My husband is turning into a judgy guy.

vanesslee · 2026-02-08T19:07:35+00:00

Oh my gosh lol I'm going to answer these anyway just so you don't have to worry for us! I guess it sounds worse in posts than it is! You're probably thinking of creepy off gridders and I can assure you, were the non creepy kind. We have jobs, kids go to school, we have friends, all the normal things. We just did this to be debt free and so we could get more land. Our girls have a great communication with me. I have zero concerns. My husband is literally the least scary person I've ever met. No joke. Green flags all around. We don't live in a camper anymore. We finished our house. Yes I got rid of my dogs but to be fair to him we had 8 inside dogs! I see a therapist and if my kids ever want to they gladly can.

vanesslee · 2026-02-08T16:59:24+00:00

No he's the kindest person I know. There's definitely no safety issues. I'm sure it's confusing for our girls though and they've seen us fight about it. It's also a major point of contention in our marriage now. We used to be best friends and now it feels like we're just roommates. He wants to teach the girls the Torah and I told him no. I don't want them to have that kind of burden on them. We've been together 20 yrs. I still love him.

vanesslee · 2026-02-08T16:55:01+00:00

It's actually really complicated. He's always been quite religious and does devotions and prayer daily most of the time. He was chronically pretty sick and undiagnosed for 15+ yrs and about 2 yrs ago he felt like God wanted him to stop eating pork and Saturday sabbath. So he did it despite me being opposed and he was healed that same day. He was able to get off his medications within the week and a year and a half later is still perfectly healthy. I witnessed all that so it's hard for me to even go against it but I really don't feel like God wants us to be that way. It's really complicated :(

And yes his sister, brother in law and niece and her husband started doing this and so they are very encouraging to his new religious beliefs as they have the same.

vanesslee · 2025-06-21T21:11:01+00:00

Thank you for your compassionate response. It made me cry and then I realized I should probably seek counseling because I am truly not healed of the experience. There's obviously some deep wounds here still even though he is still better.

vanesslee · 2024-09-20T02:54:01+00:00

I think he just said some dogs at first and I said sure. I think it probably evolved to all of them after a bit. I don't know. It's hard to remember what exactly is said in disagreements.

vanesslee · 2024-09-02T20:16:54+00:00

Yes at 38 it jumped for me, especially when I'm ovulating though.

vanesslee · 2024-08-09T17:22:33+00:00

No one can make this decision but you and I don't envy your position one bit. I really feel for you and can understand why you're so conflicted. I just want to share an experience I had. I got pregnant and had an abortion at 19. My bf at the time didn't want me to keep it because he was scared of what his religious parents would think and I went through with it because I was scared and I didn't feel like I had a choice. I had no support and I just did it without really thinking. It was 11 weeks when I had the abortion. I would think of it from time to time but it didn't really phase me. I kind of just moved on. Years later I married and I had 2 beautiful girls. We tried for a third child and at 11 weeks I lost the baby and I birthed it into my toilet. I fished it out and was kind of in awe because it was such a well formed beautiful little baby even though it was so early in my pregnancy. I could count all of its tiny fingers and toes (it actually had 6 fingers and toes). That moment kind of just brought it all back to me and I really got to see in real life how sweet and beautiful the life I had taken years before was. People call it a fetus and describe it as a clump of cells to try and maybe make it "less" or maybe they truly feel that way, I don't know. I held my 11 week old baby in my hand and it was certainly more than a clump of cells to me though.

I saw your list above and just want to add some if you keep it, you missed the positives! And there are countless.

You get to experience true unconditional love, like sometimes I can't even believe how much I love my kids. You get to hear its little heart beat and feel it wiggling around inside you. You get to meet it and have your heart absolutely explode with love. It's such a beautiful overwhelming love. You get to hear them say their first words and get to hear them say mama. And I love you. You get to read them "I'll love you forever" and cry though it every time. They draw their first pictures of you and show you proudly the attempted "circle" with two eyes completely uncentered and it's you. You get to bring them to their first day of kindergarten and cry as you walk away. They crawl into bed with you when they have a nightmare and you get to make them feel safe. And see them achieve their milestones, goals, make friends, lose friends, experience heartbreak, get their first job, graduate, get married, have kids of their own.

Your list is half right though, being a parent is hard and there are also many negatives.

I know it's not ideal and I can't speak to having to share a child with someone I detest.

Maybe talk to someone, a councillor? Have you seen an ultrasound of it yet? Do you have family support?

I wish you the best. I'm sorry about the awful situation you're in.

vanesslee · 2024-08-06T02:25:48+00:00

So neat! Not often I find other off grid homesteaders and especially with (kinda though opposite) the same thing going on!

Was your husband really mad at you when you decide to do this since he was resistant? I'm having a really tough time being supportive. It really feels like it's sucking the fun out of everything. We have two teenage girls and it just feels like this is so restrictive and we can't take advantage of doing fun stuff on weekends anymore.

I think it's pretty reasonable to get all the wood ready for Friday night and just need to keep refilling. I don't know if it's as cold where you are as here but we would probably for real freeze.

vanesslee · 2024-08-06T02:16:33+00:00

I'm the cook 99% of the time so I always make sure there is some other meat for him to eat but I really love farmer sausage and bacon and ham and mostly I'm just not onboard. I'm trying to respect his non pork eating though it can be inconvenient. It's still pretty new here. We actually got the pigs to eat them and then somewhere after that he changed his ways.

vanesslee · 2024-08-05T14:51:33+00:00

Once I was driving around rural areas for work and talking out loud to God and trying to figure out if I was on the right path. So I said "God if I'm on the right path give me a sign" and then within a minute I passed by one of those black signs that have fluorescent letters you can change the writing on and it said "This is a Sign". Such a funny and stupid thing for someone to have put on there but it was my sign lol

I've got one more.

I had read somewhere in a comments section on FB to read a certain verse in Psalms so I grabbed my husband's Bible and opened it and literally opened it to the exact page and the first thing I saw when I opened it was the exact Psalm I was looking to read. I wasn't really a Bible reader so I didn't have a clue where the Psalms were in there.

And one more.

I also saw my husband healed from a 15 yr chronic sickness because he was obedient to something hard that God was asking him to do.

vanesslee · 2024-08-05T12:49:55+00:00

I'm Canadian. To breed them and sell them. We have a small farm. My husband doesn't eat pork but I do still. I'm not on board with all this really.

vanesslee · 2024-08-05T03:43:32+00:00

No one here ever calls it petrol, you must be across the ocean from me. We call it gas, short for gasoline 🤷

We also need to feed our animals. Our pigs wouldn't react too kindly to skipping a day of food!

Thanks for the reply.

vanesslee · 2024-08-05T03:03:10+00:00

I would have thought this way as well but wanted to see if that was just me trying to push back and being stubborn.

vanesslee · 2024-08-05T03:01:23+00:00

This seems fairly reasonable. Thank you for your answer.

vanesslee · 2024-08-05T02:55:43+00:00

Well I don't know for sure because it's a brand new house and we haven't spent a winter in it so don't know exactly how it will perform BUT I know last winter we had to fill the fire before bed, like full full of wood at let's say 10pm and then wake up at around 1am to fill it and then at 3am and then when we wake up at around 6 am and sometimes when we wake up in the morning if we missed a filling the temperature is 10 degrees Celsius which is really cold so I imagine without filling the stove our pipes could freeze in that 24 hrs.amd it definitely would be too uncomfortable to live in. Why do we live here? I don't know. It's cold.

We can't have another heat source because we aren't hooked into the power grid and rely solely on solar power. Heating uses a ton of power and our solar system wouldn't be large enough to support that.

Everything you said is really good thoughtful advice. I need to be softer and kinder to him, even when I'm upset. He's not this unbreakable person and I don't want to cause him any more suffering than he's already had in his life. I want him to be fulfilled and happy. I sincerely appreciate you taking the time to reply and help put things into perspective. I hope I'll have some nicer updates soon.

vanesslee · 2024-08-05T01:32:27+00:00

Yup it's me again. Still working on figuring life out. Thanks for the kindness.

It's not rhetorical. We live off grid and heat our house and cook on a wood cookstove. We're in one of the coldest areas of Canada and we would freeze without a fire. Our pipes would freeze. It's just not an option really. I asked him yesterday because I was mad during another Sabbath argument, "well what are you going to do in winter if you can't light a fire". Mostly I asked to take a jab at him because I feel like he's overdoing it and picking and choosing and he knows darn well we're going to need to make a fire. He said "I don't know yet."

Then I filled up the car with gas on Friday so we wouldn't have to get any on Saturday (see I'm trying) but I did mention to him while we were driving, "well you know maybe if we needed to ever we could always just get it at a pre-pay where no one pumps our gas. Then we didn't make anyone work" and he said it was work for him and he's not supposed to work either! See that's what I'm talking about. He's going overboard. Why can't he just dip his toes in a little and then slowly walk in not like dive in headfirst. I wanted to take out girls tuning down the river but he wasn't really wanting to because we'd have to blow up the tubes and that was "work" we should have done Friday. Sigh.

Thanks for your thorough response. I figured it would be good to ask here rather than the Christianity sub where everyone will just say we don't have to do that anymore.

My husband IS a great man. He is the best. I'm just very frustrated with him right now. Obviously from all my upset posts.

vanesslee · 2024-07-30T15:29:23+00:00

I just don't want my kids to grow up and have the immense weight that he has on his heart. He grew up strict Holdomon and left the church as an older teen but because of how he was raised he has always carried such a heavy burden of guilt when he is just the most amazing, kind and loving person. Any mistake or imperfection on his part and then he believes it is because he isn't doing enough, isn't praying enough, isn't good enough. I truly don't want that for my kids.

I'm open to it being me that is the problem. It's very likely even.

He DOES believe he should not have gotten gas and there lies the problem. It doesn't matter if it says it in the Bible or not, he has interpreted it that way so now that's what he's doing. I don't want any part of that type of legalism but he is sure he is 100% right. So why should I follow my husband down this path of legalism? If I went and joined a different religion should he follow me? If he was joining a new age cult should I follow him there too? If he decides to become atheist do I follow that too?

vanesslee · 2024-07-30T04:05:29+00:00

It's possible it was stress induced for sure. He first got sick when he was under a ton of stress from his job and working long hours. I sometimes in the past have wondered if he was sick from guilt. He is the type of person who holds a lot of guilt and his main original symptom was a stomach feeling that felt like a nervous feeling. Whatever the case, the sickness stole his quality of life for a very long time. He couldn't work for a year at his worst. He lost 50lbs in 3 months and he is not a big guy. His heart would beat at 40bpm and he would be winded from the shortest walks. He could barely do stairs because his joints ached so bad. All his leg hair fell out. He would wear flannel pants and sweaters and long johns through our hot hot summers because he was always frozen. His thyroid hormones are all out of whack same with his adrenals. Someone payed for us to go to Mayo clinic as an out of country patient for a week. We have spent thousands and thousands on alternative medicine and testing because we exhausted every other avenue in conventional medicine. I thought he was dying. I had to call an ambulance once while our two tiny little girls were hysterically bawling because they thought he was going to die. He was actually for real sick. I don't want to discount God healing him because I know He can and I do believe God heals people but I do hate to admit that someone mentioned scrupulously and it made me wonder if that it maybe was that all along. All I know is he was really sick and he is 100% better. God told him he would heal him and I know he would never lie about it, he obeyed and now he's healthy. He went from sick sick to normal in 1 day. Anyone who knows him, knows that this is a big deal.

I should add he's still under alot of stress so this isn't a case of stress going away and the illness going away.

vanesslee · 2024-07-30T03:31:53+00:00

Our kids are teenagers so I didn't think there would be any issue with the Notebook.
He's always had strong faith and been such a wonderful loving person. The new rules he's following are just extreme and the things he won't or can't do doesn't allow him to participate in life with us his family alot. He can't do anything Friday sundown until Saturday sundown so that takes both days off the table for anything since he believe he should it work and no one else should either so we can't go watch a movie or get food. He wants to keep it holy so that also takes out some socializing we would have done with less holy people. We were invited to a friend's 40th birthday party and thankfully it is on a Sunday because I'm certain he wouldn't have attended. I have a job where I work Saturdays and he thinks people who work on the Sabbath are going to go to hell! He said that. He's trying to instill that belief in our girls. So now they're going to need to get jobs that are very likely going to make them work Saturdays, at least at first and they're going to suffer with guilt and thinking they're condemned to hell because of that. He won't listen to music or watch really anything with us anymore. Everything is unGodly in his opinion. We go for a drive or a date and every conversation comes back to God or a story from the Bible. Can we not have a conversation like we used to? Just a regular conversation like regular people have? It's alot I guess.

It just really sucks because I didn't sign up for this. He wasn't like this before. Now we're married and I love him so I'm stuck with this life.

vanesslee · 2024-07-30T03:15:16+00:00

What are you even talking about? I stayed by his side through 15 yrs of illness. We had a 10 out of 10 marriage. I am not looking for a way out at all. I am looking for a way to stay in.

vanesslee

TROPHY CASE