I believe we are living under a brutal sexual regime. The Sexual Revolution routinely chews people up and spits them out.
Let me tell you a story about a young woman whom I know by reputation, but have never met. I have inferred some parts of her story, based on my experiences that are in some ways similar to hers.
Karen was the oldest girl in a large Catholic family. She entered nursing school in the 1980’s. At the age of twenty, she left her family home to look for an apartment. She called an old family friend seeking advice.
The old family friend was a much older man, some forty years older. She moved into the basement of his home. Almost immediately, she entered into a sexual relationship with him. This relationship lasted about six years. She ended the relationship because she wanted to have children and he didn’t. He already had grown children from his first marriage.
Those are the facts that have been reported to me.
Here is what I surmise.
As the oldest girl in a large family, she may have had significant responsibilities. There may have been bickering or drinking or other problems in the family. Whatever the case may have been, the decision to look for an apartment, then cohabiting with a much older man, screams of some hunger she was trying to satisfy.
The much-older man himself admits that his fondness for younger women caused the end of his first marriage. Whatever negative
consequences he experienced from his divorce were evidently not sufficient to persuade him to give up his attachment to sex with younger women. As a matter of fact, he was an Ob-Gyn who was also an abortion provider. A relationship like this one would have been almost unthinkable, without contraception, backed-up by abortion.
Reading between some more lines, I am imagining how her father and mother felt when she showed up to family gatherings with this man. Maybe she showed up with a show of bravado and an attitude of “this is what I’m doing whether you like it or not. If you want a relationship with me, you have to accept me just as I am, which includes my boyfriend who is old enough to be my father. I will not tolerate any criticism.”
I saw that scenario go down more than once back in the 1970’s.
Or maybe she didn’t show up. Maybe she was isolated from her family during this period of her life. Maybe she knew all along that it wasn’t right, that he was taking advantage of her. Maybe she knew that she was not tough and strong and independent at all. Maybe she knew she was weak and needy and that this man was giving her something she needed that would have been better gotten some other way. Maybe she was ashamed.
Maybe she felt all those things wrapped up into one big inscrutable ball.
Maybe it really was what the Sexual Revolutionary line says it should have been. She had her nursing degree. She was financially independent, older and wiser. She had no regrets. She just “moved on.”
But I’m guessing there was more behind her decision to leave him and to stick with that decision. I imagine there were times over the life of the relationship that she wanted to leave and couldn’t bring herself to. Or she could not follow through on leaving him.
Maybe she saw through his exploitation of her and was finally strong enough to walk away. Maybe she felt her fertility slipping away and knew she was wasting her life. Maybe she made friends with someone who supported her emotionally, and who was not hitting on her sexually. Maybe some family member reached out to her gently and non-judgmentally and drew her back into the family. Maybe she had an auntie or grandma who prayed about one thousand novenas over her.
Maybe it was all of the above. I do not pretend to know.
The young woman’s name was Karen Garver.
Her story emerged in the public eye in January 2012. She had since married and had the children she so wanted. Her husband was doing well in the run-up to the Iowa caucuses. The guardians of the Sexual State did not want her husband, Rick Santorum, to do well. He had to be destroyed. So, this story just happened to emerge at that particular time.
The story was all about the hypocrisy of the Santorums for wanting to limit people’s sexual choices. Nothing at all about the vulnerability of a twenty-something girl looking for her first apartment. No scorn at all for the predatory old man. No, the press lionized him. He was after all, an abortion provider, and a hero of the Sexual State.
To the best of my knowledge, neither Karen nor Rick Santorum responded to these stories in any way. I have never spoken with either of them about this. I have never met Karen.
I am responding now. There is no election at stake. Rick Santorum is out of politics, as far as I can tell, for the foreseeable future. He and his views are no danger to those who depend on or support the Sexual State.
So now is a good time to consider a few questions, especially if you support the Sexual Revolution. Do you have any second thoughts about the idea that a steady flow of pills can offset the negative consequences of sex in a relationship that has such a severe power imbalance? When you enlisted in the infantry of the Sexual Revolution, did you really think you would be defending the rights of creepy old men to take advantage of vulnerable twenty-somethings?
Finally, would you be willing to entertain this possibility: the reason some of us are so passionately opposed to the Sexual Revolution is that we participated in it, survived it, and know that it was a string of empty promises? We oppose the Sexual Revolution because we know from experience that we can do better for future generations.
And I have a few questions for my culturally conservative friends. Do you know other women who made this kind of mistake in their early years? Maybe you did yourself? I sure did. (How do you think I could read between all those lines?) Are we going to leave people out in the cold to wonder whether they can be part of the community or are we going to help them be incorporated back into the community?
Most of all, what are we going to do to make sure there is more love inside the family in the first place? Whether I’m right or not about Karen’s particular story, I am sure that many of our young people do go off the deep end sexually, because they are looking for love.
At the Ruth Institute, we are committed to providing tools and inspiration to solve exactly this problem. Join us. Sign up for our newsletter here. You will receive a free pdf of our booklet, Improve Your Marriage.
Or you purchase the full book, 101 Tips for a Happier Marriage.
Please share this post with anyone you know who Cohabited With Regrets. They deserve to know that they are not alone.
