Kissing and Grinding

After Mary-Beth had met with her Bishop and her stake presidency, everything changed. Lorne obviously felt vindicated, and became more open in his flirtations with women. I often saw him kissing women on the lips, grabbing them tightly around the waist and tilting his pelvis into theirs. He no longer seemed to hide his flirtatious behaviour. He went to visit old friends and flames, and basically returned to his old lifestyle. He stopped working and just slept all day.

I was often worried that Mary-Beth would commit suicide, so I tried to stop in as often as I could. Most times Mary-Beth was away at work (she often worked two jobs), and I often woke Lorne from his beauty sleep. The house was a mess. The floor was sticky, like a movie theatre, and the dishes were always filthy and spread all over the house. He slept on the couch and was covered in crumbs and junk food wrappers. It was horrendous.

Even though Mary-Beth worked two jobs, they never seemed to get ahead. I found out later that Lorne had been taking all the money, and wouldn’t let her have any. He had all new clothes, and she was going to work in pants with patches on them. Her glasses became badly scratched and she needed new ones for years. I helped her out whenever she would let me, but she was taught to believe that suffering whatever God and her church wanted her to suffer was what she was supposed to do. They taught her that if she did not submit to their ill treatment, then she was rebelling against God and would be cast into hell. They had brainwashed her to an insane level, and she just took it all.

He spent their money on parties and hanging out with his girlfriends. And during all this, Mary-Beth believed that she would go to hell if she spoke out against her “monogamous” husband and their “monogamous” church.

It may be common knowledge to those of us outside these cults that this is abuse. And most of us feel that this kind of a sadistic religion that makes God out to be a respecter of persons, is far outdated, belonging in the annals of history. But to those who get caught up in these serial “monogamy” cults, it is the only thing they know. They are victims of abuse. No less. Many of them suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder. Many of them are manic depressive (bi-polar) and are on anti-depressant medications. They often suffer from physical or sexual abuse, and believe that their feelings of guilt and shame are righteous punishments from God. It is very difficult for them to adjust to a healthy life outside of the “monogamist” cults.