This is part of a series of guest posts on the topic of mixed faith marriages (MFM) from a variety of mental health professionals, coaches, podcasters, counselors and regular readers offering advice from their own experiences. Keep your eyes on the blog over the next few weeks for more great content, and feel free to submit your own essay to this series by emailing [email protected]. (Thanks! -Abby Maxwell Hansen)
Guest post: Brooke Booth is a certified life coach through the Life Coach School and a JD. She also has an advanced certificate in feminist coaching.
As an expert in LDS/Mormon mixed faith marriages and faith transitions, Brooke has established a busy coaching practice serving those populations.
Brooke’s knowledge and skills have been cultivated in her own mixed faith marriage and mixed faith extended family as well as her extensive professional work with clients.
She is the host of the Mormon Mixed Faith Marriage Podcast, a platform dedicated to helping others find hope and solutions for the issues in their mixed faith marriage.
Brooke works with her clients to help them become empowered in their marriages, develop skills necessary for a strong relationship and to find connection as they relate to their spouse in new ways. She also helps them process their faith transition, or their spouse’s faith transition and to navigate those changes with love.
Brooke has been an active member of the LDS church until her own faith transition (after 15 years of marriage), a stay at home mom, a complex business litigator and a certified life coach.
Her skills and experience are unique and effective in helping her clients navigate mixed faith marriages and faith transitions.
I remember listening to Gina Colvin years ago talk about her experience with patriarchy. She said, “Once you see it you cannot unsee it.”
I can certainly relate.
I want to talk about some of the differences men in a mixed faith marriage experience as compared to women in a mixed faith marriage.
I am careful to note that my conclusions here are based only on anecdotal evidence and personal experience. These are my musings about differences I see men and women face in a mixed faith marriage. These are not universal, absolute or complete.
A note before we dive in.
Just because there are differences does not mean it’s easier or harder for men versus women. Each individual’s path is their own and cannot be accurately compared to another. However, talking about some of the differences can be helpful to understand your own experience and it can also be a starting place for discussions between friends, between spouses or even just a way to take another look at your own relationship.
Let’s get started.
Finances
In a patriarchal society, men make the financial decisions for a family or couple. Tithing decisions are certainly financial decisions. I typically see a few scenarios in a mixed faith couple.
The man has the faith transition and is the sole breadwinner. In this situation the family stops paying tithing even if the wife would like to continue paying.
The woman has the faith transition and contributes financially. The wife stops paying tithing on her income, the husband continues to pay on his income.
The woman has a faith transition and is a stay at home wife/mother. In this scenario, she may push for a 5%/5% split of the tithing funds or the husband continues to pay 10%.
I have never seen a situation where a man remains active and they stop paying tithing altogether. Bottom line is that men tend to have more say in the tithing decision.
Emotional Labor
In a patriarchal society women tend to carry the emotional labor load in the family or couple. Emotional labor is the unseen and often unappreciated labor that goes on behind the scenes. It’s the work necessary for a smooth running family and household. It may look like reaching out to extended family, checking on kids homework, meeting social needs, asking about work projects, offering support and encouragement in callings and tasks and on and on. A mixed faith marriage can increase the amount of emotional labor needed in a family or couple. Think of emotional labor around managing children when one spouse attends church and the other stays home, the emotional labor involved when changing things like family prayer/scripture study/FHE or the emotional labor in managing relationships with in-laws after a faith transition. Regardless of who has the faith transition, this labor is often disproportionately carried by the woman in the relationship.
Community
In a patriarchal society men often work outside the home and women work inside the home. When there is a faith transition and mixed faith marriage men are often not as impacted socially. Men tend to maintain friendships and interaction with colleagues at work. Women on the other hand may be more socially isolated if they leave the church community. Women’s opportunities for friendship and social interaction may have been limited or primarily focused on church gathering and activities. If the woman has a faith transition she may have a disproportionate decrease in her social interactions.
Logic and Emotion
In a patriarchal society men are seen as logical and rational and women are seen as emotional. When a man leaves the church it may be attributed to his scientific training, his education or his hours of study (even if that is from unapproved sources, it is still studious). A woman’s reasons for leaving may be attributed to her being easily influenced or persuaded. Her decision may be seen as emotional, coming out of nowhere, or silly.
Individual Value
In a patriarchal society men’s value comes from providing financially and women’s value comes from their motherhood and relational skills. Accordingly, when there is a mixed faith marriage, if the man is still providing financially, he is still valuable and doing what is important for the family. In a mixed faith marriage, if the woman fails to mother as she should (i.e. nurture her children in the gospel) she is not as valuable in the relationship or family as before. Further her relational skills may be perceived as diminished when she is not performing the roles expected of her as a mother in the church or as the supportive wife to her husband as he fulfills his calling. The woman’s personal value is tied closely to her performance as a mother and wife which is synonymous with church activity, teaching the gospel to her children, and her faith. When these things are gone, her value is perceived as diminished.
In short, a mixed faith marriage has an impact on both the husband and wife. Those impacts may not be identical. Looking at the differences men and women face can shine a light on areas that cause pain and frustration but can be hard to articulate.
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This post is part of a series about navigating Mixed Faith Marriages. Find more from this series here.
7 Responses
Holy smokes. Thanks for this. While I am a dissector of patriarchy and participate in a “mixed faith marriage,” I have never thought about these particular gendered differences when leaving a church that puts so much weight on gendered rolls.
I also have to say that there are so many reasons why I feel inconsequential in the church as a woman but the reality of my value in the church was never more prevalent than when my husband left. When he left, I realized that women have no value in a patriarchal church. When he left, he lost his leadership, his priesthood, he stopped paying tithing, he could no longer be bishop (is what the Stake Pres. used), and on and on. When he left, he became just like me.
Eeek… “When he left, he became just like me.” Truth!
This was a good post, thank you.
As an Aspie female, the topics of “Emotional Labor”, “Logic & Emotion”, and “Individual Value” were especially relevant during my faith transition. We had the added wrinkle that my husband left the “community” first (he’s a hermit), so I was able to navigate my community interactions to a specific degree that provided accommodations for myself and our children.
My faith transition was more of a “logical one” then an “emotional one”. I actually felt that I needed to put in a lot of work with my family members explaining the “logical” part of it – and there was still pushback that the catalyst could be “logical” or that I could describe it that way.
I had some interesting conversations when others wanted to put the narrative is “I was not faithful/supportive/doing the good work” because I explicitly stated that I would continue to be the breadwinner, run the household, and teach our children the morals/values (normally escribed to church teachings and “good parenting”) that I could teach – that not include un-boundaried obedience, exclusivity, or morals/values based on gender. The fact I was still “practicing good parenting” and “being a good critter” while being “disobedient” and “respectfully asking them to reset their expectations of myself instead of accepting their shame” was/is a conundrum they were not happy to experience.
I actually spent a few years doing the “emotional labor” of “making church work” while in faith transition (and envying my husband’s ability to have a testimony and not do church apparently guilt-free).
My mother was put in a really strange position when my father was excommunicated and was not attending or wanting anything to do with church. My mother was struggling, but still attending sporadically, but wanted the home and visit teachers. The church still saw him as head of the household, but failed to realize there was zero communication between my parents because of a long bad marriage. So, her home teachers would call and make an appointment with him, but he wouldn’t tell her, and he wouldn’t be there. So, the home teachers would arrive, to nobody. Then they would be angry at HER for not being at the appointment that she didn’t know about because they made it with him. Keep in mind that he isn’t even a member, but all her communication from the church was still somehow supposed to go through him. As if she was a child. She got really resentful because this abusive, excommunicated jackass was treated with utmost respect, while she wanted contact with the church and was treated as somehow below the jackass. Instead of ever asking her why she was reacting with anger at contact from church, the home teachers just got ruder and ruder to her, because she was trying to voice her frustration, with the home teachers still bending over backwards to respect the abusive jackass because he was still somehow her (potential) priesthood holder. Instead of realizing she was the only way to bring herself and him back into activity, they treated her like garbage, and the excommunicated guy as if he was some kind of god.
I appreciated this thoughtful piece. Interesting to think about what my ward or extended family might think about my individual value now that I have left, on the context of our patriarchal system. My marriage is an exception to your tithing/finances section. My husband is the primary breadwinner but I have always been the money manager. I run the budget and make sure bills are paid, including tithing. When I stopped believing, (and he read the church finances whistleblower articles) I stopped paying tithing. As a couple, we agreed that spending a similar amount to local charities better fit our shared values. Unfortunately for him, this has put his temple recommend in jeopardy.
Sample size of one, but my husband is still fully in and we don’t pay tithing. I told him he was welcome to pay tithing, the only thing I asked is for him to attend the temple once a month (since a TR is the only tangible ‘blessing’ of tithing) and tell me one new thing he learned each time (basically, that’s me saying he actually had to stay awake and pay attention). As orthodox as he is, my husband HATES the temple, so he passed on that.