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Liz Egan's avatar

I really appreciate your willingness to write about the way religion/church culture often causes, unintended or not, serious harm for a lot of people struggling in relationships and other aspects of life. I absolutely relate. Thank you for speaking out!

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Matthew Fray's avatar

I don’t know that I believe religious life is the cause so much as I believe there’s an undeniable correlation—specifically with boys and men.

When you have a bunch of super-sacred True things to worry about, it’s really hard to take seriously someone who says “hey, it really hurt me when you did [whatever happened]” and the Whatever Happened isn’t a moral or seemingly “big” issue.

Invalidation and emotional abandonment over the so-called little things is, in my estimation, the #1 trust killer and destroyer of long-term committed partnerships, married or otherwise.

Thanks for reading and commenting.

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Michael Maupin 🄾🄵 🅂🅃🄾🅁🅈🅂🄷🄴🄳's avatar

Hey Matthew, we should book a time to talk as I'd like to feature your work on relationships in upcoming StoryShed Season 7: Daytalking, which is all about relationships, friendships, partnerships and lovers. You game?

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Matthew Fray's avatar

Hey Mike. Of course. Or we can just talk about how impossibly nice the Twin-Cities are in autumn. Whatever you want. Please email me at mf@matthewfray.com to coordinate whenever you have the bandwidth. Thanks for asking.

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