For Better or for Worse....
- Call Me Vashti
- 5 days ago
- 6 min read
Updated: 20 hours ago
Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments. Shakespeare's Sonnet 116
If your JW marriage was unhappy or riddled with impediments, know the odds were stacked against you from the outset. Many Witnesses get married too young to people that they don’t know very well, and they marry for all of the wrong reasons. Here is what I have observed.
Dating
Witnesses have the same puritanical obsession with policing sex as other high control religions: Masturbation is sinful. Sex before marriage is forbidden.
To make a fraught situation even more tense, Witnesses are taught to police and snitch on each other not unlike the East German Stasi or the Russian KGB. Single JWs caught displaying PDAs or wearing suggestive clothes or spending the night at a boyfriend’s apartment or dating a non-Witness can expect to get reported to congregation elders. That leads to a committee meeting wherein pervy older men in the congregation get to grill you about your sexual congress. Who touched whom and where? What kind of underwear were you wearing? Who had an orgasm? How many times? The elders evaluate your sexual conduct to find “evidence” of immorality or loose conduct (these terms are highly subjective). The actions that constitute immorality vary depending on which elders are picked to judge you; where your congregation is geographically (In the Bible Belt, we were envious of the California Witnesses who had more relaxed rules); and often discipline is varied according to how much clout and influence your father had in the organization.
To avoid that terrible ordeal, JWs are repeatedly admonished to have short, chaste courtships and only with other Jehovah’s Witnesses. In practice, this means that dating JWs are supposed to have a chaperone present on every date (just like a Quiverfull Duggar) This third person can vouch for the couple if there is an accusation of misconduct. How romantic is that?
Did we even discuss how difficult it was to find a spouse? In the U.S, Witnesses make up around .08% of the population. Since you have to date someone in the religion, and you might like to find a partner who is in the same generation as you, the pickings were about as limited as the options of the single folk on Gilligan’s Island. Ginger and Mary Ann had to date Gilligan, the Skipper, the Professor, or each other. Those were the choices.
To sum up: the dating pool is small. Sexual tension is high. And dating takes place in a fishbowl. Is there any wonder that many Witnesses marry before they know themselves or their partners because they are concupiscent? Trust me, these are not factors that contribute to happy marriages.
The Ceremony
If it sounds as if JW dating rules are restrictive, try planning a wedding in a Kingdom Hall. In the 1990s, when I was a bride, there were so many rules.
· Your wedding had to be conducted by an elder. Often that elder would meet with couples beforehand to read Witness literature with them and, of course, to ensure that they had not done the deed before the wedding night.
· Your wedding party had to be comprised of other JWs in “good standing.”
· The music had to be the tired, derivative JW hymns, oops, "Kingdom melodies."
· There was no writing your own vows. The Governing Body dictated the vows that you had to exchange:
“I —— take you —— to be my wedded (wife/husband), to love and to cherish (Bride: and deeply respect) in accordance with the divine law as set forth in the Holy Scriptures for Christian (wives/husbands), for as long as we both shall live together on earth according to God’s marital arrangement.”
Even in the 90s, I had questions. Why weren’t husbands commanded to respect their wives? WTF happens when "God’s marital arrangement" ends? Is that when we are living in paradise after God kills all non-Witnesses? When we are all clearing corpses and farming and petting lions, will all married couples become eunuchs? Amnesiacs?
So a couple dates as a threesome, exchange the weird vows, and begin their happily ever after. Not quite. The same edicts that made being a JW akin to wearing a turtleneck two sizes too small are exacerbated in the microcosm of marriage.
· Most Witnesses have little education and they, subsequently, have negligible marketable skills. For many couples, finances are problematic.
· JWs have been bombarded with the dire consequences of premarital sex. They know how Not to touch, cuddle, and "fornicate" but they often know little to nothing about their sexual needs/preferences or their partner’s. Many Witnesses marry one of the few single Witnesses that they know only to learn that their sexual orientation is LGBTQ. This is a nonstarter. I have blogged about the homophobia that permeates the religion.
If you and your spouse find that you are sexually incompatible – too bad. Therapy and counseling is discouraged, and your marriage is forever or until God ends the arrangement and magically transforms your marriage into siblinghood or some such nonsense.
RE: Husbands and Wives
The gender roles are non-negotiable in a JW marriage. Men are the head of the household and wives and children are subservient. If your husband tells you not to cut your hair or not to wear certain outfits, or not to be too impudent, a proper wife obeys. Remember, JW husbands tend to be men who have had their thoughts and actions policed. Suddenly, they’re the boss of someone. What could possibly go wrong?
Disobeying your husband or arguing with your husband can land you in a committee meeting of elders. And since the elder/judges all have XY chromosomes, a stunted worldview, and a patriarchal interpretation of Scripture as a baseline-trust that these meetings are rarely kind to women.
Ask a JWs about the roles of men and women and he will likely direct you to a New Testament scripture (in his weird Bible that will not even name its translators) such as: 1 Corinthians 11:3 : But I want you to know that the head of every man is the Christ; in turn, the head of a woman is the man; in turn, the head of the Christ is God.
Or, 1 Peter 3: You wives, be in subjection to your husbands…you husbands, in the same way, continue dwelling with them according to knowledge. Assign them honor as to a weaker vessel…” ( Notice that women are breakable vases, fragile crystal goblets. Women are never leaders, equal partners with men, or even intelligent adults with autonomy.)
Witness men will state (with their whole chest), these aren't my words; this is God's direction. “If you want to follow the Bible, the gender dynamic is set out unequivocally.” Husbands =bosses – women = second class citizens. How can anyone argue with that?
But would those same men adhere to a similarly rigid interpretation and argue for power dynamics that they find problematic? For example, Ephesians 6:5-9 and Colossians 3:22-25 tell slaves to obey their earthly masters in everything.
Ask a Witness (esp. a Black JW male), if this same JW logic means that persons enslaved in the Americas should have remained on plantations instead of escaping on the Underground Railroad because Scripture tells them obey their oppressors? And is it the JW position that modern-day trafficked people should remain with the people who own them because it says so in the Bible? I’ll wager that there will be some stammering as they explain that the master/slave dynamic that prompted Paul to send runaway Onesimus back to his enslaver is a first century interpretation that is no longer to be interpreted literally. Ah, so times have changed, and some Biblical dynamics are outdated, but not the ones that keep women in their place.
The reality is that JW women are voiceless and marginalized. And just like marginalized people everywhere, this creates opportunities for abuse. JW women are often advised to remain with their abusers, protect them with your silence, and maybe they will feel bad about abusing you.
“Selma recalls a lesson she learned from the Witness who studied with her. “On one particular day,” says Selma, “I didn’t want to have a Bible study. The night before, Steve had hit me as I had tried to prove a point, and I was feeling sad and sorry for myself. After I told the sister what had happened and how I felt, she asked me to read 1 Corinthians 13:4-7. As I did, I began to reason, ‘Steve never does any of these loving things for me.’ But the sister made me think differently by asking, ‘How many of those acts of love do you show toward your husband?’ My answer was, ‘None, for he is so difficult to live with.’ The sister softly said, ‘Selma, who is trying to be a Christian here? You or Steve?’ Realizing that I needed to adjust my thinking, I prayed to Jehovah to help me be more loving toward Steve. Slowly, things started to change. “After 17 years, Steve accepted the truth. Watchtower 2012 Feb 15 p.29
I wonder if Steve is still battering Selma before heading out to meetings at the Kingdom Hall.
Marriage isn’t easy for anyone. But marriages amongst Jehovah’s Witnesses are uniquely problematic. Don’t take my word for it. Do some research.
Share your Witness marriage experience in the comments.
