Post by sillygoosegirl on Jul 3, 2013 21:12:02 GMT -5
Most people I know who weren't going to have sex before marriage got married as soon as possible. Not all, but most. Most LDS I know also have or plan to have really big families. If you want to have 6-10 children, getting started at 19 isn't such a bad idea. I haven't heard this in a long time, so I don't know if it's for real, but an LDS friend of a friend when I was a kid says that they were taught that women couldn't go to Heaven until they were married... which seems like it would be a really strong incentive to get married AS SOON AS POSSIBLE if you believed that.
I wonder if a lot of them were disappointed? What do LDS believe happens if you have premarital sex?
It depends who you ask.
There used to be object lessons where teachers would hand around a cupcake and hold up the gross handled cupcake at the end and say "This is what will happen if you sleep around! No one wants to eat this!!" (Oh, only to the women, btw).
And there are people who focus on the repentance aspect of the religion and the atonement and everything that entails. Basically, God wants us to be good people and knows we fuck up sometimes.
Body is a gift, blah blah blah.
This isn't just a Mormon thing; this is a Catholic thing, too. Ours was a bandaid though, ripping off a bandaid a hundred times and it losing its "stickiness" and SEE OH SHIT THAT'S WHAT HAPPENS TO YOU WHEN YOU HAVE SEX.
You know what really pisses me off about these types of "cultures" is that it's only women that are old maids if they are over 25 and not married. The men can go to college or not. They can be in their 30s and still marry a 19 year old girl (like that girl's blog that was posted. Her husband looks mid 30s to me at least)
I finally broke away and I didn't get married until I was 29. But when I was knee deep in that shit and 22,23 years old I remember how terrified I was that I'd be 26, 27, pushing 30 and not married. It really did a number on my head. Because it's shoved down your throat that your purpose on this Earth is to be a wife and mother. And to know that your deadline is coming and that hasn't happened yet really messes with a person. I remember just thinking that I'll settle for anyone, even if I didn't love them. Better than being single and 30. What a fucked up way to think.
There used to be object lessons where teachers would hand around a cupcake and hold up the gross handled cupcake at the end and say "This is what will happen if you sleep around! No one wants to eat this!!" (Oh, only to the women, btw).
And there are people who focus on the repentance aspect of the religion and the atonement and everything that entails. Basically, God wants us to be good people and knows we fuck up sometimes.
Body is a gift, blah blah blah.
This isn't just a Mormon thing; this is a Catholic thing, too. Ours was a bandaid though, ripping off a bandaid a hundred times and it losing its "stickiness" and SEE OH SHIT THAT'S WHAT HAPPENS TO YOU WHEN YOU HAVE SEX.
OMG. In our group is was a piece of paper. Mind you this was the 18-25 singles group, not a bunch of 14 year olds. Our leader took a piece of paper and kept ripping pieces off and handing them to random people. In the end she only had one tiny, torn piece of paper left. She said that when you have sex, it's like tearing off a piece of your soul and handing it to the person you have sex with. By the time you meet your husband, you will only have a piece of shredded soul left, like the paper.
Jaycee Dugard said that she was told that women who've had sex before marriage are like a piece of chewed gum. And that over the years she could have escaped but even though she was raped, she still thought she was as good as chewed gum and that nobody would want her.
I remember my mom telling me that if I had sex before I got married that before the guy was finished coming, he will already have lost respect for me. I could never understand how girls I knew had long term boyfriends because shouldn't the guy have lost respect for her by now? I thought this way until my mid 20s. This stuff is fucked up. It saddens me that girls think this way. Our single group of was full of divorced women who said they got married because they had sex and they thought they had to. Freakin' sad.
There used to be object lessons where teachers would hand around a cupcake and hold up the gross handled cupcake at the end and say "This is what will happen if you sleep around! No one wants to eat this!!" (Oh, only to the women, btw).
And there are people who focus on the repentance aspect of the religion and the atonement and everything that entails. Basically, God wants us to be good people and knows we fuck up sometimes.
Body is a gift, blah blah blah.
This isn't just a Mormon thing; this is a Catholic thing, too. Ours was a bandaid though, ripping off a bandaid a hundred times and it losing its "stickiness" and SEE OH SHIT THAT'S WHAT HAPPENS TO YOU WHEN YOU HAVE SEX.
I remember in health class (the only time sex Ed gets addressed in HS in tx) the coach who was teaching the class compared people who have sex before marriage to used cars.
"You don't want to drive a beat up old car, do you? You'd rather have the new car that no one has ever driven!"
This isn't just a Mormon thing; this is a Catholic thing, too. Ours was a bandaid though, ripping off a bandaid a hundred times and it losing its "stickiness" and SEE OH SHIT THAT'S WHAT HAPPENS TO YOU WHEN YOU HAVE SEX.
Elizabeth Smart used a similar example (chewed up gum) that she was taught in her abstinence-only health class. She was discussing how abstinence-only ed harms rape victims like her because it made her feel disgusting, worthless, and shamed.
That's it. It was Elizabeth Smart, not Jaycee with the gum analogy. Poor girl. I wonder what her parents thought hearing that. Does it even register how messed up that is? Even if I wanted to teach my daughter to wait until she was married, still, I'd want her to know that if she did have sex, she is not chewed gum, a used car, a torn piece of paper, or a used bandaid. She's every bit as valuable as she was before. I'd want her to know, she is not her mistakes. And if some guy is more worried about her being pure than anything else, then he's not the guy for her. This obsession with the woman's purity is maddening.
I was raised Mormon, though I left the church at 19. A lot of if is social expectation. As others had said to, women are taught differently about purity and womanhood, so it's what they feel like they need to do. I don't care for the church much, it's pretty mysoginistic
Well, except men are supposed to go on missions first.
I'm hoping the whole "girls going on missions earlier" thing will help shift the culture a little (and culture is a broad term since it's a world-wide religion in various geographic cultures). Before, you couldn't go on a mission as a sister until 21, which was prime marrying age. So not many went, and many went right from college to marriage. Now, they can go at 19, which is in the middle of college. So they'd be gone for 18 months, still have another 2 years in school, and then get married.
I know some people get married in college (my BIL married his wife when she was 20 and they are both still in college) but maybe it'll shift a little. This is probably overly optimistic.
DS has a college aged classmate who is on his mission now. His girlfriend will be attending BYU in the fall, then she'll go on her mission in a year which will be shorter than his. He'll wrap his up and they will sync up at BYU in 2015. His mother and grandmother are betting on an engagement set as soon as they're together again. Both families are affluent, so I expect the marriage will occur while they're students.
Post by Jalapeñomel on Jul 4, 2013 11:11:19 GMT -5
I recently had a theatre student who got married at 19, after dating the guy for 6 months. She was attending BYU but moved back to Indiana to be with him.
I was raised Mormon, though I left the church at 19. A lot of if is social expectation. As others had said to, women are taught differently about purity and womanhood, so it's what they feel like they need to do. I don't care for the church much, it's pretty mysoginistic
There are many religions that are like this so I don't see the point in singling out LDS like they are so unusual/unique.
I was raised Mormon, though I left the church at 19. A lot of if is social expectation. As others had said to, women are taught differently about purity and womanhood, so it's what they feel like they need to do. I don't care for the church much, it's pretty mysoginistic
There are many religions that are like this so I don't see the point in singling out LDS like they are so unusual/unique.
I suppose that's true...I just have experience with the LDS faith, so I can't really speak with any authority about any other group.
I was raised Mormon, though I left the church at 19. A lot of if is social expectation. As others had said to, women are taught differently about purity and womanhood, so it's what they feel like they need to do. I don't care for the church much, it's pretty mysoginistic