courtship, a controlled twitter rant

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I got to talking about my experiences with purity culture and courtship on twitter, and decided to storify it and share here. Hope it comes through alright, never done this before 🙂

My experience in purity culture

In which i talk about my no-touch courtship and the friendship days, and all the stress of trying to keep my ’emotional virginity’

  1. @noshamemov oh Brio was way too liberal. They talked about DATING. I started my own pro courtship (among other things) Christian teen mag.
  2. .@noshamemov related story, when we started the mag, our parents got together, unbeknownst to us, to agree that we could get married. Weird.
  3. .@noshamemov spending time together collaborating was apparently close to dating?
  4. We were both writers and got along well. So when we started working together apparently this meant we would likely get married some day.
  5. So story time, continuing from the last few tweets. Luke and I were friends who started a small Christian magazine together.
  6. Our parents even had a meeting to agree that it would be okay with both of them if the magazine thing led to marriage.
  7. My inlaws fell in love while working on a magazine or something like that.
  8. It’s scary how much of my future apparently hung on that meeting between parents.
  9. If they hadn’t wanted me to marry Luke, I wouldn’t have been allowed to do the mag with him.
  10. We emailed a lot for the mag, and friendship crept into it, too. I had to email from mom’s account so she could read it all.
  11. Still mom read my emails to L, from co editor, to best friends, to courtship, to engagement. It complicated some already complicated times.
  12. In retrospect, this was ridiculously controlling. I was 17 at the time, I hadn’t mentioned that yet. And very trustworthy and obedient.
  13. Once Luke and I were close friends I got a lot of lectures from my parents about how dangerous this was for my emotional purity.
  14. after all those concerned lectures, i felt like if I married anyone else, I’d be damaged goods, emotionally.
  15. And if Luke had married anyone else, I would have been heartbroken. In that world, heartbreak is the end of the world.
  16. Sometimes I feel like we almost had an arranged marriage. A manipulated marriage at any rate.
  17. @peacefultaru I was way too obedient. I never snuck or rebelled. Now once 19 year old me sent an email from my school account.
  18. @peacefultaru when we were going to be married in 2 months. My mom was part of a major problem we needed to talk about…
  19. @danileekelley I was so stressed all the time worrying Luke didn’t really want to marry me and I could never be fit to marry anyone else.
  20. I sincerely believed I was too ‘used’ to marry anyone else, had there been anyone else. Because I was best friends with a guy.
  21. This is what the purity movement does though, taken to it’s most logical extremes. You can’t have opposite sex friends.
  22. Purity is above everything and for a woman it is easily ‘lost’
  23. In the end of course, I did marry Luke. He didnt break my heart and marry that one bitch in high heels that flirted with him at school.
  24. But the road there was full of messy stressful issues.
  25. Did you know we had a no touch courtship? My parents said it was our choice, but they wouldn’t have let us be alone ever had we held hands.
  26. Not that we were alone much anyways. Too much risk we’d do something inappropriate and ruin our whole marriage forever.
  27. I really was taught that sex before marriage, even with the future spouse, would wreck your married life.
  28. So we didn’t so much as held hands. My mom said all that stuff was on the road to sex and it would mess us up to get on the road then stop.
  29. I also wasn’t allowed to go to church with Luke, except on rare occasions, because that should be saved for marriage.
  30. I think some of my problems fitting in at b first baptist were because I never went until we married.
  31. My parents thought courtship should involve a man going out of his way to be with the woman and her family. But not vice versa
  32. The visiting I did to the hobbses was begrudgedly allowed. Luke could never visit us enough.
  33. Wow, courtship. Everyone had different expectations and parents were all over the place & in the middle of our relationship. No boundaries.
  34. I think if marriage is supposed to be one man and one woman, engagement probably works better that way, too.
  35. Some parental involvement is probably healthy. Parental control of an adults love life? Not so much.
  36. But then, I was never considered an adult. I was still a stay at home daughter. I did go to college though.
  37. I never really rebelled either. I feel delayed, like I’m emotionally fifteen. Except with a husband & two kids. Trying to figure myself out.
  38. I believe that courtship/ purity culture and patriarchy infantilizes daughters, and keeps them afraid of growing up.
  39. So all that said to say, my family was controlling, courtship is sticky, and authoritarian parenting sucks.
  40. And no touch courtships? Really suck. Would never, ever, EVER do it again. Ever.
  41. This has been Lana ranting about courtship and stuff. Tune in next time for ‘Luke’s cousin makes awesome turkey’.

2 thoughts on “courtship, a controlled twitter rant”

  2. Pingback: chaste courtship and ethics | Lana Hobbs the Brave

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