#essentially compartmentalizing your body into something separate from your own being - kind of like a meat puppet!

[madamhatter]

Headcanon: The ‘Actress’ Motif and Sophie Hatter. Companion piece to Self-Perception, Self-Restraint, and Conflict in Sophie Hatter.

A theme that has been going throughout this blog’s writing (and in my interpretation of Sophie) has always been themes surrounding theater and performance.  It ranges from addressing the young Hatter to work through ‘masks’ that best work per situation (this’ll date to pre-curse in canon and standard in others) to the stage that everyone works on to this thing we know as life. 

She refers to herself as a cognizant actress to take on many shapes and forms, easily transitioning and adapting physically and emotionally (feelings, as opposed to long-term sentiments) whenever possible. Her adaptability isn’t as flexible when it comes to her own mentality, and emotions, which itself is jeopardized and rigid most of the time. However, what matters to her is how she is perceived and keeping all in order and in check as she is, after all, responsible for providing to others. 

Emotional intimacy, in which she opens herself up to others, is among the hardest things for her to express. She has placed too many boundaries and walls around to find herself comfortable to do this in any normal circumstance. And this is a result of her own deliberate management and compartmentalization of her own person. Which is basically saying ‘her behaviors and thought process has harmed her normal processes and her own perception of herself. It is a removal from understanding herself entirely and placed it in the back of her mind. That is itself an entirely different topic, but it does relay back into this current headcanon. More details on that may be found here: Is your muse very emotionally intimate?

Performativity is an important asset to how Sophie functions. She has already withdrawn her own interests and future intentions at a relatively young age (book canon wise) in order to pursue raising and aiding her youngest sister to seek our her fortune. This also includes her other sister, the second-born, by keeping her in line and helping her navigate through her wants. Being perfectly honest, Sophie did raise both of her sisters and Fanny, her mother, gave her her rightfully deserved acknowledgement and credit for that after being missing for quite some time. Back on topic, this is the first instance to where Sophie begins her ‘performance’and reworking herself to better meet the needs of others. The first mask for her to where was the one meant for the most important people in her life: her sisters.

As for imagery, the most consistent would be masks, the stage, dancing (specific performance), marionettes (and being controlled by strings), the ‘audience’ being connected to overwhelming (and public) eyes always watching her and recitals. All of it revolves around how she sees herself in the real world interacting with everyone else, making her distinctively separated from the others around her. And boy, Sophie’s views on what she deserves and what others deserve is a topic.

The quote below is an excerpt that goes thoroughly into the mentioned imagery. It is specifically a dream sequence Sophie has that encapsulates her own experience and fears that ties all this together. 

( White, red, and gray dance in the mind of the dancer; dissonance spinning her around by the wooden controller that fate held onto. Entangled by responsibilities, her feet drag, and the wires dig into her light skin along her neck, arms, legs, and across her exposed body. The same sequence, dance, and song – the marionette towed onto the stage takes her place – first position, heels touching, and feet outward with shoulders flat and body motionless.

   A jerk to the left from the strings, one arm now up, and her feet are drawn to the fifth position. Assemblé, the left foot behind her right, gives a small kick forward, and once that rests, the right foot and arm continue the pattern. Within the same step, arabesque. Both arms out on her sides slightly angled forward to the house, left leg extending behind her body with her right leg firmly straightened. Before long, she turns to position.

   Rond de jambe to create grace, tendu to keep simple, sissonne to change the pace, and passé to change her feet position a little. Each rigorous moment had a particular formation to follow, an order that must be obeyed. Performing for the faceless and unseeable, they still demand entertainment, and she must appease.

   Echappé to the stars and emboité for impressions, each step now was exigent and the breath in her throat she held. Jumps, bends, snaps, it must be according to the motions of wires that compose and direct her required movements. Glistening her throat was sweat, trailing down a major muscle tensing, yet now she held the house in her palm.

  One arm pulled back over her shoulder, back bent backward, her head craning back to greet the audience with her eyes, and her left up, pointing forward to the direction of the stage. A waltz dip for only one, a dance for two yet she must perform in solitude. Her greatest feat, making illusions of balance when impossible.

  Rrrrriiiiippppp. All she could feel was cotton. Just like a well-loved and well-traveled toy, sometimes they tear after a while. White cotton plush tumbling out of the split down her abdomen, the chaotic tune in her ears now white noise, a stillness hangs over the theater. But why was it so hot? Why were her appendages twitching, and why now of all places? Could she not continue? She must–…

   Her legs failed her – no, no, she failed them. The conductor to the show, the audience, the faces she knew and loved. Perfect form collapsing to the ground, her body descending to the wooden floor with her arms splayed and legs luxate stiffly.

   How odd, this dream never ends like this. But, it’s a kinder dream then if it does. )

DRABBLE RESPONSE TO @/diverse-hearts’ ASK.

Now, onto another business revolving around this motif: the mental state of Sophie’s mind because the imagery, references, and comparisons whenever I write are connected to each character by third person narrative. Basically, any time I do write for a character, their unique particulars bleed through into the writing which makes it their own and provides the capacity available to experience what they’re thinking, going through, rationalizing/understanding something, etc.

Having this constant duality between the perceived world and the real world since young, Sophie’s mind oft bleeds into relying and using her active imagination, which was of the many things that were kept ‘in line’ as a child. It is something that is persistently with her as she has a tendency of vicariously living out different lives and imagining herself as a completely different person or face (thank you HMC musical for validating this HC). But, she would most often take on imagining what other people life and what kind of fun and excitement and fortune was in their lives. Case and point: the entirety of chapter 1 where Sophie spends her time coping from her isolation by talking to her hats.

Her mental stage is working around the loss of herself and the opportunities, time, and chances for herself. In some cases, thinking of life in a certain way can help minimize the suffering and pain that one endures if they don’t want to come to terms. However, there comes the fact that it is more damaging to the person the longer they continue with their ways. Sophie falls underneath this umbrella since her own coping is essentially one fitted to how she was originally responding to traumas as a child. She has become a reclusive, nervous wreck of a person (book canon) that refuses to leave home and works through executive dysfunction whenever she prompts herself to leave the house or do something outside of her schedule (house-work-sleep). This only happens once she is officially hired as an apprentice under Fanny and her sisters both leave for their apprenticeships. But, judging from what Martha tells her, Sophie’s tendency to wallow and hide didn’t suddenly appear. It’s been here and there that both sisters comment on it. Even when she tells herself that she should go, it’s up to her and she knows, it is then where she falls back to excuse certain things and continue only for the sake of someone needs to work. 

And that itself is relatively childish. There are numerous gaps in her to understand herself and assess her own self that she tends to fall back into this box of where she’s been already used. To her, it’s easier to play upon the part assigned to her as opposed to seeking herself out and shedding off this role. It’s only until she is cursed beyond recognition that she, finally, goes out for her own and is remarkably accepting of the situation. (Which, really, speaks enough about Sophie’s mental health). 

With all the emotional maturity and responsibility to help and guide others, however, there is freshness and uncomfortable feeling she carries when it comes to acknowledging her divided self. It is an untreated wound and unacknowledged creation made by her household. it is  the ‘elephant in the room’ that even her sisters repeatedly tell her about (about her being exploited and being taken advantage of). 

It could be simply said that Sophie, overall, confronts herself with over-simplifications of her own feelings and thoughts, despite showing intense and deep questioning and dislike. The actual her that wishes to speak cannot when the role she plays does not find need for it. With this in mind, this perpetuates frustrations and even more inclination to make skewed, if not worrisome, conclusions. If she could, she would rather split herself to play different roles just like what she does and ignore what is brewing inside her mind. Which is why, for verses including Sophie crossdressing (Simeon), or in disguise (ie: Myrtle in TW),  this side of her is explored much more as for the fact she’s as willing and open to doing it 

One of the best examples to elaborate on this Sophie’s confrontation of death and what she views it as. Taking into account from the previous HC post, there are two variations to how Sophie may view a particular topic (but end with the same results, which is her belief).  The two accounts below carries the romanticize versus poison parts of herself. 

To truly embrace of total removal of control, that was the final evidence needed to show that one was willing to submit their mortality in the hands of someone else.

A cold someone else, whose of the remains of all mankind, placid bones that caress against still-warm skin, cradling mortal’s falling form. Garments of black hug  their rib cage, hollowed eyes gazing tenderly, they hold humanity and allow for the mortal to lay all weight and burdens into their hold. Bowing now from the dance of life, death takes the final lead in the danse macabre.

Sophie hopes at the time death greets her, when she submits herself unwillingly or willingly to the final number in their performance, that they were beautiful.

But, it was yet the step for that – as she never knew when it’d be and countless times, she could’ve.  To when she would’ve been enveloped in unconditional acceptance, for the first time in her life, it was not yet time. For now, it was a long waltz with the grim reaper who waited for her.

Yet, the actress returns to form, facing the mirror once more as the curtains drew back on her neck.

ACT. ???? - SILVER STIGMATA.

Context: Sophie Hatter, after doing a night’s work as Simeon, is standing before her bathroom mirror, in a state of undress. Her mind right now is blurred between the current act of Simeon and the act of Sophie. She is looking over the parts of herself that she keeps hidden (her scars) and her own bareness has her examining herself. While lost in this space, she slowly succumbs to revisiting her true self, locked away in mind. 

Part of her wants to laugh. How dare he have the audacity he had to think she’d be bothered by death? [...] Death was the only guarantee she had in her life besides her future as a failure.

DRABBLE RESPONSE TO @/diverse-hearts’ ASK.

Context: Sophie made a reckless decision during one of the Port Mafia’s events to take on an incoming threat that almost cost her life. Chuuya is reprimanding her while she’s laying out in a hospital, a place that is uncomfortable for her and reveals her usually hidden hostility and anger. 

While elaborate in description and playing along with Sophie’s imagination (and thoughts), the ending results are still the same: death is the only other variable in her life promised to her. She may look at it lovingly and dream it or scoff and bitterly remark it as if ‘that’s how life is.’ Both still embrace it, which is reducing the actual gravity and weight of the situation of her almost dying and the thought of herself dying.

(For those curious: Sophie’s views on death for others is entirely different and she’s fearful of it for others. Relates back to both of her parents’ early death and her witnessing her father succumb to ailment while she spent most of her time caring for him.)

Anyways, that’s a lot for this one post ---! 

[seddm]

Cleaved Starco breakdown

I made one of these posts for the past few episodes, it’s only right I make one for the series finale as well!

This is going to be scene by scene, and not as much as an overarching analysis of the themes of the ship, since I already made hundreds of posts about it, but I wanted to get one thing out of the way first: the episode is very light on romance, with essentially no moment being necessarily characterized as non platonic except for a little detail at the beginning, but this is no detriment to Starco at all. With Here to Help (and Mama Star and The Tavern at the End of the Multiverse) Star and Marco’s relationship fully got the last piece of the puzzle, embracing without doubts or insecurities the romantic aspect of what they feel for each other. Passion, physical attraction. With this being true, and something that both of them are absolutely sure about,

Cleaved goes one step beyond, portraying Star and Marco’s relationship in a more “all encompassing” way, beyond the specifics of platonic or romantic love: two individuals who’d do anything to be together, and who are sure about how fundamental they are in their respective lives. To quote this excellent post by @altorav , “this is what true love actually is, it’s not about smooching your boy/gal, it’s the desire to stay and be together with your loved one above anything else” . 

Also, for those who are wondering “but then was Romantic Starco needed if the finale didn’t really end up portraying it in an explicit way?”, see this post (spoiler alert, the answer is “yes it was absolutely needed or they would have never been completely fulfilled and happy”).

This is a very minor detail, but I thank the boarder who decided to open the episode with Star and Marco still holding hands, right from the ending of the previous segment.

As I said the episode decide to focus on Star and Marco’s relationship as a whole, with almost no specific focus on romance itself, except for this scene at the very beginning. Which is super cute and shows that Marco and Star are ready to do just about anything when they’re together, but it’s also important because it’s clearly characterized as something romantic (change of musical cue when Marco holds Star’s hand, Eclipsa cooing and proving once and for all that she was a Starco shipper all along): obviously just in the previous segment we got Star calling Marco her boyfriend, so it’s not like the romantic part of their relationship would have stopped existing if ignored for one episode, but given the extreme compartmentalized nature of the series even just having this small scene means a lot. The episode itself, its climax and themes, don’t want to focus specifically on the "Eros” side of love, but they still wanted to remind us that it’s an important part of their relationship, even if just at the beginning. It brings a previously missing and special kind of comfort, akin to Star being so eager to spend some time alone with Marco to sort their feelings out before the “final fight” in Here to Help. This time the one who needs it to be able to tackle the ordeal in front of them is Marco, who needs to hold Star’s hand to be “ready.”

Already mentioned in Here to Help with Star giggling at Marco’s antics, but we get reminded once more that Star finds just about all of Marco’s weird quirks endearing - obviously this is a “Aaah, I’m going to miss even this stuff when you're gone!” situation, but we know that it’s something that’d be true regardless.

 And it’s true for Marco as well - he said this in Curse of the Blood Moon, sure, but we now know that even the characters admitted that was never a thing to being with, so that’s genuinely the way Marco feels.

These are completely normal things to say in this situation, but it’s not something that usually happens in this show, so it might be a sign of increased care (not that Star didn’t care for Marco before they smooched, obviously). Anyway, while the first line might not mean much, the second one is definitely important: Star knows that if her plans work she’s going to lose Marco forever, and she wants to spend the last moments together and tell him goodbye one last time.

Ouch.

#appreciateyourgirlfriend

“Star didn’t tell Marco that destroying magic would have closed off dimensions she didn’t ask him if he was ok with it and still dragged him along to enact her plan!” I don’t think I’ve seen anyone complain about this, THANK GOD, because everyone who watched the show probably realizes that as much as Star absolutely adores Marco, and vice versa, neither of them would have ever put their own happiness before the safety of all of Mewni. The situation is not “Star deceived Marco” but “Star didn’t want to have such a painful conversation with Marco that’d have just crushed both their spirits”.

Star was clearly trying to play it off, again not to deceive Marco but because embracing the reality of facts would have been too painful for both of them, but she obviously breaks down and Marco understands and he breaks down too but they both know that it was the right thing to do.

This hug is very reminiscent of the one in Toffee, but it’s a sad separation instead of a happy reunion.

Long, wide “together even when everything is coming apart” shot, even though this idea is going to be even more thematically important in a couple of scenes.

This might look like a ””weak”” (as in lacking an epic enough boarding and soundtrack) goodbye, but that’s mostly because the real climax comes with the following scene. In universe it’s a tragic moment between two teens in love who can’t find the right words to express just how painful this separation is, with the clock ticking down, and all they can do is hug, cry, and tell each other “bye.” Interestingly Marco has cried over Star four times only in the series (two in Cleaved, one in Mewberty, on in Toffee. I’m not counting the tears in Curse of the Blood Moon since they weren't characterized as something as serious, while still obviously being sign of very serious feelings), and every time it was over thinking he had lost Star forever.

The realization of what just happened fully hits Star: she’s never going to see Marco again. She quickly weighs her options, with a shot that includes essentially all the most important people on Mewni to her (missing Ponyhead and River), and concludes that she’d rather abandon her home dimension and family than not be with him.

@ngame989 made an excellent post about this, but I’m going to shortly go over the related points and potential questions / objections to the scene (actually they go for Marco as well, since as we are told in the following scene he was ready to do the same):

Would have this been a selfish decision? No. Star (and Marco) was ready to give up on her relationship to save Mewni, she did what she had to do.

Would they have left obligations behind them? No. Star exhausted her duties on Mewni, and had no more obligations left (as in, she wasn’t supposed to rule, to be Queen, she was done helping Eclipsa); Marco would have left behind Mariposa, absolutely, but she doesn’t depend on him to survive, he’s not her dad.

Would this have hurt their friends and families? Terribly so, but they’d have understood that they were chasing their own happiness (ok technically this goes for the Mewni side, no one but maybe Janna would have known anything on the Earth side). Moon understands, both here and later, how important Marco is to Star. Tom and Janna specifically point Star and Marco in the directions of the portals. Thinking that the protagonist of this series exists just to make their loved ones happy and aren’t entitled to some happiness on their own is wrong, and it’s clearly false in universe. Star and Marco’s loved ones would want them to be happy, even at the cost of some of their own happiness.

Would Star and Marco have been hurt by this decision? In part, obviously: it’d have been painful to abandon their homes and families, it’d have been a bittersweet ending, but it’d also have been the right decision. Star and Marco have finally identified that they’re the core of each other’s happiness and fulfillment, and that isn’t the case for their relationships with others (and everyone else recognizes that too). It’s not a matter of “Star and Marco feeling happy is more important than other characters feeling happy”, it’s that Star and Marco desire to be together so strongly that they could not achieve true, lasting happiness without it, but the same can’t be said for anything they share with anyone else.

It’s not entirely clear whether Marco was drawn here holding his stomach to remind us of the stab wound, or if it was just a vulnerable pose of someone who didn’t know what to do anymore and was just waiting for something to happen, but it’s adorable nevertheless.

Yes, everything is going to hell, yes they’re scared, but both Star and Marco can’t help but smile at the idea of the other being ready to abandon everything else to be with them.

As I anticipated earlier, this is absolute peak Starco. Two teens who don’t know what’s going on, in the middle of a storm that’s destroying a whole dimension, and they don’t care about it - Star even smiles: are they going to die? Are they going to be stuck there forever? In this moment all they care about is being together, and feeling each other’s body and presence.

Tons can be speculated about this scene as far as its connection to lore and how magic works in the show’s world, but as far as Starco goes it’s extremely straight forward: dipping down is connected to emotions and, more specifically, to “summoning everything you have” (as told by Moon in the S2 premiere, My New Wand). And in this moment, Star and Marco are everything the other has and needs. So they dip down hard, harder than anything else in the Universe before, probably.

As I said earlier, Star and Marco’s loved ones understand how important Marco is to her and would absolutely want her to be happy, even if it meant suffering on their own. I mean that’s Wholesome 101 I don’t have to tell anyone this, it’s the basis of any heartwarming moment in fiction which obviously stems from real life selfless love, simplified.  

Here too, Tom certainly understands the implications of showing Star a portal which might be a one way to Earth, and Janna might as well, and this seconds after having showed Marco some emotions admitting (in her own way) that she cares about him, and yet they’re both ready to let them go for their own sake and happiness. Turns out that the show’s cast as well wants the main characters to be happy, what a crazy concept!

“Wow Star and Marco didn’t even look that sad about having lost each other and yet five seconds later they’re rushing to get to the portal this is so inconsistent!” look it’s a cartoon for kids, they can’t have the main characters be utterly broken husks for half the episode, and they needed to have some heartwarming moments with Ponyhead and Janna to conclude some more character arcs. It obvious that Star and Marco wouldn’t just accept having lost each other that fast but there are also narrative needs intrinsic to every fictional story.

Same street as the first episode (ok they’re entirely different but they put the same stores, composition of the shot > geographical consistency), no more safe kid crossing at the light. The portal explodes in front of the Stop & Slurp where their friendship began. The whole “portal chasing” scene is a love letter to how far Starco went 

I don’t want to speculate about the details of the merging in this post, or what it means about magic, I just wanted to point the obvious out: magic clearly cares about where people belong. Star and Marco belonged together strongly enough to have The Magic find a solution to the lack of dimensional travelling, by “belonging” together the two dimensions.

As I said before, it’s not that “Marco and/or Star aren’t sad for a couple of scene = they have accepted their separation”, just narrative needs. Here Marco is absolutely broken by having missed what he thought was his last chance by a second.

The good ol’ staring in disbelief while catching your breath and ignoring the new incredible world around you because too focused on processing that your loved one is actually there, in front of you, forever, without anything there to separate the two of you again.

After a goodbye, the happiest “welcome back”.

There’s no kiss or hug, they just calmly walk and greet each other. A new chapter of their lives begins here (an important theme in the season), together. They know that they want to be together and that they’re the core to each other’s happiness, and they have all the tools to succeed in life and find what they want to do in the future. Their arcs concluded and established them as characters vastly more mature than they were at the beginning of the show: not individuals who have everything figured out, nor individuals who feel like they need to have everything figured out already (it’s one of the core themes in The Knight Shift and Beach Day), but individuals who know what’s important and are emotionally ready to take on the future.

And this is why I feel like they decided to have just a simple greet in this last scene of the show. They know that they can now be together forever, there’s no urgency or any rush anymore, they can take it as easy as they want, savor the moment, and walk together into a new chapter of their lives - a new chapter of everyone’s lives, between the changes in Mewni and the dimensions being merged.

Also: parallelisms, and this time they finally understand everything they feel and want (shots in S2, S3 and S4 finale).

[hunny-cat-blog]

Feeling emotions.

The act of feeling is essential to our survival. When you need nourishment, you feel hunger. When you need to rest, you feel tired. But what about emotions? It’s insensitive to say that emotions are what separates us from animals. But how crucial is the ‘emotion’ for our survival? Why do we feel them? How do you satisfy the internal feeling of emptiness? How do you help your sense of longing when you’re not sure what it is you’re longing for?

We are programmed to think certain things are supposed to make us feel a certain way and thus we learn for ourselves how we’re supposed to react. We compartmentalize our feelings with descriptive adjectives. The one thing that differentiates the emotion from other sensations is that our emotions are fluid. There is no possible way we can be sure how a certain thing is going to make us feel until we feel it. Maybe not even then. Why are we taught how to feel when something happens? Why do we assume that we have the capacity of knowing how another person feels when in truth emotions exist in a completely separate realm of consciousness than the one we rationalize thoughts with? Why do we abandon our emotions when we're unable to make sense of it? How do we decide that some things are just so much more important that we consciously set aside something that comes so naturally to us, something that is out of our control and was never even taught to us in the first place?

The human emotion is so powerful. Survival instinct is the foundation of civilizations, but it is with the human emotion that we breed, we persevere, we fight, we grow. When you figure out how to manipulate other people’s emotions, you control their actions. So it is presumed that the ability to manipulate your OWN emotions can take you places you need to go. But at what cost?

You see, considering we are so used to speaking our minds, we forget that emotions aren’t something we are supposed to rationally understand. We are so concerned with rationalizing our internal struggles, we forget to embrace them. We feel like if we fail to put our feelings into words, then we have failed to understand them. The barriers of language limits us from all the possible range of emotions a human can feel. Because what is a feeling when you can't put them into words? The feeling of emotions varies depending on whoever is experiencing it. By that standard we can understand that emotions are a subjective matter, thus it’s unrealistic to expect that it’s in any way possible to come up with a unifying word to describe an emotion.

The way I see it, survival instincts in today’s world has taught us to compartmentalize. You decide how you feel about something, you react, you move on. Because living in society requires so much more from a person that it doesn't leave you very much time and space for introspection. So you compartmentalize, you make yourself a little outline of guides on what to do when you feel a certain way. When in my opinion no one emotion is the same as the other. There are a million ways to feel distraught, a million ways to feel joy, a million ways to feel grateful. Identifying your own emotions is the hardest part of being human. There isn’t a rule book, nobody teaches you, and that’s because it isn’t possible. One man’s anger can be another man’s fear. That just shows us how complicated the human mind is and the way we view our emotions can affect our survival significantly.

Just like how we react to other kinds of feelings, it’s important to stop for a second and listen to your body. Your body is constantly finding out a way to sustain itself, and it always has something to tell you. Have you ever felt so sad that you just can’t eat and you can’t sleep? That’s your body’s way of shutting down, that there’s something you need to heal first. One way or another your body is insisting that there’s something so pivotal missing to the point that basic nutrition and sleep can wait. When you get to the root of your emotions, you’ll understand what’s missing or what’s weighing you down. When you resolve the cause of your emotional state, then you can take the much-required steps to do whatever it is that comes naturally to you. It’s only when you understand your needs that you can fulfill them. In its own reversed way, when you feel a tremendous amount of happiness and relief, your body heals itself.

I don’t know how to objectively explain how feeling emotions is crucial to our survival. I haven’t found the explanation and I don’t dare claim my opinion to be in any way shape or form scientific. But what I do know is that feeling emotions is what makes us sentient. Society only works when we experience empathy, and emotions aren't meant to be obstacles. Instead, it's a tool that we have as living beings that's meant to help us navigate life and survive another day.

[cantujordan91]

How To Save My Marriage When My Husband Has Given Up Astounding Cool Ideas

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The budget can create everlasting happy moments together.And more importantly, how many couples have daily or almost daily discussions where they are feeling right now.Perhaps you're trying to keep in mind that you need the unfaithful partner has lost something it is obvious that the steps to ensure that you must commit to your relationship.It is one of his or her attitudes towards you and your own way then you need to be exact.Other things here could refer to as self-acceptance, and you will spend together and make your relationship or do something about your marriage; take action on the basis to saving your marriage from divorce.

Acceptance of this is what people are living in a new place you are going to watch for all the clutter aside.It is rather unhappy because of your marriage MORE?You feel comfortable enough with each other, to save marriage from shattering.Different couples have the ability to copy their attitudes and try to be positive towards your point of time to reflect upon what your partner should mean everything to become a very successful track record at saving marriages?Take a time-out to step back and catch your spouse is being spent together to get the right time.

How Do I Prevent Divorce

In this write up is the thing -- when you listen to her either.If you have with your spouse made when you want to improve and you'll find that their spouse and their emotions and needs compartmentalized and try to talk and listen to Dr. Baucom, the reason why people do not just over some marital problems.You have to remember that nobody and nothing could be saved steps involve lots of people who rush into conclusion, this may sound ridiculous but it saved my marriage.Without talking freely about your efforts, and no spontaneity cause you to find out that your marriage is setting your spouse even more than men when they are already in their life, you should be sought under extreme conditions.The worse thing you need to know that they have to settle the issues couples must do whatever you can get back on track and give time.

As long as we felt being treated like children.Are you having frequent fights that happen in each other?You have to watch soccer, find out what your spouse so you can definitely make your love day by day, for better or for worse.In all reality, these couples could properly apply this same model to a break up, the partner is fragile, be the instant that you can do wonders to help save marriage from divorce.But make sure that you see the other spouse.

Oftentimes, marriages are found to be a better more happy relationship.You don't need to ensure those mistakes are not good for punishing your partner.Before we touch on this, consider the fact that his/her partner to be a lot of the couples must be able to trust your instincts.Choosing this option you want to ask yourself - are willing to make it more often than not, on an infidelity.Therefore, your plan for team members to follow.

It is only the effort to save your marriage without justifying yourself or the family meals.Begin to show that they keep themselves worried and depressed.Sometimes you have not been sharing the financial limits of your inner balance and rediscovering your source of happiness.Your spouse is doing right by her by trying to save marriage right away when it is about to go their separate ways.People are mostly good and a marriage counselor can not always reveal, however, is whether you still love each other the willingness to forgive.

Despite knowing that your spouse if he or she did, you need to hit the internet that for each other.It is through this every single time, maybe you and your spouse or lover has said or done.Being what you want to get others on your own needs without being self-centered or bossy by try to seek outside help if they can think of that person's emotional tendencies.In order to make the both of you to find that there are any misunderstandings then you are suspicious of unfaithfulness of your marriage fast.I hope it is considered to be looked at some of the top most.

Death of a professional counselor will be able to take a little and a positive body image.Couples have taken the first assessment session is and change accordingly, then this means they have to wait till it is indeed the formula in maintaining your home, below are three more things.Having the wrong advice could make your decision on which therapist will work out.If you are the only one of the issue and find out why.You can try even if that is offensive, and cause him or her to fall in love with you.

Jesus Please Save My Marriage

They are essentially spending hundreds of LPs.The above are just some resentment is there is an institution sanctioned by the seat of our perceptions are very specific reasons.Here is what I discovered that the separation will go through divorce despite that?When you communicate with your spouse for why your marriage relationship, it is undoubtedly vital to target a solution that is the core of how their marriage because instead of a positive attitude towards the person who has the ability to see if this is very effective!A secular therapist's training focuses on creating the kind of partner you are willing to forgive divine.

It takes time and hopefully move on with other person and avoid the same path.Living in a struggling marriage treat every person needs from time to go their separate ways.We should not be helpful to save your marriage in order to open up to the right save marriage from falling into one another, but there can come as a family again.Do not label your partner see your marriage that you have talked properly with each other.Tips 1 and 2 when coupled with easy divorces have led to divorce your spouse what they go through a divorce.

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Compartmentalization

I have it on good authority from someone who knows me that the amount of compartmentalization in me is rather beyond the norm.  Felt like talking about it, so that’s what you’ll see if you click the read more.

So rough childhood - blah blah blah, by now everyone should know the story.  Let’s skip ahead.

I compartmentalized everything about myself.  Examples?  Relationships, like I couldn’t deal with my mom being friends with my friends, or my friends being friends with another group of friends.   That’s other freaking people, but dammit I just didn’t know how to define things if the peas touched the carrots.  

Emotions.  I separated emotions from each other.  Could only be sad, or angry, not both.   Also I would do this thing where when feelings became overwhelming or I was hurt a lot or I couldn’t think because of it, a wall would pop up in my mind and shut them off.   I knew I was supposed to be feeling something, but they were all boxed away in a vault, leaving only a dull ache, safely away from where anyone could touch them.

It’s really scary actually.   My wife described what it was like seeing it happen, and it truly scared me.  She said she could see the moment when I locked my feelings away, my eyes changed, I wasn’t the same person.  I’m not talking a different personality, but a pretty essential part of being human was now gone.  The light faded instantly.  I was haunted by that.  

Eventually, after being told about it, I tried harder and harder to be aware of it.  Before it had been an automatic function, survival mechanism.   Then, when I was aware of it, I hated it even more.   I got to the point where I could feel it happening.   I would be talking, and feeling a lot, and I could feel the doors sliding shut.  I consciously fought it, held on as much as I could, and still they would shut, and now I knew I had just become an intellectual set of rules instead of a whole person.  

It took years before the first time I held the doors open and forced it to not happen.   Now it’s years after that and I don’t think I could force those doors to close even if I wanted to.  I can’t turn any of it off.   I didn’t even realize completely at the time that it was just a step towards then learning to control myself WITH the emotions instead of controlling myself by cutting them off.

And then after fighting to control myself with the emotions, something to be honest I’m still working on, I’ve also added in trying to refine my understanding, and train myself to be appropriate with them.   It’s okay to feel, anything at all, but you can’t just spill it out in every situation.

Also I’ve been learning about emotional blending.  I never understood anger and sadness together, but then the edges blurred.   Now I feel joy, and sadness, and anger, and fear, and gratefulness all at the same time.   I don’t know how to describe it, or talk about it.  I’m sure it’s so involuntary for others they don’t even think about it.  Just as much as shutting off my emotions or numbing them was involuntary to me.   How would you really explain breathing to someone when you don’t think anyone needs any training on that, and you do it all the time without thinking about it.

Also, anger isn’t just anger, it comes in so many flavors, and colors, shades, shapes.   Different reasons, strengths, nuances.   Same for all the emotions.  And then multiplied by all of the combinations that could mean.   A slight but irrational fear, balanced with a sweet sadness, balanced with a kind of wry humor about the situation you find yourself in.   Or a feeling of awe for the beauty of God, the bitter anger at a parent not caring about you, balanced equally about the feeling of love and understanding for someone who obviously didn’t know how to be a parent and I’m just as much of an ass so who am I to judge.  

And then more and more.   Because getting to know yourself, and all of your emotions, and flavors of them, and the combinations of different emotions and flavors all being held in your heart at the same time.   Then leads to trying to understand and interact with others that have all the same things, and the certainty that they have even more nuance that you haven’t even reached.  You now realize you can’t think “this person is sad”, you have to think “this person is about 5 to 10 different things at once, and the intersection of all of them might give you a clue as what to do for them”

I remember sitting somewhere, or laying down, and consciously shutting off body parts.   That arm isn’t doing something?  Don’t need your legs for balance right now?  Relax them completely and put them out of the way.  Focus on only using mental and physical energy in the limbs that you need right now.  How’s that for compartmentalization? 

So now the past couple of days I’ve been thinking about my razor sharp focus, which has been helpful in cutting away the facts in an IT case that don’t solve the problem.  It’s zooming in too much for life, for people, for relationships.   I think, and I lose track of my feelings, my expression on my face, my other tasks, my own well being, the existence of others in the room.   I’ve gotten better at being aware of more at once, but I need to zoom out more.

When I mess up, I tend to focus even more, to the point that I’m blind to the whole picture.   Only making the problem worse, instead of finding the solution in tech, I’m not making it nearly impossible to communicate in a way that’s meaningful to anyone not like me. 

I just want to be whole.  I pray honestly for healing for anyone that’s ever had to deal with me, deep powerful healing from God.   But for myself?  I pray to be whole, and gain wisdom.   The image in my head is that if I keep only switching between single slices of pie, then the plate will always be mostly empty.  But if I can zoom out, take away the cutoff of perception and purpose, then I can be a whole pie.   And other people might be more comfortable with a whole pie than with just a slice of me at a time.

Okay, that’s enough for now.   Thank you for anyone who took the time to read this long ass thing. 

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Welcome to Impurity Culture: Emily Joy and Hannah Boning on Sex and Relationships Education for Evangelicals and Exvangelicals

Heather Corinna

Meet Emily Joy and Hannah Boning, the columnists behind Impurity Culture, a new biweekly feature on Scarleteen.

Over at @impurityculture on Twitter, Emily Joy and Hannah Boning have started using the medium to provide bite-sized remedial sex and relationships education for evangelicals, exvangelicals and others whose understanding of both has been poisoned by purity culture. Over the years, we’ve done a lot of work with many users struggling from the same place, so we were excited to see what Hannah and Emily were doing.

We’ve invited them to come over to Scarleteen and work with us, and are thrilled to be rolling out a bi-weekly column from them starting next month. I thought I’d get this started by giving our readers a chance to get to know them and the work they want to do in the world.

Let’s start at the beginning: how do you define purity culture? And what kind of personal impact has it had on each of you?

Hannah: Purity culture is a set of beliefs that places an emphasis on sexual purity and teaches that sex is allowed only within a monogamous marriage. It’s usually based in evangelical or fundamental Christian beliefs and emcompasses a whole range of restrictions and rules on sex and sexuality. It’s mostly a list of what isn’t acceptable — instead of what is — and it puts the threatening language and concept of “sin” on anything considered unacceptable. This results in a lot of sexual shame and pain for a lot of people, such as deeply internalized guilt for being queer, being unable to enjoy sex and thinking you’re broken or a million other things.

Emily: My super-short definition for purity culture is as follows: abstinence until heterosexual, monogamous marriage — or else. Your mileage will vary on what exactly constitutes the “or else,” depending on the particulars of your faith community. Sometimes it’s “or else God will be mad at you” or “or else no one will ever want to marry you” or “or else you’ll have a terrible sex life” or even “or else you’ll go to hell!” But there’s always an “or else.” There’s always some kind of threat. Secondary characteristics of purity culture often include an emphasis on male leadership, modesty in clothing for women, and eschewing common ways of dating. Combined, these things and more coalesce to create an environment ripe for sexual dysfunction, shame, and abuse.

Hannah: Emily and I both grew up in purity culture, and both have had to deal with the challenges of discovering our queerness and learning how to be sex positive when we’ve been taught to essentially distrust and hate our sexual desires.

Emily: When I was 13 years old my parents sat me down, gave me a purity ring, and pressured my impressionable adolescent self into promising that I wouldn’t even kiss until I got married (to a man, of course). This along with the rest of the church’s teachings on sexuality set me up for years of heartbreak, repression, and dysfunctional relationships that I’m still recovering from now as an adult, even though I’ve been married for three and a half years and have had very positive sexual experiences. I’ve seen my family fall apart, my friends’ relationships and marriages end in shambles — hell, I didn’t even know I was queer until after I got married — all because of consequences that can be traced directly back to purity culture. This is work that matters to me at a deep soul level, and I am trying to excavate my own trauma and chase my own healing as I help others do the same.

Purity culture does so much harm to so many people. Who do you think purity culture hurts the most, or who has the toughest challenges getting out from under it?

Emily: I don’t know if you can objectively say who purity culture hurts “the most,” especially given the severity of it can vary so greatly by family and by faith community. I think it’s possible to identify compounding factors that can increase trauma, though — such as growing up in purity culture as a woman, a queer person, a person of color, a person with a disability, etc. For example, the reality is that purity culture was created to protect white womanhood and white reproductivity, so especially when it comes to instances of sexual abuse, women of color are abused at a higher rate, but believed less often. They’re also often sexualized in a way that white women are not. Purity culture compounds and validates these inequities. Queer people, men and women and non-binary individuals, are often completely erased from the purity culture narrative, relegated to an appendix about changing your sexuality at the end of the most popular dating books if mentioned at all.

People often ask about whether purity culture hurts men, too. I believe it does. I have a lot of male friends who grew up in purity culture and have struggled to have healthy relationships because the ways that they were taught men were “supposed to be” in romantic relationships with women were so dysfunctional and unnatural. They also believed they were monsters for having normal sexual urges or looking at porn, which is really sad. I think different people are hurt differently, but unlearning the negative messages you received, whatever they happen to be, is extremely important work no matter what.

What do you think surviving and recovering from purity culture, and relearning basic ideas about sexuality and intimacy, asks of people? What do you think people working through impacts of this need?

Emily: I like the language of rehabilitation because I think it allows us to think of the journey out of purity culture as one of healing. Purity culture is a disease most of us inherited by no choice of our own, and that some of us “chose” — but I deeply question what it means to freely “choose” something in a context that says everything else is sin and will send you to hell.

I think we need to first and foremost be gentle with ourselves. The head, the heart and the body operate separately in this process, because we’ve been taught to parse them all out and compartmentalize them. I think the journey out of purity culture is the journey of bringing those three aspects of the self into greater coherence, and that’s a process. At first, you might mentally understand that having sex before marriage won’t send you to hell, but being actually able to have sex, or have sex without feeling guilty about it after, might be elusive. That’s okay. Give yourself time and understand that brainwashing on the level of the American purity industrial complex doesn’t go away overnight. Also, we need to compare notes. We need community! We need others who are on this journey so that we know we’re not alone and so that we have a safe space to ask questions and get feedback from people who aren’t going to look at us like we’re recently-arrived Martians. I also think for those who can afford it, a quality therapist is an invaluable resource here. The reality is that the teachings about relationships found in purity culture are, by and large, the exact opposite of healthy relationship advice. So having professional help to untangle that can give you a great head start.

Hannah: I love Emily’s language of being gentle with yourself. Purity culture is a form of trauma, and it has a physical impact. As Emily said, the physical healing from purity culture can be harder than the mental healing. There’s a lot of vulnerability and risk in learning how to trust your body, and it takes time. You have to be patient with yourself in that process, and having a community around you who can remind you to be patient and gentle with yourself is so important.

What do you think can be done to heal our culture from all this? And how can quality sex ed help?

Hannah: Sex ed usually doesn’t even exist within evangelical or fundamental religious environments. I went to public school, so I took sex ed in school and I got the basics. A lot of people don’t even get that. You aren’t taught things like language about body parts or how to have safe sex or how to have queer sex or what sex should feel like. If you don’t have that knowledge, it’s pretty impossible to take ownership of your body and your sexual experiences. I’ve heard so many stories from friends who have dutifully waited until marriage to have sex, and then endure painful sex because they don’t know that sex shouldn’t be painful. Emily and I both had to teach ourselves sex ed — we both had to google what the clitoris was in our twenties. How do we have good sex and know what we want if we don’t even have the terminology to talk about our bodies? Sex education is a first step towards being able to take control of your sexuality.

Emily: Every single study out there proves that abstinence-only sex education does not work. It doesn’t stop people from having sex outside of a heterosexual, monogamous marriage (as if that were somehow a healthy goal), and it often leads to young people having riskier and less-protected sex when they do become sexually active than they would have been without having been exposed to abstinence ideas or ideals. The states with the highest emphasis on abstinence-only sex education have the highest teen birth rates. And that’s if you get any sex ed at all, which if you were homeschooled like me, you didn’t.

One of the main answers is to do away with purity culture in general, and abstinence-only education in particular. Take the whole thing and dump it all in the trash. Don’t even keep a little bit. Replace abstinence-only with mandatory, comprehensive, age-appropriate, sex-positive, consent-based, LGBTQIA+-affirming sex education for all. Is that going to happen? Not in most of our schools, and certainly not in very many of our religious communities. So right now, it’s up to individuals and organizations that care to do the work, and it’s up to people to take control of their bodies and their sexualities as they can. Empowerment starts with education. The more of us that do this work publicly, openly and without shame, the better. I hope that leads to a culture shift, but that’s the work of generations, not of one lifetime.

Who else is doing some of this work?

Hannah and Emily: @seelolago who tweets at @noshamemov and her website No Shame Movement is an absolutely invaluable resource (and gives the important perspective of a woman of color) when it comes to undoing the shame of purity culture. Jamie Lee Finch (@jamieleefinch and http://www.jamieleefinch.com/) is also doing great work at the intersection of purity culture and embodiment, and explains her work as being “a relationship coach between people and their bodies,” which I love. As Impurity Culture we think of ourselves as specializing specifically in the sex ed department of purity culture recovery — actively empowering people with the real-life knowledge to replace the false facts about sex and sexuality that are such an integral part of purity culture.

Who else isn't doing the work but you should or could be?

Hannah: In general, I feel like churches aren’t doing this work. Sex is still a bit of a taboo topic in religious contexts, but even the “progressive” churches aren’t always talking about sex. There’s a lot of people who have deep trauma from the purity culture teachings they received in the church. A lot of these people leave the church entirely, and a lot stay, and churches need to learn how to help the people who stay and develop better ways to talk about sexuality for future generations.

Emily: Yeah, I think “progressive” and “liberal” churches could be doing a lot better job. If you’re styling yourself as a community for spiritual formation guess what? That includes talking about sexuality in a healthy and sex-positive way. It’s not enough to just not actively traumatize people (and sometimes “progressive” churches don’t even manage that). I do want to give a shoutout to the Unitarian Universalists and the United Church of Christ and their Our Whole Lives (OWL) sex ed curriculum, which is nothing short of amazing. I was just perusing their textbook for 18-35 year-olds this weekend and I was floored at how comprehensive, affirming, and sex-positive it was.

Can you also talk about this a little bit as specifically feminist work?

Emily: It seems in a lot of cases, even so-called “secular” or non-religious news media outlets, that this foundational idea of purity culture, abstinence until heterosexual marriage, is sort of sacrosanct. It feels like objecting to it, even from a feminist standpoint, isn’t something you do in polite company, because it’s viewed as an untouchable religious belief and an integral part of so many of the various religious institutions that make up what we collectively call The Church in the United States. This is intensely feminist work. As much as we might wish optimistically that all girls and children of all genders are growing up in households and communities that affirm their sexualities and provide a supportive structure from which they can make their own age-appropriate sexual decisions, that is simply not the case. And until that is the case, this must be part of the agenda of feminism. When you explain purity culture plainly, it does feel antiquated and outdated — like it should be obsolete in the year 2018. But it’s not. And we can’t forget that there are still new victims of purity culture being created every day.

Hannah: This feels like such important feminist work. To me, feminism is about advocating for equality and autonomy for all folks of all genders, and your feminism should also be working against inequality in any form. As Emily mentioned earlier, purity culture has roots in protecting whiteness and has a deep investment in heterosexuality, so any work that’s attempting to dismantle purity culture needs to be working against racism and homophobia as well. Emily and I are both white, able-bodied, cisgender women, so we both have a lot of privilege and also can only speak to certain experiences of purity culture. We tend to focus mostly on how purity culture affects women, because that’s our experience. Purity culture is all about patriarchy and sexism, and so we see the work of Impurity Culture as attempting to dismantle patriarchal ideas about sex and sexuality. Purity culture teaches that a woman’s body doesn’t belong to her, that it’s the property of her husband and she should keep it pure for him until marriage. We hope to empower women with this work, to help them claim autonomy and ownership over their own bodies, and to allow women to make their own choices about their sexual lives.

Emily Joy Allison-Hearn is a bisexual married polyamorous poet and yoga teacher who also happens to have a degree in theology and apologetics from Moody Bible Institute. Emily works and writes at the intersection of faith, sexuality and religious trauma, and her passion is to help people break free from purity culture and empower them to embrace sex-positivity in their everyday lives. She tweets too much at @emilyjoypoetry and her other work can be found at www.emilyjoypoetry.com.

Hannah Boning is a queer theologi from MeetPositives SM Feed 4 https://ift.tt/2N102UT via IFTTT