Holly Welker - Baring Witness: 36 Mormon Women Talk Candidly about Love, Sex, and Marriage

Baring Witness

Figure 1. Daniel and Stephanie Lauritzen, March 2007, Salt Lake City, Utah

Stephanie writes: When we were first married and both active members, I took comfort in this image. We were small parts of a big eternal plan, and that plan, like the temple, was far more striking and impressive than the two tiny humans before it. Later, I saw that huge temple as oppressive. Daniel and I are so small compared to our surroundings that we become almost featureless. We could be any Mormon couple, molded into idealized carbon copies with identical gender roles and spiritual paths.

Now Im at peace with it all. Mormonism is who I was. Im happy for the version of my past self who was thrilled to be married in the temple, but even happier with the current self who was brave enough to walk away.

36 Mormon Women Talk Candidly
about Love, Sex, and Marriage

Edited by Holly Welker

Portions of I Do to You and You and You
by Nancy Ellsworth was previously published under a
different title and in a different form by Doves & Serpents
at http://www.dovesandserpents.org/wp/2012/gp-the=everlasting-covenant/. Reprinted with permission.

2016 by Holly Welker
of the University of Illinois
All rights reserved
Manufactured in the United States of America
1 2 3 4 5 C P 5 4 3 2 1

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Welker, Holly, editor.

Title: Baring witness: 36 Mormon women talk candidly about love, sex, and marriage / edited by Holly Welker.

Other titles: Baring witness: thirty-six Mormon women talk candidly about love, sex, and marriage

Description: Urbana; Chicago; Springfield: University of Illinois Press, [2016] | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2015047428 (print) | LCCN 2015049981 (ebook) | ISBN 9780252040344 (cloth : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780252081781 (pbk. : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780252098598 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Women in the Mormon Church. | Mormon women. | Marriage. | MarriageReligious aspectsMormon Church.

Classification: LCC BX 8643.w66 B 37 2016 (print) | LCC BX 8643.w66 (ebook) | DDC 289.3082dc23

LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015047428

For Marilyn, my mother

HOLLY WELKER

HEATHER K. OLSON BEAL

A wife comes to terms with her husbands loss of faith in Mormonismand in their temple marriage

HEIDI BERNHARD-BUBB

A couple learns to love each other despite having made very different choices about the church

AMY SORENSEN

A wife explores the languages of conflict and reconciliation in her enduringly rocky but still enduring marriage

MARILYN BUSHMAN-CARLTON

A woman married in 1969 comes up against the problems of patriarchy in her marriage, then finds a way through the difficulties thanks to second-wave feminism and a sympathetic husband

MELISSA G.

A wifes obsessive compulsive disorder nearly destroys a previously happy marriage

STEPHANIE LAURITZEN

A couple mourns the ways a wifes loss of faith changes their expectations for their marriage

KIRA OLSON

An ambitious young woman feels trapped by being a housewife, but finds happiness on her own terms

TIFFANY MOSS

During an unhappy stint as a missionary and longing for the happiness and stability the gospel is supposed to offer, a young LDS woman thinks the best way to achieve them is to propose to a male missionary she barely knows

NAOMI WATKINS

A devout LDS woman reflects on the lack of a contingency plan for women who dont marry

CHRISTMAS JONES

A single Mormon wonders what to do about sex

MARIE BRIAN

A Utah County native realizes she has met the man of her dreams when he fails to ask her on a creative date

KATHERINE TAYLOR ALLRED

A faithful Mormon couple considers the temple sealing ceremony and decides not to marry in the temple

LIA HADLEY

A young woman overcomes her anxieties about traditional marriage to shape her own unconventional wedding and marriage

MARY ELLEN ROBERTSON

The standard LDS marriage advice doesnt help a woman navigate marriage to a husband who takes longer to find than she expected and is part of a package deal with four teenage kids

KATRINA BARKER ANDERSON

A Mormon bride marries a divorced Mormon manand is told she cant marry him in the temple

ERIN HILL

How a wifes devotion to religion destroyed her marriageand how her divorce helped her understand her religion

BERNADETTE ECHOLS

Two cousins receive very different treatment after they lose their husbands, one to death, the other to divorce

NANCY ELLSWORTH

A wife comes to terms with her husbands desire to have multiple wives

MICHELLE WEEKS

A woman finds herself with a husband who will pray with her but not talk with her

BRITTNY GOODSELL

Infidelity and sexual dysfunction destroy a marriage

KATE PORTER

Mormon ideals and expectations about family undermine the relationship of two LDS lesbians

AMY WILLIAMS

A young woman unsure about her fianc asks God for a signand ends up in a violent car crash the night before her wedding, which does indeed presage the marriages striking failure

VIV B.

An abused wife leaves her husband of twenty-nine years on Valentines Day after a particularly brutal beating the night before

ANITA TANNER

A wife faces widowhood far too early

LYNNE BURNETT

A Mormon wife realizes and admits shes gay, faces cancer, and ends up married to her best friend

JARI CARLTON CANNON

After a first marriage cut short by a husbands porn addiction, a woman learns to trust her new husband when he helps her run a marathon she is unprepared for

C. L. HANSON

A young woman finds herself trapped by Mormon expectations about marriage and sex, even after she leaves the churchbut divorce means she gets a second chance at happiness

MARGARET M. TOSCANO

A Mormon feminist reflects on the sacrifices she and her husband made for their 35-year marriageand on the growth it brought them

GINA COLVIN

A young New Zealander learns via a disastrous first marriage that religious devotion will not save a marriage between incompatible spouses, but also learns that some marriages can seem so miraculous that it feels like they were arranged in heaven

JOANNA BROOKS

The Book of Mormon Girl marries a nice Jewish boy

JAMIE DAVIS

A couple confronts LDS assumptions about interracial marriagesand flourishes

REBEKAH ORTON

A young wife considers how the changes in her body and her weight wrought by three pregnancies affect her sense of self and feelings about her marriage to an effortlessly skinny husband

ALISA CURTIS BOLANDER

Advised to earn less money and education than her husband, a bride realizes that deliberate subordination is not a good recipe for an equitable marriage

DEJA EARLEY

A good Mormon girl manages to save herself for marriageto a cigarette-smoking Catholic

RACHEL WHIPPLE

A thirty-something woman marvels that, as a determined-to-marry nineteen-year-old, she managed to marry the right manand considers the work it takes to make her marriage succeed, even with all that luck