I have never broken up with anyone. I have gotten really mad at my boyfriends and threatened to leave them, but I never carried through with it. My last boyfriend cheated on me, left me, and pretty much left my life in shatters, but I still welcomed him back with open arms when he finally contacted me again. While many people might think this is a very small issue, I think that every woman should be ABLE to break up with someone.
Yesterday my significant other and I were fighting. We were fighting because I was tired of his extreme jealousy. I personally think that his jealousy is not healthy or normal. He thinks it is both healthy and normal, as well as necessary. Honestly, I don't know if he is The One. I don't know that I would marry him. I don't know that I would want to have children with him. But despite all of these doubts and fights and tears, I am unable to break up with him. While thinking about all of this yesterday, I realized that my parents never taught me how to break up with someone.
I doubt many mothers purposefully teach their daughters how to break up with someone. However, in the purity culture, breaking up is one of the worst things that could happen in a young woman's life. And the thought of HER being the one doing the breaking up?!? That is absolutely unthinkable. Thinking back, I was never given a model of a healthy ending of a relationship. Divorced women were a dark secret of the church that were tried to be kept silent and on the sidelines. I was not close to many people who had their relationships dissolved.
I remember Irene. Her husband left her for another woman. She was so faithful to the church and refused to divorce him, even though he was living with another woman and beat her whenever he would come back home for a week or so to try to convince her to divorce him. The church portrayed him as being so ungoldy and she as so goldy because she refused to divorce him and she would welcome him back whenever he would come home. The leaders always told her (at least publicly, which is what I heard because as a child I was never privy to the happenings behind closed doors) that she would one day be rewarded by her husband finally coming back to her. As a side note, she did not last too many years longer with the church and I saw her on Facebook the other day and she had finally remarried. I hope all is well with her, but that situation is far from a model of a healthy dissolution of a marriage.
I remember Jessica. She was the daughter of a widowed woman who was in and out of the church. At the time of her courtship, she was not part of the church, but we still saw her frequently and still knew the details of her courtship. She started courting a young man and even had a wedding date set. One day, the courtship was called off by her mother, who forbade her to marry the man. She and her mother pretty much dropped out of all the church circles at that point. She was disgraced. She was as good as divorced. She was damaged goods, even if it was her mother that had forced the relationship to be broken. Once again, that is not a healthy model of a relationship ending.
And then there was the Flannagin family. The Flannagin family was close to our family. However, the Flannagin couple had some serious issues. Mrs. Flannagin would go through times of mental illness and would be found walking down the road miles away from her home only because she was mad at her husband. Even remembering the memories makes me feel dysfunctional because the whole situation never made sense. She was dysfunctional and it tore her children up to have to have that reputation. After they left the church, they finally did split up. Again, the church was forcing them to stay together (as well as not seek professional help).
As a child, I was never taught that breaking up was an option. All the of models of breakups that I had as a child were unhealthy and I was taught that those people were forever inferior. I never dreamed as a girl that I would break up with someone. I always hoped and prayed that I would never have a break up. It never crossed my mind that a breakup might be better. Now I'm contemplating a breakup and realize how impossible it is for me to actually do. I wish there was someone there to help me. I wish someone could walk me through the steps of how to actually do it. I wish my mom had taught me how to break up in a healthy manner.
