Checked The Facebook Of An Old Romantic Interest...

[Vomit Comet]

Just for the hell of it, I peeped the Facebook page of an old romantic interest from my darkest days as a Pentecostal fundie. She was the senior pastor's daughter and... well, let's just say the aftermath of that one was traumatic. *sigh* All that aside, this girl was whip-smart, charming and witty, highly educated, and pretty well cultured (as far as the suburban middle classes of Southern California go). She really had a lot going for her. She also had serious intimacy issues; the whole time I was with her I got to hold her hand for 15 ultra-tense seconds, and that was that. I don't know if it was her fundie PK upbringing or if it was her herself; her siblings didn't have any such issues, that's for sure. For years afterward, I harbored the suspicion that she might be asexual, or possibly a deeply closeted lesbian. Not out of sour grapes, mind you! Because others speculated likewise....

 

Turns out she's now "In A Relationship" with the last fuckin' guy I ever thought a girl like her would get with. I mean, if you would have told me that six years ago I would have thought it both impossible and absurd. He's a dumb-as-dirt redneck who grew up in ultra- ultra-rural isolation (trust me, SoCal has some deep-ass wilderness) and has all the social graces of a bull moose that got into the moonshine still. And I'm talking duuuuuumb. As in, after a few minutes, you just want him to go away and bug someone else.

 

Now, I'm not knocking rednecks, and I'm not knocking families who choose to raise their children so far out in the goddamn sticks that they only have dogs to play with as opposed to other children (seriously not kidding), and it's a 2 hour bus ride to go to the nearest thing resembling a school.... And he's not a bad guy, he's got a good heart, it's not like he's gonna beat her while cheating on her with his own sister or anything. And I feel like shit for talking shit about him because there were times when we were indeed friends. And once again, this ain't sour grapes, believe me it ain't. But...

 

...how did that happen? It took my breath away, I was so astonished! There's three possible explanations:

 

1. She saw qualities in him that none of the rest of us ever saw. ("We" have all known each other since the mid-late 90s.) Which, unless some mutation caused him to gain 30 IQ points overnight.... I mean, he can't have changed all that much. I mean, he certainly had qualities--loyalty, honesty, etc. But still, I can't wrap my brain around it.

 

2. She's desperate, because he might be the only single male in her age bracket in her tiny little church circle. Shit, last time I myself was in that exact same circle, there were exactly two single girls, one was her and the other was her nasty she-demon of a best friend. You gotta understand, in Los Angeles there really aren't that many Bible-believin' true Christians to go around. It's not like Georgia where not being a fundie can put a serious cramp in your mate selection. More like the other way around. (Shit, it'd be easier for her to find a Mormon guy to date.) So she might have 7 or 8 great non-fundie guys at work who'd really want to be with her, but she can't get with any of them.

 

3. She's desperate, but not because of the slim pickings in her fundie circle, but because she's too shy and inept and only he had the balls to break through it. He always was pretty ballsy. Like I said, a bull moose.

 

And the fourth possibility is that I'm just a bitter asshole misreading everything from my skewed hindsight. But needless to say, I was astonished! I was like "no. fucking. way!!! Of all people, HIM!?!?!??!!"

 

Can any of you feel me on this? Because wow, like, yeah....

 

ETA: again, it ain't sour grapes. My reaction wasn't "that fucking asshole he doesn't deserve her!!!" My reaction was in fact along the lines of "that poor girl, my god...."

[Foxy Methoxy]

Dude. Move on already.

[florduh]

I've seen a few apparent mismatches in my time. I have a young lady friend who had it all happening for her - looks, brains, great career, etc. and she married a knuckle dragger who took her to the woods and now has her shootin' and muddin' and slopping the hogs. There's no point in trying to analyze or understand. As they say, the heart wants what the heart wants. It doesn't always make sense to the rest of us.

[AlphaToOmega]

People want different things in a partner.

I knew a smart guy who wanted a dumb wife.

I find that weird but whatever.

That's the last thing I'd want.

 

IMHO it just goes to show you two weren't right for each other.

But yeah, let it go.

[RankStranger]

My best friend married a gal who- from my perspective- is dumb, unattractive, loud, demanding, trashy, etc. It bothered me for a few years- but at some point I noticed that he really was happy. And so was she. They've been happily married for about 15 years now. So who am I to question it? My friend is apparently happy with his life, and what else should I want for him?

 

Relationships are unique much like individual personalities. What works for me might be intolerable to somebody else.

[ScifiChick]

 

Relationships are unique much like individual personalities. What works for me might be intolerable to somebody else.

 

 

So. True. The very things I find charming, adorable, funny, cute and quirky in my husband are traits that his ex girlfriend found incredibly annoying and tried to change about him just making them both miserable.

 

Things that people have found annoying about me all my life are traits that my husband finds intriguing.

 

It's all about finding where you fit.

 

 

[Vomit Comet]

Newsflash: I moved on about five f'ing years ago. (God dammit! ) I got married this summer, in fact. In fact, the very first person I told about all this was not any of you, but in fact was my wife. She has met this girl before (refer to that thread I made about that funeral I had to go to), and she was aware of this guy (in fact, she went "oh my god, him!?"). I stressed repeatedly that it ain't sour grapes. Apparently, my word was not taken for it by some of you. That pisses me off, but only a little bit. Am I understood better now? Capice? If anybody persists with that line of thinking (that I'm stuck on her) I will not take kindly to it.

 

And if any smart-ass says "thou dost protesteth much" I won't take kindly to that, either.

 

Anyways, the possibility that it was desperation on her part is plausible, but then maybe I'm just projecting my past experiences onto her. The only thing I had in common with her was that I was a single unmarried Pentecostal fundie in my late 20s/early 30s in a city that isn't known for such creatures (even though, ironically, Los Angeles is one of the places where Pentecostalism first appeared). And for a few long years I was pretty goddamn desperate and it had 90% to do with those circumstances. Which was why my relationship with her, nigh on 6 or 7 years ago, ended up being so fucked, and not in the good way. Not at all.

[AlphaToOmega]

And if any smart-ass says "thou dost protesteth much" I won't take kindly to that, either.

 

 

 

 

[Vomit Comet]

Sorry for the outburst. It just came as a slap to the face. Maybe it's because it took me 2 very painful years to get over her. I seriously had to go into fucking therapy because of how fucked in the head I got over it. (You couldn't have known that, Foxy.) But that was six or seven years ago, and I've had a few girlfriends since then (outside the church, of course!) and now I am a newly married man.

[Vomit Comet]

2. She's desperate, because he might be the only single male in her age bracket in her tiny little church circle. Shit, last time I myself was in that exact same circle, there were exactly two single girls, one was her and the other was her nasty she-demon of a best friend. You gotta understand, in Los Angeles there really aren't that many Bible-believin' true Christians to go around. It's not like Georgia where not being a fundie can put a serious cramp in your mate selection. More like the other way around. (Shit, it'd be easier for her to find a Mormon guy to date.) So she might have 7 or 8 great non-fundie guys at work who'd really want to be with her, but she can't get with any of them.

 

I'd like to focus on this particular notion. Maybe that says more about (the past) me than it does (or did) about her. That was certainly my experience. Most of you seem to hail from Red State Christian America and probably can't empathize much. If you're a Pentecostal fundie in Los Angeles (or, for that matter, Las Vegas) and you find yourself an unpaired mid-late 20-something, you just might have a fuck of a time finding a suitable age- and biblically-appropriate mate. Shit, even within Fundyism your options aren't that broad; if you're a Pentecostal, getting with a Southern Baptist (for example) is declasse. At any rate, Los Angeles might be a massive Pacific-sized ocean of potential mates for normal people, but if you're a Pentecostal fundie, it turns into a small fucking pond, let me tell you.

 

That was the exact situation I found myself in, and let me tell you, it was the bane of my fucking existance. I absolutely cannot overstate that fact. I prayed and prayed and prayed for a Godly woman and God never came through. Meanwhile, I knew that I could get dates/pussy/relationships outside my narrow isolationist little church circle. Shit, I was turning women down, in fact. Holding out for that Godly wife that God had in store for me. Well, not only does God not exist, but eventually I figured out that it was purely a numbers game and that I was facing some bad fucking odds.

 

You could say that women were my ticket to deconversion. I fell in love with a girl and for the first time in my whole goddamn life the girl actually fell in love with me back, but I was forced to dump her and break her heart (not to mention being forced to not make love to her) because she wasn't a Christian. I prayed and prayed for my actions to be a witness to her, but of course she was heartbroken and pissed off, so much so that she went from being a nominal Catholic to a full-fledged atheist because of me! That was a fucking battleship broadside to my faith. I prayed so hard for one outcome and got the exact fucking inverse opposite.

 

Well, a little while later I met another girl and she practically bullied me into her bed. She fucked (most of) it out of me. And then shortly after that I met the woman who became my wife. I said "I'm not going to fuck it up with this one" like I did with my first true love (see the paragraph above this one). Pussy pulled me away from the flock and true love made me drive the final nail into the motherfucking coffin. And that's my story in a nutshell. Boy, am I on a roll! Holy shit! TMI, right? It's like midnight over here (northern Italy) and I'm all sleep-deprived and stress-bombed and everything.

[Ramen666]

Searching on Facebook they you may have had interest in the past, only makes you feel worse, I know from experience, I do search out of curiosity but every time I do, I feel much worse than before I started.

[Foxy Methoxy]

Hey, I've done it, too, but it's no good. Certain kinds of curiosity are highly unhealthy.

[Vigile]

I've seen a few apparent mismatches in my time. I have a young lady friend who had it all happening for her - looks, brains, great career, etc. and she married a knuckle dragger who took her to the woods and now has her shootin' and muddin' and slopping the hogs. There's no point in trying to analyze or understand. As they say, the heart wants what the heart wants. It doesn't always make sense to the rest of us.

 

One of our Russian relatives is a physics professor in PA. She is kind of the mom of the young Russian girls in the area that came over to marry American men.

 

Anyway, one girl she is friends with was an executive French chef in Russia, who lived well above average back in Russia, went to the opera, ballet, etc... Now she's married to some guy in PA who makes her live out in the woods in a trailer. He doesn't let her have a car, so she only makes it to town when my relative comes to get her, and for christmas, he gave her a toothbrush ; nothing else.

 

I have no idea why she married the guy. I heard this story about 10 years ago and the Russian economy has grown by leaps and bounds since, so perhaps she came over during the crisis thinking she would have a better life. Dunno.

[midniterider]

 

 

...how did that happen? It took my breath away, I was so astonished! There's three possible explanations:

 

 

I've wondered why my ex married the guy she is with now. Then I had a good chuckle .

[Vomit Comet]

Hey, I've done it, too, but it's no good. Certain kinds of curiosity are highly unhealthy.

 

Here's the thing. It didn't really affect me personally. The only reason I ranted about it here (aside from the fact that this is the only place to rant about such things) was because I felt bad for her. I was (am?) assuming that she did it out of desperation, due to a sheer statistical lack of biblically-appropriate spirit-filled holy roller mates in that godless blue state metropolis that the rest of America so loves to hate. (They're jealous!) Probably projection on my part, but the whole goddamn thing seems so unlikely that it's the only explanation that makes sense to me. I could be completely wrong. Insufficient data to go off of.

[Vomit Comet]

btw, I recall reading several stories over on ex-mormon.org about smart, educated, cultured girls ending up with dumb inbred hicks because they were only permitted to marry a fellow Mormon, and there weren't too many Mormon men to go around because they had made the "mistake" of waiting until their mid 20s (as opposed to the usual age of 19). In each of these accounts I read, misery and bitter divorce were the usual result, often precipitating deconversion.

 

If you are not permitted to get dick outside of marriage, and if the only person you can marry is an officially approved co-religionist, and there is a pronounced scarcity of co-religionist males that you would consider as a quality mate, you have three choices: rebel and be cut off from your church and family, swear off dick and become a virginal old maid, or resign yourself to the slim (inbred slackjawed) pickings available in your neck of the (deep) woods.

 

Now she's married to some guy in PA who makes her live out in the woods in a trailer. He doesn't let her have a car, so she only makes it to town when my relative comes to get her, and for christmas, he gave her a toothbrush ; nothing else.

 

Holy shit! See, there just has to be more to that story than "love doesn't always make sense." I mean, fuck!

 

 

 

I heard this story about 10 years ago and the Russian economy has grown by leaps and bounds since, so perhaps she came over during the crisis thinking she would have a better life. Dunno.

 

I've heard that mail-order brides are nowadays impossible to find within Moscow/St. Petersburg (unless you're a rich stud), and that agencies are having to go further and further afield (towards the east, or into the backwoods of the Ukraine) to find recruits.

[Monk]

I've seen a few apparent mismatches in my time. I have a young lady friend who had it all happening for her - looks, brains, great career, etc. and she married a knuckle dragger who took her to the woods and now has her shootin' and muddin' and slopping the hogs. There's no point in trying to analyze or understand. As they say, the heart wants what the heart wants. It doesn't always make sense to the rest of us.

 

One of our Russian relatives is a physics professor in PA. She is kind of the mom of the young Russian girls in the area that came over to marry American men.

 

Anyway, one girl she is friends with was an executive French chef in Russia, who lived well above average back in Russia, went to the opera, ballet, etc... Now she's married to some guy in PA who makes her live out in the woods in a trailer. He doesn't let her have a car, so she only makes it to town when my relative comes to get her, and for christmas, he gave her a toothbrush ; nothing else.

 

I have no idea why she married the guy. I heard this story about 10 years ago and the Russian economy has grown by leaps and bounds since, so perhaps she came over during the crisis thinking she would have a better life. Dunno.

 

 

That's the saddest thing I've read in a long time. Wow.

[JadedAtheist]

One of my mates is a pretty smart guy and he is married to a complete control freak, air head, bimbo. I see him get annoyed all the time because she does shit that embarrasses him and he just takes it on the chin. I'm sure there has to be qualities there that makes him put up with her (other than the fact that she is attractive) but I would have a hard time dealing with her myself. He's a handsome guy too, so it wasn't like this was going to be the hottest chick he'd ever get either. The last nail in the coffin is he is pretty much a closet atheist married to a fundy. Though he hasn't said it, I'm pretty sure he was "born again" just so her father would let them marry. Anyways, what can you do? I just know I will be careful not to make the same mistake.

[ClaraOlive]

When I see that guys I dated or liked have married redneck Bible thumpers, I feel so relieved that it isn't me married to them.

[smellincoffee]

I grew up in a Pentecostal church with limited options for relationshps, as well -- and I was nuts for the preacher's daughter. In retrospect I was just a lonely guy who thought he needed a relationship to find meaning -- someone 'in love with love', you might say -- and I channeled those directions onto her, a girl who I didn't really know despite growing up with. When she left Pentecostalism, that was sort of the triggering for my own departure: I didn't have to pretend anymore. Eventually she came back, as she's rather emotionally dependent on her domineering parents, but by that time it was too late for me to deny that my religious life was over. I moved away and went to college; haven't seen her for five years. A few weeks ago, I looked her up on facebook and realized she's not that interesting a person -- she married young, to a Pentecostal naturally, and all she posts on facebook is bible verses, prayers, and football stuff. If we were friends on facebook I would have her blocked from my newsfeed. I don't like seeing a lot of pious posts clogging up my page.

[Vomit Comet]

I grew up in a Pentecostal church with limited options for relationshps, as well --

 

Ah, finally someone who can empathize.

 

You're from Alabama, your thingy says. Were potential mates scarce because Southern Baptists were averse to hooking up with Holy Rollers (Pentecostals)? In the L.A. area, people were a little less picky over denominational shit as long as they were close enough to the evangelical creed, it was just that people who believed in such a way in the first place were vastly outnumbered by the unsaved.

 

 

and I was nuts for the preacher's daughter. In retrospect I was just a lonely guy who thought he needed a relationship to find meaning -- someone 'in love with love', you might say -- and I channeled those directions onto her, a girl who I didn't really know despite growing up with.

 

In hindsight I desperately wanted pussy, and I was sublimating or dressing up that animal urge in evangelical platitudes. (To this day it puzzles me why others aren't as sex-crazed as I am. And it wasn't just her, there were many other Christian girls my dick was pointing at.) Basically, chasing after the hand of a godly young woman was the only way to get pussy without satan and his demons having a fucking field day. The times that I turned down sex, the only only reason was because I was afraid that an innocent girl lacking spiritual defenses would become fair game for demonic attack. I didn't want the girl to be driven to suicide and then sucked down to hell just because I had to get my dick wet. Fuck! Bat-shit Pentecostalism is as insidious as it gets, it really is.

 

I mean, don't get me wrong. There were also severe emotions, and fantasies of Christian marital bliss and all that stuff. But when it came down to it I was masturbating non-stop like a fiend and beating my head against the wall.

 

she married young, to a Pentecostal naturally, and all she posts on facebook is bible verses, prayers, and football stuff. If we were friends on facebook I would have her blocked from my newsfeed. I don't like seeing a lot of pious posts clogging up my page.

 

Half of it's bible verses and other holy garbage, and the other half is a striving attempt to establish upper middle class status ("this okra from Whole Foods is so flavorful!", shit like that).

[AlphaToOmega]

I've seen a few apparent mismatches in my time. I have a young lady friend who had it all happening for her - looks, brains, great career, etc. and she married a knuckle dragger who took her to the woods and now has her shootin' and muddin' and slopping the hogs. There's no point in trying to analyze or understand. As they say, the heart wants what the heart wants. It doesn't always make sense to the rest of us.

 

 

 

Do I know you?

 

 

[smellincoffee]

I grew up in a Pentecostal church with limited options for relationshps, as well --

 

Ah, finally someone who can empathize.

 

You're from Alabama, your thingy says. Were potential mates scarce because Southern Baptists were averse to hooking up with Holy Rollers (Pentecostals)? In the L.A. area, people were a little less picky over denominational shit as long as they were close enough to the evangelical creed, it was just that people who believed in such a way in the first place were vastly outnumbered by the unsaved.

 

 

 

In my case, it was a matter of being from a small town. There were five to seven of us in my youth group, and only two of us guys. Naturally my best friend (the other guy) dated several member, including the girl I liked. (That was an awkward few months.) There were more opportunities for dating at sectional rallies and district conferences, of course -- that's how my friend eventually got himself married. (Come to think of it, the rally where he met her was the last rally I ever attended, back in 2004 or 2005!)

[pitchu]

Y'know, VC, sometimes, inexplicably, the sex is just better between mis-matched partners. Some women even marry for that reason. Honestly.

 

(When Jessica explained her attraction to Roger Rabbit as, "He makes me laugh," you did recognize that as a euphemism, didn't you?)

[DesertBob]

I grew up in a Pentecostal church with limited options for relationshps, as well -- and I was nuts for the preacher's daughter. In retrospect I was just a lonely guy who thought he needed a relationship to find meaning -- someone 'in love with love', you might say -- and I channeled those directions onto her, a girl who I didn't really know despite growing up with.

Heh. They say you never forget your first one -- usually in reference to your first sexual experience -- but for us romantics, I think "first girl I ever admitted to myself I wanted to pursue" will do. It was the preacher's daughter in my case, too, and I had to laugh because this particular PK was such a supercilious, self-absorbed, dysfunctional example of humanity that I managed to work it out in about two week's time despite my hormone-ravaged 16 year old brain. Nothing ever came of it because she was too frigging good for me (or anyone, basically) and it came off her in overwhelming waves of self-righteousness. If she were on Facebook (virtually no one from my fundamentalist past is -- they probably think Facebook is of the devil) I would, I'm sure, find her at least as insufferable as you find the former object of your affections.

 

There are a couple of other fundie girls lodged in my memory banks, one of whom I never had the courage to date and one of whom I chickened out on after just one date -- I was so conflicted around my sexuality in those days -- and I have wondered at times, based on the still unsullied fantasy versions of those girls, what would have happened if I'd married one of them. In my honest moments I can tell you exactly what would have happened. One of them would have ballooned up to the size of her mother in a few years and as for the other, she was a PK too, and I'd be dealing with her controlling, unpleasable father. In both cases I'd be trapped in the faith as the price of keeping an increasingly unpleasant marriage and lifestyle that I would not admit to myself was unpleasant. So no, thank you very much, I'm not thinking of those as lost opportunities.