Christian TradWife Lori Alexander's idea of a happy marriage is horrifying
The Christian blogger celebrated her marriage by saying that, when she first met her now-husband, "I felt like he stole my joy."
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I’ve done it. I’ve upset Christian blogger and professional mommy-shamer Lori Alexander (a.k.a. The Transformed Wife) because I dared to quote her accurately and that always makes her look bad.
If you’re not familiar with her, Alexander is a fundamentalist Christian who dedicates her life to making a #TradWife lifestyle seem as unappealing as possible.
Like when she said all women should let their husbands have sex with them whenever they feel like it because it’s a woman’s job to obey her husband. In her mind, there’s no such thing as marital rape because a woman should always consent to her husband’s wishes in the bedroom.
She also compared obligatory sex to cleaning a toilet: It was just something that had to be done.
When you clean your toilet, you have the blessing of a clean toilet. When you're not depriving your husband, you have a blessing of a husband that's very happy with you for not depriving them.
She also said in that same video a woman should always say yes to sex with her husband because, “you know, how long does it take?”
A true romantic, that one.
That’s not all. She has said women should not have careers outside the home, that women shouldn’t become doctors (“I grieve for the lack of grandchildren they will most likely have because of this decision”) and that they’re taking up “positions in medical schools that should belong to men,” that paid family leave and subsidized childcare are bad for America because those policies “make it easier for women to work away from their homes,” that women shouldn’t be cops or in the military and that she can’t believe men are attracted to women in those roles, and that working women are at least partially to blame to the obesity crisis.
She also said, since divorce is never an option in her mind, that a woman whose husband is a child sex predator should still be allowed to spend time with their kids as long as there’s a chaperone around “so the children could still have a relationship with him.”
I keep having to remind people that she’s a real human being because her website and social media usually read like a parody. She says all the things you would say if you were trying to mock the very idea of a Christian mommy who wants to tell you how to live your life.
Recently, she made an 11-minute video about her own marriage that was so cartoonishly awful, I couldn’t help but share excerpts of it online.
For example, she said “marriage should not be built upon emotions” and that the sort of passion you see in Hollywood movies doesn’t exist in real life. When she first met her husband in college (I recognize the irony), she thought he was intelligent, but “I was not attracted physically to him… I mean, he was tall, but I didn't think he was handsome.”
Even when she became mildly attracted to him, “there weren't those butterflies and the things that I thought should be there with a man that I was supposedly in love with.”
When he asked her to marry him—no ring, no special proposal—she said “sure,” but added, “I wasn't that excited though.”
She wondered why she wasn’t feeling anything. But then they were apart for a bit and she missed him, so that was that. It must have been love.
They got married but, even then, she still felt no real spark:
… We argued a lot about everything. We didn't get along that great ‘cause I was so critical, and all I saw was my parents arguing and quarreling, so…
I wasn't that way with other people. It was just so frustrating. I felt like he stole my joy. I don't know what was wrong with me.
And so I went on my wedding day and… none of those butterflies in excitement. I'd go to my bridal showers and none of that. It was like this emptiness to me. It's like, “Why don't I have that in me? I don't like this! I want to have butterflies and so excited!”…
We discussed that… divorce would never be in our vocabulary.
So we got married. And, um, the first 20 years were rough because I was still critical. But we were committed to each other. Very, very committed. Divorce was never an option.
I need to remind you at this point that she’s describing why people should admire her marriage.
She felt bitter before the marriage began. This was a man who “stole my joy” and gave her zero butterflies even on their wedding day. That led to a rough “20 years.” 20 YEARS! These people spent 20 years in a marriage that she reluctantly accepted all because they promised not to divorce. As if they deserve some kind of award for sticking it out.
20 years may actually be an underestimate because she’s posted before that “If I based intimacy with my husband with how I was feeling, we wouldn’t have had sex for 30 years.”
She has also said on social media that sex is physically painful for her—”sex hurts me”—but that’s irrelevant since it makes her husband happy:
To be clear, Alexander says she’s happy now. She only tells us those troubling details to explain how it all turned out fine for her. She’s been married for 44 years and her only bar for a good marriage appears to be longevity. It’s the quantity of the marriage, not the quality, that matters to her.
Do I believe she’s happy? It doesn’t matter. It’s not my marriage. I’m bothered by what she says only because she likes to think of herself as a mentor to other women.
Her message is clear (and disturbing): Don’t worry if you’re unhappy, or not attracted to your partner, or not feeling Hollywood-style passion for your spouse. Just stick it out and it’ll turn out okay, I guess, because that’s what God wants.
She closes the video with lines that feels ripped straight out of a horror movie: “I'm going to be going to church soon, and I will learn in silence with all submission as God commands women to do. I have zero problem with any of God commands because He is good and His ways are perfect. Bye-bye.”
Horrifying stuff. And a troubling example of what a good Christian marriage is supposed to look like.
Anyway. That was an 11-minute video and I clipped it into a 97-second segment to share online. The tweet went viral enough that it broke through the bubble of atheists who tend to follow me.
Now, Lori Alexander is furious, writing about me in a post:
A men decided to edit my video by taking out phrases and piecing them together to make it seem as if I never found my husband attractive nor loved him… He is a liar and deceiver just like his father the devil.
She added on X/Twitter:
This person edited my video to spread slander about me… My husband and I have been married almost 44 years and love each other deeply. I’ve been attracted to him since we began dating over 45 years ago!… Don’t believe everything you hear.
Like I said, maybe she finds her husband attractive and loves him today. But she herself admitted that’s not really how she felt when she met him, or married him, or went through the first 20 years (or more?) of their marriage. Her love story is everyone else’s nightmare. She’s so afraid of a divorce that she’s willing to sacrifice her own happiness to avoid one, and she just rationalizes it by pretending that’s just part of the package deal if you’re obeying God.
No one should aspire to her brand of Christian love.
No one should treat divorce like it’s a failure.
No one should accept unhappiness because their religion tells them it’s part of the Plan.
Quick side note: I was chatting with my former Patheos colleague Suzanne Titkemeyer who told me that, once, after writing about Lori, her husband Ken Alexander messaged her to complain about it.
No. Wait. I’m kidding. He messaged Suzanne’s husband to demand that he do a better job of controlling his wife. (Suzanne shared this message with me.)
I am hoping that you will be the gracious man of God who will help bring some sanity to all of this nonsense…
It is not too late for Suzanne to repent and hand her bitterness and hate over to God and be healed.
Needless to say, the goal of silencing Suzanne didn’t work out for Ken.
If this is the life this absurd woman has chosen for herself, then I have no sympathy for her. She appears to be someone who lives in a world beyond the reach of facts, reason, and self-esteem. The real problem, is the fact she would mandate her choices for all women if she had the power to do so. There is little chance she will ever see that perverted dream come true, but I find her mentality sickening.
Anyone else getting massive cope vibe from this woman?
What comes across loud and clear is that this is a woman who's trying desperately to pretend she's happy with a life that is making her miserable. All her trad wife-ing is nothing but a sad attempt at compensating for bad life choices that have left her ground down. Any time someone is that desperate to point at themselves and say, 'Look how HAPPY I am!', you can count on the fact that she's miserable. No one, not a single person, should take 'advice' from someone so lacking in self-awareness.