I need to vent a bit. So there's this guy I've known for about 3 years through a 12-step fellowship. I like him and he seems to like me. He is divorced from a woman who is an LDS church member. They have three kids together, and they're LDS too.

Given that we know each other through a 12-step program, spirituality and related topics come up all the time. He's from a country, where most people are secularized Catholics. During the three years we've known each other, he's never said anything to make me think that he's anything else than a typical person from that country. For example, he keeps saying "My ex-wife is Mormon, so..." and he always talks about LDS as "they."

Today a group of us were out hiking together and the topic of Mormonism came up. I was going to say something about my experience with LDS but suddenly it struck me that maybe he is Mormon too. Rather than risk offending him, I asked point blank if he was Mormon. And lo and behold, he is. I'm sure I looked as shocked as I felt. 

Religious affiliations and leanings come up all the time in conversations with 12-step people. They're practically woven into the fabric of the program. I've never made a secret of the fact that I'm Pagan. Others are Buddhist, Hindu, Jewish or various Christian denominations. It's treated like a complete non-issue in the meetings I attend. People talk about it like they talk about if somebody prefers Mexican cuisine or Chinese. 

A romantic relationship with a confessing LDS could prove difficult. But what makes me angry is that he's kept his religion a secret from me and the others in the group for all the time we've known each other. That's crazy! I'm sure that if I hadn't asked point blank, he still wouldn't have told us. As the saying goes, "You're only as sick as your secrets." 

This is actually a great example of how you can control a situation by lying through omission. If we had moved in the direction of dating, at what point would he have told me? It would have become more and more difficult, the longer he waited. It would have been so much easier if he'd just been up front about it. I really don't like it when people keep secrets from me. It reminds me of when my ex failed to mention that he'd just broken up with his girlfriend when I drove down to visit him for a week in Southern California. The next day they were a couple again! Fortunately she was back in France, so I didn't have to deal with her. Still, that is definitely something he should have mentioned before I made that long drive. 

And I've got to wonder: Why the secrecy? And are there other important facts about himself that he's not telling us? I'm suddenly a whole lot less interested in him. 

This was originally posted as a response to a friend's reaction to a nasty piece of relationship advice by Tracy McMillan on Huffington Post. I'm screening comments from people who aren't on my LJ friends list. My usual comments policy applies. Don't comment here if you don't like it.  

Tracy McMillan has a book to sell. That's why she's writing this stuff. It's classic marketing: create a need, sell your product that just happens to fulfill that exact need. It has nothing to do with us.

You, me and other single women are just the marks. McMillan and the commenters judge us because they get something out of it. Some are pushing their products (Neenah Pickett is one of the first commenters and she just happens to have a web site that will help you find a husband called 52Weeks2Fi­ndHim.com), others just like to feel superior, and some like to beat themselves up.

That doesn't mean that it's wrong for us to react. This stuff is written to get us to react, ideally with a credit card number or self-flagellation. It's meant to hurt. McMillan is a professional writer, she is constantly trying to get better at eliciting specific emotions through her writing. In other words, she's constantly trying to become more hurtful and less _obviously_ manipulative.

Anger is a very appropriate response to that. That's why making you wrong for being angry, no matter how legitimate the reason, is her first point. McMillan knows that we've been trained to see our anger as damaging to relationships.

But what if she's wrong? What if showing up as an authentic person in relationships is the only way of allowing our true selves to be loved? Even if that sometimes means we're angry or insecure or flawed in other ways? Just like the "messy, farting, macaroni-and-cheese eating man" she thinks we'd like to marry?

Oh wait, I forgot, the first rule of relationship advice to women is that women who don't take 100% responsibility to keep their relationship going R DOIN IT WRONG. That's why "working around a man's fear and insecurity is big part of what you'll be doing as a wife." Does that sound like a relationship you'd like to have? Yeah, me either.

( cuddle slut )

That's probably a slight exaggeration -- I'm actually quite picky about who I cuddle with. But with the right person I am very physically affectionate.