Thanks. It’s actually one of the few official standards of measurement to incorporate the comedy “rule of three”.
So…you are drawing a parallel between Joe and God?
Gaaaahh!!
I meant “factor” in the mathematical sense: A part of the BIG EQUATION. Me, Misty, as a PERSON, an INDIVIDUAL, reacts differently in my different functions. Part of me is a wife. Part of me is a mother. Part of me is a friend/neighbor/fill-in-the-blank. I’m just saying that the KIND of love I give TO JOE is vastly different, both physically and emotionally, than the kind I give to the kids.
Now I’m starting to feel like I really AM nutso, just because I can’t seem to make myself clear.
No, not in the way you think I am. Just in the sense that he is someone that I am deeply devoted to.
I don’t see that.
She is comparing her love of her husband and her children with other people’s ability to love God and their children.
How is that not comparing drawing a parallel between her husband and God? If she feels the same way about him as she would about, well, Him, how is that not regarding her husband like a God?
It’s a retarded comparison.
Because Joe is a person, not the creator and saviour of the human race. He’s just a man. No more, and no less.
Umm…don’t you believe in equality of orifices?
Right. No need to answer that one.
If you were a religious person and the god you listened to required you to do things that were not in your kids’ best interests, then you would have to choose to either obey your god and hurt your kids or protect your kids and disregard your god. This is not a problem for most devout Christians because they believe – even the fundamentalists who practice female subservience believe – that what God requires them to do and to teach is ALSO in the best interests of their kids.
You have – until now – claimed to engage in behaviors “24/7” that are arguably not in the best interests of your kids: making yourself completely subservient to your husband – his “slave”. If you are truly doing that, you either (a) think that, as a woman, being a slave to a man is a good thing, worthy to teach your kids or (2) agree that it is not worthy to teach your kids, but do it anyway because you put your own preferences above your kids’ well-being.
The third option, of course, is that you don’t really do it 24/7 but act like a functioning independent adult around your kids for their sakes. I hope that’s the reality of it.
Didn’t God order a man to kill his son? I don’t find that to be in the child’s best interest. But that’s delving into religious debate, which I’m not wanting to do here.
I do believe that teaching mutual respect and equality is in the best interest of my kids.
And for the umpteenth time, just because the kids don’t see something, doesn’t mean it’s not happening. There are plenty of ways to be submissive that don’t show to anyone but us, not even my devoutly Christian and vanilla mom.
That’s why it was a stupid comparison.
Freekalette, I understand that it was not a perfect analogy, but I’m genuinely curious: the woman who loves God, how does she love her husband?
I think the disconnect we are having here is that I tend to look at my relationship with my husband through the lens of what I think is good for the whole family. Your comment about having the time & energy to take care of each other kind of made me laugh…since we had the kids, taking care of each other is so far down on the priority list, it’s lucky we don’t have to do that to survive, or our kids wouldn’t have any parents at all. I want us to have a good relationship, for our sake and the kids’ sake, of course, and I think we do. But more or less what that seems to mean for us is that we have general goals in life (earn a living, raise the kids to be decent human beings, try to have a little fun, etc.) and everything we do is working to those goals, even when we aren’t consciously aware of it. Working on our relationship specifically is something we just tried to build a good foundation for, and hope it will pretty much take care of itself for a while. Of course, this means we have to attempt to be nice to each other…I’m not saying you blow off the other person completely…but in terms of compartmentalizing it into separate buckets of what we’re “working on” at any given time is kind of a foreign concept to me.
I will neither confirm nor deny I currently or have ever engaged in such activity, at any point on the VT scale. (I do, however, know a couple who named their children after Batman characters - but they were the “secret identity” names - not Clayface).
You’re the one who compared your husband to God. For what it’s worth, I think it’s just as unhealthy for parents to prioritize their religion above their kids as anything else.
But it doesn’t sound like that’s what you’re doing. It sounds like you’re teaching them that Joe is your boss and that you have to do whatever he says, including kneeling at his feet and grovelling for approval.
I’m concerned about what does show, not what doesn’t. If your kids see you constantly subordinating yourself to your husband, that’s not teaching equality.
My mom and stepdad do not ebgage in any kind of physical contact in front of others, though they love each other dearly. As mentioned waaaaay upthread, she wears the pants. (Remember that my kids spend every other weekend with them, and the kids and I even lived with them at one point when I left my first husband.) She controls the finances, gives him an allowance (even though they both work full time) and pretty much just runs the show. So for most of their lives, that was the dynamic they were exposed to the most. My ex didn’t work, so I was the breadwinner there.
The world is made up of all types of people. Some are good, some bad, some neither. I don’t want the kids to grow up in a bubble, and then one day realize that there are certain people they have no idea how to interact with, like I did. I try to give them as much age-appropriate information as I can to make sense of this crazy marble we live on, and allow them to make their own decisions with the smallest safety net needed. If that’s wrong, then I think I’m beyond any help you may think I need.
Well, since you brought it up. Remember that for Fundamentalist Christians, this life is not the end state. If sacrificing your child means your child gets the immediate entry into heaven ticket, rather than living this life of suffering, yes, that is in the best interests of the child. This was Andrea Yeats’ psychosis, as I understand it. It is certainly not a belief I hold to, but it has its own internal consistancy to it.
God hasn’t been ordering human sacrifice for several thousand years, and let Abraham off the hook on that one. Mrs. Yeats was just nuts.
No, she isn’t, but you are being an ass.
Then I’m being an ass, too. So why don’t you enlighten my dumb ass and explain what exactly she was trying to convey with that analogy?