This hack has saved me many a minute.

They didn’t have to do a study about this. I can prove it just by letting them get a whiff of my kids’ room in the morning.

Hasn’t that shark kind of jumped already?

Do you take your bribes in homemade baked goods?

This is an adult at university. One that is benefitting from crazy low subsidized tuition and signed a contract to cut his hair in order to get it. Hardly a child. And the church flat out said that parents should not punish children who don’t choose to believe in their faith. There are plenty of problems with that church, making up stuff just distracts from the actual issues.

Apparently, I have more than you do. It’s not hard to leave the Mormon church. As someone with family members in an actual cult, I find it very stupid to conflate the two. People leave that church every day with no more consequences than an extra measure of condescension from neighbors.

Not one penny less, no property taken. No threat to life. You water down the term “cult” by being so reactive about it.

Well, last time one was out, she ate a dozen cookies, half of which were oatmeal raisin. That was fun.

And by fun, I mean a nightmare.

For safety reasons, they sleep in their kennels, except for during the day when one sleeps in my room with her head under the bed, and the other in every possible spot of the house, but mostly the other one’s kennel.

You know Mormon priests are 16-17 year old boys, right?

It’s really easy to just not go to church. And credits get transferred all the time. You’re letting your hate affect your perception of reality.

If there is, don’t mention it out loud, or it will be next.

Sure, if you were wealthy enough to have a pager.

Pick one argument you made that you think is the best, and I’ll show you why it’s erroneous.

And no, I wouldn’t want to wait. I’ve been the woman in this scenario. I was three months pregnant when my husband physically attacked me. You need a swift legal end. It’s easy to write a divorce agreement that deals with situations that don’t yet exist. Most every single one deals with at least a few. (When the house sells, at retirement age, when taxes are due, etc.) Why not when a baby is born?

Until that line is signed by a judge, men like my husband continue to drag you back because they think they own you under the law.

Your arguments sound great to anyone who hasn’t actually been in that situation. But every one of them can be addressed without forcing a woman to stay married to her abuser.

Yes, he does. What in the world makes you think otherwise? Parents have equal and open custody without an order otherwise.

Because leaving a relationship is the single most dangerous time for an abuse victim. Remaining married and not having divorce proceedings in place gives your spouse rights that can let them find and control you more easily if you try to leave. It’s safer to keep it secret until you can take necessary steps.

None of those reasons are valid. Not one.

Both of the major escalations in my relationship were when I was pregnant.

If this had been a law for me, I and my children might very well be dead now.

The mundane nature of the offense actually makes it more terrifying. My final night of marriage, he raged because I was too morning sick to go out as planned and leave the house to him. It didn’t stop him from doing what he wanted, I was just going to go to bed after feeding my toddler.

It’s so mundane an offense, that you feel stupid telling anyone. Even having lived through it, sometimes I have a hard time believing it.

One time he almost drove us off the freeway because I knew more about genetics than he did. I had a degree relating to the field and he had once watched a documentary on it.

And he raged because I hung up the phone when he got home. He was convinced my friend Jackie was actually Jack (names changed) and accused me of cheating. He knew I talked to Jackie at least once per week because we were working on a project together.

There was a Microsoft profile picture named Jack that he was convinced was the man I was cheating on him with. I couldn’t convince him otherwise, even after showing him it was in a file with other profile pics. He got a secret vasectomy to try to catch me cheating.

Spoiler: I was not cheating. I didn’t get pregnant again until he got a reversal. Guess who was cheating and gave me an STI?

They really don’t care. They either can’t afford to realize their sycophants are abusers because then they’d have to take a hard look at their own beliefs, or they think being abusive is a feature, not a bug.