Anger

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

Page 230 of 447 · 20 per page

• From Take Back Your Life: Recovering from Cults and Abusive Relationships (2000)

  Rebecca Bruce, a former member of a political cult that is still quite active, wrote the following poem. It speaks for itself. Anger Risin' [image file=img/page0166_0000.svg] [image file=img/page0166_0001.svg] [image file=img/page0166_0002.svg] [image file=img/page0166_0003.svg] [image file=img/page0166_0004.svg] [image file=img/page0166_0005.svg] [image file=img/page0167_0000.svg] Rebecca now works as a clinical social worker in a primary care clinic. She speaks out about cults and works with people affected by cults. Her poem illustrates the kind of raw anger many former members feel. This anger is better expressed in such productive ways as this rather than being bottled up and turned into depression or suicidal tendencies. Remember, your anger may be difficult for family, friends, and, sometimes, even therapists to accept. You maybe urged to forgive and forget. Former members who were brought up to hide or deny negative feelings may not have the tools or experience to know how to express this potentially healing emotion. Former cult members "need to realize that what was done to them was wrong," writes Michael Langone. " [They] must be allowed-encouraged even-to express appropriate moral outrage. The outrage will not magically eliminate the abuse and its effects. Nor will it necessarily bring the victimizer to justice. But it will enable victims to assert their inner worth and their sense of right and wrong by condemning the evil done to them. Moral outrage fortifies good against formidable evil. Even implicitly denying victims' need to express moral outrage shifts the blame from victimizers to victims. Perhaps that is why so many victims are disturbed by `detached' therapists or `objective' scientific researchers. They interpret the detachment or `objectivity' as implicit blaming [of] themselves."9 People whose cult involvement was particularly traumatic share experiences and traits with people who were physically and/or sexually abused in childhood. Both have been victimized by those they depended on and trusted. Also, many cults physically, emotionally, and/or sexually abuse their members. Anger at such abuse can be expressed in positive ways and transformed into empowerment. The following activities have proven helpful to others: • Keep a diary and write about your anger and other strong feelings. Former members have consistently said that writing about their experiences has been one of the most helpful vehicles for working through their feelings. • Write a letter to the cult leader. Tell him off. It is not necessary to send it, specifically if doing so would put you in danger. You don't have to mail the letter to feel the positive effects of having written it. • Talk to someone about your feelings, someone who will understand and empathize. • Join a gym, take a kickboxing class, or engage in some kind of regular physical activity or sport. Releasing endorphins helps to resolve pent-up emotions. • Imagine scenarios in which your injured pride is restored. Don't, however, act out by doing something illegal or dangerous to yourself or anyone else. • When the time feels right, speak out publicly about your experience. Doing so has been therapeutic for many former cult members.

• From Worried about Everything Because I Pray about Nothing (2022)

  It takes honesty to confront the things holding you back. But as my Peloton instructor, Jess Sims, always says, “No ego, amigo!” Whether you prefer to change up your prayer routine all the time or find something that works for you for decades to come, that’s up to you. But don’t not pray. That would be the only failure. TEN How to dodge ducksThere are few forces on earth that can make California drivers slow down, much less stop en masse. So if you’re driving down the freeway and suddenly see a wall of brake lights in the distance, you know there is a real problem. It’s probably either a) road construction, b) a wreck, or c) a mother duck and her ducklings crossing the road. That last one really happens, by the way. Ducks with death wishes occasionally try to cross I-5, the main interstate on the West Coast, triggering traffic jams and news reports. Why are they crossing the road? Nobody knows. (Except the chicken, possibly, and he’s not talking.) There is something inherently frustrating about traffic jams, regardless of what causes them. And I don’t think I’m the only one to feel this, but as you are inching along, surrounded by hundreds or thousands of other frustrated motorists, you start to question the existence of humanity. Or at least the competency of the civil engineers responsible for the roads. Traffic is meant to flow . Vehicles are designed to move . Here’s my point: If traffic isn’t moving on the freeway, something is blocking it. And until that thing is taken care of, we’re going to be stuck in a traffic jam, listening to podcasts (if I’m alone) or the Kidz Bop playlist (if I’m with the family), while time ticks by. In the same way, prayers were meant to flow, to move, to go somewhere. So if our prayer life is not flowing, something is probably blocking it. But instead of roadwork or ducks, that something is usually internal, subtle, easy to miss. Prayer comes naturally to humans. The practice of praying is present in religions the world over. Prayer is simply talking, after all. Humans learn to talk early in life and then never really shut up. It only makes sense we would talk to God too. Since prayer is natural, if we aren’t praying regularly, there is usually a reason. If we want to pray more, we need to figure out what is getting in the way. Often, though, we don’t take the time to figure out what the obstacle is. We just feel guilty for not praying more. Why do we feel guilty? Because we know we should pray more. We’ve heard about prayer, read about prayer, maybe even tried prayer. We might even really like praying. But we just don’t do it as often as we wish we would or know we should. We find ourselves praying when we need something, of course.

• From Take Back Your Life: Recovering from Cults and Abusive Relationships (2000)

  However, for people who were in a one-on-one or family cult, information on abuse, battering, and betrayal trauma is more salient because of their personal relationship with the leader. People leaving family cults also have a unique departure experience. When a person leaves a larger cult and most one-on-one cults, often she will have a fractured community to return to: some family, old friends, and so on. In contrast, someone leaving a family cult is leaving behind everyone and everything they knew, which is similar to the situation of someone born or raised in a cult. Such individuals will benefit from the information in Part Three as well as other sections throughout the book, depending on their experiences. One of the most important aspects of recovering from abusive cultic relationships-whether family, no-name, or one-on-one-is for the former member to come to a deep understanding of the source of the leader's power and then learn to reframe it. The examples in this chapter amply demonstrate how members tend to idealize and idolize their leaders. In most cases, they are unable to see that the leaders are troubled individuals with dominant personalities. In Chapter 4, we learned that most cult leaders have personality disorders, as defined by the DSM-IV. These disorders have been identified as Antisocial, Narcissistic, Borderline, and Paranoid. People with these personality disorders have fixed and rigid ways of looking at the world and interpreting their interactions with others. Most people with these personality disorders are not "pure" types who fit all the DSM criteria; instead, they have a mix of attributes. Someone who is primarily antisocial (sociopathic), for example, is most likely to purposefully and knowingly manipulate his or her victims. Such leaders tend to study how to manipulate people; they premeditate their domination and manipulation. Narcissists, on the other hand, feel deeply humiliated, envious, angry, and empty. They keep those feelings at bay by acting haughty, contemptuous, grandiose, and controlling. If they aren't able to keep an audience or garner all the attention, they fall apart and feel awful. People with borderline personalities are hypersensitive to abandonment. They can idealize someone one minute, but at the slightest hint of abandonment, they can go into a blaming rage. In abusive relationships, this oscillation keeps members hooked. Victims live for the so-called good times and blame themselves for their partner's rage. The leader (or dominant partner) and the victim both agree to blame the victim. The submissive person keeps trying to better herself with the belief that if she can be better, then only good times will reign. People with paranoid personalities live in a closed system of "us and them." All interpersonal conflicts are viewed as antagonistic challenges, as if other people are against them, lying, or not admitting the perceived real truth. Even when subordinates agree with them, paranoids can become suspicious about what their partners are "up to." Therefore, the relationship is never peaceful.

• From The Surrender: An Erotic Memoir (2004)

  This guy name-dropped God like they were buddies, and his heresies became my self-righteous obsession. Though invited to enter their bliss for a three-way, I simply couldn’t override my own intelligence and do it. Witnessing his religious arrogance in all its shameless glory, however, inspired my own libido to new heights, and every erection became a tangible victory over his troubled piety. Dressed in my red stilettos, fishnet stockings, and a thong, I invited him one night to come into my backyard. Camouflaged in my bushes, he spied through the bedroom window into the candlelight as I pranced, stripped, and touched myself. All was quiet but I could see his hypocrisy harden as his hand moved furiously back and forth on his cock. Was God watching now as my pussy took precedence over Him? I couldn’t have God myself, so I settled for treating Him like the competition. In fact, each time Born Again touched me in public, I felt a kind of religious potency emanating from my pussy. I was angry at Born Again for not being who he thought he was. And who I hoped he was. I wanted him to be for real, a real Man of God. Once again, I found myself not fucked by God but fucked over by His apostle. This man’s flaws shone all the brighter in the light of my massive expectations and subsequent frustration. I had, you see, loved him. A little. He couldn’t win with me, and eventually the games wore out and I ended our X-rated morality play. The Holy Fuck never took place. Perhaps this was how he kept things straight with his buddy. THE LAST BOYFRIEND Contrary to appearances, perhaps, I was by now finally beginning to acquire some semblance of romantic discipline. After the disappointment of the truck-driving, gun-toting, sex-addicted Republican Christian, it was time for the Volvo-leasing, pot-smoking, monogamous, left-wing atheist. And a liberal lesson in disappointment. I refused to mourn for the impossible Young Man and the crazy Christian. So I attempted the possible—a boyfriend with an out-of-control dick—and found this, too, impossible, but in a different way. There are two types of out-of-control dicks: the first one insatiable, the second merely undisciplined and poorly behaved. I prefer the former, but often found myself with the latter. In some strange, inexplicable throwback to my premarriage years, I had agreed to be monogamous with this guy after one mad make-out session on my couch on the first date. He asked and I delivered. Perhaps I was having a conventional moment of my own after the transcendent Trinity and the byzantine Christian affair. Naughtiness in the moment was definitely the most fun, the most erotic, but it had a price—the anxiety of impermanence.

• From The Lives of Great Christians (2007)

  B. When Luther returned to Wittenberg, he carried out a series of reforms, including vernacularization and simplification of the liturgy. He also married. IX. Luther faced opposition all around him and was quick to condemn his opponents. A. He called for the slaughter of peasants who revolted, in part based on what they understood Luther to mean about Christian freedom. B. He saw Erasmus as something of a vacillating coward and rather vehemently attacked him in a famous treatise called On the Bondage of the Will, a response to a work of Erasmus about free will. C. Luther met with the Swiss reformer Ulrich Zwingli at the end of the 1520s but was unable to form an agreement with him because of differences in their understanding of the Eucharist. X. Especially toward the end of his life, Luther viciously attacked Jews and their religion. A. In 1523, Luther had written about the Jews, urging compassion toward them and hoping for their conversion to Christianity. B. In 1542, Luther published Against the Jews and Their Lies, advocating the expulsion of Jews from Saxony or, at least, the burning of their synagogues and books. C. The 16 th century was not a tolerant time, and Luther’s powerful writings and strong personality show him in combat with everyone from Catholics to other Protestants to Jews. XI. Luther was larger than life, a man of great intellect and courage, but one who shared some of the worst traits of the era in which he lived and, indeed, magnified them. Essential Reading: Martin Luther, “95 Theses,” “An Appeal to the Ruling Class of German Nationality,” “The Pagan Servitude of the Church,” “The Freedom of a Christian,” in John Dillenberger, ed., Martin Luther: Selections from His Writings. Supplementary Reading: James Kittelson, Luther the Reformer. ©2007 The Teaching Company. 78 Martin Marty, Martin Luther. Questions to Consider: 1. How did intellectual matters and personal experiences come together to form the Martin Luther who led the break from the Roman Church? 2. From what you have learned in the lectures on John Hus and other late- medieval figures, why do you think a serious Christian, such as Luther, might find himself so vehemently opposed to so many practices of the Catholic Church? 3. How can we understand that a man so in love with God and so knowledgeable of scripture could be so intolerant of other Christians and Jews and doubt their good will or the possibility for their salvation? ©2007 The Teaching Company. 79 Lecture Eighteen John Wesley and the Origins of Methodism

• From Emotional Inheritance (2022)

  She needed a husband because she was too frightened to be alone. I feel so bad for her for not having the life she wanted. I used to blame my stepfather for that. I guess I wanted him to make her happy so I wouldn’t have to.” Alice speaks fast and hardly takes any breaks. She plays with her fingernails. I notice that she bites her cuticles until they bleed. “Don’t get me wrong. The main person I blamed for destroying my mother’s life was my biological father,” she continues. “I hated him. My mom, by the way, was never angry at him, not after she found out that he had had an affair, not even after he had left her for that other woman. She used to say that he broke her heart and that his abandonment of her hurt so much because it was a reminder of her own mother’s death when she was eight years old. My mom never got over what happened with my dad. He was awful. Did I tell you that he had another family?” she says and glances at her watch. I find myself out of breath. Alice keeps talking and I am overwhelmed with feelings that I don’t have a moment to digest. I assume that I am feeling what she has always experienced. She helps me get to know her from the inside when, like her, I feel overloaded with information. I have no way to stop things from happening, to understand, or to process the information . It is the end of our first session and I’m left with many questions. I recognize the implicit connections Alice makes between her mother’s traumatic past, her own bad luck, and the wish to save her unborn daughter from the same future. Alice and I plan to meet twice a week. Alice comes back a few days later and to my surprise but also my relief, she picks up where she left off. I wonder how she felt about our first session, a question I often ask in second sessions. But Alice communicates with me a sense of urgency. She sits down quickly and immediately starts talking. “Basically, my father had another family,” she says. “He had children with that other woman, and when my mother found out, he left us. I’m not sure how she found out exactly, but you can imagine how traumatic that was for her. This is where we ended last time, right?” I nod. “Last time you told me about your mother’s past,” I say. “And how your father’s abandonment was a reminder of her early loss of her mother.

• From Emotional Inheritance (2022)

  “At first, he would call me every day. I was only five years old and we spoke for a minute because my mother forced me to. Then, when I was in middle school, he would call once a week and I’d say that I was busy and wouldn’t call him back. At some point he stopped calling. He had a new life with that woman and it felt like I didn’t exist for him anymore.” Alice keeps talking. She tells me about her childhood, and the angrier she gets, the sadder I feel. “Did I tell you that about a year ago I reached out to my father?” she asks. “I think I was ready to hear his side. He was excited to hear from me and super nervous when we met. He said he would do anything to stay in touch with me and to repair our relationship. But the truth is, there was nothing to repair. What I realized by then was that he wasn’t my father anymore. I’m a grown-up now, and he missed my childhood. He is just a stranger who has nothing to do with me, except biologically.” I see Alice thinking and then she adds, “I hope you know that my mother never pushed me to reject him. It was my own choice.” For the first time, Alice begins to recognize what she lost as a child. She was protective of and loyal to her mother and estranged from her father. As a child Alice thought fathers were not important. She wasn’t jealous of her friends who had good relationships with their fathers and believed that as long as she and her mother had each other, they were better off without him. Unconscious dynamics are, behind the scenes, shaping Alice’s life as a repetition of her mother’s history. While she believes she inherited her mother’s genetic “bad luck,” it is in fact the identification with her mother, and the unconscious attempt to heal her mother, that bring Alice to live the same psychological pain her mother experienced: the drama of a daughter who loses a parent. Her mother’s trauma is reenacted in Alice’s childhood and, like her mother, she, too, grows up with one parent and loses the other. Alice’s loss, unlike her mother’s, was not framed as a tragedy for the daughter. Through this reenactment, Alice and her mother could relive the mother’s history together, but this time with the illusion of control; Alice believed that it was her own choice to end the relationship with her father. Instead of feeling sad, like her mother, she felt angry. Instead of being abandoned, she was doing the abandoning. Alice and her mother shared an unconscious fantasy of repairing her mother’s trauma and healing her.

• From Emotional Inheritance (2022)

  Guy looks confused. “Kind of,” he replies. “I mean, the man is an asshole, that’s for sure, but is he a bad person? Is he the monster his daughter describes? I don’t think so.” He pauses and gazes out the window. “What did you think just now?” I ask when he turns to me again. “I don’t know,” he says. “I guess I’m not sure how I feel about this. There is a noise in my head. I wish I could stop thinking. I mean, it’s clear that she hates her father so much and I feel bad for him,” he continues. “She wrote on Instagram that she wishes he were dead. I guess I understand that part. I used to wish my father were dead.” “That makes sense,” I say, carefully stepping into his childhood. While most kids are afraid of losing their parents, I’ve often heard patients describe that as children they wished for their parents’ death. The parent is the one the child depends on for survival; that wish usually surfaces when the parent is the one threatening the child’s physical or emotional being. The wish helps the child feel less helpless as she imagines she can make the parent disappear. It expresses the child’s pain as well as rage—two feelings that are fused and confused. The child simultaneously feels helpless and is overwhelmed with anger that she can’t process. Abused children often have difficulty regulating feelings. Love and hate intermingle: the people you love are also those you hate. I notice that Guy becomes flooded with emotions. He needs to take a break. “It’s sick,” Guy says. “It pisses me off.” He suddenly stands up. “Excuse me, I need to use the bathroom,” he says. “I’ll be right back.” He comes back a few minutes later, smiling. “Did you notice that I said ‘piss’ and then went to pee?” he jokes. “You see, I know how to therapize myself.” He is conveying that I have taught him something, but also that he is not dependent on me, that he can do it on his own. The ability to master and control his life is crucial. It’s the only way he feels safe, and he needs to make sure that he is in control in our sessions as well. I’m again aware that it’s Guy, not me, who ends each session. When he feels overwhelmed, rather than turning to me for comfort, he withdraws. “I needed to be alone for a moment, to calm down,” he says. I know that there is something about jury duty that awakens his childhood trauma. “As a child, I spent hours in the bathroom. My father used to lock my brother and me in there every time he got angry, which was all the time.

• From How to Be Yourself: Quiet Your Inner Critic and Rise Above Social Anxiety (2018)

  The most damaging perfectionistic mind-set, however, is when our worth becomes contingent upon our social performance. Anything less than perfect isn’t good enough, which in the land of dichotomous thinking lands closer to “totally incompetent.” When a perfectionist like Rosie inevitably fails to live up to her unattainable social standards, she takes it personally. “I suck at this; therefore, I suck,” is the conclusion. * * * But for other perfectionists, the conclusion is that everyone else sucks. Case in point: my client Vivian. Sitting across from me in my office, Vivian grumbled, “Everybody is so judgmental. My generation is so entitled and petty. The world is full of stupid people. I mean, what makes you think you can walk around not contributing to the world?” The “you” threw me. This was my first meeting with Vivian, who was twenty-four years old, socially anxious, and, as I was learning, very, very angry. “I don’t know how to socialize, and anyway, everyone my age is really back-stabby and immature and superficial. I expected these people to be intelligent and sensitive and mature, but all they do is gossip and back-stab and walk around with this entitlement and arrogance.” “These people” were her co-workers. Vivian had just gotten a new job in the fundraising division of a nonprofit. Vivian liked the work well enough; it was meaningful and rewarding. It was the people she hated. She was miserable—she craved acceptance but couldn’t stop being judgy and critical. Online was even worse. Whenever she scrolled through Instagram, she couldn’t stop herself from leaving cutting little comments on pictures of parties, hikes, or get-togethers. She devalued group pictures because they made her feel so alone. Both online and in person, Vivian knew she was turning people off and alternately felt guilty for being ridiculous, as she called it, and blamed everyone else for being petty, entitled, or stupid. It was like watching a tennis match: guilt, blame, guilt, blame. As Vivian spoke, sometimes the volume of her rants would rise until she was yelling. That, combined with her tendency to speak in the second person—“You walk around like you deserve to be here. You walk around like you’re contributing something to society. Or like you deserve to be alive. Unless you’ve made a great contribution or you’re really worthwhile as a person, you don’t deserve to be here”—made me scoot my chair back a little. It took me a few sessions to realize she didn’t mean me personally; she was yelling at the world at large. I left our first meeting reeling a little. After Vivian was on her way down in the elevator, the receptionist motioned me over. “Can you book a room at the end of the hall next time?” she whispered. “We could hear her from the waiting room.”

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  Does he call these things robbery, and slave-holding, and swindling? No: they are termed enterprise; and business skill; and capitalism. They are termed nature.‘But is it natural, that babies should die for want of milk? Is it natural, that women should sew skirts and coats long into the night, in cramped and suffocating workshops? That men and boys should be killed or crippled to provide the coal upon your fires? That bakers should be choked, baking your bread?’My voice had risen as I spoke; and now I bellowed.‘Do you think that’s natural? Do you think that’s just?’‘No!’ came a hundred voices at once. ‘No! No!’‘Neither do socialists!’ cried Ralph: he had crushed his speech between his fingers, and now shook it at the crowd. ‘We are sick of seeing wealth and property going straight into the pockets of the idle and the rich! We don’t want a portion of that wealth - the bit that the rich man cares, from time to time, to chuck at us. We want to see society quite transformed! We want to see money put to use, not kept for profit! We want to see working women’s babies thriving - and workhouses pulled to the ground, ‘cause no one needs ’em!’There were cheers at that, and he raised his hands. ‘You are cheering now,’ he said; ‘it is rather easy to cheer, perhaps, when the weather is so gay. But you must do more than cheer. You must act. Those of you that work - men and women alike - join unions! Those of you that have votes - use ’em! Use ‘em to put your own people into parliament. And campaign for your womenfolk - for your sisters and daughters and wives - that they might have votes of their own, to help you!’‘Go home tonight,’ I went on, moving forward again, ‘and ask yourselves the question that Mr Banner has asked you today: Why Socialism? And you will find yourselves obliged to answer it as we have. “Because Britain’s people,” you will say, “have laboured under the capitalist and the landlord system and grown only poorer and sicker and more miserable and afraid. Because it is not by charity and paltry reforms that we shall improve conditions for the weakest classes - not by taxes, not by electing one capitalist government over another, not even by abolishing the House of Lords! - but by turning over the land, and industry, to the people who work it.

• From Sex with Kings: 500 Years of Adultery, Power, Rivalry, and Revenge (2004)

  In contrast, most royal mistresses would not have dared risk love affairs with other men. A few who did were generously forgiven by their womanizing monarchs. But many would have expected a punishment similar to that of Madame d’Esterle, who became mistress of Augustus, king of Poland and elector of Saxony, in 1704. When the playboy king discovered that Madame d’Esterle had been having affairs with several gentlemen at court, he gave her twenty-four hours to pack her bags and leave the country. Worse was the vengeance of Peter the Great (1672–1725), who in 1703 discovered that his mistress of thirteen years, Anna Mons, had been sleeping with the Swedish ambassador. Peter, who throughout his relationship with Anna had routinely enjoyed drunken orgies, was so enraged at her infidelity that he threw her in prison along with thirty of her friends. For a woman who publicly declared that whoredom was her profession, plucky Nell Gwynn proved remarkably faithful to Charles II, even after his death. Bereft of her royal lover, pretty Nell was courted by numerous suitors. She sadly informed one ardent admirer that she “would not lay a dog where the deer laid.”40 Ironically, Charles’s nobly born mistresses, the imperious duchesses, were not nearly as faithful as his spunky whore. Auburn-haired Barbara Palmer, whom Charles created the countess of Castlemaine and duchess of Cleveland, was the most notorious. Perhaps Charles tolerated her blatant infidelity because she was his dream sex partner. One childhood acquaintance of Barbara’s described her as “a lecherous little girl…[who] used to rub her thing with her fingers.”41 In 1667 Lady Castlemaine was enjoying an affair with the renowned court rake Harry Jermyn. One day when the king made an unexpected visit to his mistress, Harry had to dive under her bed. When she was pregnant the sixth time, the king knew very well the child was not his. He had not been certain about some of her prior five but had decided to claim paternity, since there was a good chance. This sixth child, however, he would not own. Lady Castlemaine was furious that the king was making her look like a whore. “God damn me, but you shall own it!” she cried. “I will have it christened in the Chapel at Whitehall and owned as yours…or I will bring it into Whitehall Gallery and dash its brains out before your face.” Charles maintained, “I did not get this child.” “Whoever did get it, you shall own it,” cried the shrew.42 It was reported that in a few days the king begged forgiveness of his mistress, on his knees.

• From Sex with Kings: 500 Years of Adultery, Power, Rivalry, and Revenge (2004)

  According to Augustus’s biographer Karl von Pöllnitz, when Madame Cosel discovered that the king had profited by her absence by having an affair with a wine merchant’s daughter in Warsaw, she thundered, “I am resolved not to undergo the fate of your other mistresses. I have for your sake quitted a husband, lost my reputation, and done all this, because you promised me upon oath an everlasting fidelity. I will not suffer your abuses, except your life pays for them. I am resolved to break your head with a pistol, and then to make use of it upon myself, as a punishment for my folly in loving you.”35 Another unfortunate scene occurred as she was recuperating from childbirth at Augustus’s court in Dresden. A note was passed to the king as he sat at Madame Cosel’s bedside along with his secretary of state, Mr. Caspar Bose. He read it and turned bright red. His mistress was so curious to read the missive that when she jumped out of bed, according to the report, “she showed the King and Mr. Bose on that occasion what no modest woman would have shown her husband without many persuasions.”36 Grabbing the letter, Madame Cosel found it was from Henrietta, the wine merchant’s daughter in Warsaw. Worse, it informed the king that she had given birth to his daughter. Madame Cosel went into a purple rage, crying, “Let her drown it! And would to God it was in my power to drown the mother too!”37 Augustus laughed, but Madame Cosel informed him that if he answered the letter or acknowledged the child, she would, still bleeding from childbirth, take the next stage coach to Warsaw to strangle both mother and child. Madame Cosel’s bad temper was aimed not only at rivals for the king’s love, but at courtiers and officials as well, and worse, she meddled in political affairs. After suffering nine years of her tyranny, in 1713 a coalition of ministers decided she had to be replaced with a more compliant mistress. When Madame Cosel was again heavily pregnant at Dresden and the king was required to ride to Warsaw, his advisers used this opportunity to find him another mistress. They held a meeting, discussing all the possible candidates at the court of Warsaw. They finally settled on Countess Maria Magdalena von Denhoff because “she is sufficiently amiable to be capable of pleasing, but her mind is not so exalted as to be able to rule.”38 The new mistress having been chosen, the cabal had only to make the king and countess fall into each other’s arms. They first went to work on Madame Denhoff, using her mother to counter any qualms she might have about betraying her husband to become a royal mistress. Fortunately, Madame Denhoff readily agreed to the plan.

• From Sex with Kings: 500 Years of Adultery, Power, Rivalry, and Revenge (2004)

  Even Lillie Langtry, who did not receive a regular allowance from Edward VII, was expected to appear in an astonishing array of new gowns. In her later years, Lillie reported that she had had only one quarrel with Edward during her three-year tenure as his mistress. “I wore a dress of white and silver at two balls in succession,” she reminisced. “I did not know that he was going to be present at both balls, but he was. He came up to me on the second night and exclaimed, ‘That damned dress again!’ He walked away in a temper…. It took me a long time to make it up…. That was the only quarrel we ever had.”14 Lillie, who had come to London with just one plain black dress, patronized the fashion houses of Worth and Doucet. Her evening gowns were embroidered with pearls, her tea gowns bordered with silver fox, her dressing gowns lined with ermine. For a ball at Marlborough House, Lillie appeared in a confection of yellow tulle over which a gold net held preserved butterflies of various sizes and colors. In the 1890s Edward’s second official mistress, Daisy Warwick, never paid less than five thousand dollars in today’s money for a gown, often far more. Society columns gushed about the “violet velvet with two splendid turquoise-and-diamond brooches in her bodice” she wore to a ball; the “gauzy white gown beneath which meandered delicately shaded ribbons” she wore to a dinner party; the “splendid purple-grape-trimmed robes and veil of pearls on white” she wore to a drawing room.15 More expensive—and certainly less rewarding than the mistress’s own bodily glorification—was the management of a large household of retainers and servants. In the 1590s Gabrielle d’Estrées managed a household consisting of eighty-three ladies and gentlemen, seventeen crown officials, and more than two hundred servants. This large tribe of hangers-on needed to be fed, housed, paid a salary, and in some cases clothed. A portion of the mistress’s cash went to maintain the ultimate status symbol of centuries past: a magnificent coach. The mistress needed to keep her coach in good order—fresh paint and gilding on the outside, plush upholstery and plump pillows on the inside. The carriage was pulled by horses which she needed to feed and stable. In addition, she had to pay the staff that looked after them. Madame de Montespan, the proud owner of a luxurious carriage drawn by six horses, was flabbergasted to see her younger rival, the teenage Mademoiselle de Fontanges, drive by in a grander carriage pulled by eight horses. The mistress arranged entertainments for the king, often lavish ones, where she paid not only for food, cooks, and waiters but for actors, singers, musicians, theatrical sets, costumes, and fireworks. In 1671, for instance, as a token of her gratitude for being created a duchess, Louise de Kéroualle gave a dinner for the entire English court.

• From Take Back Your Life: Recovering from Cults and Abusive Relationships (2000)

  Also, I had to chuckle when I read a sentence in a book on critical thinking that said, "Of course, we all know when we read something that we don't have to believe every bit of it." I felt like stomping my feet in anger-in the cult, I always had to believe every bit of it. Those of us who were born in COG were treated particularly harshly. A lot was expected of us. It didn't matter that we had been selling literature on the street since we could toddle about; nor did it matter how hard we worked as we got older. We were relentlessly told how ungrateful we were for the sacrifices our parents' generation had made to give us this way of life. We were exhorted to become more thankful, willing, humble, spiritual, sacrificial, and so on. Of course, we were considered to be in this for life. We were treated like public property, with no room for individuality. The climate of the large "teen homes" was army-like. They even called it an army, a boot camp. I would think to myself, "Not even soldiers stay in boot camp for years on end!" Even when we were living in a community with our parents, emphasis was placed on firm discipline, and "delinquent" parents were punished. Because parents were judged by their children's behavior, parents could sometimes be harsher to us than our "teen shepherds." As a result, I now feel it is so important to always treat people, including oneself, as the German philosopher Immanuel Kant said: as an end in themselves and never simply as a means. When young people leave a cult, they need autonomy, including the right to make their own mistakes. Personal dignity and autonomy are the basic rights each person has by virtue of being human. These rights are overridden when others decide to use influence, pressure, or whatever to get you to do what they supposedly know is best for you. The experiences I had in the cult make it difficult to trust people, especially if they are paternalistic. They may mean well, may think they know what is best, and may work to help me to avoid what they feel would be pitfalls, but they should realize that if I am to recover from the cult, I cannot be expected to continue in the cult modes. For example, it is exceptionally difficult for me to sit still, look attentive and receptive, and listen to drawnout lectures. When I feel caged in, or if people are being intrusive about what is truly my business, I feel my lungs will explode. I clench my teeth, and my ears ring. I was never allowed to show anger, and I still generally keep it in, which leads me to behave toward myself in ways I don't wantto. But when I do express anger, I feel so guilty I usually run to apologize and do whatever is wanted of me.

• From Take Back Your Life: Recovering from Cults and Abusive Relationships (2000)

  • Consider getting involved with an organization like the International Cultic Studies Association, where you might find ways to make a positive contribution to ongoing research and education efforts. • When you feel better and have had some time away from the group, serve as a resource person for people or families seeking information about the group you were in. • Get the law on your side. If your group is or was involved in illegal or criminal activity, consult a lawyer for your own protection before going to the police or other authorities. • Consider a civil suit for damages. Again, seek legal advice about this first. • Take an assertiveness training course. The following story illustrates one former member's struggle with anger: Divorced and alone, Jill B. joined Pastor John T.'s church after the accidental death of her small daughter. At first, she felt comforted by the loving solicitousness of the group and its leader. In addition to full Sunday service, Jill spent three to four evenings a week attending Bible study and prayer meetings. This enabled her to avoid lonely evenings at home missing her daughter. Six months after she joined the church, Pastor John's counseling turned affectionate toward Jill, then sexual. Though not particularly attracted to him, Jill found it difficult to say no to her pastor, and so passively (and confusedly) submitted to his sexual attentions. He told her he would leave his wife and children, which he never did, and forced Jill to engage in bizarre sexual rituals using religious language and icons. When Jill tried to end these sessions, the pastor invoked God's name and implored Jill to stay. As her shame and guilt about the relationship became untenable, Jill withdrew and finally left the church and Pastor John. With time and distance, she felt her anger mount. At odd times during the day, she would become preoc cupied with hatred and rage toward her former spiritual leader. She found herself snapping at others. She was impatient and irritable over small mistakes. Through counseling, Jill learned some techniques for dealing with her anger. If she started to become preoccupied and angry while at work, she would take a moment to fantasize about telling off Pastor John and exposing his duplicitous behavior to everyone in the church. By giving herself permission to fantasize about her abusive pastor's embarrassment and public humiliation, she could smile and get on with her day. It took time for the rage to turn to anger, then to irritation, and then to resentment. Finally, that too was all but gone. While you were in the cult, or with your abusive partner, it may have been dangerous or forbidden to express anger or rage. You probably learned to turn your anger inward, to deny and suppress it. Now give yourself permission to feel this emotion. There are big differences between thinking, feeling, and acting out.

• From Sex with Kings: 500 Years of Adultery, Power, Rivalry, and Revenge (2004)

  Perhaps Lola Montez cast her glance backward into history and decided that as a royal mistress she, too, should be ennobled. If so, she did not recognize that she lived in a different time, a time when the king’s word was not law. The timid mewling of most seventeenth-and eighteenth-century political opposition had swelled into a roar with the French Revolution and would never again be muted. Nevertheless, Lola demanded that Ludwig give her the title of a Bavarian countess, something which she hoped would provide her with an air of respectability, or at least officially elevate her position above that of her angry detractors. Ludwig succeeded only with great difficulty in pushing Lola’s Bavarian citizenship and ennoblement as countess of Landsfeld through his ministry. His entire council resigned in protest. But Lola was now permitted to drive a carriage with the nine-pointed crown of a Bavarian countess, and she gave herself more imperious airs than ever. To her chagrin, the new countess was still not received by Bavarian high society, as Queen Therese made known that she would not receive anyone who received Lola. For two years after her exile from Bavaria Lola traveled about Europe, where her title was ridiculed by true blue bloods. Curiously, her title did her more good in the United States, where she lived in the 1850s. Unlike the ossified European nobility, Americans were thrilled to meet a real Bavarian countess and didn’t care how she had come by the title. Gambling DebtsIn past centuries gambling debts routinely made up a significant part of the cost of living. Those in the upper echelons of society were expected to play cards and dice and wager large sums on the outcome. Those who refused were considered boring or, even worse, poor. Needless to say, many of the players suffered extraordinary losses, which as a matter of honor had to be paid promptly. One of the most satisfying perquisites of a royal mistress was the certainty that the king would pay her gambling debts. Throughout her decade-long reign at court—and a decade beyond that—Charles II would pay what in today’s money would be millions of dollars in gambling debts for Lady Castlemaine. She would lose—and sometimes win—startling amounts, wagering princely sums without blinking an eye. In 1679, Lady Castlemaine returned to England from a long stay in France. One courtier reported that upon hearing this, “His Majesty gave the Commissioners of the Treasury fair warning to look to themselves, for that she would have a bout with them for money, having lately lost 20,000 pounds in money and jewels in one night at play.”11

• From Sex with Kings: 500 Years of Adultery, Power, Rivalry, and Revenge (2004)

  Speaking of Charles II, the courtier George Villiers remarked, “A king is supposed to be a father to his people and Charles certainly was father to a good many of them.”8 Charles acknowledged fourteen bastards—nine sons and five daughters. He created six dukedoms and one earldom for his bastard sons, and made four of the daughters countesses. So many of his illegitimate sons were called Charles that he, like Henri IV before him, had a hard time keeping them straight. Charles kept a keen eye on young heirs and heiresses for his bastards and arranged for them to marry as children—some as young as five years old—to make sure the mouthwatering fortunes didn’t slip away. The fierce rivalry among royal mistresses often extended to the honors the king bestowed on their children. In 1674 Louise de Kéroualle was delighted to learn that Charles II had created her two-year-old son Charles the duke of Richmond. But her joy was almost immediately tempered by the news that he had also named Barbara, Lady Castlemaine’s eleven-year-old son Henry the duke of Grafton, and Barbara was demanding that her son have precedence. Officially, precedence was given to the duke whose patent was first signed. Both women hammered poor Charles, who lamely suggested that the patents be signed at precisely the same moment; but neither would hear of it. Both patents were made out bearing the same date but required a signature by Lord Treasurer Danby to be effective. Danby was planning to leave the next morning for Bath, and Lady Castlemaine instructed her agent to wait upon him very early, before he departed. Louise, however, heard that he had changed plans and would depart the night before. Her agent handed the patent to Danby as he was getting into his coach, and he obligingly went into his house to sign it. The next morning, when Lady Castlemaine’s agent arrived, he found that Louise’s son would always have precedence over Lady Castlemaine’s. It is amusing to picture the blazing fury of the defeated mistress when she heard the news.

• From Sex with Kings: 500 Years of Adultery, Power, Rivalry, and Revenge (2004)

  Daily attending royal dinners with highly fattening food—which the king insisted she eat—and with the limited exercise available to upper-class women at the time, Madame de Montespan often grew plumper than was fashionable. The Italian fortune-teller to the nobility, Primi Visconti, noted gleefully, “While she was descending from her carriage one day, I had a glimpse of one of her legs, and I swear it was almost as broad as my whole body.”17 To counter this tendency toward stoutness, Madame de Montespan had herself rubbed down with pomade two hours at a time, several times a week, as she lay naked on her bed. Periodically she disappeared to a health spa, where she starved herself back into shape. In 1676 she returned from several weeks at the spa in Bourbon. When Madame de Sévigné visited court, she found the royal mistress “quite flat again in the rear end…her beauty is breathtaking…. While losing weight, she has lost none of her radiance…her skin, her eyes, her lips all aglow…. Her costume was a mass of French lace, her hair dressed in a thousand ringlets, the two at her temples quite long, falling against her cheek, her coiffure topped with black velvet ribbons and jeweled pins, her famous pearl necklace…caught up with superb diamond clips and buckles. In short, a triumphant beauty to show off, to parade before all the Ambassadors.”18 Athénaïs de Montespan was like a golden lioness, a majestic feline beauty, purring contentedly, who at a moment’s notice bares claws and fangs, ready to rip and tear. Her temper tantrums were notorious. When courtiers heard her shrill, angry voice wafting down the hall they avoided her wing of the palace rather than “passing through heavy fire.”19 One day, while getting into a carriage with his queen and his mistress, Louis got a whiff of Madame de Montespan’s strong perfume and angrily remarked that he had repeatedly requested her to wear less, as the scent made him ill. His mistress replied that she was forced to wear perfume because the king never bathed in his life and, frankly, stank. A shouting match ensued as the king and his mistress entered the carriage, the hapless queen following. Courtiers made bets on how long the mistress would last. Oddly, Madame de Montespan’s reign lasted thirteen years. The king must have enjoyed sparring with his imperious mistress. And she sometimes showed the good sportsmanship that most royal mistresses possessed. For instance, in the winter of 1678 she insisted on joining Louis on a tour of his frontiers although she was five months pregnant. She suffered repeated fevers but refused to return to Versailles, bumping over muddy roads with the king, sleeping with him in farmhouses, and never complaining. It was this behavior that bound the king to her, in between her temper tantrums.

• From Sex with Kings: 500 Years of Adultery, Power, Rivalry, and Revenge (2004)

  Edward never publicly showed any resentment toward the Prince of Wales, but he did sometimes vent his frustrations in sudden violent rages at his wife. One day, Lillie and Edward were guests along with the prince at the home of Lord Malmesbury. She wrote her royal lover a suggestive letter, which her husband deciphered by holding her blotting paper up to a mirror. Edward was so angry he reduced the normally tough Lillie to a puddle of tears. The whole house heard their argument. Lord Malmesbury, too, was furious—at the servants for not changing the blotting paper every day in all the guest rooms as they had been instructed, to prevent just such an inconvenience. After three years as royal mistress, Lillie lost her position to actress Sarah Bernhardt, who took London, and the Prince of Wales, by storm. Lillie turned her attentions to the German prince Louis Battenburg and soon became pregnant. The Prince of Wales, still fond of Lillie, arranged for her to give birth in France, away from prying eyes. Even Edward Langtry was unaware that his wife had had a child. Lillie, separated now from her nearly bankrupt husband, found herself cut off from the prince’s financial largesse. To support herself and her daughter, she decided to emulate her rival Sarah Bernhardt and earn her living on the stage. Her notoriety as the prince’s former mistress ensured good box-office receipts, and the Prince and Princess of Wales pointedly attended her London plays. Traveling coast to coast in her own luxurious ten-room railway car, she performed throughout the United States for six years and met with huge success in the mining towns of the Wild West. Edward, grasping at some memory of love, refused to divorce Lillie despite her pleas, and without the consent of both parties the British courts refused to grant the divorce. Because American courts were more flexible, Lillie became an American citizen to rid herself of her humiliating husband. Having lost his wife to a prince and a subsequent dazzling career, Edward sank into an irretrievable pit of alcoholism and depression. Lillie, though thrilled to be freed of him, faithfully sent him money four times a year until the day he died. The Penalties of DefianceWhile some husbands leaped for joy as their monarchs bedded their wives, and others suffered dutifully, a few had the backbone to stand up to such adulterous intrusions. One of the earliest records of such defiance occurred during the reign of England’s King John of Magna Carta fame (1167–1216). One Eustace de Vesci, an aristocrat, was hated by King John “because he had placed a common woman instead of his wife in the royal bed.”18

• From Sex with Kings: 500 Years of Adultery, Power, Rivalry, and Revenge (2004)

  The silly girl, proud of her great accomplishment, showed her letter triumphantly to her cousin the comte de Stainville. The count, though no friend of Madame de Pompadour’s, cleverly decided to win the eternal gratitude of so powerful a woman. He convinced Charlotte-Rosalie to allow him to keep the letter a few hours, then visited Madame de Pompadour immediately. He informed her that his cousin was too immature to fill so important a position, one for which Madame de Pompadour was so eminently suited. He gave her the letter and politely departed. For once Madame de Pompadour vented her rage at her royal lover. When Louis visited her that evening, she showed him the letter and—for the only time in their relationship—threw a shocking temper tantrum. The king, horrified that the indiscreet Charlotte-Rosalie had let his passionate letter out of her possession, agreed to banish her from court that very night. Seven months later she died after giving birth. She was twenty-one. By way of an apology, a few days later he raised Madame de Pompadour’s status from that of marquise to duchess. When she was officially presented to the king and queen as duchess, she made her venomous cousin Madame d’Estrades witness her triumph and later banished her from court. Comte de Stainville had bet on the winning horse; although the king could not bear to see his face—a reminder of the painful episode—Madame de Pompadour had him appointed ambassador to the Vatican and he later became foreign minister of France. Sometimes the Parc aux Cerfs girls, hired to keep serious rivals from bothering Madame de Pompadour, made trouble themselves. One such girl, the nubile fourteen-year-old Louise O’Murphy, was being coached by Madame de Pompadour’s enemies. One evening Louise asked Louis how things were between him and his “old woman,” referring to Madame de Pompadour.34 The king was shocked, and his “old woman” quickly had Louise married off with a large dowry, shortly before she gave birth to a royal bastard. After this episode the king visited Le Parc aux Cerfs incognito as a Polish nobleman. But one girl searched through her lover’s pockets as he lay sleeping and discovered that he was not a Polish nobleman but the king of France himself. Throwing herself at his feet she proclaimed her undying love for him. This poor girl was taken to an insane asylum—a surefire method of invalidating whatever stories she might relate about the king—and after a suitable period of incarceration married off in the country. Another girl, a stunning prostitute displayed by Paris’s premier pimp, was seeking to ensnare the king with her sexual talents and hoped for far more than a stint at Le Parc aux Cerfs. The king’s valet and procurer, Lebel, a true friend of Madame de Pompadour’s, informed Louis that the girl was eaten up by venereal disease, putting an immediate end to her chances.