the accidental bohemian

This is a personal story. It is about a family that I belonged to. I care deeply for them all to this day.

There were a lot of issues that caused the destruction you are about to hear. There was addiction, codependency, denial, and enabling. But as I looked harder, deeper, at the very root of it all, the thing that caused all of it to play out with so much more devastation than it ever had to… what I saw was very surprising and peculiar.

It was one system of belief.

It sat, lurking in the corner. Crouching quietly like a silent killer. I saw that it powered every move, every action, every belief that led to the rest. It controlled the entire family like a crazed ruler. It was the religion of this family in an unconscious way. They lived by these ideas, what they perceived as laws and rules for right living. It was the foundational cancer of the family.

The story of this family began with a man. A man who drank and abused his wife and three daughters, physically, verbally, and even one of them sexually. And these young daughters of his grew up feeling harmed, unsafe, oppressed by the very sick and abused power of male dominance. And out of this terrorism, which took place during the rapid development of the feminist age, grew a mentality in at least one of them.

She was the middle child. And, possibly without even knowing it, she decided she would never let another man control her life again.

She got unexpectedly pregnant at a young age, however. And she married the father of her baby, though she did not feel she really loved him the way she should. She had her first son shortly after the small hurried wedding.

No matter how hard we try, we cannot always escape our pasts, however. Drawn to repeat her dysfunction without meaning to, this man liked to drink. And she tried to stand up for herself. She had seen her mother submit and be abused, and she refused to be like this. She fought back hard and with tenacity. And so she was called crazy and unstable because she screamed and shouted and demanded he change. Soon a second son was born.

And in this very valid desire to protect herself, she severed the relationship. Though he was a good man, and not by any means abusive, it was just not working. It was just not healthy.

She maintained the residence, of course, that the boys lived in. He was required to give child support, and was allowed visitation, one night a week and every other weekend. But she was in charge. She was dominant. She held all the power. And the courts supported her position.

But something very quiet and sad was happening in the mind and the heart of a six-year-old boy who watched it all from small innocent eyes. Her first son. And he wanted to be with his dad. He had never bonded well to his mother, there was too much pain and struggle involved in how and when he came into the world. It happens, you know. It just does sometimes.

So this boy watched his mother strip his father of dignity and power and parental rights. He watched her lord over him. He cried every night to be with his dad. But of course, she refused. The place that the children belonged was with their mother, understandably so. But a boy without his father, and seeing what he saw, how could he not blame her for his absence? And so, without knowing it, this seed in her heart was planted in his. But it grew into something else, it grew into an unconscious hatred for women.

This innocent little six-year-old boy grew up and the seed hid quietly in the back of his heart. Waiting to be watered.

Before I move on with this story, I want to look briefly at where all of this came from, this power struggle between man and woman.

When I look at the universe I see a very interesting story. This is a story of a God who was, by all accounts, lonely for something. And so he created a species of creature. Mankind. This creature was like him and taken out of him and the same general image of him, but this species was not greater than him or as great as him. This species, though cherished, was subordinate, in need of the supremacy of the God it came out of.

And out of this picture came the next.

Man was made first. He was made first to tell us this story. This story about God. Because when he was created, he too was lonely. He too needed a special kind of companion. One who was taken out of him, made in his image, a part of him… but also in need of him. To be cherished by him, but by design, never meant to be exactly equal to him. Differences so special and important. But different all the same.

And in this role they lived in perfect harmony. Until there was a big mistake. And their eyes were opened. And they tasted and saw evil. And it made them feel fear and shame and separation from God and each other. The curse placed this cherished woman into a role that was morphed and twisted. A role in which she was no longer perfectly cherished. She would now be lorded over. This role was tainted now, and the domination that came from it would be unholy. He would rule over her and it would not always be in a healthy way. He would often take other lovers. He would often use his greater strength to take things from her rather than protect her from the things she needed protection from.

For many centuries, women were simply at the mercy of men and this impure domination that had resulted from disobeying God and stepping away from the boundaries he had set. The way he had made for their relationship to be: For him to protect, serve, and cherish her… and for her to find rest and satisfaction and joy being in this safe and secure place as his protected one. Under his wing, perfectly and beautifully unequal.

Until a very special time. Perhaps the greatest time there has ever been. The twentieth century. The amount of development to humankind in this century was unprecedented by any century before it. It was the great developmental stage of this human-kind fetus in this earth-womb. The brain was developing rapidly in the form of technology, education, scientific understanding, and industry. We grew rapidly and with this rapid growth began to come a sense of confidence. Women, little by little, began to refuse to be controlled, abused, dominated in this unholy way any longer. They stood up in droves and began to proclaim No more will we be treated like a lesser species of human! No more will we be told we have fewer rights than men! And they rallied and fought until they were heard.

This was important in many ways. Women deserved the right to vote. To be paid fairly. To be respected in places of authority. To join the military and serve in politics and fight fires and wear pants. To stop being abused and raped and molested. We deserve these things.

But like every kind of abuse and control, once the victim gains a little power, she tends to go overboard, fueled by the residue of the abuse she endured and moving from being assertive to being outright aggressive. Instead of moving herself out of oppression and into a safe place, she pushed harder and harder until, in her own mind, she not only felt equal to a man, but even in many cases, above him. A hatred of men, a resentment for all the years of oppression, was accelerant on the fire. She was unstoppable. And she was so afraid of being oppressed again, she decided the only way to prevent it was to remove herself completely from the position of being the weaker sex altogether.

This was the same story that took place between God and human-kind. In all the evil this world endured we began to grow suspicious of the power of God over us. We began to try and remove ourselves from the place of submission to him, feeling we could not trust him. Humankind began to see themselves as their own gods and to reject the safety of his dominant presence. We stepped out from underneath him as a people and tried to find our own way.

Sadly, both of these cases, the woman pulling out from under the authority of man and the people pulling away from the authority of God, created disaster.

Now, back to the little boy who watched his father emasculated, watched his mother in total domination.

I met this boy just after his twentieth birthday. We fell in love. And we got married.

I did not know what he had seen growing up. I did not know the beliefs planted in his heart. The hatred and mistrust of women that was sitting dormant and juts awaiting activation. A tendency toward addiction and alcoholism. A belief that divorce was the answer to marital problems. And this toxic, passed-down, generational mentality: I will never let a woman take from me the way I saw my mother take from my father. I will always be in control. I will always be dominant. She will never rule over me. 

Do you see, reader, how dangerous it is that we do not work through our past abuses? Do you see that if we only lash out in response to them and let unhealthy mindsets remain because of them, that we pass them right down to our kids?

And this man was prepared with an arsenal of beliefs that seeing woman dominate over a man had planted in him. It destroyed this man’s chance of ever being happy and it destroyed every relationship he ever had.

Starting with the one he had with me.

I was never supported by him. He demanded I work for anything I needed. The whole family stood behind him and agreed. They called me lazy and said I needed to contribute. In my mind, my role was very important and honorable. I cooked and cleaned and took care of our son and did the shopping and managed the household. This was always my dream job. This was where I fit, this was what my heart felt its work was and should be. He made plenty of money to take care of us, but he spent the excess on partying and drinking and drugs so it was placed on my shoulders to make up for the deficit. While doing everything else as well.

Because… weren’t women natural super creatures after all? Weren’t we stronger than men? Smarter? More capable? We were meant to shoulder much more weight and responsibility, right? To uphold our new position as the non-oppressed sex. To work and manage the household and raise the children, three times the work men are expected to do, but of course we are three times more able than they are, right?

Wrong.

This is not at all how I saw things. I saw myself as the weaker sex and I liked that role very much. I did not have any desire to assume the role of super woman they thought I should have simply because I was equipped with both a brain and ovaries.

I was the very opposite of a feminist. I was raised to believe women needed men. We were in need of their love, their protection, their support, their provision. I wanted so desperately to be cherished. To be protected. To be provided for, the way I saw my own father treat my mother. I had wanted a life like the one I had grown up in.

But my husband believed very differently from me. As a man who was taught that a woman is dominant, that he had no responsibility to protect me or provide for me. And as a man who had watched his father stripped of all rights, he did not know how to be a father or husband himself. How could he?

I lashed out in the marriage as well, fighting against the cruelty he inflicted on us both as he drank and did drugs and abandoned us and left us to fend for ourselves. Eventually, true to his beliefs that he was not a detrimental presence in the life of his wife and child, and that what he saw growing up was the answer, and because of being pushed by his family to do so, he divorced me.

But no woman was ever going to be in charge of him. No woman was going to do to him what his mother did to his father. No woman was going to take his son away from him. And no woman was going to get child support from him. He would not support a woman he was married to, so why on earth a woman he wasn’t? Women were not seen by him as the weaker sex. They were seen by him as the dangerous, more dominant sex… the hated and untrusted sex. He had no capacity to see a woman as precious or needing protection or to be cherished or needing to be taken care of. He saw them from the point of view of feminism, the dominant infectious belief he was raised with without ever knowing it.

He got into fighting position, ready to take everything he could away from me before I could hurt him in this way.

I was the opposite of the typical ex-wife, however. I never shed any ill light or spoke one negative word about this man to his son, my sweet innocent boy. I made sure visitation was 50/50 equal, knowing that his time with his father was vital to his development, and that being ripped from a parent, even one with problems, is far more damaging to a child than most things. I never asked him for support, never took him to court, never demanded a thing from him. I let him go off and live his own life, and I lived mine and I went to my parents for help and support, before setting back out on my own. I said things to my son like, your daddy loves you so much… are you excited to go spend next week with daddy?… I bet daddy misses you when you are with me this week… daddy is so strong and so handsome, I bet you will grow up to be just like him…

I uplifted his father in this little boy’s eyes. I made sure that he saw his father as a strong masculine entity whom I respected. I was careful never to strip my ex-husband’s masculinity from him in my actions, but especially in his little boys eyes. I made sure he remained a very regular and strong presence in his life with equal parental rights.

Soon I met a new man.

And this one I interviewed.

All night long we stayed up after our first date and talked about every detail of our upbringings, our beliefs, our plans and goals for the future. And we both knew it was a match. Though both of us were infected with many many things we were intent on conquering still, neither one of us was infected with the mentality of feminism.

We both enjoyed gender roles. We both believed women were precious and deserved protection, provision, and honor. We both believed men deserved a headship role in the family, a sense of the protector, the dominant one, the powerful source of masculinity and safety. We both desired to assume traditional gender roles. I wanted to have children and take care of the house and cook and clean and serve him in these roles. He wanted to work and support the family and protect us and provide for us, and serve his family in this way.

This was a powerful match. And we have been together for nearly twelve years now. I have never, not for one day, lost my sense of gratitude for being cherished by him as the weaker sex in our relationship. Because I will never forget what it felt like to be abandoned to tread water on my own. And it seems, the more I respect him for this protection, the greater his sense of duty to be an honorable man becomes.

Someone reading this might say, well that’s you. You’re just a naturally meek and submissive person. You are less independent and maybe even a fearful person who cannot stand on her own. Nope. Anyone who knows me will tell you I am a very strong, highly opinionated, incredibly spirited, and extremely independent woman who will proudly, confidently, securely say I am not a feminist.

My ex-husband has continued to live in the same pattern of belief and behavior. He has never taken responsibility for those in need of his protection and provision, because he has been blinded from seeing that they are in need of such things. He cannot see gender roles in a healthy way. He sees them twisted and confused. He perpetually sees women as self-sufficient, powerful perpetrators and he sees himself as the emasculated victim of that power. So why would he step up and be an honorable man who confidently takes his role and owns his powerful masculinity?

He can’t.

So what I saw, what I believe,  is that a failure to honor the mantel of masculinity played a very impactful role in harming a family greatly. Remember, this is one story. Of one family. There are millions that may be very very different. This is my own opinion, based on my own observations, experiences, and perceptions.

You may say, it is awfully presumptuous to claim that feminism is a strong underlying factor at all in this family’s issues, filled with divorce and abuse and addiction. But take my own son as evidence to support my claim. He grew up seeing the addiction, seeing the divorce, seeing all these terrible things his father saw while growing up… except one. He never saw from me feminist beliefs. He never saw his father emasculated by me. He never saw me disrespect men or try to dominate them. He saw from me a respect and need for them. And now, despite exposure to many terrible losses and dysfunctions, he knows that women need to be protected and he takes that role very seriously.

We, as women, need to raise our boys to see masculinity as a powerful, important, and respected role so that they will be able to step into it themselves. If we fail to honor it, how can they see it carries honor?

Some of them will find women who are very successful, more independent, who might make more money, or even be taller or stronger. And some men love taking care of the kids while some women love working. This is not about arguing about “the place” of a man or “the place” of a woman in these shallow ways. Everyone is different.

This is about the deeper big-picture:

Masculinity needs to be given its place back in our society, in our families, because as soon as it was knocked down from this place, our families began to crumble, and then our society followed. There are many studies that show it is the breakdown of the family unit that is destroying our society more than any other thing. The need for a strong male lead in every family that, when missing, is harming our children so greatly and changing who they are for a lifetime.

Men used to stand whenever a woman entered the room. He used to tip his hat to her as she passed. He used to open doors and always yield to her. He made sure no one shocked her with inappropriate behavior or language. Some men are still like this. But many just shove past women, flip them off on the freeway, and ignore their needs for protection. And it’s because so many women have rejected this treatment as condescending.

Emasculating men in our world was a very dangerous thing to do when even God gave them permission to rule over us when the curses took hold. The more they are told that we do not need them, the more they will leave us behind, the less they will perceive our needs. But the more they feel honored, respected, and needed… the more they will step up and assume that role once more. The more they will stay with their women and children as that powerful pillar of strength because they know how vitally we do need them after all.

You would never leave a kitten behind in a jungle, unless it had somehow convinced you it was a dangerous lion that needed no rescuing.

Wives, submit yourselves to your husbands, the same way you submit to the Lord, because he will be your protection, your covering, your provider, just as God is. Husbands love and cherish and protect your wives, sacrifice for them, the way Jesus sacrificed everything, and laid down his life for his people. Put yourself in between them and harm. Stand guard over your wife. Stand guard over your family. Because they are precious and they need you.