Miscellaneous
"Marriage is a rite of passage into adulthood," explains Jeremiah. Conservative Christianity puts additional pressure on early marriage, as straight marriage is the only permissible setting for sexual expression. While Jeremiah was in a 10-year marriage, he explains that the relationship was set up to fail from the very beginning due to sexual repression and the ensuing cycle of shame and anxiety around sexuality. A post-mortem to a significant part of his adulthood, Jeremiah grieves the parts of himself that he lost in an attempt to fulfill both the church's standards of successful adulthood: rigid expectations of masculinity, and the longevity of a marriage.