sending you a link for some deodorant that needs a Chinese ID card to buy, can you buy it for me?" - that's mostly what immigrant marriage is.)
Sometimes I read news articles about women who immigrated to the US and married American men, and how a woman in that situation can be very vulnerable. If her husband abuses her, she may feel like she's not able to divorce him, because it would affect her immigration status.
I don't have anything like that in my marriage, but I wonder if it's always true that a marriage between an immigrant and a citizen will have a power dynamic which could potentially turn bad. The root of it is, citizens always have more rights than immigrants. And an immigrant married to a citizen has more rights than an immigrant not married to a citizen. So, it is necessarily true that the immigrant will have more legal rights if they stay in the marriage than if they don't.
(Thinking about how people usually view this kind of marriage in very romantic terms, like "wow our love is so strong, it crosses the boundaries of culture, race, nations, and language, how beautiful" without thinking at all about the practicalities of it.)
Honestly, though, it's probably impossible to have a relationship that doesn't have any kind of "power dynamic" at all. (And maybe "power dynamic" isn't even the right word here- is it only a "power dynamic" if it's likely to turn harmful?) The two partners are two different people, each with their own unique resources, which the other partner can have access to if they stay in the relationship. Is that a "power dynamic"?
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Okay, but things are different if you have kids.
When I was pregnant a few years ago, I joined a few social media groups for international women in China who are partnered with Chinese men. And that's where I first heard about the massive amount of bureaucracy you have to wade through if you have a child who has 1 Chinese citizen parent and 1 foreign parent. See, China doesn't recognize dual citizenship, and yet, according to Chinese law, our son is a Chinese citizen because his dad is a Chinese citizen, and according to US law, our son is a US citizen because I am, so, uh... he does *have* two citizenships, but China doesn't *recognize* it, what on earth does that mean?
Well, the short version is, it means more paperwork for me. (And it means that China calls it "nationality conflict" [国籍冲突] instead of "dual citizenship." ... So basically dual citizenship, except with extra bureaucracy because they're pretending it's not dual citizenship.)
There were a whole bunch of bureaucracy-related decisions we had to make, after our son was born. On his birth certificate, do we put his Chinese name or English name? Do we get him a US passport? Do we get him a Chinese passport? Do we get him both passports? (Note that apparently it's illegal to get him both passports- but some parents do that.) Do we put him on the Chinese parent's hukou?
(There's nothing *wrong* with having a child in this situation- plenty of people do. The government employees never treat us like we've done something wrong, they just often don't know how to handle it because my son doesn't fit nicely into any of their categories.)
Okay, so I had to think through all of those options and figure out what would be best for our family. I'm really glad there are social media groups with other moms in this situation, because most people in China have no idea about any of this. I had no idea it would be so complicated.
But, when thinking through all these bureaucracy things for my son, it wasn't just about "how much of a pain is it to apply for a pro-forma visa vs a Chinese travel document?" I was also advised by the other moms to think very seriously about what it would mean for my child custody rights if we divorced.
Basically, the issue is, China considers the child to be a Chinese citizen- not recognizing dual citizenship. If you divorce in China, the Chinese court will give custody to the Chinese side of the family, and the foreign parent doesn't have rights. This is what I've heard- I don't know the exact details. If you're in that situation, talk to a lawyer, don't take this blog post as legal advice.
I've heard a lot of bad stories, in these social media groups for international moms married to Chinese men. Women posting things like "I want to divorce my husband, but I know that I would not be able to get custody of my child" [often followed by "and he never actually does any of the work of being a father- he'll just send the kid back to his hometown to live with her grandparents"]. Or "my husband says he will divorce me when our child is over 2 years old, because if the child is under 2, the court is more likely to award custody to the mother." Just really scary stuff. I've heard stories of women who divorced their husbands, and then the woman went back to her own country without her kids- oh god, don't do that, don't leave China without your kids if you're on bad terms with your husband- you might never get those kids back. I even heard about a woman who made plans with her husband that she would move to another country first, and then later he would come and bring their kids, but instead he suddenly cut off contact with her after she had left China. Oh god.
I've heard that, if the husband runs off with the children without your consent, Chinese courts will not hold that against him, and actually will award custody to him because the children already live with him and it would be difficult for the children to suddenly have to move- whereas, if you take the children and get the hell out of China, and then your custody battle is in a court in the US/Canada/Europe/etc, it's likely the court will say you kidnapped the children and that will look very bad for you.
Power dynamics.
If you really want to protect your rights as the non-Chinese parent, to the fullest extent that you can, here's what you need to do:
When the baby is born, put an English name on the birth certificate. This way, it will be impossible to add the child to the Chinese family hukou. Only people whose names are Chinese characters can be added to the hukou.
DO NOT allow the Chinese side of the family to put your child on the hukou. (If you did the previous step correctly, then you don't need to worry about this.) I have heard of cases where the Chinese side of the family put the child on the hukou without the mom's consent- yikes. (But honestly this is because for Chinese people, it's simply unimaginable to not have a hukou- they likely never even thought that *not* putting the child on the hukou was an option.)
Renounce your child's Chinese citizenship. (If your child is on the hukou, there is an extra step you have to do first: remove the child from the hukou. The hukou is likely in the grandparents' possession, so now you have to talk to them and convince them to remove the child from the hukou- yeah, good luck with that. This is why the previous step is important.) Renouncing the child's Chinese citizenship requires a bunch of paperwork and consent from both parents- so you have to do this when things are going well in your marriage, not when you're about to divorce.
Good job! If the child is not a Chinese citizen, then in the event of a divorce, it's likely the the Chinese court will award custody to the foreign parent.
If you've failed to do the above steps, and you want to divorce, you should move out of China, together with your husband and child, and after you've established your life in a different country, then file for divorce. You'll likely have a better time there than in a Chinese court.
Before my son was born, I talked to a bunch of moms about this, and got advice like "do NOT put your baby on the hukou" and "before I got pregnant, I made my husband agree that we will renounce the baby's Chinese citizenship as soon as possible" and less intense ones like "yeah we put our baby on the hukou, *shrug*". There are women who are extremely serious about advising other women to protect their rights, and also women who are aware that these risks exist but are confident they won't get divorced, so they don't worry too much about it.
(Please note that there are some other benefits to renouncing the child's Chinese citizenship. It's not just about the foreign parent not wanting the Chinese parent to screw them over in a child custody battle. Remember how I said that China doesn't "recognize" dual citizenship, so it makes things more complicated? A lot of bureaucracy stuff for the child is much simpler if the child is a fully foreign citizen, rather than being "both." For example, registering for school.)
I didn't know how to think about it. I had never considered marriage in those terms- like, how to make sure your spouse doesn't have the legal right to screw you over. Honestly, I don't want to think about marriage in that way. I don't want to think about *my* marriage in that way.
And, society tells us that we're not supposed to think about those things, because that means you don't have confidence in your marriage, and it'll be a self-fulfilling prophecy and you'll end up divorcing. But the immigrant women in these social media groups, they know how it really works. They know there are very real risks of losing your children, if you don't consider these things and you end up getting divorced. I was told "you can't be naive and romantic about this."
I eventually came to this conclusion: I want to make the choices that are best for my son, rather than doing things that are sub-optimal for him, in the interest of protecting my own rights. He lives in China, so it will be more convenient for him if his legal name is in Chinese characters, rather than English. And we didn't want to renounce his Chinese citizenship- we want to let him make his own decision about that when he's old enough. I want to follow the law in China, so we didn't get him a Chinese passport, only a US passport. To enter and exit China, instead of a visa, he can use a document called an "entry exit permit" or "travel document", this is basically a passport issued to Chinese citizens who can't have a Chinese passport for whatever reason. (This is the workaround that the Chinese government invented because you're not supposed to have a Chinese passport and foreign passport.) We did not put him on my husband's hukou, because there's no benefit to it- it's not a Shanghai hukou, so it doesn't do anything for us, living in Shanghai.
Anyway, that's what we're doing. Uh so, I guess I didn't really take the advice to protect my own rights for child custody... I just really don't know what to do with that advice. It's very... game theory... like *not* choosing the option that's better for everyone overall, because it would put me as an individual in a position where other people could take advantage of me if they wanted.
I don't want game theory in my marriage. But am I too naive and romantic? I can say "marriage shouldn't be like that", but in reality it sometimes is like that, so, if you do end up in that situation, don't you want to be in a position where your rights are protected? Divorce IS real. Seems like a bad idea for me to just pretend that it's not. It's real, and it can be very bad. Especially for immigrants.
Long ago, when we were engaged, I remember reading a blog post where the writer said, "I wouldn't marry someone that I wouldn't divorce." Okay, that's worded confusingly, let me explain: What they meant was, you should marry someone that you trust will still treat you fairly, even if you divorce. Not someone who's going to fight dirty. I understand the point they're making, but also, I don't really know what to do with this advice either...? Nobody thinks they're going to get divorced, so does it even make sense to plan for that?
But in everything else you do, it's wise to have a backup plan in case it doesn't work. Is marriage different? Well, I think it is... because it's about love... uh right?
And here's another thing: International marriages require more trust than a marriage between 2 citizens who live in their own country. I don't know if it would really be practical, to think "the law doesn't protect my rights, so I need to set additional boundaries in order to never be in a situation where I'm vulnerable and my spouse could take advantage." In practice, it needs to be the opposite- it needs more trust, not less.
People in an international marriage frequently find themselves in situations where they have to depend on their spouse for help with navigating the language or culture. Suppose you're traveling together in Spouse A's country, and Spouse B has no idea how things work, so Spouse B has to trust Spouse A to basically handle all the decisions. And then of course, sometimes it works the other way, you're in Spouse B's country and Spouse A needs to listen to Spouse B's expertise on how to do things. This is super normal in an international marriage. You have to depend on each other like that.
(Is that a power dynamic?)
And there have been several times that I traveled to the US with my son, and my husband didn't come with us. This is also incredibly normal for immigrant families. Taking a trip to the other side of the world is a big deal- plane tickets are very expensive, and you have to take 2 weeks off work (2 weeks is a good amount, if it's less than 2 weeks it's not really worth it, you won't even be done with jet lag and your vacation will already be over). So, it's often the case that one parent isn't able to come on the trip, or feels it wouldn't be worth the cost. Again, SUPER normal for immigrant families.
I frequently see people posting in social media groups "I'm traveling to another country with my kids, and my husband isn't coming, do I need to have him sign something to give me permission?" Yes, many countries require some kind of signed document from the other parent. And there are always people in the social media groups ready to help- "yes, here's a template you can fill in and have him sign." This is super normal.
And if your marriage is good and you trust each other, then no big deal. I guess I would say, maybe don't let your spouse take the kids and go to the other side of the world, if there are warning signs that maybe they're planning to not come back? But normally, of course you trust each other, so it's not an issue.
There was even one time I was traveling to the US with my son, without my husband, and I had to get some paperwork for my son from the Chinese consulate in the US, and it took longer than expected. It took so long that I had to cancel my return flight because the Chinese consulate hadn't mailed me my stuff yet. (Bureaucracy!) I cancelled our return flights (from the US to China), waited a few more days till I got the documents in the mail, and then bought tickets for the flight back to China.
And all of that is no big deal. Yeah my husband missed us, and wished we could come back sooner, but, it was fine, it was only a few days. But I guess if you feel you should never be in a situation where your spouse can screw you over, it would be different... you realize, I *cancelled* our return flight. If you didn't trust your spouse, would you insist that instead of cancelling, they rebook for a different day immediately, despite not knowing exactly when the required documents would come in the mail? But, plane tickets are expensive- is it practical to live that way?
My point is, in an international marriage, it's very common that sometimes one spouse takes the kids and goes on vacation to the other side of the world. (Is that a power dynamic?) You see what I mean, an international marriage requires more trust- it's not going to work with less.
The way marriage should be is, you treat each other right because you love each other and want to have a good relationship- not because the law forces you to. But, when people divorce, they no longer have an incentive to treat each other right, so they do need to be forced by the law. And in an international marriage, well, you should be aware that the laws regarding divorce are different in different countries. And as an immigrant, you're at a disadvantage compared to a citizen. There are many stories of very ugly things that happen, when international couples divorce.
But, what do you even do with that information? Should you really make decisions proactively to protect your own rights in the case of divorce, even if those decisions aren't what's best for your child/ your marriage/ your family? I'm sure that the women who lost custody of their children in a Chinese court wish they had made those decisions, instead of trusting their partner. Is it unwise for me to live like I'll never be at risk for that, so I don't have to worry about it?
I don't want my marriage to be like that- I want to be a team, a family. But of course that's what everyone thinks when they get married- nobody expects they're going to divorce, but the reality is that some couples do divorce. (And maybe, when a marriage is breaking down, there is a transition point, where you no longer prioritize the marriage, but you prioritize your own rights, at your spouse's expense.) I don't know what I'm supposed to do with this information.
The overly-romantic view of international marriage is "our love is so beautiful, it transcends the boundaries of culture, race, language, and nationality" but the reality is more complicated than that. If you divorce, the immigrant spouse is likely to be in a situation where they don't have the same legal rights as the citizen spouse (in particular, in China, a foreign parent is very unlikely to be awarded custody if the children are Chinese citizens). A divorce can be ugly and painful in ways that wouldn't happen in a divorce between 2 citizens. At the same time, the practical reality of being from 2 completely different cultures will frequently require the 2 spouses to trust and depend on each other in ways that citizen couples don't have to. And it's very common that one spouse will take the children and travel to their home country, without the other spouse being present- which is totally fine, unless your spouse happens to be the kind of person who is going to take the children to the other side of the world and then disappear, in which case, what would you even do???
I guess marriage is a lot of things- it's love that reaches across cultures; it's trusting and supporting each other in practical ways every day; it's a legal arrangement where the exact details of what rights you have may or may not matter, depending on whether your spouse is a decent human being. How to reconcile all of this? That's a big question.
I love this song because it's called "International Love." We played this song at our wedding. Please ignore all the other lyrics except the part that says "international love."
Every so often, I hear people making the argument, "The government shouldn't be involved in marriage at all. If you want to get married, you can just make a private contract with your partner, that says whatever you want, whatever terms the two of you are agreeing to." (Sort of a libertarian argument.)
(This could also be an idea for polyamorous people, but I'm not sure on the details for that, so in this post I'll just use the example of marriage between 2 people.)
And every time I hear this, I'm like, oh this is a scary bad idea.
If we actually changed the laws so this would be the case, I think this is what would happen: Most people who aren't lawyers aren't really interested in writing a contract themselves. So, probably some lawyer would write a standard template for a marriage contract, it would be gender-neutral and completely equal between the two partners, and most couples would just use that, and not think about it much.
And for the couples who did that, it would be fine. They would be equals, and have all the legal protections that are reasonable to have in marriage.
But here's another thing that would definitely happen: Conservative religious groups would tell their members, "You must NOT use this standard marriage contract. It is based on worldly, evil, sinful ideas about marriage- like the idea that you can marry someone of the same gender, or the idea that the husband and wife are equal, rather than the husband being the leader. It is a SIN to get married and use this contract! You must use our contract instead."
And the conservative religious groups would make their own versions of the marriage contract. It would say things like, the wife must submit to the husband. It would have a very short list of acceptable reasons to get divorced- most likely you would be allowed to get divorced if your spouse physically abuses you, or cheats on you, but other than that, no, you can't get divorced. Or perhaps it would say divorce is NEVER allowed, regardless. It would put restrictions on women- for example, saying a woman has to be a stay-at-home mom when the couple has kids. And it would have details on exactly what hoops a wife must jump through, in order to get help if her husband isn't treating her right- ie, first she has to ask their pastor for help, and go through counseling to find out why it's her fault that he's abusing her, etc. And maybe the husband would have veto power over his wife's decisions about medical care, access to birth control, her education, her job, whether she's allowed to have a bank account, etc.
Oh yeah, religious groups would DEFINITELY make marriage contracts like that.
And for the girls who grow up in those conservative religious environments, that would be completely normal to them. Of course they would plan on using their church's version of the marriage contract, not the standard one that makes the husband and wife equal. Of course they would. They wouldn't even see it as a decision, they would never consider the standard contract as an option. That's only for bad, sinful, worldly people who have been influenced by the evils of feminism.
Actually, a lot of the legal rights related to marriage are about divorce. For example, I've heard people give advice "If you're thinking of buying a house with your partner, and you're not married, don't do it. You should be married if you're buying a house together- because then if you break up, there's a standard process for how to fairly divide up the finances related to the house. If you're not married, it will be so ugly and emotionally distressing trying to negotiate that." Typically, the only time you need to use the law to force your spouse to do something, is if you're divorcing. If the marriage is good, then you will treat each other right, regardless of what your actual legal rights are.
And people don't enter into marriage expecting to get divorced, so they're not thinking about what legal rights they would have in that situation. No, when you're planning your wedding, apparently you're not supposed to think about that. That would be unromantic. I certainly didn't think about any of the legal implications when I got married. It was just, we love each other, we want to spend our whole lives together, so we get married. And not really thinking about what marriage means in a legal sense.
So it's good that lawyers have thought about this, and feminist activists have thought about this, and the laws around marriage are fair. (Or, at least not explicitly sexist...) It's a good thing no-fault divorce is an option. Because people who are engaged- the ones who really *should* be thinking about this- are *not* thinking about it, because society says if you love each other then none of those things will ever be a problem, and if you're thinking about "what legal rights would I have if we divorce" then you're not really committed to the marriage.
My point is, in the hypothetical world where the government is not involved in marriage, and people can make their own marriage contracts, people would just go ahead and use a template contract from some official source, rather than actually thinking about what it means for them legally. Most couples would use a standard contract that makes the two partners equal, without thinking about it, and that would be fine. But couples in conservative religious groups would use their religion's version of the contract, without thinking about it.
I was taught all sorts of things about how "God designed" marriage to work, in church, in Sunday school, from Christian books, etc. The wife is supposed to submit to the husband. The husband is supposed to be the leader. All of this is seen as completely normal, in the evangelical church. Of course I believed that- I was taught that as a Christian, I had to believe that. That's how God said marriage should work.
It's one thing to believe that. To be taught that in church. To be surrounded by people who all think this kind of sexism is completely normal. It's a completely different thing to be legally bound by it.
It's hard enough for a woman in a bad marriage in a conservative church. Everyone wants to tell her that it's her fault, maybe because she didn't pray enough, didn't submit to her husband enough, didn't have sex with him enough. It's hard enough finding the courage to reject that ideology and realize that what she wants actually matters. It's hard enough when all her Christian friends ghost her because of it.
Imagine if she is also legally bound to those beliefs. That's horrifying.
In a practical sense, I think most couples who have a sexist marriage contract (in this hypothetical) would still have a good marriage. If they love each other, and the husband is a decent human being, then he won't actually use any of those rights. So Christians would believe that those contracts are totally fine, because usually there aren't problems. A false sense of security. They would think it was fine, but it wouldn't be fine- because when it goes wrong, it goes VERY wrong.
I can easily see young, idealistic girls who just want to do their best to obey God, finding examples of marriage contracts that are *much* more patriarchal and abusive than what the average person in their church has. And listening to rhetoric that says if they're really following God, they'll use the extremely patriarchal versions. Like me in purity culture- when my parents (who had life experience and common sense) told me some of the teachings of purity culture weren't right, I didn't listen because the purity books all said that this is the way to really follow God. I can easily imagine a 20-year-old girl getting married, choosing an extremely patriarchal marriage contract, and other Christians warning her against it, but she of course doesn't listen. She believes that if she got married with a contract where she had rights, that would mean she didn't really love her husband or have faith in God.
I can also imagine a young woman reading through her church's sample marriage contract, wisely thinking through what the actual implications are, and asking questions about why on earth her husband would have those rights to control her life. And the church people would act like it was bad for her to even ask about those things- of course her husband would never use those rights in a bad way! She shouldn't even be thinking about that! Just like when I asked church people what "submit to your husband" really means, and they all insisted "don't worry, the husband loves the wife and will make good decisions!" Okay... maybe... hopefully... but man I wouldn't want to be legally bound to that.
At weddings, people recite marriage vows which contain all sorts of promises to each other. But wedding vows are a very different thing than a legal contract. Wedding vows are about communicating the things you intend to do, because you love this person and you want to do those things for them. A legal contract is about what you'll be forced to do, even if in the future you decide you don't want to. Would you want lawyers parsing the exact words of your wedding vows, and arguing about whether your behavior in the marriage matched the vows or not? Would you want to have to present arguments in court, to try to convince a jury that your spouse didn't keep their vows?
(I've attended weddings where the bride's wedding vows included "submit to her husband" and the groom's wedding vows included "lead his wife." Imagine actually being legally bound to that.)
So, to sum up: It's a bad idea to allow everyone to make their own private marriage contracts, because in conservative religious groups, young people will be taught that they need to use their own group's sexist version of the contract. And of course they'll accept it without question, like I accepted the evangelical church's bad teaching about marriage. Wow, I'm glad I wasn't legally bound to it. When I decided I wanted to leave, I could leave.
But, unfortunately, I have 3 examples of ways that churches really have used laws or contracts to control people or restrict their rights in marriage. These are real things- these are not hypothetical.
Example 1: Church covenants
There are churches in the US which require people to sign a contract if they want to become members. The contract is called a "church covenant" or "membership covenant." This has led to problems such as:
Someone no longer wants to be a member of the church, but the contract only allows them to quit for specific reasons, and the church leadership determines that their reasons aren't good enough, so they aren't allowed to quit.
A woman wants to divorce her husband (for example, because she found out he is a child abuser) but the church says that's not a good enough reason to divorce, and because of the "covenant" she signed, the church has the legal right to "discipline" her for divorcing her husband.
Or various other situations where a church puts someone under "church discipline" because the contract gives them the right to do that to members who are deemed to be "sinning."
So, this post is about a hypothetical world where conservative religious people enter into marriage contracts which don't have all the reasonable legal protections we have now. But, actually, this is a real thing that exists in 3 states in the US. It's called "covenant marriage" and wikipedia defines it this way:
Covenant marriage is a legally distinct kind of marriage in three states (Arizona, Arkansas, and Louisiana) of the United States, in which the marrying spouses agree to obtain pre-marital counseling and accept more limited grounds for later seeking divorce (the least strict of which being that the couple lives apart from each other for two years). Louisiana became the first state to pass a covenant marriage law in 1997;[1][2] shortly afterwards, Arkansas[3] and Arizona[4] followed suit. Since its inception, very few couples in those states have married under covenant marriage law.
Oh, look at that, if you live in Arizona, Arkansas, or Louisiana, you actually can enter into a marriage where you have fewer rights than a normal marriage. Yay religious freedom, or something...?
(I will note, though, that my hypothetical examples of conservative marriage contracts were explicitly sexist, but covenant marriage is not. In practice, though, because women are more likely to be victims of abuse, and women are more likely to be the ones filing for divorce, the practical results of covenant marriage would be disproportionately harmful to women.)
I first heard of covenant marriage at my church in college, when somebody in a Sunday school class mentioned it. He thought it was a totally great idea, and all Christian marriages should be covenant marriages. He said it meant that the couple couldn't just decide to divorce, they had to go through counseling first and try to heal the marriage. And I just nodded along because I had always heard people in church talking about how "these days people are getting divorced willy nilly because they are selfish, and that's the cause of all of society's problems" etc.
Yes, I believe you shouldn't just immediately divorce if you have an argument. (But, does anyone actually do that, or is that just a myth that evangelicals are constantly repeating? I am skeptical.) I believe you should go to counseling and try to fix the problems and stay married. But here's the thing: If you're in a situation where one partner does not want to do that, and has to be forced by the law to go to counseling, well you're already past the point where the marriage could be saved. It doesn't help the situation at all, to force people to stay married. And, also, it's not safe to go to couple's counseling with an abusive partner- abusers are able to manipulate the therapist to make it look like they're not abusive. Sometimes, the victim just knows they need to get out of the marriage. They might not have evidence that will be able to convince other people that they have a "good enough reason" for divorce, but they know the truth, they know what they experienced, even if no one believes them. They know they need to get out. And being in a covenant marriage may force the victim to stay in a dangerous situation with an abuser.
It's one thing to teach people the general principles of how to solve problems in marriage, rather than get divorced. It's a completely different thing to make it an actual legal requirement. To have lawyers and judges butting into your personal life to debate whether what your spouse did to you is bad enough that you're allowed to leave them.
The guidelines on how to have a healthy marriage are for people who want to have a healthy marriage. That's a good thing. Making it into a legal obligation, a "covenant marriage", would only affect the couples where one spouse isn't even trying to have a healthy marriage, and that is exactly the kind of bad situation where you need to NOT put more legal requirements on people.
Child marriage. Yes, this is a real thing that happens in the US. White American Christians think that child marriage is something that happens in foreign cultures in faraway countries- no, there are white American Christians right here pressuring their children to get married.
The majority of children who get married are girls. Sometimes they are marrying adult men, much older than them. Some states allow a child to get married with "parental consent" which really means the parents are pressuring the child into it, and the child doesn't have an actual choice. Because, if you're in an environment where child marriage is seen as an acceptable option, do you think that will also be an environment where a child saying no to her parents is an acceptable option? Hahaha, no.
And often, pregnancy is seen as a reason that we need to allow a teenager to get married. What on earth. Because, oh, wouldn't it be just terrible if a baby was born to unmarried parents. More terrible than a teenager being stuck in a legal arrangement that she's way too young for, apparently.
Girls who get married as teenagers are much less likely to complete high school or college. And if/when they realize they're in a bad situation and need to get out, it's so hard because they don't have the education or skills to get a job, and maybe they already have several children.
This is an example of religious groups pushing people into a marriage where they have fewer legal rights than in a normal marriage- because people under the age of 18 don't have the legal rights of an adult.
It's not something that happened in the evangelical culture I grew up in- the Christian groups which are pushing children into marriage are much more controlling and conservative than the evangelicals I know. But yes, my point is, if everyone is allowed to make their own versions of a legally-binding marriage contract, there absolutely will be very conservative groups pushing women into very bad marriages.
Conservative religious groups have a lot of very controlling teachings about correct moral behavior. When you grow up in that environment, all of those teachings feel completely normal, and it doesn't even occur to you that you could choose to do something different. (No, you've been taught that people who choose to do something different are bad, sinful, evil.)
In particular, they have a lot of very harmful teachings about marriage. About how a wife has to "submit" to her husband, about what kinds of reasons are or aren't acceptable reasons for divorce. These teachings have very real harmful effects- if a woman realizes that her husband is not treating her right, and she needs to divorce, her whole church community will turn against her and blame her, and also she likely has a bunch of children she needs to provide for, and maybe she has no college education because she was taught that women don't need that. This is a very real thing that happens (for example, we see it in the Shiny Happy People documentary). Imagine how much worse it would be if these women were literally legally bound to those patriarchal teachings. If they actually literally don't have the legal right to reject those teachings and get out. Which is absolutely what would happen if every religious group was writing its own version of a marriage contract for its members to use.
I know that's what would happen, because there already are examples of Christian groups in the US using contracts and laws to control people. Church covenants, covenant marriage, and child marriage.
We cannot change laws to allow everyone to just make marriage whatever they want it to be, because conservative religious groups will make it into something very harmful, which their members will totally accept when they're young and in love and have no awareness of what it actually means.
2.Is This the End of Prison Phone Fees? (September) "The telecom providers charge prisoners’ families directly, and then hand over a cut of their spoils to the state. Securus’ contract gave Connecticut up to 68 percent of the fees it took from people like Diane Lewis. Prison calls, in other words, are not a state service partially funded by loved ones, but rather a profit source for states and private companies. Higher state commissions contribute to higher costs for families."
3.From Streets to Pages: Inside the Life of a Beijing Courier (September 13) "Some customers order clothes, and upon receiving them, they make you wait around while they try them on. If the clothes don’t fit, they reject them and expect you to fold them and put them back in the box. Naturally, we’re not paid for any of this."
4.Movie Family Therapy: MRS. DOUBTFIRE (September 5) 26-minute video, analyzing the movie "Mrs. Doubtfire" and how it portrays divorce and co-parenting, from a therapist perspective.
5. Developers respond to Unity’s new pricing scheme (September 15) "Once the news broke, the video game developer community reacted strongly and negatively to the news, citing Unity’s poor communication, lack of clarity, loss of trust, and what they saw as a naked attempt to squeeze money out of small developer teams."
8.Wheaton College Releases Report on Its History of Racism (September 14) "A new president, J. Oliver Buswell, stopped admitting Black students altogether in 1926. Privately, Buswell said he didn’t think integration was immoral, but he was concerned about too much 'social contact' between races."
9.Taylor’s truckers and the sweating of the 1% (August 10, via) "These bonuses have a lot of people doing this math for the first time ever, seeing the ludicrous gap between those on top and the rest of us."
A man and woman sitting on opposite ends of a bench, ignoring each other. Image source.
So Focus on the Family is publishing a new book called "How God Used “the Other Woman”: Saving Your Marriage after Infidelity" by Tina Konkin. Sarahbeth Caplin has a blog post about this: A New Book from Focus on the Family Blames Women When Their Husbands Cheat. Yep, the book is about how, if your husband cheated on you, you can save the marriage by determining what your role was in causing him to cheat. Umm. Okay... that sounds unhealthy and victim-blame-y.
Caplin's post includes a quote from Sheila Wray Gregoire, a Christian blogger with a much healthier view on cheating. Here's the part that I want to talk about:
A marriage can only start healing if the cheating spouse first repents. That’s always the first step. Once that’s done, the hurting spouse can choose to extend grace, can go to counseling and look at how drift was caused, and try to rebuild. But unless there is total repentance from the cheater, you won’t get anywhere.
Yes, she is absolutely right. If the person who cheats isn't interested in fixing the marriage, then it doesn't matter what the non-cheater does- it's never going to work. In that situation, the marriage is just not fixable.
To put it more generally: If a relationship has some kind of huge problem, and one partner wants to work on solving the problem, and the other partner doesn't, then it is just not possible to solve the problem and make the relationship healthy again. It's just not.
This fact is SO IMPORTANT TO ME because I never heard anything like it in Christians' teachings about purity and dating and marriage.
In Christian purity culture- which is targeted toward unmarried people- breaking up is The Worst Thing Ever. And in Christian teaching about marriage, divorce is Always Bad. So all of the advice about what to do if you're in an unhealthy relationship is along the lines of "do these things to fix the relationship" instead of "here are the criteria you can use to decide if the relationship is fixable, or whether you'd be better off just leaving." Leaving is not an option, so I never heard any teaching about how to make a healthy decision about leaving.
Yes, the "how to fix your marriage" advice from Christians often included a disclaimer about "we're not talking about people in abusive relationships- if you're being abused then you should get out" and "okay in SOME cases divorce is okay, like if there's cheating or abuse." But those things were only mentioned to show that we aren't talking about them. They only gave "here is how to fix your marriage" advice- they did NOT give "here is how to recognize abuse" advice or "here is how to go about getting a divorce if there's cheating or abuse" advice.
And similarly, for the unmarried people, there was no teaching about how to break up in a healthy way. All of purity culture was about how to avoid ever experiencing a breakup, because if you have an ex that means you gave them part of your purity and you can never have a perfect marriage. Back then, I was terrified of breaking up. So terrified.
So no, I never knew that if one partner doesn't want to fix the relationship, then it's just not fixable. I never heard that before. I never knew that, in a situation like that, it's not possible to make the relationship healthy. If your partner really shows no signs that they'll ever be willing to work with you to solve the problem, then the best thing you can do for yourself is to break up. There's nothing good or virtuous about staying in a relationship like that.
Instead, all the advice goes like this: If your husband isn't treating you right, then here's what you need to do. You need to pray for him every day. You need to be a better wife. You need to submit to him more. You need to smile and not complain. You need to have sex with him more. And so on and so on. And if you do all these things, he will magically change and become a better person.
(Related: all the evangelism tactics we used to do, back when I was "on fire for God." We were trying to get people to change their personal religious beliefs. I didn't know about boundaries; I didn't know everyone's beliefs belong to them and I can't "make" them change. All the evangelism training was about how to try to coerce and manipulate people into changing. And how to pray for God to coerce and manipulate them into changing. I thought if I followed all the steps, then it would "work.")
No, it doesn't work that way. If someone doesn't want to change, you can't make them change, no matter what you do.
See, I now believe in boundaries morality. Boundaries means you can't "make" anybody do anything. You can't make someone treat you better. You can't make someone agree with you. You can't make someone become a better person. Everyone is in charge of their own self. You can't make someone treat you better, but you should set boundaries so that people who would mistreat you don't have access to you and therefore won't be able to mistreat you. And sometimes, when you set a boundary and somebody realizes they don't like being excluded from your life, it might inspire them to change their behavior and stop mistreating you. Maybe. It might. But it also might not. The goal isn't necessarily to make them change, it's to protect yourself from their bad behavior, whether they change or not.
A long time ago, I was dating a guy, let's call him Xin, and he was sometimes very nice and affectionate, and sometimes seemed to be acting like he didn't really want to have a girlfriend. And I loved him, and I cried a lot during the times he wasn't treating me right. I ... It never occurred to me that I would be better off breaking up with him. I was starting to get out of purity culture but I was still terrified of the very concept of breaking up; it wasn't something I considered as an actual option. Instead I tried everything I could possibly think of to manipulate him into being a better person. Occasionally he would treat me better, for 1 day, and I would be so happy and feel like it was all worth it and we could totally make this relationship work.
It felt like a big milestone when we hit the 6-month mark. Then the 1-year mark. I thought that being together for 1 year was something to celebrate- as if staying together is "success" and breaking up is "failure." No, that relationship was happy for just the first few months but then it should have ended. We all would have been better off. Staying in a relationship with a partner who doesn't treat me right isn't an accomplishment.
I knew the relationship wasn't happy, and so I feared that it would end. And by "it would end" I mean my boyfriend saying to me "we should break up." I never thought maybe I could be the one to say to him "we should break up."
I thought "loyalty" was a good thing. I thought it was godly how I was good and loving toward him while he was being heartless toward me. I thought "giving up" on the relationship was a bad thing. I thought I was supposed to selflessly love him and always do what would be best for him.
It turns out, in reality, "loyalty" isn't intrinsically good. It's only good to be loyal to someone who deserves your loyalty. Someone who loves you. Someone you can trust. And it's bad and unhealthy to be loyal to someone who doesn't treat you right. (And that's why I don't worship any god. I believe in God, but I don't worship them because I'm not willing to say they deserve my loyalty. Boundaries.)
And finally ... well ... I decided that me loving Xin and wanting what's best for him meant I should tell him "okay, we will take a break from our relationship." I didn't do it for myself; I did it because I decided he would be happier if I stopped trying to manipulate him into being a decent boyfriend. (Or at least, that's how I reasoned it out- maybe I also did it because of "selfish" reasons but I was a good Christian and therefore wasn't allowed to be honest with myself about that.) I still thought there was something wrong with making a decision to break up. I still thought that I should always put others first and never be motivated by caring about my own emotional needs- that would be "selfish." I didn't know about boundaries yet. In boundaries morality, you put yourself first. That's how it should be. But all my life, Christians had taught me the exact opposite.
And then I started dating Hendrix, who from the very beginning has always acted like he is just the luckiest person in the world to have the privilege of being in a relationship with me. And every day he says and does little things that show he's in love with me. (Reader, I married him.)
But even if I hadn't met such a good partner after breaking up with Xin, breaking up still would have been a good decision. Being single would be better than being in a relationship like that- though I didn't have any way to believe that back then. I loved Xin, I was lonely, and my whole life I had heard so many warnings about losing my "purity"... if I have to start over and find a new partner, that means starting over with less purity than I had originally, and therefore I would be less valuable and less deserving of a good partner.
I wish I had been taught a whole comprehensive ideology about "yes, even though breaking up is sad because you love him, logically it is a good decision because of these reasons." Instead, my "whole comprehensive ideology" was purity culture with its beliefs about how breaking up is The Worst Thing Ever... And then occasionally an adult who didn't buy into that might tell me I deserve better and someday I'll find a way better partner, and in the meantime it's better to be single than to put up with that crap anyway... but I didn't have any way to actually fit that in to the rest of my worldview with regards to dating. So it felt like just some fleeting faraway possibility, not something I could actually trust.
No, the idea that I could tell him "we should break up" because I deserved better was never something I actually considered. There was no way I could, when I believed "loyalty" was good and "giving up" was bad, when I believed a relationship that ends is a "failure" but a relationship that keep racking up anniversaries is a "success." When I believed in "always put others first." When all the relationship advice I'd heard was about "here is how to fix your relationship" instead of "here is how to know if your relationship is worth fixing." When I had heard stories of women who suffered for years and years in bad marriages, who kept submitting and working hard to be a good wife, until finally God magically changed their husband into a good husband- and those women were role models, that was the "correct" thing to do in an unhappy marriage. When divorce was only mentioned in terms of "yes, divorce is allowed in some cases but we aren't talking about that," basically saying that if your husband cheats on you then technically it's not a sin to divorce him but it's still better to stay in the marriage. When Christians were always saying "marriage isn't about making you happy, it's about making you holy" and divorce is for those selfish losers that didn't realize "marriage is hard" so they bailed at the first sign of conflict.
I wish I had known about how to put myself first and how to make healthy decisions about breaking up. I wish I had known about boundaries, and no matter what I do, I can't "make" someone treat me right. I wish I had known that if one partner just won't do the work to fix the relationship, then it's just not fixable.
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.
