Quote:
Originally Posted by Terry
I was raised in the local churches since the age of 3. By the time you leave grade school for middle school, it is no longer acceptable for boys and girls to be sociable.
As you get to be high school and college age it was common to hear the phrase from a brother's perspective, "you don't get into a relationship until you're ready to get married." How do you know when that time is? If you even dare to speak to a single sister, protocol has been broken. Your character within the church becomes questionable.
It wasn't until the 1990's it became more common to find one's spouse outside the local church fellowship. It wasn't until facebook did I realize other former church kids, single sisters had the same attitude towards single brothers that single brothers had towards single sisters. There's a facade in the churchlife pretending to be spiritual and on fire for the ministry even if you're not. Brothers want to marry a normal sister and sisters want to marry a normal brother. Someone you can grow and laugh with. As it was there was such a distance for brothers and sisters to know each other as persons, they became socially dysfunctional towards the other gender.
You said,
I was one of those brothers. How I came to be married and a father of three had nothing to do with the local churches.
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This describes my experience too. No way granted to be able to be normally healthily functional towards the opposite sex. I recall having a young people's serving one telling me sternly "DON'T EVEN THINK ABOUT IT AT ALL UNTIL YOU ARE 25!" and when I turned 26 I got "what's the deal, why aren't you married yet?"
I tried to tell elders that young people are harmed by being told "no no no no no no no no" in every meeting their whole life and it is never balanced out with any kind of meeting where they are told "okay....now's ok". The elders were not church kids themselves, and they didn't seem to understand the problem.
You don't get into a relationship until you're read to get married?? How are you supposed to have any idea of who you'd like to be in a relationship with if you can't interact with them in a normal way? In the LC it's like you've got to break their protocol to have a hope of getting married. I can't stand what they've done to people.