Ever since the execrable Roosh Valizadeh decided he’d rather be a patriarch than a pickup artist, he and the writers on his Return of Kings garbage site have been singing the praises of traditional religion.
Not so much for them, or for the male readers of his site, very few of whom seem to be religious, but for women and girls. In Roosh’s fantasy world, you see, traditional religion means more hot young virgins for him.
But how does the aspiring patriarch choose what religion to pretend to believe in order to score himself a virginal wife who will probably cook dinner for him and wash his fetid socks?
Enter regular Return of Kings contributor Max Roscoe with a new series promising to answer that important question. Roscoe, who previously wrote about his failed attempts to pick up chicks at what he decided was a too-liberal church retreat, has generously agreed to attend services of three relatively conservative faiths in order to scope out hot virgin chicks for the benefit of Return of Kings readers.
First up, the Mormons.
Roscoe starts off with some general impressions of Mormons:
Mormons are extremely family oriented. They are very clean, and often talk like Ned Flanders.
Then, after describing a rather uneventful visit to a local Mormon ward, Roscoe offers his assessment of the pros and cons of the religion. He praises Mormonism for being, among other things, a “very patriarchal” religion that is “nominally Christian [and] moderately accepted in [the] West,” then rattles off a slightly longer list of cons, including
- Dubious beliefs
- Prohibitions on alcohol, caffeine, and other intoxicants …
- Probably the most hostile to the ideas of “game”
He’s also not impressed with the Morman church’s renunciation of plural marriage, which causes him to “wonder if they will not cave to demands of the corrupt outside world at some point.”
While Roscoe himself isn’t too keen on becoming a Mormon, he sees some hope that the religion could help Return of Kings readers in their search for virgins.
Sure, you might get stuck playing a lot “of board games and bible trivia [and] hanging out with the extended church family.” And you’ll have to stop banging sluts. Oh, and you’ll probably have to actually become a Mormon yourself.
“But the payoff,” he happily concludes,
is an extremely submissive wife who knows that her eternal salvation depends on fulfilling her motherly and wifely duties so that one day you can have endless celestial sex among the gods. Expect a Mormon girl to barely know what a penis or vagina is, but to do anything that her Priesthood holder (you) tells her. … the only single women I saw were in middle or high school.
I would make a joke here but honestly I feel a bit ill.
LG – I was in an emotionally and verbally abusive marriage for a long time, technically I’m still in it – though we live apart. The violence toward objects thing is actually a really strong physical threat. My ex used to do that, too. Hitting things around me, though never actually hitting me. Interestingly, he stopped doing that after I started playing rugby, since I was obviously placing myself in the line of much greater violence all the time and without much fear and I ended up getting hit more than a few times, including a black eye in a training accident that was so bad I had double vision for a week and still played.
The control/ lack of control issue is a difficult one. I liken it to my relationship with tobacco. Of course I could stop smoking if I really wanted to, but I feel out of control with it. I feel like I need it. So I could stop smoking, but I feel (now) like I’d always be in danger of relapse.
I totally get where PoM is coming from with the ‘of course he can control it otherwise he’d do it to everyone’, but I suggest that for you it’s much safer to assume that he can’t control it. (Though he can, if he’s hitting objects around you, but not you, it means that he’s choosing to make a threat of physical while still being able to say “I never hit her.”) It is absolutely not for you to decide whether he can change because you cannot know (and I would say he might not either). Offering you the fund might be “I can’t control myself” or it might be “I want you to always feel that you can go if you feel you need to,” but it’s not for you to decide which it is. It might also be a way of buying himself time – thinking you won’t/can’t leave until you have ‘enough’ money. You can only make decisions based on what has happened, not what might happen. Take the money. In a best case scenario, the money you’ve set aside could be used for an amazing vacation with a reformed man.
Let me also suggest that you start looking for that full time job now. And that if you’re not in counselling now, you get in counselling. When you are in the midst of abuse (and after) your thinking can be very disordered when it comes to personal decision making. Mine still is. You need someone who will listen to you and help you reflect.
I totally get about not talking about what’s going on. I never told anyone the full extent of what my life was like. I was ashamed. I was muddle-headed and couldn’t unpick what was going on myself. It was also hard to talk about it, because part of it was relentless ‘small scale’ belittling. It was mainly ‘words’. Part of it was too painful to recount. When I ‘hinted’, I felt that everyone tried to minimise what was going on, but in reality it was partly that and a whole lot of me minimising it. But actually it was total hell, it was killing me. I would think about living another 5 yrs, another 10 like that and I knew I would be dead. If my health (which was awful) didn’t get me, I’d go by my own hand. When I asked for help from my own mother, she told me I was exaggerating, that made it hard to ask for help, too.
Take the money. Take the money. Take the money. It’s awesome if you feel you have people you absolutely can rely on, but it never hurts to be in the position where you don’t have to. But if you’re not in that position (yet), don’t hesitate to accept the help of your support network.
LG – listen to rugbyyogi. My intermittently violent relationship was too long ago (40 years) for me to be a reliable adviser here.
1. Take the money and set up an account in your name only. Don’t be too ready to spend it for any purpose other than your own safety. Never let it get to zero.
2. See how he goes reading Bancroft. Then, if you’re still around, see how long the effect lasts whatever the specific improvements in behaviour turn out to be.
3. Get some personal therapy for yourself if you can manage it.
4. A job with a decent/better income for you is a good idea regardless of how your relationship turns out.
Hi guys, thanks for including me in your good wishes.
My situation is not nearly as bad as those LG and others are sharing. In my case I’m not in a relationship with the guy I live with, but we’ve been living this platonic de facto marriage for about 16 years now and during the past few years things have turned sour and he’s been acting like a jerk for the last couple of years. There’s no violence, just a drip drip of disrespect and microagressions and generally driving me crazy. I have a child, but he’s not the father, however they do have a good relationship and the thought of separating them makes me feel terrible, even though I’m unhappy with things the way they are.
However I can’t afford to move out. I don’t earn much and we live in London where rents and house prices are cripplingly high, and I wouldn’t be entitled to social housing. I figured a few weeks back that my only real option is to leave London and make a new start somewhere else, but I still need to earn more money to do that, and with a young child that’s not easy. So currently I’m stuck, and I have a lot of sympathy with anyone else who is also stuck in domestic situations they don’t want.
@LG, you should definitely start paying into that fund, and mentally prepare yourself to make that break. FWIW, during my last, actual attempt at full relationship, my boyfriend would be nice to me and try to work things out whenever it looked like I’d leave him, but as soon as I was back securely he’d become a gaslighting asshole again. He couldn’t help it, it was the only way he could interact with me long term. While I can’t speak for everyone, my guess is that unless your husband is going through some difficult but resolvable crisis that’s leading him to act out towards you, then he isn’t likely to change back to how he was before.
@snorkmaiden – I live in London, too. I totally get the housing thing.
I always think about reading this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slaves_of_New_York_(short_story) when I was a teen and then I became it.
That may be the case, but difficult but resolvable crises happen to everyone at random intervals and it is never ok to be someone’s stress valve.
My ex has a lot of social anxiety and would pick ridiculous fights with me before we went anywhere he was nervous of. I can feel for him about the social anxiety, but it was never ok for him to use me as his relief for that anxiety.
@LG
Do all the things!
Definitely leave. People who can change will under those circumstances, even if they resist real conversation. Apparently some people need aggressive action to understand how their behaviour affects others.
He may come crawling back, full of apologies. Although nasty abusers will also do this, so will those who see damage.
@rugbyyogi,
yes I agree it’s not ok to use someone as your stress valve. I was putting in that caveat because it is human to act out when we’re stressed, but if someone calls us on it, and we care enough to work on ourselves, I think it’s possible to change. I used to do that, because that’s what I saw growing up, but I’ve worked hard not to do that anymore because it’s not who I want to be. However for some people, life is a never ending series of mini crises and taking it out on people is just what they do.
My ex (from years ago) would pick little fights all the time, when not picking fights he’d just tease me until I snapped. I once asked why he was doing one particularly aggravating thing, he said he knew that that thing pushed buttons with me, I asked why he wanted to push my buttons, he said he didn’t know.
I remember when you were on the cusp of leaving your ex, and I’m glad you’re living away from him now, but sorry you still have to have him in your life.
Honestly, there are days I wish I could just take Snork Junior and run off to a deserted island, everyone else in my life does my head in.
@snork maiden
Yeah, I know what you mean about people. They can be just awful.
Courage.
Kat – thank you. The bit about someone pretending to reform by just keeping emotional distance struck home, not because he’s doing that now, but because I’m starting to realize that strategically-deployed emotional distance is really his most common everyday abuse tool, so that’s a metric I can use to track everyday change.
Like I said, the threatening behaviors are few and far between. Less than a half dozen incidents in ten years. But they always come when I’m starting to get angry and fed up with doing so much more than my share of the emotional labor and housework/household running.
He has never hit me or shoved me. There has been a lot of “playful” grabbing and restraining and tickling and poking, and with that he’ll always stop if I tell him “No, stop, I mean it,” in a stern tone (and it *has* to be a stern tone), but…that’s not really respectful. It’s not the same as making sure I’m into it in the first place, and when he does it in front of friends, he’s not respecting how uncomfortable it is for me to have to get angry in front of them. Which, holy shit, is probably why he does it more in front of friends.
Same with “playful” teasing. Not mocking or verbal abuse, but things that are just…exhausting. Things that feel like a deliberate theft of my energy. Extended mock gaslighting (like, gaslighting that’s absurd and obvious and “funny”). Fake arguments about outrageous projects he wants to buy and build (“Can I build a Tesla coil in the garage? Why not? You’re mean!”) where I have to play the part of the un-fun, but reasonable wife, which I hate. Does that make sense?
The good news is that he learned this shit from how his dad treats his mom, and as long as I’ve known him he’s been eager to not turn into his father. I’m hoping he just needs the tools and insight to change. Right now, he seems to be genuinely accepting that I have the right to leave him, and that even if he gets his shit together, it might be too little, too late.
But if I do leave…well, then there’s another obstacle in front of me in the form of my much-worse father, who has been behaving himself for the last ten years because he knows my husband is there. The though of him makes me want to just run straight into my husband’s arms and say I’m sorry I complained, I promise I’ll never leave you!…which is how I got into this mess in the first place.
Oh, LG, that’s awful. Amd exhausting. Passive-aggressive abuse is much more insidious and hard to combat than straightforward abuse. They always have plausible deniability and the “what, it was a joke!” defense to fall back on.
Hugs and sympathy for everyone who’s struggling with unhappy marriages. You deserve better, and I hope it all works out. <3
As for RoK's laughably sleazy, desperate, and dumb advice to consider converting to Mormonism as an easy route to a teen virgin bride…yeah, I'm sure that will go over well, and won't be at all transparent to church elders. I'm sure a bunch of manbabies who spend their days whining about the horrors of child support will love tithing, taking a distant back seat to the children, helping around the house, and dedicating time to the church, as Mormon husbands are expected to do (so much for their fantasies of being hailed as a king and waited on hand and foot). They'll also love special undergarments, the dim view the church takes of extended adolescence, and the discouragement of unconventional sexual practices (so much for their fantasies of unlimited oral and anal). And if they're over 25, good luck….Mormon women prefer to marry young.
If they're fantasizing about joining the FLDS and having multiple child brides, that's even more of a pipe dream. You pretty much have to be born within the FLDS and know church doctrine backward and forward, and even then, there's a high rate of excommunication. Thousands of teenage "lost boys" get kicked out every year on the flimsiest of pretexts, and then struggle to survive in a society they've been taught to shun. If the sons of church leaders can't make it, horny opportunistic strangers have even less of a chance. Church elders don't want competition for the limited pool of brides. Oh, and they pretty much have to rely on welfare fraud in order to support their numerous wives and children. What was that again, RoK, about the evils of "daddy government"?
Hugs, LG. That sort of environment is exhausting and can make it so difficult to think straight. Thank you for talking about it.
“While I can’t speak for everyone, my guess is that unless your husband is going through some difficult but resolvable crisis that’s leading him to act out towards you, then he isn’t likely to change back to how he was before.”
There is no “before” in my case. All of the abusive behaviors have been there from the start, it’s just taken me this long to start thinking I deserve better.
He has permanently changed his behavior for me in the past. Little things, like he used to be a total dick to me anytime I started crying. We unpacked how that came from his dad being a dick to him about it, and ever since he’s been reliably kind and supportive and there for me when I need to cry. That was about six years ago.
And the fake gaslighting thing I mentioned above, hasn’t happened since I specifically asked him to stop that. That was about six months ago.
But…there have been other areas where progress has been highly unreliable, like trying to get him to do his fair share of emotional labor and household stuff. We’ve never tried to address his abusive patterns as a whole before.
EJ:
This is a line of thinking I see a lot of in the BDSM community as well. I identify as a submissive in that context, so I do sometimes get assholes who strut up, whip their dicks out, and bark an order like I’m supposed to hop up and do it without question. Because apparently, submissive means “submissive to everyone, especially me”.
Also, hello again everyone! Some quick updates from me: I’m finally at the new place, and I’ve been here for about a week now. I’ve been sleeping like a log, I’ve been much happier, and my new roommates and I have been going on lots of walks to malls and neat stores and even a year-round farmers’ market. I also have a new, fully functional phone with service now, and I got to play a bit of Pokemon Go! We’re going to take care of my bank stuff hopefully tomorrow, and one of my roommates is bugging his manager to get on my application and get me an interview.
Unfortunately, my computer isn’t set up yet, even though my stuff came in on Saturday (I want to clean it out first, and I don’t have a desk yet to put it on), so I haven’t been keeping up with WHTM like I wanted to. I missed y’all. ?
So, hopefully, things can only go up from here!
P.S.: I also have a new fuzzy roommate named Tabby. She has taken to me quite well! I can pet her and she only gets bitey if I get too close to her belly.
LG, his behaviour sounds horrible, and it seems that all the changes he has made so far have been to dial back the dickishness to a level that you find just tolerable enough to stay with his sorry ass.
You shouldn’t have to draw boundaries all the time, and keep having them ignored until you finally hit the level where the consequence of his behaviour is you being ready to leave him.
Seriously, why does he think it’s ok to do these things to you in the first place? He can’t keep blaming it on his dad, he’s a grown-ass adult and you can be certain that he knows how to play well with others when it suits him.
Get the Fuck-Off Fund together. Do it quickly, and try to make a plan of whose couch you can crash on, who can help you move appartments, who can support you through the leaving process. Consult a lawyer. Don’t let your husband know that this is what you are doing.
Don’t hesitate to find a new job if you need to, one that will cover rent and bills on a small flat of your own.
I’m a bit worried if you only have one joint account and he earns 4x your salary. Even if it’s financially convenient, it still gives him the ability to see what payments you are making, and a level of control over your access to all your money.
Is he really going to be cool with it if you create an FOF and actually use it? Get your lawyer’s advice, because he may be attempting a manipulative double-bluff where you make a break for it and he suddenly stakes a claim on the money you used for your fund, and has a reason to chase you down for it.
And I hope that you will eventually break free of him, LG, because with every new detail of his behaviour, you sound more and more unhappy. You really deserve better.
When the time comes, leave quickly and quietly. He always escalates his abuse when you try to leave. Make sure you are gone before he has a chance to swing at you (because that is the intended threat of punching the walls – that next time it will be you).
I don’t know the specifics of your Dad situation, but if he’s even scarier than your abusive SO, you could stand to cut him out of your life too. Kill two birds with one stone if possible by not disclosing your new contact details.
I know this sounds so glib – it will be hard, and scary, and you will feel all kinds of horrible mixed emotions. Try to imagine what you would do with a space of your own in which to express yourself, what it would be like to breathe easier. You’re fed up now, focus on how good it will feel not to be constantly worn down by his irritating, disrespectful behaviour.
I strongly recommend the Captain Awkward link that OpposableThumbs posted, and the Reddit thread discussed in the comments there.
Plenty of people have successfully left abusive relationships behind, and I hope that you will, too. It won’t be easy, but it’s not as hard to do as your fear would have you believe.
I wish you all the strength in the world, LG. But you are already strong.
You have already identified these behaviours as abusive, and you’ve already used your words, and you’ve already been generous to him in giving him so many chances. Your next step is to accept that nothing is going to change with him, and then set yourself a time limit on how much longer you will put up with it.
Take care of yourself, LG.
As a feminist, I respect the right(but not the indoctrination towards) of women to be socially conservative and focus on a traditional marriage if that’s what they want out of life.
Roosh, however, wasted the youth that could have been spent on the ideals of dedication and honesty chasing sex with as many women as possible. And it’s totally clear how empty inside that life left him. He’s now looking for an alternative that doesn’t require him to give up his misogyny.
He may find it. Maybe.
But I suspect it’s going to leave him exactly as unfulfilled and he’ll find another excuse to blame in on women.
“Oh, LG, that’s awful. And exhausting. Passive-aggressive abuse is much more insidious and hard to combat than straightforward abuse. They always have plausible deniability and the ‘what, it was a joke!’ defense to fall back on.”
Nah, he doesn’t say things like that. Or any variation on blah blah “dramatic” or blah blah “oversensitive.”
He doesn’t use verbal abuse or control my actions within the relationship. If I’m gonna be real with myself, in fact, he’s an enabler.
He’s extremely patient and slow to anger…just, you know, acts threateningly when he gets there.
@Lea:
Definitely an emperor w/o clothes on type situation: everyone knows he’s lying and that his advice will mostly lead to being laughed at/slapped across the cheek, yet the numpties that follow him keep applauding.
He’s a deeply sad character and one day he’ll realise it and possibly reform or at least fade into oblivion where he belongs.
Somehow I doubt Roosh and his buddies are willing to fork over the 10% of their income to the LDS church that they require to get into heaven. Not to mention that young, virginal LDS girls born and raised in Utah generally won’t date, let alone marry, older convert men who haven’t gone on the two year mission.
In order to get married in a LDS temple, which said young, virginal LDS girls and their families will require, they have to be a member “in good standing,” which requires a LOT (remember that 10% of income thing?). First they actually have to join that church by getting baptized. Then they have to jump through a years’ worth of hoops. In addition to paying the required 10% of income, they have to not watch porn and not masturbate (good luck with that), repent of any past sexual activity outside of marriage (lol), not drink coffee or alcohol or smoke, fulfill any and all responsibilities given them by their local leadership, go to church for three hours on Sundays plus any other meetings they’re told to go to, and they will probably be pressured into going on the two year jaunt to prove their worthiness as “priesthood holders.” Then there are the periodic personal worthiness interviews in which they have to confess all their sins to local leadership (lay leaders with no professional counseling or pastoral training).
It’s a huge commitment for little to no return. If ROK assholes want to undertake something that’s going to require them to upend their entire lives and completely change in the hopes of scoring a young, oblivious virgin, that’s their choice. But somehow I doubt they’ll be chomping at the bit to do so once they find out the extent of the commitment required.
weirwoodtreehugger: communist bonobo
That matches what I’ve heard from ex-Mormons. Marriage prospects for men are highly dependent on your status as a true believer, especially whether you’ve gone out as a missionary.
If you’re a fresh convert at age 30, you will be considered a second class husband, so I think these guys are going to be rather disappointed if they think they’ll marry a young, attractive woman.
Can I just say that the image at the top of this story is giving me nightmares? D:
@Axe: I am really digging that dude’s voice but can’t seem to find anything about him/them through my Google-fu. Do you know anything about who they are?
Jedi hugs if wanted to all those going through hard times. 🙁
Hey, Paradoxy! Glad to hear things are going well, I’ve been thinking about you.
From the OT
Can’t you just imagine Doosh’s dispatches to his minions about playing ‘dread game’ by pitting one wife against the other? Cause you know that’s what he’s thinking.
I don’t know a whole lot about the FLDS, but I’d be willing to bet that ‘dread game’ would NOT looked favorably upon by either the church or the community.
Oh! Paradoxy,I missed your post there. I’m so glad that you’re having a great time in your new home! Don’t stress over getting the computerbeast up and running, get that job and enjoy that farmer’s market! I suggest garlic zucchini, it is the best way to zucchini.
(i.e. split into halves and scoop out the zucchini guts to make a boat, put zucchini in a bowl with some bread crumbs, cheese, and minced garlic; put mixture into boats and sprinkle with more cheese, then bake until bubbly golden brown. They are magnificent snacks)
@ALW
Apparently, Parker Cressman and Conner Hein (the missionaries in the vid) were both actual missionaries at 1 point. That’s all I know *shrug*
Well that’s already more than I got from trying to google ‘Joseph and Smith’, so thank you! I shall keep an eye out in case he decides to start a singing career.
Scildfreja – garlic zucchini sounds divine! I wonder if it would work with yellow summer squash?