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It sounds to me like you were really disrespected, and this house church is almost cult-like. I don't want to jump to conclusions on that, but it just sounds that way from what you describe.
It's going to be tough to let your husband know that you know about this lunch without letting on to him that you were snooping through his email. Is it possible for you to just show up to wherever he's meeting this woman and sort of interrupt their lunch? It sounds like he's not really ready to let her go as a mother figure in his life, but he knows it will upset you, so he's keeping it from you. And she might try to talk him into trying to go back to this house church again which it sounds like you don't want. I would definitely try to find a way to bring this up to him. I know it will stink b/c it will rat you out for snooping in his email, but right now, he's keeping something from his wife, which doesn't sit well with me.
I'm very sorry you're going through all of this and hope everything works out. Please keep us updated!
Okay, I didn't read everything, but here are my though on what I did read:
1 - that is not a church, that is a cult. I am a Christian and I have a personal relationship with Jesus and I go to church weekly. You do not SUBMIT to your husband. You are a partnership and you become one and you support each other and you seek God to lead you down the path together. Seems to me that now you have gotten out of that "church" you are both on the right path.
2 - there are myriad of reasons why he didn't tell you - he knew you would be upset, she possibly initiated it, he wanted to hear what she had to say, he wanted to see if she would apologize, he wanted to tell her how much he disliked her treating you the way she did, etc. If you worry about it, it's going to eat you up. You have to have trust in your relationship and your marriage. Pray about it and know, that if he didn't like what this woman had to say, he might not tell you about it.
I hope the best for you!
I think something in your gut told you to snoop. I think as a woman you never have to make apologies for following your instincts. There should be nothing in his email that should be a shock. Maybe you can't tell him directly but this is definitely something that needs to be addressed.
I agree that even though she is not a romantic threat it is purely the fact that he is "sneaking" to lunch with her that is bothersome. I would talk to him about it and let him know he can tell you anything and that he really needs to be honest with you to build and maintain trust. Even if he thinks you'll be upset or if he thinks you won't like it he still owes you the truth because you are his wife.
Second I agree with the bees above. This church sounds VERY cult like. The fact that they want you to commit and submit. Two huge red flags in my book. I say stay far away, forget trying to sort things out with this woman. I stay get and stay as far away from this church as possible. Sorry you are having to deal with this church and this woman. Definitely doesn't make things easy.
No; this is not Nothing. It is a big deal if your Husband is sneaking around and not telling you things. I may do things a little differently but if it were me; I would wait till he goes to leave for the day. I'd ask him where he's gonig and what he's doing. If he straight out lies to me; I'd stare @ him & say is that really what your doing? If he still avoids it & doesn't tell me then I'd walk away without saying another word. He knows he's in the wrong. Like I said; I may do things wrong but I'm a beliver in the cold shoulder. If your going to disrespect me then bet your a*s you'll be getting disrespected right back. Make him know that you "know" just by your actions. Make him do the admiting and apologizing. I don't care if you snooped or not. He's hiding something & you knew it. It's called a gut feeling. Go with your gut. He should be able to be open and honest about something as simple and silly as a lunch with someone else. & he should be supporting you and your feelings. He should not be encouraging this churches actions of telling you to "submit" to your Husband. Give me a Break.
What is the definition of a house church? It sounds very cult like to me. Anyone of sound mine (you) can probably see that but if your husband previously lived with them and went there for a while he probably has been (I hate using this phrase) brainwashed, as in, he can't see past their BS to the truth because of the relationships and all that these people have done to build them up.
I might try calling him when he's supposed to be with her and if he doesn't come clean you need to confront him about it. I'd think moving halfway across the country would make a different but apparently not! This needs to be addressed.
Hmm, I wouldn't consider not telling my SO about a lunch date as sneaking or snooping or doing anything wrong. I don't think our friends are required to have relationships with our partner and I don't think I or my partner is required to run our lunch dates by each other. (I would certainly mention any lunch dates at some point, just because it would be weird not to but weird doesn't mean wrong.)
This church sounds very toxic and I'd avoid all contact with them but I can understand how he'd want to occasionally meet with someone he used to be very close to. I would not try to work it out with any members of the church in the future - I would just stay as far away as possible. As for your husband I think/hope with time he would limit his contact as well and come to see that the way they advocate leading one's life is not for him. I would not try to forbid him seeing these people, I would just refuse to see them myself.
Sorry, that sounds like a terrible situation. I identify as a Christian but have to agree this sounds more like a shunning type of cult injecting their own beliefs than a house of worship. But anyways they could all be very nice people and I guess that's besides the point of this post.
If your husband sees them as family I can see how it would be hard for him to cut them out of his life completely. I think it is an issue that he didn't feel comfortable sharing it with you. If a lunch comes up I don't run everything by my husband nor does my husband run everything by me but if something like this were to happen we would definately tell each other, it seems a bit deceptive not to.
And that's probably because your husband feels torn between his wife and being comfortable with leaving the church and his old family who has supported him. But if I were you I would talk to him in an understanding way, not angry, and explain why you want the trust between the two of you there that he can share things like this with you.
Good luck and I'm glad you had the strength to leave a place you felt was not doing justice.
I am glad you stuck your ground long enough for God to reveal the truth about the situation to your husband.
I think he is wrong by not telling you about the lunch plans but he may have some justification to why he felt he needed to hide it.
I would bring it up to him and discuss how hurt you feel and discuss that you need to know that he loves you enough to put you before this other woman. If he loves you that much, then you should be able to back down and trust he will make the right decision. Hopefully he will see and will cancel the lunch or he will be reminded of the situation and confront this woman with the issues.
I would definitely bring it up with him. No need to be sneaky about it , just flat out say that I was looking through your email and saw that you were going to lunch today with D. Why didn't you tell me? Keep it as non-confrontrational as possible, but I think it is something he should have told you.
There's two things that I take away from this. The first is that your husband knows you're uncomfortable around the woman. There's no potential for cheating but there is potential to make you uncomfortable. It doesn't seem like a betrayal that he hid this from you.
BUT... this "church" of theirs? Seems manipulative, controlling, and as others have said, somewhat cult-like. Your gut was right about them and I think it's not just dangerous for his relationship with you, but his own personal autonomy, to be involved with people like that. I can understand that she's a maternal figure for him, but it's really important not to get sucked into an atmosphere like that. The way they treat people who are in vs people who are out, the way they expect more and more, and are telling you how you should behave around your husband? To me, that's big flashing lights and it is important to make sure neither you nor he gets caught up in that.
@maybee...it seems odd that he knew about this lunch date for a while and didn't even bring it up in casual conversation. My advice would be to call him out on it...point blank. Yeah you were snooping but your husband is still having contact with a woman who tried to come between your marriage. He should have unfriended her on FB the moment she unfriended you. She is still "speakiing into your life" through your husband and that is even MORE cause for concern b/c now you aren't a party to those conversations. I understand that your husband has had ties with this woman for a long time but you are married now. Either he is in the marriage 100% or he isn't. That means cutting people that disrespect your spouse out of the equation...period.
To all the bees who have mentioned that this house church seems cultish....I agree! And so does my husband actually (though he didn't before). He found a list of top 8 traits of cults and we agreed that this house church fit 7 out of 8. We've been on the same page and in agreement about these issues since we've seen their reaction to us leaving, which is why this threw me off. It makes me wonder if he's having second thoughts about leaving.
2Peasinapod -- unfortunately that's not an option. I don't have a car, plus I rarely go out to eat just by myself so it would be a dead giveaway if I walked in to a restaurant. Plus I don't know where exactly they're meeting because she's picking him up from work.
Sheydenise -- He initiated the e-mailing and the meeting. At first i thought that, too, that he was going to talk to her about the issues, which made me feel somewhat okay with it, but then in the later e-mails he was talking about how much he was looking forward to seeing her and I had this sinking feeling that he might not bring up the issues at all.
DemoDreamer -- unfortunately, i can't ask him because he's going there straight from work. He told me he'd probably be working a shorter day today, but I have to leave for work before he'd be back. I do plan on texting him on my way to work (he'll be at lunch at that point) and asking him how his day is going and if he's still at work or if he's on his way home, and hopefully he'll tell me the truth. I've never had a problem with him lying to me, and only once has he just not told me something that he did (and later he did tell me).
kjpugs -- I agree that him living with them has tainted his view of them. Plus he's had a lot of family issues so they were family to him in that time. I know in that sense it was good for him, but unfortunately it really blinded him to their faults too. He seems to have "seen the light" so to speak since we left and moved here, but I'm afraid that perhaps his latest correspondance with the head of that house church network has made him second-guess things again.
Arachna -- I agree that him staying friends with people from that church isn't a problem. In fact, I'm still friends with some of them, too. But this woman, in particular, being in leadership there, is one of the primary sources of conflict and was the one who said the most hurtful/direspectful/untrue thigns to and about me. i wouldnt' even have so much of a problem with him meeting with her, even, if he'd told me, but this issue with her is something that we've been talking about for the past month or so and we even talked about the fact that she was in town right now, so it would have made sense for him to say something about wanting to meet with her and especially once he'd made plans about it.
I agree that this church sounds a bit like a cult. The church members sound like they are essentially trying to break up your marriage. This woman sounds very manipulative. All this facebook stuff is very childish on her part. I would tell her that she is interfering with your marriage and to back off. Have you talked to the pastor at your church about this?
As a disclaimer, I don't really identify as a "Christian" per se, but am definitely a spiritual person. In my opinion, you and your husband's priorities should be: 1) God; 2) each other. You should make this clear to your husband.
I know this woman was a mother figure to him and that she is important to him... but I beleive even the Bible says that YOU are his family now and YOU need to come first.
I'm sorry you're dealing with this. I've been involved with these types of church groups before that see to care more about controlling their members than they do about allowing their members to follow God's calling in their lives. It can be so hard to break free from them, especially if that is where your circle of friends is. When I had to leave one of these groups I felt guilty, sad, and despite being miserable I kept going back to try to make it work for over a year and a half before I was finally able to leave. The one thing I kept thinking was that, outside of worship services these people were friendly people. They also seemed to genuinely care about me. It took me a very long time to realize that they may have thought they cared about me, but if they really cared about me they wouldn't pressure me to say in a place where I felt like God was calling me to leave. Your husband is probably experiencing all this right now.
You need to talk to him about this. Yes, there is probably going to be fall out from you snooping. You're going to have to be willing to accept that he will probably be angry at you, you'll have to sincerely apologize, and you may need to let him cool off before you're even able to talk about the church thing because its important to make sure that the two of you can discuss this without other emotions clouding the discussion.
You need to make him see that this woman does not care about him. If she did care about him, she would be doing everything she could to help build up your marriage, rather than cause problems in it. If she truly cared, she was say that it is important for both of you to find a church that will build you up as individuals and as husband and wife. Her understanding of what makes a good marriage is just so out of whack, I can't believe it! Even if she does believe in the whole "wives submit to your husbands" thing, shouldn't she also believe that it would be the responsibility of the husband to find a place where both members of the marriage were being spiritually fed? When I was leaving the toxic church environment I was in, I kept trying to separate the people from the church, and I thought I could still be friends with individuals outside of the church environment. It can't happen. When someone is so involved with one of these cult-like organizations, it infects them. They can't just be your friend, and they can't accept that it might be right for anyone to leave. It may be very painful for him to lose these relationships, but he needs to realize that it must be a clean break for the sake of both of you.
But at the same time, it is also something that he may have to realize himself, in his own time. In the meanwhile, he needs to know that he has to stand up for you first, and it is not ok to be friends with someone who is so disrespectful of you.
Good luck, and let us know how it goes. I'm glad you at least got out of that church...
i would have BIG PROBLEMS with this lunch date, after reading the back story. This doesn't sound like a church, but a cult. and a mean one at that. It sounds like he's being manipulated, and you're being severely disrespected. I would talk to him immediately and ask to go to lunch with them. You are a unit, especially in situations like this. It's troublesome that even with your history and the pattern of disrepect toward you that your husband insists on being a part of this church and speaking to this woman. Sorry, but it sounds like he's disrespecting you too.
Just wrote an update, but I posted it separately so I could add a poll:
Jamaicabride -- that's my concern. He says that she isn't trying to get him to come back and she's not trying to bring division to our marriage, but she's always worrked through really subtle manipulation that he never picked up on. I'm afraid of that being the case again, especially if there continues to be private communication apart from me (which he says there won't be...).
Greenleafmountain -- thanks so much for sharing a little bit about your experience! It helps to know that I'm not alone in this. I think that's pretty accurate of what my husband is going through right now, too. He says we won't ever go back unless BOTH of us felt that God was calling us there (not gonna happen on my end :-P), but he wants to stay on friendly terms, particularly with the branch of the house church that's in our city (which is actually the larger "parent" church of the house church we had all the problems with). In general, they really are nice people (except maybe D. -- I have trouble seeing her as even friendly in a surfacy way) and I'm all for different churches working together despite they're differences, but it's hard because of the personal hurt and the manipulation. I'm afraid of them influencing my husband again so I'm wary of maintaining even a general friendship with them. When you said "They can't just be your friend, and they can't accept that it might be right for anyone to leave" that seems so true! But you're also right in that he probably needs to figure that out himself. and unfortunately, it may take further hurt and drama to convince him....
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So yesterday I was snooping (I admit it) and discovered that my husband has been e-mailing a woman from a church we used to go to and they're planning to meet for lunch today. It's 11:30 and he's yet to mention this to me (hes' been planning it since Sunday morning).
Now before I go any further, I have to clarify. This woman is NOT a potential romantic interest for him. That's not the issue. She's married and in her 50's (my husband is 27). She's a former pastor-ish of ours and was a mother-figure for him at one time.
But here's the problem (in a nutshell...background to follow):
1) He's hiding this lunch date
2) He seems ok just haning out with her (not to mention still being friends on facebook) after what she said to me and how she treated me
3) She's acting like it's perfectly fine to be his friend, be part of his life, meet with him to talk, and treat him like a son, while rejecting me and treating me like an outcast and making it clear that she doesn't want even a casual relationship with me. I thought that, as a married couple, we come as a packaged deal now?
So here's the background story:
My husband lived with this couple for a year before we started dating and was part of their house church. He then left their church, came to mine, and shortly afterwards we started dating. I had been to that particular house church before but had issues with it. I'd thought about joining, but felt like God said not to, but because I had a number of friends there, I would go to visit occasionally. Whenever I was there, no one from the church would speak to me or even acknowledge that I was there. It was awkward, to say the least. I asked some of my friends there about it and was told that the house church is looking for committed people. If someone isn't committed, they won't invest any time in them because it's not worth it. So I stopped going at all.
Fast forward a year. My now-husband and I start dating and we go back to the house church occassionally to hang out (because he considers them family). All of a sudden, because I'm his new "girl" people talk to me. Hmm.
We get married, house church is still all supportive. And then suddely, a month after we get married, my husband decides he wants to start going back to the house church weekly. He promises that he has no intentions of leaving our other churches but a couple weeks later suggests that we should. We argue about this for 5 months (really bleh time).
In the midst of this arguing, we're still going to the house church weekly. They pressure us to leave our other church and commit there. They also pressure me to "submit" to my husband and do what he wants, regardless of how I feel about it. I struggle and pray and talk to many friends and mentors but still fill VERY uneasy about joining this church. I continue to insist that we keep praying and talking until we can come to an agreement on what church we should be part of. The house church continues to pressure me to do the 'godly' thing and submit to my husband's will, as well as pressuring me to submit to their "authority". There's a lot of manipulation going on and they subtly push themselves between me and my husband. Not so healthy for our marriage.
Finally, my husband prays about it and God shows him how destructive his attatchent to this church is. He makes the decision that we should leave. We meet with the couple in charge of the church (including this woman he's meeting with today) and tell them that we feel called away from the church, but don't really go into details about why.
Shortly afterwards, I notice that this woman -- I'll just call her D -- had deleted me as a friend on facebook. Oddly enough, she was still friends with my husband. I kind of pushed it aside, but several weeks later, after consulting my husband, sent her a brief e-mail asking her why she'd deleted me (and not my husband) and stating that we didn't intend to cut them out of our lives even though we were no longer part of their church. She responded by saying that "you didn’t trust me to speak into your life" and "I was just respecting your wishes." I wrote back and tried to clarify where I was and what I was feeling in all this and asked if we could meet in person to talk about it before we moved (we were in the process of moving half way across the country). She refused. So I tried to talk things through on facebook, but she said she doesn't have "these kinds of conversations" and to just let it rest. Finally, a month ago, I gave up on it, but it's bothered me because she's stayed friends with my husband and periodically writes very nice encouraging comments on his wall.
And meanwhile we hear rumors of things being said at the house church about me and my "issue with authority". We contact the head of the house church network, who lives in our city, and ask to meet with him to talk about one of these comments (which we were told came from him). He denied the comment and refused to meet with us. More drama.
So now, D is in town visiting her family and they're meeting for lunch. My husband initiated this meeting and at first I thought maybe he was going to address some of the things being said. But the later e-mails made it sound like he just wanted to hang out with her while she was in town. And why wouldn't he say something to me? I've given him tons of opportunities today, but he seems to be deliberately hiding it.
I'm hoping he'll tell me so we can talk about it, but am I out of line in flipping out over this lunch thing?
Ugh.....