A Dissolution of Relationships

***This post is to give voice to all of the women who invested their lives and bodies into forming and having relationships and marriages (and children) that were destroyed while being in Jim Baker's 'source family'.***  In order to write this blog, I have had to relive many of the distressing moments and emotions that I experienced during the course of The Source Family, in order to write about those experiences; something that has not been easy to do.  I can only attest from firsthand experience that the long-term effects of following and obeying Jim Baker's directives did not have any lasting healthy or positive effect in people's lives, but rather left behind a wake of dysfunctional relationships, emotional suffering and physical scars, because families were torn apart while being part of Jim Baker's Source Family, which is why it's even that more unfathomable to me why some would want to continue in the folly of extolling the virtues of life in 'the family'.  I didn't really want to revisit many of the emotions and experiences that I felt and had during the six years that I spent in The Source Family, and like other women experienced anguish, distress and separation as we watched and witnessed men that we loved follow and obey the maladaptive belief system of Jim Baker's for the men to engage in sex with as many women as possible; some who even abandoned their own wives and children, in order to follow and carry out Father Yod's edict of 'his son's' having more than one woman.  Because Father Yod believed that only by destroying or deconstructing the matrimonial bonds and emotional bonds and ties between the men and women in his 'family' and their children; would they be living his ideal of an 'aquarian' new age family; and so I witnessed the dissolution of many relationships and marriages throughout the years that The Source Family was in existence.  People would enter 'the family' married or in close, committed relationships only to have their relationships or marriages torn apart/destroyed due to the misguided, self-serving directives of Jim Baker/Father Yod, because he believed that an open, sexual environment where both men and women having multiple sexual partners was healthy and represented the 'new age of Aquarius', and where he would continually assign women to be with and 'serve' men other than their own spouses; to become an interloper in a man's already established relationship or marriage with another woman; and women were expected to 'buck up' and just endure it, and even 'be happy' about it!  As I've stated before, Jim Baker was continually messing with people's personal lives and relationships within his 'family' believing that he was setting an example for the men in the 'family' how they should treat women, along with a more hands-off impersonal attitude towards their own children; relationships that should have been sacrosanct and left alone.  Although, Jim Baker's belief in himself and the other men in 'the family' having multiple women seemed to glaringly contradict his very own commandment that he penned in 1969 that read, "The Man and His Woman are One, let nothing separate them.'  Which begs the question, "Even another woman?"  This commandment was later changed to, "The Man and His Women are One, let nothing separate them."  Ha!  How convenient.  Although there are still a couple of women who still cherish their days spent as one of 'Yahowha's women', but that is because they were never able to deprogram themselves enough to see that women were treated more like chattel in The Source Family than anything else; women who were seen as only a resource or commodity by Father Yod to direct or place with those whom he valued most:  the men.  Because, deep down Jim Baker was more an old school sexist who was more concerned about 'his son's'/the men in his family and whether or not they had 'angels' or women to take care of them (especially sexually), than with anything else.  So, the women in Jim Baker's 'aquarian family' were relegated to a servile, albeit protected status; something which became a constant part of his rhetoric about how it was a man's duty to protect and provide for 'his woman' and a woman's 'duty' was to obey and serve a 'man', of course Jim Baker had to change the singular 'woman' to the plural 'women' to accommodate the many that he began to accumulate around himself.  One man (one of Jim Baker's most favorite) once described being in 'the source family' like being in a 'candy store' with all of the sexually available women that were at his disposal; because that was what Father Yod was all about; moving around the 'angels' or women within 'his family' placing them with various 'sons' as some sort of reward for their devotion to him.  Women saw their own spouses and husbands, and fathers of their own children get so caught up in following Father Yod's directive of men having multiple, sexual partners within the family that their only choice was to either accept another woman being insinuated into their relationship, leave or dissociate, just to cope; because after all this was 'the aquarian' way of life as being taught by our 'earthly spiritual father.'  More like 'aquarian' bullshit!  Many married couples who joined 'the family' soon saw their marriages destroyed by following  Father Yod's derelict and irresponsible 'aquarian' morals.  Jim Baker believed that he was setting the bar or the standard for all of his 'sons' in how to attract and hold on to/keep women, which is why he was continually casting around within the family for new sexual conquests; to show off his prowess and ability to attract women.  It was practically impossible for any marriage to survive while being in The Source Family, under the sexual promiscuity encouraged and promoted by a man who believed that women were only attracted to the most constant and powerful of men; but rather than encouraging the men to be constant devoted husbands and fathers; he encouraged them to acquire as many women around them as they possibly could and to have them treat all their 'women' equally showing no preference or deference to any one woman; yet that was exactly what Jim Baker continuously did: he showed preference for one woman.  That one woman began with Robin Baker, whom he married prior to the formation of The Source Family, but soon devolved into being another whom he became sexually enamored.  So, Jim Baker had to quickly adjust and tailor the social mores within his spiritual group to where a man should have multiple women to 'serve' him; while not showing preferential treatment to any one woman in his harem; something that was supposed to also be representative of the 'new age' of 'aquarius'.  Yes, we were all brainwashed into believing 'the aquarian way of life' meant that we all belonged to one tribe where men would have multiple women to attend to their every need, and where any emotional bonds or attachments to any one individual such as a wife or husband were seen as being Piscean; something which I observed only created varying degrees of physical and emotional abandonment and neglect that arose from being encouraged by Father Yod to dissolve or shun any prior commitment to anyone they were either married to or had a child with, to be replaced with the delusional 'new age' belief that care of their children should become the responsibility of the entire group and not just their own, and that any close, personal relationships between a man and a woman could be torn asunder and usurped at any moment, by Father Yod's incessant interference and assigning of women to other men.  So, many who were in committed relationships and marriages were forced to have their relationships 'tested' by following Jim Baker's mandate that the men in his 'aquarian' family gather as many women as they possibly could.  Something that left many men who followed Jim Baker with degrees of remorse and regret for having followed the man for as long as they did, in such misguided and detrimental nonsense which inadvertently either destroyed or irreparably damaged their marriages and relationships with the women in their lives, as well as with their own offspring.