At a wedding today they basically defined love as enmeshment.
A little reality check, please. My RBB normal-meter needs help calibrating. This wedding felt like I’d walked into a cult led by a pwBPD.
I am not religious. My relationship with the bride is relatively peripheral, but I like her very much and didn’t realize until this wedding how intense her religion is. It’s a version of Christianity but not a named denomination that I could find on their website.
At one point, the two religious leaders were taking turns talking about love. I was so uncomfortable I almost left. As it was, I kinda dissociated from it instead (e.g. thinking to myself “they can’t really mean that”). Now I need to process it.
They said things like:
- put everyone else before yourself
- you should anticipate what the other person needs before they ask
I kept looking around the church at all these people soaking this up and affirming whatever was said. Like, WTF people, do you not realize that this is fertile ground for abuse? Is this such hidden knowledge that everyone just goes along with these crazy cultish leaders up there? Are they asking you for money, too?
OK, calm down, self. Maybe this is normal religious stuff. But my gut absolutely said “nope to this!”
It feels so unsettling to have been in that church on a lovely sunny day with seemingly normal people but perceive this gaping horror / threat at the heart of it.