"Why are we told to stay in abusive or neglectful marriages?"

A Surviving Purity Culture Interview on Abusive Marriage, Divorce, and Remarriage

Welcome to Surviving Purity Culture, a mini-series of interviews with purity culture survivors and diverse experts. These are the full-length transcripts of the interviews I conducted for my book, Recovering from Purity Culture.

Psst! My book is currently in Amazon’s buy 3 for the price of 2 sale! I have no idea how long this sale lasts, so grab a copy (or three!) today!

Today’s interview is with Alisha on abuse in marriage. Trigger warning: Abuse. Here is a line-up of this Mini-Series.

Experts:

• Brittany Broaddus-Smith, a Christian sexologist: Purity Culture's Effects on Black Women

• Bridget Eileen Rivera, an activist and author: Purity Culture’s Effects on Queer Christians

• Sarah McDugal, an advocate and coach: How to Recognize Unhealthy or Abusive Relationships

Survivors’ Stories:

• “Carrie”: prolonged singleness

• “Nicole”: divorce and marital rape

• Emily: dating and reconstructing your sexual ethic after the death of your spouse

• “Elizabeth”: dating and your sexual ethic after divorce

• Alisha: abusive marriage and remarriage after divorce

• Hanna: vaginismus in marriage

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Alisha Roth

is a thirty-five year old mother of five daughters who lives in the Midwest. She homeschools her four older daughters and writes and blogs about homeschooling at Wild + Free, a homeschooling community. Yet, Alisha considers herself more progressive than most of the homeschooling moms she interacts with. She is currently writing a book on love and healing after divorce, to be published by Revell Books in 2026. Alisha is curious to explore the question of “why do women get into marriages in the first place and why are we told to stay in abusive or neglectful marriages?”

Alisha’s first marriage ended after 12 years of marriage when she was 32 years old. Alisha stayed in this abusive marriage because she believed she had no other choice. It took professional therapy for her to realize her marriage was abusive. “Purity culture affected our ability to talk about problems. We didn’t have the tools to know how to communicate.”

Alisha Roth

In order to protect both the women’s stories and the material in my book, this mini-series will only be available to paid subscribers or members of my launch team. You can subscribe for $5 per month or $50 per year and support my writing. When you subscribe, you get access to all the previous paid posts as well!