[00:00:00] Brainwash be gone. A podcast for women who've left a high control, high demand religion. In every episode, we deconstruct one specific rule you were taught so you can let go of the harmful conditioning and live an amazing life on your own terms. Today we'll be talking about.

[00:00:19] Residing with a partner, is living in sin.

[00:00:24] Did you grow up being warned regularly that you should never, ever live in sin? Meaning living with a man you weren't legally married to 'cause? Gosh, I sure did, and unfortunately for me, I totally believed the whole idea that as long as I didn't play house ahead of time and I waited to have sex until marriage, and I married a religious man, I was guaranteed to have a healthy, happy, supportive marriage.

[00:00:49] I learned the hard way, exactly how illogical that framework is. And today we're gonna talk about how we all can make our own choices about what's best for us in terms of relationships and how a person can logically make good decisions before legally binding themselves to another human being.

[00:01:07] 

[00:01:09] When I was growing up and when I was being indoctrinated into the dogma of my high control religion, I heard so many different reasons for the rules having to do with. What they called sexual purity or the rules about no sex before marriage or living together. And those rules were often a mixture of moral arguments, spiritual arguments, and even social and psychological arguments.

[00:01:38] And you likely heard a lot of those too, stay sexually pure, living together. It means you're having sex and that's morally wrong outside of marriage to be obedient to God, you know, God said. Allegedly that marriage is the only divinely approved context to have this romantic partnership. So you're gonna have to wait until you're legally married.

[00:02:02] Well, if you wanna preserve the sanctity of marriage, you know, because marriage is sacred, anything resembling it ahead of time is really gonna diminish the value of your marriage later on. Like you're cheating on your future spouse before you ever even met him. And what's he gonna think about that? Yeah, and then sometimes there's some fuzzy pseudoscience studies thrown around too, like, partners who live together statistically break up at a higher rate than people who are married. No, freaking kidding. That's kind of the point, right? Like you wanna be able to break up if it's not a good thing, versus feeling like you're stuck after you've already made this commitment.

[00:02:43] And then there's just the whole idea of the social order and respectability of it. We as women. Our moral worth and reputation depend on avoiding the appearance of impropriety and heavens. If anyone thought that we as adults were having sex and being the biological human animals that we are, that would just be outrageous.

[00:03:03] Everyone would talk about that, which is really their problem, not ours. Let's just be real.

[00:03:09] But although high control religions will have 1,000,001 reasons why they have to control our sexuality and our adult decisions. Supposedly for our spiritual safety and our wellbeing and the happiness of our future marriage. The truth is there are a lot of other motives that aren't stated that quite frankly seem really important as well.

[00:03:32] Psychologists have observed and broken down some of the main psychological tactics that authoritarian and high control groups use against people, and one of them is that they try to restrict a fundamental biological human urge.

[00:03:47] In this case, sexuality because it guarantees that it's impossible for anyone to meet the standard. No matter how scrupulous and compulsively you try to block and repress your sexuality. If you are not asexual, then you're going to have thoughts or urges, even if you don't carry them out.

[00:04:06] And the groups say, well, that's a sin. So the effect that that has is that it keeps everyone continuously failing according to their standard. It allows the church to position itself as an authority and it keeps the members in a one down position where they are always the ones sinning.

[00:04:21] They always need to repent. They always need to come back to the church. And the church has this authority to punish them or to be over them. So it keeps you on this treadmill of shame and repentance. Trying to meet an impossible standard, which perpetuates their control, and honestly, it's extremely effective, which is why repressing sexuality has been a tool of high control groups, literally for millennia.

[00:04:46] These rules also control women and women's sexuality because if you're regulating living arrangements, it makes women's bodies and choices a lot easier to monitor. And previously before the invention of birth control and things like that, maybe there was a little bit more of a pragmatic reason for wanting people to be legally married before they were having sex, just so that children could be taken care of.

[00:05:11] So there was some way to say like, whose kid this was or whatever. But we're not in a world like that anymore, and we're also not getting married at 12 and 13 anymore. It's a different situation.

[00:05:22] Another unstated motive is that it encourages early marriage

[00:05:28] because you have the biological urge to have sex, and you can only do so within marriage according to your group, you're probably just gonna marry someone pretty quickly as soon as you're able to, and continue to propagate the group and be dependent on the group.

[00:05:45] Often it also causes economic dependence because if you marry early, you haven't had time to develop yourself as an adult first and have any financial stability or earning power that you've already set up ahead of time.

[00:06:00] It also causes women, especially to have a lack of knowledge about partner selection, the less information that women have about men and how to select them for compatibility, for kindness, for sexual satisfaction. It's sad to say, because I think no good men would be wanting to participate in a system like this, but.

[00:06:25] A lot of these structures realistically were built so that men would have the power and women would not have the information or the power to make choices that were good for them. They were just a supply of labor, to bear children, to take care of the house, to not have the basis to make any complaints about the standard or to ask men to raise their standards, which is totally gross.

[00:06:48] Good men don't want a system like that. They want to have an equal partnership where they also are contributing to the relationship and they understand what makes their partner happy, and they are a compatible unit.

[00:06:59] So there are several negative impacts that come. For women, for men, for society in general. When people follow this rule of avoiding living together before marriage, or avoiding having sex before marriage, there are a lot of rushed or ill-informed marriages that happen. You might prematurely jump to get married, ignoring red flags, not even having time to see the red flags, not even knowing what red flags are because you've been kept away from the opposite sex and.

[00:07:29] You find out the hard way only after you're married and it's a very serious situation. There can be a lot of shame and anxiety that people experience if they are living together or even considering it, or even after marriage because they're so used to these prohibitions on their sexuality and their way of being, that that doesn't just disappear overnight once you're married to someone.

[00:07:53] And then there's just relationship instability because without the chance to experience your daily compatibility or lack thereof, couples get married, they're unprepared for the real life dynamics, and they start to form families.

[00:08:07] With major underlying issues in their relationships that wouldn't have needed to be there if they'd had more information about themselves and about each other. I literally realized my marriage was probably a mistake on day two of the marriage, which is crazy. And then I suffered and stuck it out and tried to fix it for another 15 years, but I would never have married the man that I married had I experienced day two of the marriage before I had married him.

[00:08:33] Imagine how much that would've helped me to have spent literally two days with him before I made a decision on marriage. But I did not do that, and it's not just me. Literally, every single one of my religious friends who I had in my early twenties, who waited to have sex and live with their partner before marriage ended up divorced for various reasons.

[00:08:55] Extreme incompatibility, various types of abusiveness, addictions, all of the things that were invisible. Because there was not enough time spent in knowing these partners before we committed to them, which is terrifying. I'm shocked at how bad the rate turned out to be for my group of friends who were all very devoutly religious and desiring to have wonderful marriages, and that's just not what happened.

[00:09:23] And there would've been ways to prevent that from happening had we not been so. Entrenched in various high control religious groups. So I wanna take a look at this whole issue from a purely logical framework as I would as a lawyer, just using my logical, critical thinking, not as an indoctrinated religious person.

[00:09:46] So I think that it's pretty clear if you look at it, that marriage is a serious contract in the law. I didn't even think about that until after I was married. Honestly, either. Yes, there are protections like your children, you know, in, in a lot of states and this could vary across the world, but usually there's some sort of system that, you know, children that are born in the marriage are deemed to be.

[00:10:09] That's the father legally, and that can have advantages. If you have shared financial gain during the course of the marriage, then it can protect you. If you know your spouse makes more money than you do, and maybe you're taking care of the household and then you aren't left destitute if you split up.

[00:10:25] So there are some protections there, but before I got married, I never heard anyone talk about what are the serious risks of marrying someone legally, and this is, of course, I have to say this is not legal advice about your specific jurisdiction, but in general, in a lot of states here in the United States and in a lot of places in the world, when you are married to someone.

[00:10:47] You are responsible for debts that they take on. So if they take out secret credit cards, if they are spending all the money on addictions or they're just bad at finances, they don't save, they use the money. Even use it when you don't know you didn't agree to it. Maybe they have a secret life that they're funding.

[00:11:09] Guess what? It's your problem because you're legally married to them and you can be liable for paying back those debts. And it's not stealing from you in a lot of cases if you're married. So if they wipe out the account for something that you didn't agree to, it's not like some stranger wiping out your account.

[00:11:27] It's like you're married and in many cases you have this joint financial life where they can significantly harm you financially.

[00:11:36] And yeah, there can be ways to kind of separate your finances and have prenuptial agreements and great, but in religious groups, we all know that that stuff is not happening. People are not taking those kinds of precautions at all. It also can put you at very significant physical risk when you live with someone.

[00:11:56] Statistically, women are much more likely to be physically harmed at home than in public by a stranger. How terrifying is that? So your choice of who you live with as a partner impacts your financial health, your physical safety in a lot of cases, and sometimes the trajectory of your future. You could actually be on the hook to financially take care of a deadbeat spouse simply because you were married to them for a long time.

[00:12:25] I know several women who were in long-term marriages where the woman got an education, she was supporting the family. The man was chronically unemployed or had various problems and kept dragging the family down. And then once she got sick of it and finally got a divorce, those women paid alimony to the man after divorcing sometimes for years because they were legally married.

[00:12:49] They were still responsible to some degree for that person that they'd married even after divorcing, which could be a tough pill to swallow after facing years and years of problems in a marriage. Not to mention your life trajectory and emotional health is so seriously impacted by who your day-to-day partner is.

[00:13:11] If you're emotionally abused, if you have a partner with a personality disorder. If you simply have the feeling that your partner doesn't fundamentally understand you,

[00:13:20] those things cause pain at a very deep level and loneliness at a very deep level that no one else can really impact you at that level other than your day-to-day primary partner.

[00:13:31] So in other words, it's a huge, huge, huge risk to legally tie yourself to someone that you don't know well.

[00:13:37] So if it's such a serious commitment and there are these big risks, what are the logical steps that a person could take to screen someone to reduce the risk that their partner would harm them in any of these ways? Well, you're gonna need some knowledge. You're gonna need to collect some data. You're gonna need to observe the partner over time.

[00:14:00] You are gonna wanna date them for a significant period of time, at least a year, maybe longer. You're gonna wanna see them in a lot of different scenarios and situations over time. People can fake good behavior for a certain amount of time, but the cracks will always show after a while. You're gonna wanna have had a serious fight with that person to see how they treat you when they are very angry, very upset when they're provoked and being their worst selves.

[00:14:28] You wanna know what that looks like before you commit to someone. We've all got our stuff and our moments of. Not the best ways of being, but some people are downright dangerous. And for other people it's like, yeah, that's just what that side of them looks like.

[00:14:44] They're having a rough time, but they're not harming me in any way. And that's something that we can totally live with and work around.

[00:14:51] You wanna make sure that you're spending plenty of time with that person when they are not in performance mode. How do they treat you in private versus when they are trying to look good for other people? Often the steps that are taken in religious groups to chaperone people or prevent them from being alone so that they don't have sex

[00:15:12] actually prevent you from seeing the other person in the truth of who they are. And it can prevent you from seeing signs of things like addictions, control issues, violent tendencies, and ways that they're lying are untrustworthy. Like how do you see those things if you don't have enough experience seeing them in different circumstances over time and honestly, testing out the sex is very important. The only time it wouldn't be important is if both individuals know that they are asexual and they do not wish to have a sexual life together. Then of course that works for the two of you. You're going in without understanding, but if one or both of you expect to have some kind of sexual relationship after marriage and you don't try it out ahead of time.

[00:15:56] That is a recipe for disaster, and I've seen it go down in a lot of different and bad ways. And I will say that there are a lot of things I did not know about sex at all when I lived in a high control religion. And got married before I ever had sex. And then after I got divorced, I had to learn so many things and I dated men out in the world and tried different things.

[00:16:17] And here are some important things that I wish I had known ahead of time that I didn't know. And I'm gonna share it with you because it's just like, if there's anyone listening to this who hasn't had this experience, or maybe you've only had an experience with one man that you were married to, it's really important to know

[00:16:33] That people are different. So people have very different libidos, meaning they're very different in terms of how often they like to be sexual. There's a huge range out there, and it's very challenging when you have a very different libido than someone that is your partner.

[00:16:50] People have very different styles of how they like to have sex, whether it's like. Soft and sensual or more just straight to the point there's a ton of different ways that people have sex in different styles, and you can just naturally be a very different style than a person in a way that no matter how much you love each other, you're not really gonna be able to meet in the middle on those style differences.

[00:17:13] People have very different bodies, the shapes and sizes of the people and how they fit together. It just feels different. I literally did not know that, and it's super important because if it's something that's this shape or this size is uncomfortable for you or doesn't feel good for you, it would be so sad to commit to someone when you had just a fundamental biological mismatch and it is gonna cause you both to be miserable.

[00:17:40] That's a terrible outcome. You need to know that ahead of time. People are also very different in terms of their cuddliness. So some people like have sex and they don't want anyone to touch them. Other people are like, have sex and then they wanna cuddle or outside of sex, like just sitting on the couch.

[00:17:57] Do they like to hold your hand? Do they like to cuddle? Do you like that? Do you feel like, no, I'm touched out. Don't touch me. When people are really in different ranges for that cuddliness factor. It's also really, it can be really incompatible or really compatible, or it could be the greatest delight when you find someone who you know, who's similar to you on all of these different variables.

[00:18:20] So what if you don't care that much about sex? You might not care, but unless you're sure that your partner also doesn't care, you could really be destroying your future partner's life if they do care and they feel trapped in the relationship and at your mercy. And it would be. Very sad for both of you to be incompatible in that way.

[00:18:39] And how would it feel to live with someone who every single day potentially they are like, yay, I would love to do this with you. And you're like, no, both of you're gonna be miserable. There's no real compromise in this situation. So even if you feel like it doesn't matter a ton to you, it would be great to figure out how much it matters to them and in what context before you're making this commitment for both of your future happiness.

[00:19:04] But will the data collection of figuring these things out ruin your future marriage? A lot of groups say this, I used to believe it, and fortunately, I no longer do believe that. First of all, it's just totally illogical. Secondly, I am now in a relationship with a wonderful man who I deeply love, respect, and I'm very compatible with in every dimension.

[00:19:27] The relationship I have with him is how I thought my marriage would be, but it totally wasn't. And the fact that I had a failed marriage and then lots of dating experience and a handful of boyfriends over several years after I got divorced, until I met the man I'm with currently did not make having a good relationship.

[00:19:44] Impossible. In fact, I think it made it better because I had knowledge about what I wanted. I had knowledge about what type of person I'm compatible with, what I'm seeking. I'm much more mature from having had these experiences. And he's much more mature from his own relationship journey.

[00:20:00] And I think he actually probably feels more secure knowing that it's not from lack of knowledge that I'm with him, but I tried the things and I know that he's my favorite kind. You know, like how beautiful is that? It's just simply not true that you can use up that relationship juice and then you can't have a good relationship after that.

[00:20:20] That's just totally silly. You don't have to believe that that's true, even if that's what you were taught. So don't let anyone convince you that knowledge harms you. That is such a common thread in so many topics in high control religions because keeping knowledge away from you is clearly about controlling you.

[00:20:37] It's not about your actual best interest, and it's extremely reasonable to have as much knowledge as possible about your partner and yourself before forming a serious legal bond with someone. A lot of the proponents of waiting until marriage who are happy in their marriages, just literally lucked out, and that's great for them.

[00:20:55] That's nice. But there are a ton of people who do not luck out in this way. Being religious and following the other tenants, do not guarantee that you're gonna luck out in that way. And in some ways, I'm almost happy that I had the opposite of lucking out in my marriage, because I probably would've been just smug and self-congratulatory.

[00:21:15] All about my excellent, you know, decision making that caused me to have a great marriage. Instead, I had a bad experience. It was hell on earth and psychological torture. To be married to that man and escaping him was the best thing I ever did in my entire life, which brought me these experiences, which I'm happy to share with all of you in hopes that it would help someone who's in this process or someone who's, thinking about all of these things deliberating in your own life.

[00:21:41] So some parting thoughts for me about relationship morality. I think consent, mutual respect matter a ton more than marital status. I think cohabitation can be a totally responsible way to assess your compatibility or communication, your shared values, and that's good for everyone involved. Moral behavior is not determined by living arrangements, but by.

[00:22:06] Your honesty, your care, your integrity in your relationships, and I think adults are perfectly capable of making ethical decisions without institutional control, and they deserve to make their own decisions. You deserve to make your own decisions, whatever's best for you. 

[00:22:22] 

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