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I think it’s weird that Dave will talk about his progress with therapy and his life altering awakenings and his desire to develop as well-rounded individual and Bethany will just respond with a casual “yeah”. The ways she agrees and nods her head when he says he realizes his faults is, like, gross to me. She acts like he is the biggest inconvenience and that she thinks obviously HE is the source of strife in their relationship
@@erikacomfort3343yeah, god, this is practically a conversation I had a few times with my ex husband. I was like, "We should go to therapy because we're kinda fucked up." In my head it was mostly to get him to go because I've been in therapy for a zillion years, though I always will have growing and healing from trauma. He was a deeply unwell person who really needed to get his shit together because I couldn't spin the plates anymore, especially after being dismissed with cancer. A cancer that will never go away even if it's controlled, a sickness that I've been doing all the work maintaining without any assistance at all. I was told straight faced, "You should go if you think you want to, but I'm okay..." The operative word in this whole thing is "EX". I feel really bad for Dav because there's something not great going on, and I get the feeling he's staying for other people and not himself. I know what that feels like and it kills parts of you over time the longer you stay. I hope that if he feels this way he cuts and runs; no one should have to slowly suffocate themselves for people who could care the fuck less.
My great grandmother said “you should take many lovers, preferably foreign, before you marry. That way you know what you like.” She also dated the writer Joseph Campbell when he studied in France, and claimed it was for the best that she broke it off, because “they would have had the most peculiar children.” He also shredded her in his autobiography. Go figure. So that’s hot relationship advice from a hundred years ago👍🏽
I get the impression that Dave is better at masking his criticisms of Bethany behind generalizations and kindness than Bethany is at masking her criticizing Dave.
As a sexologist - buy the books "Come as You Are" and "Sex, God and the Conservative Church" - that's around $25 - and that will take you much further than any class by Bethany or anyone else who has no sex education and hasn't deconstructed their sexual shame and inhibitions.
My therapist recommended "Come As You Are" to me, and I found it to be extremely triggering as an asexual. I could barely get through it. Any other book recs for aces?
@@pokelover02 Ace: What Asexuality Reveals About Desire, Society, and the Meaning of Sex by Angela Chen - I read it and found it extremely interesting and informative! I plan to read Refusing Compulsory Sexuality: A Black Asexual Lens on Our Sex-Obsessed Culture by Sherronda Brown as well, it was recommended along with Ace.
@@kweenz600 Thank you for the recs! I just finished Ace (binge-listened the audio book in 2 days), and I felt so seen! I’ll check out the other one as well. Appreciate you 💜
As someone who was married for 10 years (now divorced) and was 100% CONVINCED that I hated sex, I can honestly tell you sexual compatibility is definitely a thing. I knew there was something wrong on our honeymoon but I thought that it was just something wrong with me.
Watching yall react to Dave's Barbie review was really...hope-inspiring. He saw Barbieland for what it was in the film-a matriarchy. And he absolutely caught on to the whole point being that its the opposite in the real world. That the way the Kens were ignored and downtrodden, taken for granted, and were seen as nothing more than essentially eye candy...thats how women are often treated in the real world. And then you add on the fear of violence that Barbie immediately noticed in the real world...and you get a really great feminism 101. Greta Gerwig absolutely did a great job constructing a reverse version of the patriarchy. When on of the Kens asks if they can have just one Supreme Court Justice...the President said they can't do that. But they can have some lower circuit court judges! 😂 I can see Dave is a really smart man, and thankfully, it appears that the church has failed to squash his critical thinking skills.
Barbie land was never a matriarchy. It was a reverse patriarchy where women are all in charge. A true matriarchy puts motherhood, family, caring at the center of politics rather than hierarchy and ownership. The movie didn’t really explore matriarchy at all. Loved it though!!
@@margauxwalson8474matriarchy does not imply anything other than "women in charge" by definition... what is a "true matriarchy"? That doesn't really make sense to me even as you describe it Also, if motherhood is centered by politics it will still make a hierarchy. Motherhood over fatherhood, and parents over children again. If family is centered in politics people without family will be lower in the hierarchy and marginalized (just how it is today? Politics favor the nuclear family so I don't see how your idea of true matriarchy differentiates itself from this system). This kinda sounds like pseudo-feminism is all I'm saying from your description.
I feel like Dave is either really close to deconstructing or has already deconstructed but is scared for Bethany's reaction. I hope he manages to get it sorted for the sake of his mental health.
@@meluzinaskolastika746It might not even be verbalized blackmail. The blackmail is built into the structure of the church (and, y'know, heteronormative monogamist patriarchy in general)
Can I just say, CALLED IT!!! Good for Dave. So glad that Bethany is taking it well too and they are going mixed faith with mutual respect. For my next prophecy... Bethany sees that Dave is still a great person without the need for religion and eventually leaves too.
Ugh I hate how true this is… like they were assigned to care for a baby doll in health class together 💀 (no shade to the baby; he's adorable and I'm sure they both love him to bits)
15:35 I love how Bethany hits the nail on the head with this and then completely misses the point. Yeah, your circumstances and interests _can_ change over time...maybe that's why you should live together with your partner and have sex before getting married? Give it time before making a lifelong commitment to someone?
49:23 As someone who was raised in a religion with purity culture, sex before marriage, and divorce being a horrible thing. I feel for Dave. I loved my husband enough to marry him but he was not a great partner. It took having children to ease me into getting a divorce for the kids benefit. He was as removed from them now as he was then. I am not thirsty for guys and living a happily single life. But Dave is such a well balanced guy with these confessions. He sounds patient, loving, kind and that is an amazing set of qualities for a partner. 57:25 I am just feeling for Dave. I honestly don't understand how it is being played as all his fault. His wife (bc her name escapes me) was raised the same way but she is all of a sudden a sex goddess and giving courses? I really just don't understand.
"sexual compatibility is a lie, you guys can explore together" is something that can only be said by the most vanilla of vanilla people. Like imagining my freaky ass telling someone I'm dating about my kinks and then just trusting that they'll be able to meet me halfway on it is actually comical.
I love the episodes where you two make me literally laugh out loud and my kid says, “Mom what’s so funny?” and I have to say, “Nothing sweetheart…😂”happens all the time. Love you guys! 😂
Oh I needed you today. I just have been knee deep and heart broke by this Franke/Hildebrant torture story. It just gets darker by the minute. So I need a light hearted laugh and I am rooting for Dav to escape or for Bethy to break feee. Thanks y’all for just being here
Ugh I spent all of yesterday getting caught up on everything there and it REALLY took its toll on my mood last night, so I’m so glad we could ease your heaviness a bit today!!! 💜💜💜
Dave always seems so real and honest in these videos. In contrast, Bethany seems mostly forced, still more focused on what people will think of them rather than the actual subject they're discussing. They come off so incompatible! Here's hoping Bethany continues to follow Dave into the light, as it were 🤞. Their journey is fascinating. ETA: i love watching the cat meditating ❤
Yes! She seems like she's performing for her audience, and he's trying to connect with them. Here's hoping that her religious indoctrination to follow her husband will lead both of them down a more positive and fulfilling path! (And just maaaaybe they'll bring Kristen and her husband along with them!)
43:20-45:21 Dave seems so pained during this part - unless this is his baseline; I don’t watch them - rubbing his face, odd facial tensions, looking away from her, switching his sentence at some point to describing some general “your relationship” versus a personal “our relationship,” and energetically just completely trailing off at the end. And I know they have a baby there but she doesn’t seem to be listening to him at all, and when he trails off she just says “yeah” then starts right up with her own narrative without responding at all to what he just shared. Even if she nods or makes some noise of agreement while he speaks, it doesn’t feel genuine (at least not compared to Sam & Tanner’s attention & responses to each other as they talk back and forth). It just feels like they are both suppressing so much (as I’d expect given their religion) and I hope they BOTH keep deconstructing as the years go by.🤞🤞 P.S. Like our hosts here, I find Dave especially sympathetic, and I hope that his kind, gracious nature doesn’t stop him from eventually recognizing that sometimes other people and systems ARE the problem. 🫣
fantastic analysis (analyses?) of Dave and Bethany's dynamic, I one hundred percent agree and I love your profile pic it's givign garden gnome realness
Love the conversation about having multiple relationships and how much can be learned from each experience. It is scary to think about only being with my own first partner….also appreciate that I had dated and lived with partners to know what works and what doesn’t. Life is crazy
Thank you guys for always being kind, fair and thoughtful with your videos. I feel like the anti fundie spaces have been becoming toxic again, maybe just me, but I can always count on you two !
I think Tanner underestimated the danger of sex for women. Some of us are lucky and in a safe position. But given the state of reproductive rights in your own country, or similar rights rollbacks around the world, and several jurisdictions where contraception is banned, and countries where HIV is still an epidemic, or where premarital sex is a crime, where unwed mothers receive worse than no support, where medical care in pregnancy could bankrupt you, where marital rape isn't a crime so you have no choice over conception, or a high risk pregnancy could kill you, or the rising rates of sexual violence towards women, revenge porn, etc. etc. because I could go on forever... These are intense, lifelong, consequences that women commonly face. In the face of all that it makes complete sense to restrict ones number of partners. I'm not saying "traditional," marriage is the cure or answer, as it comes with a new set of problems for women. But saying "we don't have to worry about most of that stuff," betrays a lack of perspective imo.
Totally know what you're saying, I think he was just trying to communicate that we as a species have the knowledge and the resources--we just have messed up systems that block people's access to them. :/ Tanner is a vasectomized man haha
I think these risks, although real in many parts of the world, are literally socially constructed. There's a reason why the biblical view of marriage was useful at a point in time but isn't the most popular model in some parts of the world
@@miglek9613how can pregnancy, violence, stds, assault be relegated to socially constructed problems? Sex is a socially constructed situation but the results, either direct or indirect, are realities that are possible.
I appreciate your compassion for the people who are trapped in their religious stranglehold. They can absolutely be total jerks, but they are that way for many reasons. I hope more folks stuck in those toxic ways can find a way out to becoming their more authentic selves.
From their marriage discussions, it seems they genuinely don’t like each other that much, but feel forced to make it work. Their beliefs, their ways of engaging, the uphill struggle to even have satisfying sexual experiences together. It all seems extremely stressful.
just discovered this channel and LOVE the amount of humanity behind it. making fun of and breaking down harmful ideology while still understanding where the individual person is coming from. happy to be here!!
32:37 The look on his face when he was coming out of the closet, covering with a mug and glancing was fascinating. I hope he's doing well and can get out of the mindset that hurt him.
I could totally understand him not wanting his kid to get his idea of masculinity from a bunch of church women. There were definitely some older ladies in the church telling us what a man is supposed to be. Plus we were also explicitly told that we can and should make our husbands better Christian’s by like, being a good Christian tradwife. I feel like it sets up a pretty brutal cycle of wives trying to be this perfect theoretical Christian wife, and getting upset when that doesn’t magically change their husbands into whatever their expectation is of masculinity
I’m married to my Highschool sweetheart and my one and only. There were a lot of difficult times but we have always known we are right for each other and choose to love each other every day. He’s my best friend and I can’t imagine being with anyone else. But that’s just us. We made it work because we wanted too. And I would never judge anyone for dating around to try and find their right fit, especially since people do change a lot from teen to grown adult.
The belief that marriage before a pre-frontal cortex development, before any real getting to know yourself and living and dating many people and just the blanket belief that god or communication can make anything work is really something that seems like magic. My current partner and i are planning a big cross country move and we are both incredibly excited but tense and this stress is something to navigate. If we didn’t have the history of problem solving, communication and knowing that we’ve lived together for 3 years prior i don’t think we could handle it.
Speaking as a very concerned environmental engineer - to anyone who makes this argument, is there enough space to physically fit the number of people on the planet? Yeah, of course. But you’re neglecting to consider that the amount of land and resources required to keep 8billion people *alive* is wayyyyy higher than the physical space those people’s bodies take up. We’ve created a reliance on unsustainable and un-resilient mono-cropping agriculture that requires acres and acres of land, an obscene amount of water, and an excessive amount of nutrients to keep one person alive. Fertilizers have been so heavily overused that the earth is going to be severely low on phosphorous in the next 50 years. Phosphorous is a vital nutrient for plants to grow, so no phosphorous means no food. Infrastructure was planned so poorly in the last several hundred years that many places that used to have abundant water supplies don’t have them anymore. We’ve created a reliance on massive scale industrial and commercial processes that take up loads of physical space in addition to resources. Not to mention how the pollution from these processes can steal vital resources from us. And not to mention how all of these impacts are heightened due to climate change. I’m not in the business of telling people what to do reproductively, but please don’t downplay the severity of our situation by straw manning the issue like that. Nothing is going to get better if people can’t acknowledge that there’s a problem
Eeeeeeeee! I am a person who has been essentially in the same relationship my entire adult life (6 years). I think we only work and dont feel constrained because we do set time aside for the kind of deep talks Zelph has all the time and we are still learning and adapting all the time. I think it is possible to end up in a fulfilling relationship without exploring a whole lot, but it takes a lot of *honest* conversation and discussion. So, as a person who essentially did what Girl Defined did, there is a way to do it and I hope they learn how to be more honest with each other and grow as people.
Some people just get lucky the first time, too. I know two couples (one of them - my parents!) who are each other’s one and only and married young, and they never felt like they had to force it. Obviously they had hard times to work through, but they managed to come out the other side ok. Both couples have always had good communication and have luckily grown together instead of apart (something that’s kind of out of a couple’s control). I have one friend who married at 19 and divorced at 21. Another friend who had only dated the guy but he’d had more experience, and they ALMOST divorced because one of them wanted kids, but once they did the math and looked closer at the reality of raising a kid in this day and age, they both said they’d rather be child free and married to each other - they grew together instead of apart. The rest of my friends? Dated more than one person and didn’t marry at all or waited until later in life. The vast majority of them are in this category.
@LaCeiba1924 oh definitely! I think it takes a certain kind of people who are willing to adapt to each other to be able to just, make it work. I am totally all for couples taking breaks or breaking up if things are just not working out, ya know? If both partners arent willing to change so they can coexist, then its ok to go find someone who will. And maybe they'll be like my mom and step-dad and meet again decades later and realize theyre ready now.
Dave seems to be great at looking at himself and taking accountability, which is such a healthy and brave thing to do. It seems Bethany may be taking advantage of that rather than appreciating it and reciprocating.
I do wonder if talking about or pointing out how Dave could be deconstructing could have a negative impact on his journey? Could he, Bethany, or church family or friend could see it, get scared, and turn the opposite direction? Not saying this is anyone's responsibility if that happens or putting blame anywhere, but I am curious. I know it's an additionally complicated situation because of his wife's ministry. Anyway, would love to hear other people's thoughts! This is an interesting subject and change. Whatever happens, I hope it's what's best for Dave.
Eeek I hope not! We try to show as much love and support for him as possible so that would suck. :/ I guess we can never know the full impact of what we say which is a bit spooky, but I like to think that having your heart in the right place can come through-we feel a kinship with Dave so it would be awesome if he could feel that from us! 🥲
@ZelphOntheShelf I do appreciate how kind you are being towards him, and I do hope he can see the support he's getting from everyone. I think we all worry for the people who are grappling and being harmed by the culture they were brought up in, and want them to have every chance of success in healing. I guess I distrust the people around him and fear the pressures they will put on him, if they think he's leaving. She's humiliated him online again and again talking about his "problems", I fear what she'd and their army of fellow influencers and followers would do if they thought he was leaving. I think the space they've all created is almost like a cult and religion in and of itself, really.
In my personal experience (which I fully understand is not universal, but it’s what I have to work with), probably not. It may make the process more bumpy and complicated and generally sucky for him, but once we start squeezing out that toothpaste, there’s no putting it back in the tube. We can’t just return to believing something again once we’ve come to the conclusion that it isn’t true, and after we’ve discarded one belief that we previously considered important, we inevitably start evaluating the rest of them, and it’s not a process we can stop just because the consequences are more than we banked on. My deconstruction has cost me most of my family, but once I started, I couldn’t have changed the trajectory of it even if I had wanted to. Edited for more precise word choices.
i just stumbled upon your videos and your conversation is much more nuanced than what i am used to from youtube and i'm loving it. i'm a life-long atheist coming from a very loose Lutheran background and this shit is so fascinating to me.
deconversion comes in waves. Barbie movie triggered a big wave to push back against the programming that is too difficult to face. letting go of ideas she can explain away as 'misunderstanding gods intentions' that are making sex hard is easier because she wants to have a healthy godly marriage which includes sex, but challenging the entirety of the construct all at once is often VERY difficult to do and requires a few instances of 'BUT THAT CANT BE TRUE' before accepting maybe what you're learning and seeing is true. They're at different stages of processing with related but different traumas and different indoctrinated roles; hence why he was so emboldened by the barbie movie as it was confirming the new things he was learning, and why she was so deterred realizing the issues are bigger and farther reaching than she thought.
Bethany has the confidence of someone who has fully and completely embraced there childhood programing. As someone raised Jehovah's Witness, part of me is jealous, part of me is horrified.
the drunker I get while watching this the more I envy Tanner's style. the level of gender envy is only rivaled by Harry Styles and the distant clicking sounds of my keyboard. Also I am obsessed with the edging on Sam's tank it reminds me of those fancy scissors that gave me sooo much dopamine when I was but a wee lad
This was so good! I loved the bit about incompatible relationships are great to reflect on what attracted us to someone who couldn’t meet our needs. Just the whole thing was great. Subscribed!
I actually think it's possible to do most, if not all the work you need while in a single relationship, but it requires a huge amount of trust and compatiblity and space outside that person to explore who you are. I also think it requires both partners to have room to grow outside the relationship. But I'm biased, as I had my first relationship last 7.5 years and we both worked through a lot of our attachment issues and so on while in that relationship.
I really hope that in private Bethany is more supportive and listens better (she may feel she has to perform a certain way for her audience… or she may be even less responsive; who knows). I wish the best for all of them (including the baby), but Dave's the one I have the most hope for based on what we're currently seeing. He seems really open to interrogating his own actions and motivations, which is a powerful catalyst for change.
If Bethany doesn’t appreciate Dave the way he should I will take him 😅 if he would have me, of course 🤣 But seriously, it’s so nice to see a man, let alone a Christian man, seeking self improvement
Is he having a trauma fawning response? He sees her as the authority and just says nice things about her and taking everything on himself unnecessarily. Including trying to be ok with her complaining about their sex life publicly & blaming himself for the “deficiency”, even though it takes both people to have a positive experience. And in my opinion he has a perfectly valid desire to NOT want super vulnerable stuff like sexual experiences being put out on the internet. And personally I think he has every reason to not be sexually attracted to her as she’s clearly dismissive of him. I know I lost the desire to have sex with someone when they tried to treat me like she treats him.
Thanks for the recommendation on We're Not Really Strangers. I've played it a few times with various groups. It's nice. (Your 'there's something to be said about hashing it out in front of a camera' triggered that memory.)
Your videos are so healing for me, i was really about to hang out the towel cause of a bad sexual/romantic experience but it really is just a learning experience. I don’t know what I’m supposed to be learning but yknow it’s ok
As someone who has never been involved with the church I find your perspectives very interesting. I love how you both humanise Bethany and Dav and strip it back to us all having a human experience, very refreshing
Just found your channel and subbed. This conversation was immensely triggering as someone who came out of a fundie background and made a lot of the same mistakes. I have a long ways to go. Would love for you two to do a reaction series on the SHP docu
There is enough SPACE for people, but the "space" is either being used to provide food for the people we already have, or it's not habitable... like desert wastelands, both hot and frozen.
There are some places where I think maybe you are giving Dav more credit than he deserves due to some language/semantics differences in the ways evangelical/fundie Christians talk vs Mormon lingo about the same things. It’s been so interesting on a lot of ways through your content to realize how vocabulary differences confuse what is and isn’t parallel between the two groups, and how things that sound innocuous to me in general conference talks turn out to actually be references to toxicity that I actually did experience in different “clothing” in my church upbringing. All that to say some of it may be happening in reverse to you. I hear a lot-and I mean a LOT- of Promise Keepers in his word choice, especially when talking about manhood and marriage. PK seems on the surface to be respectful of women, supportive of men doing their equal part…but the patriarchy is in the details. A PK doesn’t want his son to learn about men from women because that’s how a son grows up to be “too soft.” A PK doesn’t stuff his emotions, he lets loose in his wife in intimidating ways and spins it as open communication. Etc. maybe I’m wrong, but I hear a lot of echoes of toxic Christian men I’ve known in his language in some of these points.
If you’re wrong, then I am too. I hear the same things you do, and it’s usually nothing but an added layer of mental gymnastics to allow them to feel okay about the garbage they’re spewing. If it’s done well, it can look like the beginnings of deconstruction, but most of the time, it’s just a rebranding of the same bag of flaming dog poo they’ve been peddling all along. I’m not going to say that’s what’s happening here, because I don’t even know him, but I’ve seen it way too often to discount the idea.
These kind of emotional stunt often occurs to fundie when they basically delay their natural human development…… (Relationship building, sexual awakening, self discovery) I feel sorry for them because Bethie don’t see that this is what is happening by being brainwashed from a young age…
I relate to that thought so much. I didn't kill myself because I was more scared of what would happen to my mother's mental health. So I'm still here and she's still here.
Tbh, I felt a little uncomfortable when Dave was talking about how Bethany positing about their sex lives on the internet was a chance for him to work through his own insecurities, because it almost came across like he knew he couldn't say it made him uncomfortable or talk to her about adjusting the way she talks about their relationship online (I do think Bethany could talk about the struggles she's had around sex in a way that's way more compassionate to Dave, but maybe that would require Bethany to deconstruct more). I feel like if they where talking about the private conversations they've had to improve their relationships him talking about working through is feelings about not wanting to be seen as sexually inadequate would seem healthy, but the way it came across was "no, I'm not really ok with Bethany talking about our sex lives on instagram, but I'm not allowed to feel that way."
1:13:14 omg sam and your kitty both had an adorable in sync moment, with the drink and them cleaning themselves and looking away. too cute. don't know the kitties name, and I probably should, my bad haha.
@@ZelphOntheShelf love that name, love them. Was a great video, but Banksy made it even better. Gotta sell the video as art under Banksys name(had you guys considered making them a channel?) Give them a good pet for me ❤️ ADHD brain but here’s to hoping someday us strangers on the internet can look back at Bethany & Dave but hopefully especially Dave, and laugh with them about how far they’ve come. There’s always hope.
Her chaotic energy and talking makes me die a little inside. And I say that as someone with ADHD and raising kids who have ADHD. Bethi, get diagnosed, we support you...and practice calming the eff down. Yes, some people call it masking, but sometimes it helps so we don't add to someone else's mental health issue (as in, some people can't process the chaos energy, waterfall communication)...I am both.
ADHD here as well. She is so fucking wound up that I can’t even imagine her just enjoying anything. She is always trying to crack the code to how to enjoy life and feel joy. Her energy is just too much. I can’t imagine being in the same physical space as her.
We shouldn't be encouraging NDs to mask as that's the quickest road to burnout and depression. But yes, she should def see a therapist if she hasn't already.
It’s like the only way they can have an honest conversation is in front of people, and they turned to UA-cam to make it possible to have an important, private marital conversation. They way she asks questions to know what he’s thinking and all of the answers he has so at-the-ready, makes me think that they’re both aware of their problems and think about them all the time, but can’t healthily approach conversation between themselves without the social pressure of having eyes on you to make you at least pretend to be calm and be respectful to your partner.
Admittedly I have only seen one or two girl defined videos and only the Barbie one you guys did and this one with Dave. But it seems to me that he is genuinely introspective and capable of really absorbing information. In both videos he's the one talking about how these things effect him or the thought process he had and examining things deeply, or against his own thoughts and feelings. Specifically in this the way both of them are talking about therapy is completely different. She is, yeah I learned some stuff I wasnt expecting or aware of. Where he is going in to the process of it, how it effected him and how he views himeself and their marriage. I understandall of this is on camera and they don't own anyone personal details but you can discuss sensative matters in a deep manner without actually revealing things that you feel are too personal or vulnerable. The're are two different vibes coming from them.
Hey, thanks for your content! I would be really interested to know your perspective on pop culture representation of mormonism, like the musical "the book of mormon", the TLC show "sister wives" or the "real housewives of salt lake city".
If you ever get a chance to do emdr I highly recommend it. I really do think it helped me process certain things that I had been really stuck on for years. It’s not hypnosis, it just has something to do with how our brain processes things and the eye movement is one method of achieving that but there are other ways too. For example for me trying to do the eye movement method just made me feel really anxious and distracted so instead we used these vibrating things I would hold in each hand that would alternate in vibrating. It achieves the same thing and I actually found it really relaxing plus I was able to close my eyes which helped me focus on the memories I was processing.
I’ve been following the Dave X Zelph On the Shelf cinematic universe and when you made the joke about the counselor being a Unitarian Universalist I gasped aloud because I was thinking to myself- a UU- if only I could get my compassionate heart and wise words on this hatefully conditioned mind, help her through it and towards “god” in the Bruce Willis kinda way. (Like y’all’s stuff helps me through it all)
"WHAT WILL YOU DO WHEN YOURE NO LONGER SEXUALLY COMPATIBLE?!" Divorce. I got divorced. I mean he was abusive as well, but I'd have divorced him just over the sexual compatibility 😂.
The joke about Dave being going asexual was a bit fucked up tho. Like, he might actually be tho 🤷🏼? I don’t mean that in a trying to guess his sexuality way exactly, more in like a “he’s just starting to give himself permission to deepen his self understanding way”.
........I was not expecting the "Somebody once told me, the world was gonna roll me" from Tanner. I was expecting a Shrek, but that delivery, man! It was spot on!!!
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Sorry I'm new ... do you really sell candles and if so, like, where? I want something like that where if I have guests they're like WHAT IS THAT
I think Bethy and Dave should be your Halloween costumes 😅
"Welcome to another episode of us monetising our hyper-fixations" I support this!
It's really the best quote that describes what we all strive to do 😂
Me too ❤
It was a feeling ☺
Dave saying he was miserable and after 4 years of marriage he hit a wall of disappointment, wow. Good thing he went to see a qualified therapist.
I think it’s weird that Dave will talk about his progress with therapy and his life altering awakenings and his desire to develop as well-rounded individual and Bethany will just respond with a casual “yeah”. The ways she agrees and nods her head when he says he realizes his faults is, like, gross to me. She acts like he is the biggest inconvenience and that she thinks obviously HE is the source of strife in their relationship
YES
Him: therapy has helped me realized all the growing I would like to do
Her: yeah you ARE pretty messed up. Whereas I am mostly fine
- the vibe
@@ZelphOntheShelfit drives me crazy! I listen to y’all’s podcast at work and their content baffles me into run-on sentence territory fr LOL
@@erikacomfort3343yeah, god, this is practically a conversation I had a few times with my ex husband.
I was like, "We should go to therapy because we're kinda fucked up."
In my head it was mostly to get him to go because I've been in therapy for a zillion years, though I always will have growing and healing from trauma. He was a deeply unwell person who really needed to get his shit together because I couldn't spin the plates anymore, especially after being dismissed with cancer. A cancer that will never go away even if it's controlled, a sickness that I've been doing all the work maintaining without any assistance at all. I was told straight faced, "You should go if you think you want to, but I'm okay..."
The operative word in this whole thing is "EX". I feel really bad for Dav because there's something not great going on, and I get the feeling he's staying for other people and not himself. I know what that feels like and it kills parts of you over time the longer you stay. I hope that if he feels this way he cuts and runs; no one should have to slowly suffocate themselves for people who could care the fuck less.
Why the hell does Bethany feel the need to speak at least 4 to 6 times faster than a normal human being
My great grandmother said “you should take many lovers, preferably foreign, before you marry. That way you know what you like.” She also dated the writer Joseph Campbell when he studied in France, and claimed it was for the best that she broke it off, because “they would have had the most peculiar children.” He also shredded her in his autobiography. Go figure. So that’s hot relationship advice from a hundred years ago👍🏽
Ok wow ‼️
For the best, dodged his Heart of Darkness
@@harpyspeaks I think you're thinking of Joseph Conrad, not Campbell. Great pun though lol
omg i did my thesis on him lol
Cool! What was her name?
I get the impression that Dave is better at masking his criticisms of Bethany behind generalizations and kindness than Bethany is at masking her criticizing Dave.
As a sexologist - buy the books "Come as You Are" and "Sex, God and the Conservative Church" - that's around $25 - and that will take you much further than any class by Bethany or anyone else who has no sex education and hasn't deconstructed their sexual shame and inhibitions.
we love Come As You Are. Definitely need to check out the other one now
My therapist recommended "Come As You Are" to me, and I found it to be extremely triggering as an asexual. I could barely get through it. Any other book recs for aces?
@@pokelover02 Ace: What Asexuality Reveals About Desire, Society, and the Meaning of Sex by Angela Chen - I read it and found it extremely interesting and informative!
I plan to read Refusing Compulsory Sexuality: A Black Asexual Lens on Our Sex-Obsessed Culture by Sherronda Brown as well, it was recommended along with Ace.
Ditto
@@kweenz600 Thank you for the recs! I just finished Ace (binge-listened the audio book in 2 days), and I felt so seen! I’ll check out the other one as well. Appreciate you 💜
As someone who was married for 10 years (now divorced) and was 100% CONVINCED that I hated sex, I can honestly tell you sexual compatibility is definitely a thing. I knew there was something wrong on our honeymoon but I thought that it was just something wrong with me.
Watching yall react to Dave's Barbie review was really...hope-inspiring.
He saw Barbieland for what it was in the film-a matriarchy. And he absolutely caught on to the whole point being that its the opposite in the real world. That the way the Kens were ignored and downtrodden, taken for granted, and were seen as nothing more than essentially eye candy...thats how women are often treated in the real world. And then you add on the fear of violence that Barbie immediately noticed in the real world...and you get a really great feminism 101.
Greta Gerwig absolutely did a great job constructing a reverse version of the patriarchy. When on of the Kens asks if they can have just one Supreme Court Justice...the President said they can't do that. But they can have some lower circuit court judges! 😂
I can see Dave is a really smart man, and thankfully, it appears that the church has failed to squash his critical thinking skills.
Barbie land was never a matriarchy. It was a reverse patriarchy where women are all in charge. A true matriarchy puts motherhood, family, caring at the center of politics rather than hierarchy and ownership. The movie didn’t really explore matriarchy at all. Loved it though!!
@@margauxwalson8474matriarchy does not imply anything other than "women in charge" by definition... what is a "true matriarchy"? That doesn't really make sense to me even as you describe it
Also, if motherhood is centered by politics it will still make a hierarchy. Motherhood over fatherhood, and parents over children again.
If family is centered in politics people without family will be lower in the hierarchy and marginalized (just how it is today? Politics favor the nuclear family so I don't see how your idea of true matriarchy differentiates itself from this system).
This kinda sounds like pseudo-feminism is all I'm saying from your description.
I feel like Dave is either really close to deconstructing or has already deconstructed but is scared for Bethany's reaction. I hope he manages to get it sorted for the sake of his mental health.
@@meluzinaskolastika746It might not even be verbalized blackmail. The blackmail is built into the structure of the church (and, y'know, heteronormative monogamist patriarchy in general)
Can I just say, CALLED IT!!! Good for Dave. So glad that Bethany is taking it well too and they are going mixed faith with mutual respect. For my next prophecy... Bethany sees that Dave is still a great person without the need for religion and eventually leaves too.
These kids seem as if they were randomly assigned to be married and are now desperately trying to make it work although they have zero chemistry. 😢
Ugh I hate how true this is… like they were assigned to care for a baby doll in health class together 💀 (no shade to the baby; he's adorable and I'm sure they both love him to bits)
I mean, as I understand it, they kind of were... Bethany was desperate to get married and I guess Dave was the 1st one to propose
Man I feel so bad for Dave! Her gets zero intellectual engagement in his normal life. What a nightmare!
My thought exactly.
I really do appreciate the way you two have helped me have more empathy toward hyper relgious people. I do not carry near the anger I once did.
Dude! Same! ^^
I find myself so genuinely enjoying what Dave has to say. I really can see him deconstructing near in the future.
Its truly unbelievable how well Tanner can pull so many different hairstyles. You look great!
HONESTLY THOUGH
Let’s start a petition for a tanner fashion and style account
As an 80s kid, Tanner's hair yeeted my soul straight out of my body when I first saw it! It's perfect!
@@kyliesmith729 Please I need tips
He's going George Michael, and I'm not talking about Arrested Development.
15:35 I love how Bethany hits the nail on the head with this and then completely misses the point. Yeah, your circumstances and interests _can_ change over time...maybe that's why you should live together with your partner and have sex before getting married? Give it time before making a lifelong commitment to someone?
This is my favourite plotline. Hope the writers land the ending!
Omg. Poor Dav. When he says they need marriage counseling and she makes a huge spectacle of agreeing and he's just staring into space.
The way Girl Defined just makes arguments for the otherside and don't even realize it. Its amazing to behold. I hope Dave gets out soon.
49:23 As someone who was raised in a religion with purity culture, sex before marriage, and divorce being a horrible thing. I feel for Dave. I loved my husband enough to marry him but he was not a great partner. It took having children to ease me into getting a divorce for the kids benefit. He was as removed from them now as he was then. I am not thirsty for guys and living a happily single life. But Dave is such a well balanced guy with these confessions. He sounds patient, loving, kind and that is an amazing set of qualities for a partner.
57:25 I am just feeling for Dave. I honestly don't understand how it is being played as all his fault. His wife (bc her name escapes me) was raised the same way but she is all of a sudden a sex goddess and giving courses? I really just don't understand.
Really relieved to hear the both of you acknowledge the presence of a blossoming Dav crush
"sexual compatibility is a lie, you guys can explore together" is something that can only be said by the most vanilla of vanilla people. Like imagining my freaky ass telling someone I'm dating about my kinks and then just trusting that they'll be able to meet me halfway on it is actually comical.
I love the episodes where you two make me literally laugh out loud and my kid says, “Mom what’s so funny?” and I have to say, “Nothing sweetheart…😂”happens all the time. Love you guys! 😂
YAY ✨
Oh I needed you today. I just have been knee deep and heart broke by this Franke/Hildebrant torture story. It just gets darker by the minute. So I need a light hearted laugh and I am rooting for Dav to escape or for Bethy to break feee. Thanks y’all for just being here
Ugh I spent all of yesterday getting caught up on everything there and it REALLY took its toll on my mood last night, so I’m so glad we could ease your heaviness a bit today!!! 💜💜💜
Dave always seems so real and honest in these videos. In contrast, Bethany seems mostly forced, still more focused on what people will think of them rather than the actual subject they're discussing. They come off so incompatible! Here's hoping Bethany continues to follow Dave into the light, as it were 🤞. Their journey is fascinating.
ETA: i love watching the cat meditating ❤
I was just about to comment this same thing. Dave seems so bloody sincere and she seems so the opposite
Yes! She seems like she's performing for her audience, and he's trying to connect with them. Here's hoping that her religious indoctrination to follow her husband will lead both of them down a more positive and fulfilling path! (And just maaaaybe they'll bring Kristen and her husband along with them!)
43:20-45:21 Dave seems so pained during this part - unless this is his baseline; I don’t watch them - rubbing his face, odd facial tensions, looking away from her, switching his sentence at some point to describing some general “your relationship” versus a personal “our relationship,” and energetically just completely trailing off at the end. And I know they have a baby there but she doesn’t seem to be listening to him at all, and when he trails off she just says “yeah” then starts right up with her own narrative without responding at all to what he just shared. Even if she nods or makes some noise of agreement while he speaks, it doesn’t feel genuine (at least not compared to Sam & Tanner’s attention & responses to each other as they talk back and forth). It just feels like they are both suppressing so much (as I’d expect given their religion) and I hope they BOTH keep deconstructing as the years go by.🤞🤞
P.S. Like our hosts here, I find Dave especially sympathetic, and I hope that his kind, gracious nature doesn’t stop him from eventually recognizing that sometimes other people and systems ARE the problem. 🫣
Wasn't the interrupting thing always... the thing with girl defined? 🤔
fantastic analysis (analyses?) of Dave and Bethany's dynamic, I one hundred percent agree and I love your profile pic it's givign garden gnome realness
Love the conversation about having multiple relationships and how much can be learned from each experience. It is scary to think about only being with my own first partner….also appreciate that I had dated and lived with partners to know what works and what doesn’t. Life is crazy
Thank you guys for always being kind, fair and thoughtful with your videos. I feel like the anti fundie spaces have been becoming toxic again, maybe just me, but I can always count on you two !
💜💜💜💜
I really appreciated that too. They don't dehumanize fundies while disagreeing
I think Tanner underestimated the danger of sex for women. Some of us are lucky and in a safe position. But given the state of reproductive rights in your own country, or similar rights rollbacks around the world, and several jurisdictions where contraception is banned, and countries where HIV is still an epidemic, or where premarital sex is a crime, where unwed mothers receive worse than no support, where medical care in pregnancy could bankrupt you, where marital rape isn't a crime so you have no choice over conception, or a high risk pregnancy could kill you, or the rising rates of sexual violence towards women, revenge porn, etc. etc. because I could go on forever...
These are intense, lifelong, consequences that women commonly face. In the face of all that it makes complete sense to restrict ones number of partners. I'm not saying "traditional," marriage is the cure or answer, as it comes with a new set of problems for women. But saying "we don't have to worry about most of that stuff," betrays a lack of perspective imo.
Totally know what you're saying, I think he was just trying to communicate that we as a species have the knowledge and the resources--we just have messed up systems that block people's access to them. :/ Tanner is a vasectomized man haha
I think these risks, although real in many parts of the world, are literally socially constructed. There's a reason why the biblical view of marriage was useful at a point in time but isn't the most popular model in some parts of the world
@@ZelphOntheShelf because he is a responsible king we stan
@@miglek9613how can pregnancy, violence, stds, assault be relegated to socially constructed problems? Sex is a socially constructed situation but the results, either direct or indirect, are realities that are possible.
I appreciate your compassion for the people who are trapped in their religious stranglehold. They can absolutely be total jerks, but they are that way for many reasons. I hope more folks stuck in those toxic ways can find a way out to becoming their more authentic selves.
Dave had the Kenergy in him all along! We have to stan
From their marriage discussions, it seems they genuinely don’t like each other that much, but feel forced to make it work. Their beliefs, their ways of engaging, the uphill struggle to even have satisfying sexual experiences together. It all seems extremely stressful.
yessss Im obsessed with this topic, something so satisfying and interesting about the idea of Dave deconstructing
just discovered this channel and LOVE the amount of humanity behind it. making fun of and breaking down harmful ideology while still understanding where the individual person is coming from. happy to be here!!
🥰🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍
32:37 The look on his face when he was coming out of the closet, covering with a mug and glancing was fascinating. I hope he's doing well and can get out of the mindset that hurt him.
I could totally understand him not wanting his kid to get his idea of masculinity from a bunch of church women. There were definitely some older ladies in the church telling us what a man is supposed to be. Plus we were also explicitly told that we can and should make our husbands better Christian’s by like, being a good Christian tradwife. I feel like it sets up a pretty brutal cycle of wives trying to be this perfect theoretical Christian wife, and getting upset when that doesn’t magically change their husbands into whatever their expectation is of masculinity
I loved how positive this was. I think most all of us are rooting for him and hope for the best.
I’m married to my Highschool sweetheart and my one and only. There were a lot of difficult times but we have always known we are right for each other and choose to love each other every day. He’s my best friend and I can’t imagine being with anyone else. But that’s just us. We made it work because we wanted too. And I would never judge anyone for dating around to try and find their right fit, especially since people do change a lot from teen to grown adult.
Awww yay 🥳✨
I adore how kind both of you are, I hope there will be another episode ❤
oh you know it ;)
The belief that marriage before a pre-frontal cortex development, before any real getting to know yourself and living and dating many people and just the blanket belief that god or communication can make anything work is really something that seems like magic. My current partner and i are planning a big cross country move and we are both incredibly excited but tense and this stress is something to navigate. If we didn’t have the history of problem solving, communication and knowing that we’ve lived together for 3 years prior i don’t think we could handle it.
Speaking as a very concerned environmental engineer - to anyone who makes this argument, is there enough space to physically fit the number of people on the planet? Yeah, of course. But you’re neglecting to consider that the amount of land and resources required to keep 8billion people *alive* is wayyyyy higher than the physical space those people’s bodies take up. We’ve created a reliance on unsustainable and un-resilient mono-cropping agriculture that requires acres and acres of land, an obscene amount of water, and an excessive amount of nutrients to keep one person alive. Fertilizers have been so heavily overused that the earth is going to be severely low on phosphorous in the next 50 years. Phosphorous is a vital nutrient for plants to grow, so no phosphorous means no food. Infrastructure was planned so poorly in the last several hundred years that many places that used to have abundant water supplies don’t have them anymore. We’ve created a reliance on massive scale industrial and commercial processes that take up loads of physical space in addition to resources. Not to mention how the pollution from these processes can steal vital resources from us. And not to mention how all of these impacts are heightened due to climate change.
I’m not in the business of telling people what to do reproductively, but please don’t downplay the severity of our situation by straw manning the issue like that. Nothing is going to get better if people can’t acknowledge that there’s a problem
👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻 thank you!!!!
@@ZelphOntheShelf preaching to the choir I’m sure haha
i feel like dave needs someone to hug him and tell him he’s enough
Eeeeeeeee!
I am a person who has been essentially in the same relationship my entire adult life (6 years).
I think we only work and dont feel constrained because we do set time aside for the kind of deep talks Zelph has all the time and we are still learning and adapting all the time.
I think it is possible to end up in a fulfilling relationship without exploring a whole lot, but it takes a lot of *honest* conversation and discussion.
So, as a person who essentially did what Girl Defined did, there is a way to do it and I hope they learn how to be more honest with each other and grow as people.
sounds like you’re doing it the right way! glad it’s working out!
Some people just get lucky the first time, too. I know two couples (one of them - my parents!) who are each other’s one and only and married young, and they never felt like they had to force it. Obviously they had hard times to work through, but they managed to come out the other side ok. Both couples have always had good communication and have luckily grown together instead of apart (something that’s kind of out of a couple’s control).
I have one friend who married at 19 and divorced at 21. Another friend who had only dated the guy but he’d had more experience, and they ALMOST divorced because one of them wanted kids, but once they did the math and looked closer at the reality of raising a kid in this day and age, they both said they’d rather be child free and married to each other - they grew together instead of apart.
The rest of my friends? Dated more than one person and didn’t marry at all or waited until later in life. The vast majority of them are in this category.
I can’t help but imagine how enlightening it would be for Dave if he watched this video of yours.
@LaCeiba1924 oh definitely! I think it takes a certain kind of people who are willing to adapt to each other to be able to just, make it work. I am totally all for couples taking breaks or breaking up if things are just not working out, ya know?
If both partners arent willing to change so they can coexist, then its ok to go find someone who will. And maybe they'll be like my mom and step-dad and meet again decades later and realize theyre ready now.
Okay but is the acting out Song of Solomon a subtle way for Bethany to be like let the guy go down on you bahahahahahah
Queen!!!!!
These s3x tips are just like, the first things you try fresh out of highschool / in your first serious relationship w a s3x component .
YES. They remind me of girl magazines in the early 2000s haha
Dave seems to be great at looking at himself and taking accountability, which is such a healthy and brave thing to do. It seems Bethany may be taking advantage of that rather than appreciating it and reciprocating.
I do wonder if talking about or pointing out how Dave could be deconstructing could have a negative impact on his journey? Could he, Bethany, or church family or friend could see it, get scared, and turn the opposite direction?
Not saying this is anyone's responsibility if that happens or putting blame anywhere, but I am curious. I know it's an additionally complicated situation because of his wife's ministry. Anyway, would love to hear other people's thoughts! This is an interesting subject and change.
Whatever happens, I hope it's what's best for Dave.
Eeek I hope not! We try to show as much love and support for him as possible so that would suck. :/ I guess we can never know the full impact of what we say which is a bit spooky, but I like to think that having your heart in the right place can come through-we feel a kinship with Dave so it would be awesome if he could feel that from us! 🥲
@ZelphOntheShelf I do appreciate how kind you are being towards him, and I do hope he can see the support he's getting from everyone. I think we all worry for the people who are grappling and being harmed by the culture they were brought up in, and want them to have every chance of success in healing.
I guess I distrust the people around him and fear the pressures they will put on him, if they think he's leaving. She's humiliated him online again and again talking about his "problems", I fear what she'd and their army of fellow influencers and followers would do if they thought he was leaving. I think the space they've all created is almost like a cult and religion in and of itself, really.
@@bowenarrows7819I’ve had the same worries. I hope he’s safe to explore new ideas in spite of his environment.
In my personal experience (which I fully understand is not universal, but it’s what I have to work with), probably not. It may make the process more bumpy and complicated and generally sucky for him, but once we start squeezing out that toothpaste, there’s no putting it back in the tube. We can’t just return to believing something again once we’ve come to the conclusion that it isn’t true, and after we’ve discarded one belief that we previously considered important, we inevitably start evaluating the rest of them, and it’s not a process we can stop just because the consequences are more than we banked on. My deconstruction has cost me most of my family, but once I started, I couldn’t have changed the trajectory of it even if I had wanted to.
Edited for more precise word choices.
This season of girl defined went hard on the dave character development. I’m here for it. Team Dave 🎉
i love how you guys discuss these people with such compassion. that is a beautiful thing. thank you!
i just stumbled upon your videos and your conversation is much more nuanced than what i am used to from youtube and i'm loving it. i'm a life-long atheist coming from a very loose Lutheran background and this shit is so fascinating to me.
💛💛💛!!!
deconversion comes in waves. Barbie movie triggered a big wave to push back against the programming that is too difficult to face. letting go of ideas she can explain away as 'misunderstanding gods intentions' that are making sex hard is easier because she wants to have a healthy godly marriage which includes sex, but challenging the entirety of the construct all at once is often VERY difficult to do and requires a few instances of 'BUT THAT CANT BE TRUE' before accepting maybe what you're learning and seeing is true. They're at different stages of processing with related but different traumas and different indoctrinated roles; hence why he was so emboldened by the barbie movie as it was confirming the new things he was learning, and why she was so deterred realizing the issues are bigger and farther reaching than she thought.
we are all rooting for dave!!! and hope that bethany follows suit, clearly something has already rubbed off on her
Tanner looking absolutely dashing ngl
You two show so much more affection for and appreciation of Dave than Bethany does.
Bethany has the confidence of someone who has fully and completely embraced there childhood programing.
As someone raised Jehovah's Witness, part of me is jealous, part of me is horrified.
the drunker I get while watching this the more I envy Tanner's style. the level of gender envy is only rivaled by Harry Styles and the distant clicking sounds of my keyboard. Also I am obsessed with the edging on Sam's tank it reminds me of those fancy scissors that gave me sooo much dopamine when I was but a wee lad
This was so good! I loved the bit about incompatible relationships are great to reflect on what attracted us to someone who couldn’t meet our needs. Just the whole thing was great. Subscribed!
I actually think it's possible to do most, if not all the work you need while in a single relationship, but it requires a huge amount of trust and compatiblity and space outside that person to explore who you are. I also think it requires both partners to have room to grow outside the relationship. But I'm biased, as I had my first relationship last 7.5 years and we both worked through a lot of our attachment issues and so on while in that relationship.
I want to whisper to Dav, "are you okay? do you need a getaway car? pack a bag and slip away into the night, I got you."
When is Tanner starting a 80s new wave band? His haircut is giving me huge 80s vibes.
no joke i literally decided to cut my long hair after a night of watching new wave music videos 😂
I really hope that in private Bethany is more supportive and listens better (she may feel she has to perform a certain way for her audience… or she may be even less responsive; who knows). I wish the best for all of them (including the baby), but Dave's the one I have the most hope for based on what we're currently seeing. He seems really open to interrogating his own actions and motivations, which is a powerful catalyst for change.
If Bethany doesn’t appreciate Dave the way he should I will take him 😅 if he would have me, of course 🤣 But seriously, it’s so nice to see a man, let alone a Christian man, seeking self improvement
Is he having a trauma fawning response? He sees her as the authority and just says nice things about her and taking everything on himself unnecessarily. Including trying to be ok with her complaining about their sex life publicly & blaming himself for the “deficiency”, even though it takes both people to have a positive experience. And in my opinion he has a perfectly valid desire to NOT want super vulnerable stuff like sexual experiences being put out on the internet. And personally I think he has every reason to not be sexually attracted to her as she’s clearly dismissive of him. I know I lost the desire to have sex with someone when they tried to treat me like she treats him.
Thanks for the recommendation on We're Not Really Strangers. I've played it a few times with various groups. It's nice. (Your 'there's something to be said about hashing it out in front of a camera' triggered that memory.)
Looking like two Muppets kissing for the first time 😂🤣 I'm dead 💀
Your videos are so healing for me, i was really about to hang out the towel cause of a bad sexual/romantic experience but it really is just a learning experience. I don’t know what I’m supposed to be learning but yknow it’s ok
💜💜💜💜
As someone who has never been involved with the church I find your perspectives very interesting. I love how you both humanise Bethany and Dav and strip it back to us all having a human experience, very refreshing
I just came across your channel and I just gotta say you guys are so charming. Excited to catch up on your content.
!!! 💜💜💜
Yet another brilliant video!
Just found your channel and subbed. This conversation was immensely triggering as someone who came out of a fundie background and made a lot of the same mistakes. I have a long ways to go. Would love for you two to do a reaction series on the SHP docu
🩵🩵🩵
There is enough SPACE for people, but the "space" is either being used to provide food for the people we already have, or it's not habitable... like desert wastelands, both hot and frozen.
Jesus Christ! Dav looks dead inside! Oh my god...he really can't hide it anymore. It's all over his face.
There are some places where I think maybe you are giving Dav more credit than he deserves due to some language/semantics differences in the ways evangelical/fundie Christians talk vs Mormon lingo about the same things. It’s been so interesting on a lot of ways through your content to realize how vocabulary differences confuse what is and isn’t parallel between the two groups, and how things that sound innocuous to me in general conference talks turn out to actually be references to toxicity that I actually did experience in different “clothing” in my church upbringing. All that to say some of it may be happening in reverse to you.
I hear a lot-and I mean a LOT- of Promise Keepers in his word choice, especially when talking about manhood and marriage. PK seems on the surface to be respectful of women, supportive of men doing their equal part…but the patriarchy is in the details. A PK doesn’t want his son to learn about men from women because that’s how a son grows up to be “too soft.” A PK doesn’t stuff his emotions, he lets loose in his wife in intimidating ways and spins it as open communication. Etc. maybe I’m wrong, but I hear a lot of echoes of toxic Christian men I’ve known in his language in some of these points.
That’s interesting. Thanks for the context.
If you’re wrong, then I am too. I hear the same things you do, and it’s usually nothing but an added layer of mental gymnastics to allow them to feel okay about the garbage they’re spewing. If it’s done well, it can look like the beginnings of deconstruction, but most of the time, it’s just a rebranding of the same bag of flaming dog poo they’ve been peddling all along. I’m not going to say that’s what’s happening here, because I don’t even know him, but I’ve seen it way too often to discount the idea.
One hundred and...sixty nine?dollars?😂💀
can’t believe we didn’t address this
Love this video! I can see examples of this in my own life, thank you for sharing
Tanner is giving me 80s post-punk/goth club vibes. It's distracting in a good way. Ha ha.
I just want to give the guy a fucking hug.
These kind of emotional stunt often occurs to fundie when they basically delay their natural human development……
(Relationship building, sexual awakening, self discovery)
I feel sorry for them because Bethie don’t see that this is what is happening by being brainwashed from a young age…
I relate to that thought so much. I didn't kill myself because I was more scared of what would happen to my mother's mental health. So I'm still here and she's still here.
What a gift of a video! And on Bernie Sanders' birthday, no less!! 🥳🎉
I literally just ate a slice of cake and I didn't even know, wow :) :)
@@ZelphOntheShelfThe subconscious always knows... either that or it's just almost always a good time for cake. 😉🎂
Love the cool look, Tanner.
Months before the Barbie movie Dave talked about his awaKENing. Truly ahead of his time.
✨✨✨✨
Tbh, I felt a little uncomfortable when Dave was talking about how Bethany positing about their sex lives on the internet was a chance for him to work through his own insecurities, because it almost came across like he knew he couldn't say it made him uncomfortable or talk to her about adjusting the way she talks about their relationship online (I do think Bethany could talk about the struggles she's had around sex in a way that's way more compassionate to Dave, but maybe that would require Bethany to deconstruct more). I feel like if they where talking about the private conversations they've had to improve their relationships him talking about working through is feelings about not wanting to be seen as sexually inadequate would seem healthy, but the way it came across was "no, I'm not really ok with Bethany talking about our sex lives on instagram, but I'm not allowed to feel that way."
Love your videos! I grew up mormon and left the church about 7 years ago. I love both of your opinions
Yes Tanner, I would define them as "fundie" because they are not coming from a traditional mainline Christian culture...
Thank you. Watching from Alaska.
This is new to me, I have been busy with other bizzaro world events.
1:13:14 omg sam and your kitty both had an adorable in sync moment, with the drink and them cleaning themselves and looking away. too cute. don't know the kitties name, and I probably should, my bad haha.
Banksy!!!! 🥰
@@ZelphOntheShelf love that name, love them. Was a great video, but Banksy made it even better. Gotta sell the video as art under Banksys name(had you guys considered making them a channel?)
Give them a good pet for me ❤️
ADHD brain but here’s to hoping someday us strangers on the internet can look back at Bethany & Dave but hopefully especially Dave, and laugh with them about how far they’ve come. There’s always hope.
Love the ending thoughts! You guys are the best!
🤍🤍🤍!
Her chaotic energy and talking makes me die a little inside. And I say that as someone with ADHD and raising kids who have ADHD. Bethi, get diagnosed, we support you...and practice calming the eff down. Yes, some people call it masking, but sometimes it helps so we don't add to someone else's mental health issue (as in, some people can't process the chaos energy, waterfall communication)...I am both.
ADHD here as well. She is so fucking wound up that I can’t even imagine her just enjoying anything. She is always trying to crack the code to how to enjoy life and feel joy. Her energy is just too much. I can’t imagine being in the same physical space as her.
this is a wildly inappropriate ask & super ableist lol. the way she talks is completely fine!
We shouldn't be encouraging NDs to mask as that's the quickest road to burnout and depression. But yes, she should def see a therapist if she hasn't already.
It’s 1.25x speed as well
It’s like the only way they can have an honest conversation is in front of people, and they turned to UA-cam to make it possible to have an important, private marital conversation. They way she asks questions to know what he’s thinking and all of the answers he has so at-the-ready, makes me think that they’re both aware of their problems and think about them all the time, but can’t healthily approach conversation between themselves without the social pressure of having eyes on you to make you at least pretend to be calm and be respectful to your partner.
All i want in the world is to have the level of calm of that cute kitty!! 😍
Admittedly I have only seen one or two girl defined videos and only the Barbie one you guys did and this one with Dave. But it seems to me that he is genuinely introspective and capable of really absorbing information. In both videos he's the one talking about how these things effect him or the thought process he had and examining things deeply, or against his own thoughts and feelings. Specifically in this the way both of them are talking about therapy is completely different. She is, yeah I learned some stuff I wasnt expecting or aware of. Where he is going in to the process of it, how it effected him and how he views himeself and their marriage. I understandall of this is on camera and they don't own anyone personal details but you can discuss sensative matters in a deep manner without actually revealing things that you feel are too personal or vulnerable. The're are two different vibes coming from them.
Hey, thanks for your content! I would be really interested to know your perspective on pop culture representation of mormonism, like the musical "the book of mormon", the TLC show "sister wives" or the "real housewives of salt lake city".
If you ever get a chance to do emdr I highly recommend it. I really do think it helped me process certain things that I had been really stuck on for years. It’s not hypnosis, it just has something to do with how our brain processes things and the eye movement is one method of achieving that but there are other ways too. For example for me trying to do the eye movement method just made me feel really anxious and distracted so instead we used these vibrating things I would hold in each hand that would alternate in vibrating. It achieves the same thing and I actually found it really relaxing plus I was able to close my eyes which helped me focus on the memories I was processing.
Welcome to another episode of Tanner having better hair than anyone I know 🎉🎉🎉
I’ve been following the Dave X Zelph On the Shelf cinematic universe and when you made the joke about the counselor being a Unitarian Universalist I gasped aloud because I was thinking to myself- a UU- if only I could get my compassionate heart and wise words on this hatefully conditioned mind, help her through it and towards “god” in the Bruce Willis kinda way. (Like y’all’s stuff helps me through it all)
Just a clarification that EMDR isn't related to hypnosis, two different things!
you’re right! they share similarities, but emdr isn’t supposed to get a person into a trance state like hypnosis. thanks for the clarification!
"WHAT WILL YOU DO WHEN YOURE NO LONGER SEXUALLY COMPATIBLE?!"
Divorce. I got divorced. I mean he was abusive as well, but I'd have divorced him just over the sexual compatibility 😂.
The joke about Dave being going asexual was a bit fucked up tho. Like, he might actually be tho 🤷🏼? I don’t mean that in a trying to guess his sexuality way exactly, more in like a “he’s just starting to give himself permission to deepen his self understanding way”.
........I was not expecting the "Somebody once told me, the world was gonna roll me" from Tanner. I was expecting a Shrek, but that delivery, man! It was spot on!!!