These jokes hit hard for me because I’ve seen the kind of culture that creates situations like this, but I’d like to add I guess a sympathetic touch to this...

Christian youth are often taught that sexual feelings and thoughts are really only permissible within marriage, and that they’re basically supposed to be sexless beings before that. This leads to them being rushed to marry the first person they feel attracted to because waiting longer increases the discomfort/feeling of “sin.”

But furthermore, “dating” within this subculture is usually very atomized and sterile. You barely have physical contact. You often aren’t allowed to date until a very late age, and even then, it’s incredibly limited.

This happens because these people are experiencing really being in a relationship for the first time ever when they don’t have the maturity to deal with it. They’re making all their relationship mistakes the very first time. They haven’t had much time to figure out what kind of person they are compatible with. They probably don’t even know what they’re sexually attracted to because they’re taught to be so disconnected from it. They’ve never been alone in a bedroom together with a date and now they’re sharing finances and everything. It’s “hard” because they are not prepared in the slightest.

This doesn’t happen because either of the people involved are bad or foolish people. It happens because they were failed by a culture that forces them to make a vastly life changing decision before having ever been able to make a tiny mistake and learn from it enough to figure out what they need and want. And it’s sad.

@christians y’all need to do better by your young people. let them make mistakes, learn, and grow through that

@the people in the notes actively calling the woman stupid: please do not do that. not only is it extremely misogynistic to say that women in bad relationships are there because it’s their fault for being stupid, it’s also just wildly dismissive of how DEEPLY damaging and manipulative purity culture is

i mean, maybe she is stupid. But she should have been allowed to be stupid with her boyfriend at sixteen when she didn’t have to change her entire life around a single decision. Stupid leads to mistakes. Mistakes lead to learning.