Stolen Innocence - Lisa Pulitzer [118]
What made things worse was how I was manipulated. His mind games were a constant. Most of what he said was to coerce me in one way or another. He’d tell me that if I wasn’t one with him as the priesthood taught us, then our afterlife in heaven was in jeopardy. In retrospect, it’s easy to dismiss his words, but at the time I sincerely believed that he and this arranged marriage were my keys to eternal salvation. Because of all the pressure I was receiving from him, the priesthood, and the community, I had no choice but to obey him.
By June, Allen was fed up with the way our marriage was going, and worried about the possible consequences, he initiated a meeting with Uncle Warren. He felt he had tried everything and no matter what he did it was met by my resistance. He refused to see that his version of kind and respectful behavior was not seen that way by me. In his eyes, everything had the same result: I wouldn’t become the submissive, obedient wife that I should be. I was grateful that Allen had been the one to initiate this meeting with Uncle Warren. Perhaps now the prophet would take the situation more seriously and grant me the release I had been asking for. Warren was happy to see us. “How are you doing?” he asked us when he stepped out into the waiting room. He was still operating out of Uncle Rulon’s office, but now that he was the prophet, it was officially his headquarters.
Allen and I sat side by side. “I don’t feel like things are going very well,” Allen said in his humble, obliging way. “It’s been two years, and Elissa is still having problems with obedience. She does not trust me, or allow me to direct her in what she’s doing and what friends she should have. I think she needs some counseling because I feel like she’s being a little rebellious.”
Turning to me, the prophet asked, “Elissa, how do you feel?”
“I have told you so many times how I feel. Honestly, I just can’t trust this man. I don’t love him. I don’t know if I’ll ever love him. And I don’t feel comfortable around him. Things have happened between us that I don’t agree with and that I don’t like or ever want.”
Warren began to ask us questions, trying to determine why we didn’t yet have any children. “Because when you have children, your responsibility changes,” Warren explained. “You are not selfish. It’s not all about you. It’s about children and raising them up to be good, obedient, faithful priesthood children. Sometimes, having children changes everything. And it makes people fall in love because they have another life on earth together.”
I sat silently in my chair staring at the flowers sprouting from the garden just outside. I didn’t want to have children with Allen. I was certain of that. But I wasn’t prepared to say it aloud. We’d already had a number of heated discussions over it, and they’d all ended badly. Listening to Warren speak, all I could think of was a time when Allen had said very much the same thing, insisting that if we just had a baby together, I would love him. When I disagreed, Allen grew forceful, telling me that we needed to start a family immediately. That’s when he’d forced himself on me.
Directing his gaze at me, Uncle Warren told me how I was failing in my mission, “because you are not being obedient.” It was always the woman’s fault. If the marriage wasn’t working, it was because she wasn’t faithful enough. “I have given you so many opportunities to change your actions and allow yourself to accept what you have chosen to do. You need to remember your vows. You still need to give yourself over to Allen, mind, body, and soul. You need not to question him.”
Warren’s words seemed so hypocritical. He was saying that I had chosen this when I really had had no choice at all. It was nothing I hadn’t heard from him before. I couldn’t see how this marriage was going to improve. But I sat silently with my hands folded in my lap, listening to Warren’s directives.
“Your problem is that you are questioning Allen and the