Looking back at my marriage I see where I gave all control to my husband, he was older and he was an elder. When I wanted some say in how my life was going he would throw at me if you do not like this you should have never married an elder. I would instantly feel like scum when he said that to me and it would take all the wind out of my sail so to speak, I could not find words to answer him because I did marry him as an elder and I truly thought I had no right to question what was happening.
There were so many time over and over and over that I would be put down and made to feel like a child. Like we would have plans for doing something as a couple after the meeting and time after time after time a surprise elders meeting would come up and my husband would dump me like a hot rock. I would be told to just go sit in the car, like I was a child. Never was I offered a ride home from him or anyone. I would sit in the car for hours and hours. It got to the point the even the publishers in the hall would come up to me and tell me to just go sit in the car as they needed to talk to my husband. He was the only elder in the hall when we were first married. I even got phone calls from some of the JW's screaming at me demanding to speak to my husband, just rude people who no respect for me being his wife. It was HELL.
I put up with it because in my heart of hearts I thought it was really the truth, I thought things would get better someday. I would watch other young couples have date nights, and have fun together buying things for their homes, getting new cloths etc but all of our money went into field service for car gas to pioneer and besides we never had time for date nights as there was always a shepherding call to make or a meeting parts to prepare, etc.
I truly loved my husband more than anything in the world, but slowly that love died sitting in the car and being dumped at a moment's notice for someone in the hall. We could never and I mean NEVER miss a Saturday morning for service. A couple of times I talked my husband into not going out in service but he still had to go conduct. It was totally crazy. When we finally bought our first and only home he was on a JC committee that went on for weeks, I painted the home and moved in by myself. One of our new neighbors even came over and asked if I was single, I told him no I was married the neighbor than asked if we lived together because he never saw my husband with me. I got into a bad car accident and was going to massage therapy which I had to quit because it interfered with my going out in service and as an elder's wife my husband could not stand that.
It all came to a head when I realized that we had not one but three pedophiles in our hall, two of which were in our book study group at the time and one of which was determined that he was going to work door to door with my husband. I was like over my dead body. My husband said he would have to being he was an elder. It was finally a huge deal breaker for me. I went to the CO and asked if it was true that my husband would have to work with a man who had raped children and the CO told me I 'needed to get a handle on my attitude and yes my husband WOULD WORK with pedophiles door to door.' I totally flipped out, that was totally the very last straw. All the other hurtful things that had been done to me was nothing compared to my husband working in public with men who had raped kids. I was molested as a child and it was just mind numbing to me to think that my husband would spit in my face to be going door to door with a child rapist.
Anyway long story short the elders deleted my husband because I was not in submission. I was not in enough submission after all the hell I had been through, all the hours of sitting in the car alone, no time with my husband and I was not in submission???????
My husband has apologized over and over for the past but the past is still in my mind my memory and I truly wish I could make it go away it still hurts in how I was treated like a non person all those years. It just took the extreme of the pedophiles to make me finally have a back bone. To here you guys say your wife's had temper tantrums and would yell and scream it totally amazes me. I never would have dreamed to do that, though my husband says that I always got my way, and I truly do not know what he means by that. How did I get my way? Our second year anniversary that I had been looking forward to for weeks was destroyed because my husband had a elders meeting come up and I spent the night over seven hours in a cold car until one in the morning waiting for the meeting to end. We never made up for the anniversary. How did I get my way, no mornings together just having coffee, no true time together, all our marriage was for the stupid religion. No time for me his wife, but somehow I got my way.
Our marriage is not great now because of the past but we have been together for so long and I just cannot walk out, I just wish I could turn back time and that I had, had a back bone back than. And yes my husband is still in though he misses a ton of meeting the pedophile thing really affected him and he did agree that I was totally right about it.
LITS
