Protecting Parents as a Survival Mechanism for Children and Adults

 

Behind Blue Eyes: A Little Girl's Shame

Originally published on 2/8/10

I had other problems before I was molested. I had a terrible school phobia for a couple of years before it started. If all conditions were good, I seemed to be alright – something like a normal person. Something would always tip the scale, and to be out of balance even a little, I felt like the side of the balance I sat upon had fallen into the depths of the earth. And I just “knew,” in my little five year old brain, that there was something very dreadfully and inherently wrong with me. I was different in a very bad sort of way. Though my heart’s desire was to be perfect, I was helplessly, hopelessly bad. I already knew the language of shame.

I was drudgery for her and the bane of her existence. She’d wanted a boy to name “Darin” or "Darren"....  She says that as an infant, I screamed for months, drove her mad with sleep deprivation, and these were only my first actions that would slowly kill her alive by ruining her life. I was helpless to do anything other than ruin my own in turn. She would… I guess it doesn’t matter anymore. I loved her and tried so hard and failed so miserably always. And I loved her, and I know that she loved me. That’s what makes it so hard. That’s why I hated myself for so long. The love was there, and it wasn’t for lack of love. It was life that had been unfair to her and unfair to us. Unfair to me.

But the sexual abuse certainly didn’t make things any better. I seemed to need absolutely no help to feel horrible about myself. With all the mixed and confused feelings of an eight year old little girl, there were things about it that were… well… frozen. I can’t move and I can’t escape… Going back to the memory, a journey that feels like walking down a dark spiral staircase that is narrow, takes me to the place where it happened and happened and happened again. And I feel… dead. I feel dead calm and it is dead silent. I am powerless to do anything. I wiggle away and can’t get away and I remember being afraid. Then nothing. I remember, but I think and I feel nothing when I try to remember when I was just a little girl. I feel dead, like my life and my body were nothing but flat photographs. I wonder what my face looks like as I write this? I imagine that it looks dead, but an emotionless, sad kind of expression. Death would have peace and comfort, but that is not like this. My death is empty nothing

I just wish that I could go on feeling nothing… But feeling comes back. It hurts deep and vaguely in my belly…. Then it is like cramping very low in my stomach…it feels empty as if my body is not there at all, but hurts around the edges of the emptiness… Sick, sick, sick… I’d rather feel nothing. When people ask me now why I didn’t tell anyone then, I don’t remember any thoughts. I remember the familiar pain that travels and takes over my tired, disgusting body that doesn’t even feel like my body anymore. I’m too afraid to really remember and too sick to really forget. I don’t remember thoughts or details, especially in the beginning. I remember feelings of sickness and almost like my soul died inside me with my body still alive, going through the motions of life. The world never stopped going on around me, but I did. I felt dead. No one listened. No one heard.

Little girls should be good and kind. They should be seen and not heard, packed full of sugar, spice, and nice. They should have no needs, and they should be helpful. What’s the use, then? I’m ruined, so I just don’t think about it, and I don’t know what I’d say. Do dead girls talk? Little girls should love everyone and only feel good feelings toward others, particularly adults that they should respect. Only love. Love your enemies and bless everyone, especially those who hurt you. Heap burning coals on their heads by loving them. I think of the red hot coals that burn in the furnace in the winter. I don’t want to burn anyone. Well, at least he loves me. I have to love him and respect him as my elder. I have to obey authorities and they know better than little girls, especially very horrible little girls. Oh, but I hate… the smell of him? The… I can’t even tell you... I feel horrible! Something is very, very wrong. Good girls don’t get angry. Maybe good girls die instead.

Then I became pretty compulsive. Obsessive. Driven. Restless. Lusting after justice and wanting to understand the truth about what was right and wrong. I would determine to do the right thing, and then I would be whole. They would see that I meant well. That would make it okay if I could just… Oh, compulsion soon rules me with an iron fist. I feel lust, but it is lust for justice for others who are mistreated, and maybe I’d find a little for myself.

I didn’t need any help feeling terrible about myself before the death that part of who I was. I don’t even remember who I was or when I was innocent. I only remember feeling very bad and always guilty from the very beginning. Everything bad in the world that happened around me happened because of me, but the world never took notice of my death. And then I woke up to anger, but I couldn’t let it be anger because anger was bad. It was anger I wasn’t ever allowed to have. Inconsistencies brought more anger, and anger brought more shame. That brought more compulsion that seemed to operate in slow motion.

More than thirty years later, I find myself remembering, remembering, while watching the Superbowl XLIV Halftime Show. The Who sings “Behind Blue Eyes,” [LATE ENTRY: in the preliminary acoustic set the did before the game] and I remember when I first heard this song and understood what had happened to me. I’m flooded with memory and the feeling of waking up from my deadness as a young adolescent to feel shame and anger and even more disappointment. Townshend wrote this song as the anthem of an evil bureaucrat cog on a wheel in a totalitarian machine for a rock opera that no one could understand. They only ever recorded a few of the better songs from the opera. But I understand the anthem well. I like another remake of it that I saw on the “Gothika” DVD a few years ago, wept and sang the song for days thereafter. Like wringing a dishrag, I rang out my heart. I have blue grey eyes, I love the arpeggiated accompaniments in both renditions, the chords are beautiful, but the new one holds much more melancholy for me. Add the content of the “Gothika” film in context if you are familiar with it, and it might make even more sense. Everything about this haunts me tonight.

Behind Blue Eyes

No one knows what it's like
To be the bad man
To be the sad man
Behind blue eyes
And no one knows
What it's like to be hated
To be fated to telling only lies

I am bad and sad, and no one knows. My eyes are blue and I look like a normal little girl, I think. But I am hated everywhere and my mother has claimed over and over that what happened to me at school today could not have happened. I know I’m not lying, but she doesn’t believe me. I either get laughed at or punished at home. When it becomes known that I didn’t lie, the vindication doesn’t seem sweet. I don’t remember them talking about me being right all along. If they apologized, I was so afraid that I don’t remember.

[Chorus:]
But my dreams they aren't as empty
As my conscience seems to be
I have hours, only lonely
My love is vengeance
That's never free

[When you are dead, you stop dreaming for awhile. Well, not really. I don’t know what you do when you are dead. I stopped having good dreams for a long time. I had nightmares, and my mother’s answer was to give me a copy of C.S. Lovett’s “Dealing With the Devil.” Oh, this is fantastic reading for a nine year old! (If you’re unfamiliar with what is known in evangelical circles as ‘deliverance,’ take a look at “Pigs in the Parlor” sometime. The book I read was a shorter, do-it-yourself version of that book.) My dreams were full of shame, being chased by floating baseballs that spoke condemnation that followed me… of dripping faucets that I could not stop… the dripping of my endless shame and inadequacies that never stopped.

My deadness was like the empty conscience in the song. Why didn’t I react differently? Why didn’t I seek out help? But who would have helped me? They didn’t believe me about how people pronounced their names or that I’d not done anything to “instigate” ridicule, save to act self-conscious. I would tell them this?

When I became a teenager and old enough to start processing what had happened to me, the overwhelming anger that I could not acknowledge made my conscience feel empty. I didn’t feel anything. I think that the shame deadened me. The deadness was emptiness.

I would, however, sometimes sing my own version. Well, I found myself singing my own version…

“BUT my dreams they ARE as BROKEN

As my HEART now seems to be…”

I have hours, lonely hours, with my secrets and my shame. My love is a lust for justice that is never satisfied despite all of my striving. That sounds much to me like “vengeance that’s never free.” Love is about performance. I’m trapped and helpless.

No one knows what its like
To feel these feelings
Like I do, and I blame you!
No one bites back as hard
On their anger
None of my pain and woe
Can show through

My parents don’t know because I fear my father would murder the man in anger. He wasn’t born again then, and he could go to jail, to the electric chair, and then to hell. Then that would be my fault. It is all my fault. But, then I awaken to the first blushes of womanhood and talk of purity, and I know that I am hopeless. Anger tries to find an outlet, but I hold it down until I can crush myself no more. Until I am old enough to drive away in a car. Until I am old enough to pay my own way well enough to leave. None of my pain and woe can show through, and I do bite back hard. I bite back through striving to be good, and I am still never good enough. I developed a lust for justice. One day, I must be able to prove that I have not been as horrible as they think. And then the panic that I used to have that if people looked at me a certain way, they would see what had happened to me. If they saw me naked, they would know. The more of me they could see, the more they would be able to tell. But I had to see to it that none of my pain and woe showed through.

Anger comes, and I am still struggling with it today, watching the Superbowl in 2010. Anger is a sign to us, not a sin. It tells us that we’ve been threatened or that we are in pain. It is protective. But I had no right to protect myself, and the double messages and double meanings swim in my head. Anger at me, at my mother, at my father. And at him. Though I didn’t really mean it, for awhile I’d hoped that the man was rotting in hell because of what he’d taken from me, but I’d given it willingly because I had no option. But I don’t really want to see anyone in hell, yet this blame rests with him. And the blame of who I am to my parents rests with me.

Then came my realization of spiritual abuse. My self had been shaken to the core. I’d been unfaithful to God by serving the church and the acceptance of men in the church. Idolatry. Idolatry of seeking my parents’ approval. Idolatry of acceptance. Idolatry of perfectionism. And my anger reared its raging head. I couldn’t choke it back or “bite back” on it anymore. I’d stored a whole lifetime of it, and this receptacle was full.

No one knows what its like
To be mistreated, to be defeated
Behind blue eyes
No one knows how to say
That they're sorry and don't worry
I'm not telling lies

The isolation that comes with this kind of thing is horrible. I have blue grey eyes and things look pretty normal on the outside. But the traumas happen while the world keeps on moving around you, like in some movie special effect. I’m in this world but I’m walking in a universe just a few breaths behind the real one. I’m isolated in defeat and unjust treatment. To be mistreated, to be defeated, behind blue eyes. I remember once saying to someone who was encouraging me to take better care of myself that it seemed like “spraying perfume over a cesspool.” They looked at me in shock and surprise… because no one knows what it’s like…

For a very long time, I’d hoped that those who had hurt me so deeply by rejecting me and expecting me to be perfect when I was tiny and helpless would come and say they were sorry. I wanted and needed comfort. But my story fell on deaf ears that couldn’t even process the horror of it. They don’t express sorrow for me – but they accuse me of more lies. It’s no different when I’m 23 or 33 or 43 than it was when I was five. “We don’t understand, we are uncomfortable with what we don’t understand, so the path of least resistance for us is to call you a liar.” The bad one. The sad one. Behind blue eyes that fill with tears until no tears even come anymore. But I’m not telling lies.

[Chorus:]
But my dreams they aren't as empty
As my conscience seems to be
I have hours, only lonely
My love is vengeance
That's never free

No one knows what its like
To be the bad man,
to be the sad man
Behind blue eyes.

I’d hoped for a long time that all I would need was prayer and my Bible to heal. And then the Holy Spirit. Then maybe some deliverance. Then, if I mastered spiritual warfare. Then, maybe, if I could get friends who would love and help me. If I could just get out of the house. If I could learn more of the Bible. If I married. If I could have a baby. If I could get far enough away from it, in time…

Some of these things did heal me, but I could not do it on my own. Some of the deep pain required someone who could love me through sessions of talking about my pain and my grief. I found a therapist who showed me the comfort that she’d received from others in the Lord. She encouraged me in love. She taught me and helped me find the way out of the Valley of the Shadow and the long, dark night of my soul. My faith in Jesus was enough to heal me, but I needed another to come along side of me. I needed someone to sit valiantly and patiently beside me while I vomited up the grief and sadness and pain of my dark night. I needed Jesus to extend love to me in a very specific and expert way, and He did that through someone else. The Lord will help you find healing. It doesn’t happen overnight, but it comes in time and through looking into the mirrors that other people provide us in their loving honesty. It comes through His Word, given to us so we can see what He sees in us.

Tonight I’m haunted. I don’t live in shame anymore because I’ve finally started to learn about the courage of unconditional love that I’ve begun to learn to extend to myself. But Superbowl Half-time has me teary eyed a little, grieving the things I barely remember having but feel a full portion of the grief of the loss. I feel heavy in my body, but not sick. Just sad. And it is sad.

I pulled up this video after half-time. Then I journaled. I didn’t weep on the outside, and I felt sad on the inside with a sense of sweetness to realize how much I’ve healed. Now I am weary and will sleep. Tomorrow is a new day and I will rejoice in it. I will look to find the joy in the morning. And the sadness will go to sleep for a few years until I’m reminded of this song and the sad memory of loss that it brings to my mind. I will remember and grieve and feel the sweetness again.

Purge me with hyssop and I will be clean

Wash me and I will be whiter than snow

Ps 51

Zelophehad's Daughters

Originally Published in 2010 at Quivering Daughters.com 

(Cindy Kunsman featured as a guest author.)

An acquaintance of mine asked me what I knew of some of the ideas that neo-patriarchy had about unmarried women living alone. I explained that some sectors within patriarchy maintain that Numbers 30 requires unmarried adult women to have an assigned male overseer who is accountable for her and her affairs. Others in these circles maintain that all woman require a male as her a protector at all times to remain both spiritually and physically safe. Some actually extend this concept to support their idea that a woman who works outside the home (for a man other than father or husband) commits a form of adultery by serving the vision and efforts of another man.

My friend pointed out the account of the Daughters of Zelophehad in Numbers 27:1-11. They asked me why I had never cited this example in the past as evidence against patriarchy’s overtly paternalistic take on Numbers 30, and I did not have a good answer! Perhaps because it takes me a while to process the dramatic events of the previous chapter where the sons of Korah are swallowed up alive into hell for rebelling against Moses’ leadership, I glossed over the significance of this account. I did not remember anything about these daughters, and I didn’t recall their father’s name. I certainly know them now! (That’s the cool thing about Bible Study: I expect to discover a new thing that I’d passed over before or understood only marginally, and I expect that this will happen for the rest of my life.)

Numbers 27 introduces the Daughters of Zelophehad to us: Mahlah, Noah, Hoglah, Milcah, and Tirzah, also tracing their lineage. Zelophehad was the great, great grandson of Manasseh, one of Joseph’s two sons. These daughters went to the Tent of Meeting and spoke directly to Moses, Eleazar (the priest), the leaders of the tribes and the congregation. They explained to Moses that their father who had borne only daughters died in the wilderness, but that he did not participate in the rebellion of the Sons of Korah. The daughters asked if their father’s name must die out because he had borne no sons and requested to be granted their father's portion of the inheritance that was set aside for Manasseh’s heirs. Verse 5 tells us that Moses brought the case of Zelophehad’s daughters directly before God.

God ruled that Zelophehad’s daughters were entitled to receive their father’s inheritance and established that if a man dies and leaves no son, that man’s inheritance should be passed to the father’s surviving daughters. If he had no daughters, the inheritance should be given to the man’s brothers or the nearest relative to keep the inheritance within the family.

If unmarried women must be assigned to a male governor who oversees their process of sanctification and protection, how is it that these daughters who were the offspring one of the house of Joseph who remained faithful to God were treated so favorably? God tells Moses to give their father’s inheritance directly to them. God doesn’t use this as an opportunity to spell out the rule that women must be assigned to a man for decision making, bestowing the inheritance upon an elected man whom God assigns to them. God doesn’t instruct Moses to find a “male covering” for these unmarried women. 

Consider that these daughters also had recourse to approach Moses directly. They did not need a man or other representative to speak to Moses for them. Many women who follow strict patriarchy are denied status to even read Scripture or pray in church sanctuaries, addressing the congregation. Some churches don’t even let a woman speak to remind everyone about the “pot providence” (in place of what most people refer to as a “pot luck” meal) in the basement after the conclusion of a worship service! Yet the Daughters of Zelophehad spoke confidently and directly to Moses who took their plea directly to God. God rewarded them and established these standards for all of Israel.

In full context within close proximity to the Numbers 30 passage, does Numbers 27 support the model for women taught by many within neo-patriarchy? I think not. The account of the Daughters of Zelophehad discounts the claim that all women require male oversight and protection. Property and inheritance require good stewardship, and stewardship requires a certain degree of authority and personal autonomy. God Himself rewarded the faithful daughters with their father’s inheritance, and He did not discriminate against them because of their gender.

Patterns of Interaction Between Love Addicts and Love Avoidants

From the writings of Pia Melody on Love Avoidance and Love Addiction

The Cyclic Dance Between

Love Addicted and Love Avoidant Partners

Love Addicted Greatest fear is that of abandonment with an underlying fear of intimacy.	Love Avoidant Greatest fear is that of intimacy with an underlying fear of abandonment.
	1. Enters relationship out of duty, not love
1. Is responsive to the avoidant's seductiveness and enters the relationship.
	2. Enters behind wall of seduction (which actually impedes intimacy)
2. Denies partner's walls and importance of life outside the relationship.
3. Experiences an event that shatters the denial.	3. Becomes overwhelmed by the neediness of the partner and moves from the wall of seduction
4. Emotional withdrawal from fantasy Feelings: Pain anger fear rage shame panic suicide This is a psychological emergency of worthlessness	4. Escapes the relationship: In some way, creates distance from the partner Feelings: Avoided
5. Obsesses and medicates to get out of the feelings of the withdrawal from the relationship. Feelings: Self-destructive behavior	5. Creates intensity outside of primary relationship and can use addictions or thrill-seeking. Feelings: Anger and revenge
Either the fantasy is rejected and the relationship ended OR The Love Addict Resolves the conflict and the cycle is repeated. The relationship becomes a repeating of the cycle. Returns to the relationship out of FEAR of abandonment.	Either the relationship ends OR The Love Avoidant Becomes overwhelmed with GUILT for abandoning responsibilities (because self-worth is derived from rescuing and care-taking) and returns to the relationship.

From Pia Mellody's writings and lectures,

and professional training with "The Meadows" treatment facility.

And from

“Facing Love Addiction”

by Mellody, Miller and Miller

HarperOne, 1992.

Another Way of Looking at Triangulation in Relationships

Just something else to ponder.

This is not from David Stoop's book, but it likely influenced the writing thereof. This is a representation from one of the earlier writings on triangulation for you to consider. This is the Karpman Drama Triangle that comes out of the writings concerning Transactional Analysis.

This also depicts the type of "all or nothing" relationships that we can become trapped within when we do psychological splitting, plunking people in a static role rather than a dynamic sharing of role and responsibility within relationships. I would not want to be any one of these persons in this triangle, yet I have and still am each one of them and all three at the same time in some way.
Look at the triangle and each point on it, asking yourself if you fall into one of these roles, if you can honestly identify with any of them and whether or not they nudge you to make some changes in your behavior. Personally, I find it convicting and difficult to consider each one of them, because I know that in this flesh of mine, they are all at work.


Original Source © 1968 by the Transactional Analysis Bulletin.


Hat Tip to Rhoda Mills Sommer!


Keep checking back... More posts to come from Stoop on "psychological splitting."

Explaining Triangulation (Part III of III): Relationships and Implications

Relationship Triangulation in Botkin Syndrome

The evangelists of the Stay-At-Home-Daughter (SAHD) model of family promote enmeshment with daughters, using their children to gratify adult psychological and emotional needs, and in some cases, physical and financial needs. Daughters are taught to defer to the father primarily but also to the wishes of all men, and it extends into teachings concerning relationships with brothers. All women are restricted to roles that define them as the helpers (“ezer” in Hebrew) as well as subordinate. This teaches both young women as well as young men alike that the fairer sex has one purpose only: tools to be used to meet the needs of men. It is not only just an issue of prescribed or limited roles for women, but their very essence defines them as lesser creatures: tools and objects for the purpose of service and meeting needs.

The subtle and psychological implications of this are profound. The boundaries between sexes become virtually non-existent. This is not to say that those who intend the paternalistic protection of their daughters out of love purpose these negative outcomes at all. I believe it is an oversight wherein the followers of this teaching become blinded so that they cannot anticipate these implications. As with all idolatry, the fruit and final product produced often ironically yields the very opposite of what was originally intended. 

 Consider Romans chapter 1 wherein idolatry of man (worship of the creature over the Creator) will actually produce gender ambiguity. There is quite a bit of this notable within the movement already, while preaching gender priority actually produces men with very effeminate characteristics and behaviors. The group has become so culturally irrelevant and detatched, they do not even recognize this growing evidence of the effete. Also, there appears to be a developing trend of estrangement between grown children with their patriarchal families, characterized in some patriarchal groups by rebellion, depression, self-punishment and suicide.

The book “So Much More” focuses upon the critical nature of the father and daughter relationship, teaching both spiritual and physical salvation for daughters through service to fathers. This might not be so troubling if there was an equal attention devoted to the relationships between daughters and mothers, but mothers are rarely referenced in this capacity within the subculture. Fathers have all the priority, and mothers seem to be pushed off to the side. Victoria "Vicky" Botkin, wife to Geoff Botkin, is rarely referenced, photographed or discussed in their literature. The mother and daughter relationship is rarely discussed if at all.  The priority within patriarchy falls upon sons only, and purity becomes paramount when it comes to women.

In regard to triangulation, what we see is an unhealthy relationship triangle where father and daughter are aligned, but husband and wife as well as daughter and mother are not.




Following the example presented in the writings of Dr. David Stoop, the implications for other relationships are quite notable, primarily the adult child’s relationship with a new spouse. (I can attest to this difficulty personally, as both my spouse and I had enmeshed relationships with our mothers.) Parental enmeshment destroys intimacy and relationships between husband and wife like nothing else. Within the synoptic Gospels, Jesus tells us that not only can a house divided not stand, but it is also impossible to serve two masters. If one attempts to serve two masters, Jesus said that one will love one master and hate the other. The “multi-generational faithfulness” concept as taught by the proponents of the SAHD model may work for the initial family, but it will undermine the relationship between the new husband and wife. 



The next implication of enmeshment involves what Pia Mellody identifies as an inevitable gender-related “Love Avoidant” pattern. According to her model that expands upon the triangulation model of family therapy, enmeshment (covert incest) produces a “Love Avoidance” toward all members of the sex of the parent with whom the adult child shares enmeshment. If these fathers so control and derive non-sexual need satisfaction from their daughters, the daughters will be love avoidant with other men. They will have intimacy difficulties with their husbands, compounded by the competition that is created with the father-daughter relationship that they carried with them into the marriage. In an attempt to stress appropriate gender relations as Biblical and “kingdom architecture” (as the Botkins define it), they are actually promoting a milieu that drives women away from men.



Revised 24Feb2019

Explaining Triangulation (Part II of III): The Father/Husband Patriarch as an Idol

Patriocentricity

Some religious homeschoolers follow “Biblical patriarchy.” but it is far from Biblical and does not actually reflect traditional patriarchal systems but rather a type of male hegemony. (Power must not only be established, it must be willingly yielded by subordinates without protest or constraint. It is not enough to follow and submit to the pattern in obedience to the law, but it demands a surrender if not destruction of any opposing will. “They say it cannot be taken; it must be given,” says the Merovingian character in the third film of the “Matrix” trilogy.)


From Wise Geek’s definition of hegemony:

Hegemony dates to the Greek verb hegeisthai which translates to “to lead.” Early leaders who were able to exert a great deal of control and influence over a group of people might be referred to as hegemons. A hegemon had to have a great deal of support from at least one dominating class, in order to keep the people of the state from rebelling against the leadership.

From Wikipedia on hegemony:

The processes by which a dominant culture maintains its dominant position: for example, the use of institutions to formalize power; the employment of a bureaucracy to make power seem abstract (and, therefore, not attached to any one individual); the inculcation of the populace in the ideals of the hegomonic group through education, advertising, publication, etc.; the mobilization of a police force as well as military personnel to subdue opposition.


Within the Stay-At-Home-Daughter model associated with Christian homeschooling, all family members revolve around and serve the needs and vision of the patriarchal husband/father. The model encourages sons to “cast visions” and have callings of their own, so long as they are approved by the patriarch. Daughters may follow pursuits that are both circumscribed by the patriarchal father but also the “sphere of the home.” In other words, women must not be permitted any activity in the public square, the sole domain of men. Marriage is deemed the only “normative” role, so any premarital pursuits must be directed only towards that which will prepare the daughter for marriage and motherhood.



















Even so, these pursuits must be approved by the father and must directly and indirectly serve and benefit the overall “family vision” as declared by the father. Home based businesses are strongly promoted, though they must be deemed appropriately feminine in nature as circumscribed by the concept of the so-called “Biblical patriarchy.” Daughters are permitted, however, to serve the visions of their brothers who are encouraged to have their own, independent pursuits that are not necessarily permanently directed at the family unit. A distorted interpretation of Numbers 30 serves as the only Scriptural basis for this belief.

This is idolatry, and it is not even an optional choice of children but is a required element of “multi-generational faithfulness.” This adds to the concept that the family patriarch serves to purify and sanctify all those women assigned to him. Add to this the teachings that all daughters are to be “helpmeets” to their fathers until they are given in marriage to the spouse of their father’s choice. The ideology teaches that girls should refrain from all emotional interest and attachments to potential mates, directing those only towards family members, until their father presents a suitable mate to them. Presumably, the daughter has the option to decline a particular spouse, but based upon a concept of bounded choice, this option is only an illusion. What viable choice does the daughter have to decline? Is she not required to submit to her patriarch’s will in all matters? She cannot flee the home because she has been taught that to do so is apostasy and will render her completely deserving of God’s wrath and Satan’s pleasure. Leaving the home deems her anathema. That is not choice but is bounded choice. The idolatry of the father and then the husband after marriage is non-optional.