Last night, my husband reminded me of how we used to be forced to sit in church and watch women in the rows in front of us give long, drawn-out back rubs to their husbands and/or sons. All of a sudden, that vision came flooding back to my mind and I literally shuddered and covered my face. The thought of it honestly nauseated me! Please tell me they didn't know that everyone behind them was observing this display. Bothered me then, but I simply tried to look the other way. Why do they do that?

OMIGOD!! I can't believe it! In our ward there was a couple who was practically notorious for doing that. Is this embarrassing behavior unique to Mormondumb or does it go on elsewhere? Too funny!

I hated it at sacrament!!!! It was worse in the single ward. I don't want to see any PDA in church at all.

I think they do it in mormondumb because the meeting are just that bad. Too long, boring, monotonous, and they need a reason to go to church.

yep the singles ward are bad...MOSTLY in UT with the back rubs.

Amen to boring, lifeless, monotonous, disempowering Church!

I mean burst out a rap or something.

Shout a Hallelujah.

Use inflections...something!

It seemed so out of place! Sit in the back if you're gonna be rubbin' and scratchin'! Out of the line of vision of a hundred people!

freegirl10 Wrote:
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> It seemed so out of place! Sit in the back if
> you're gonna be rubbin' and scratchin'! Out of the
> line of vision of a hundred people!


+1

I remember the singles ward it was like the made a point of doing it over thetop bc of the fact they were together it was like oooh look at how in love this couple is that just met last week and are getting married next week. kind of made the rest of us singles feel shameful.

& I would be so uncomfortable most of the time that I would beg my grandma to rub or scratch my back.

Ohhhh, Tristan, I'm so sorry if you felt my comments were directed at someone like you. You are the exception. I hope you know the ones I am referring to!

freegirl10 Wrote:
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> Ohhhh, Tristan, I'm so sorry if you felt my
> comments were directed at someone like you. You
> are the exception. I hope you know the ones I am
> referring to!

It's just that you mentioned kids too, & I had the feeling that they were just as miserable as I was.

But I knew what you meant about the husband/wife-couple PDA.

Guilty as charged, but they were only casual backscratches. The worst PDA I saw was on my mission- a mother & son in sacrament mtg giving each other noserubs, (eskimo style kissing). Totally disgusting, and embarassing because they were our investigators.

I always thought that if people are getting back rubs, where the hell is my handjob. Laugh people, come on.

The back rub was a prelude...did you not get the memo?

Sheeeesh

I am picturing my old ward and certain people who did it all the time. My son's friends, who obviously didn't want to be there, would seem uncomfortable as their moms rubbed their backs incessantly. Not having been raised in the church, it felt very uncomfortable to me. Maybe not everyone reacted the same way?

dthenonreligious, you sure know how to ruin a thread!! LOL

She wants to yell out, "Get a room!"

Why is this so common in Mormon meetings?

Yeah, and it sounds like it happens at every ward!

[whiny voice] I don't wanna go to sac'ment meeting again. It's sooo booooring!

Oh, come on. It's the right thing to do. You want to make god happy doncha?

[whiny voice] But it's sooo boooring!

There's a back rub in it for ya! And if you keep your eyes open, there'll be more to come when we get back home.

[whiny voice changing to perky voice] Well, ookay.... Actually, I kinda like sac'ment meeting. Yeah, it's fun! Let's go, let's go! It's almost ready to start. By the way I really like it more down to the left under the shoulder blade. And right around the base of the neck. I'd like you to work on that for about 15 minutes. Who knew sac'ment meeting could be so pleasant??

It's been so many years since I've been to a sacrament mtg. but now that you mention it, you are right. I have NEVER seen this anywhere else and I've attended a number of other churches for one reason or another.

I go to an extremely liberal UU church now, and I'm sure I have never seen that. Sometimes a person will put their arm around their partner's back, but I'm sure that's the extent of it. But I also used to just laugh and make fun of women who would sit there rubbing their husband's back. Ewwwwww, just the memory is grossing me out.

It use to freak me out to the point that I have walked out on several meetings. The nondenominational church we go to now isn't afflicted therewith. Some couples hold hands, which is fine, but no one feels impelled to stroke each other. Yechhh.

As I'm thinking about this, it seems to me that it was almost always the woman (subordinate) preening the dominant male. Is that just my skewed perception?

Looking back, it seemed to be, most commonly, wife stroking husband; mother stroking son; or father stroking son. I don't recall seeing mother-to-daughter or husband-to-wife. Is an analysis in order?

Like I mentioned above, I always begged my grandma to scratch my back to whatever because I was so miserable & uncomfortable in Sacrament meeting. & I'm a girl.

Tristan, I'm digging myself deeper and deeper into a hole. You make me realize that maybe I am too judgmental. I'm learning!

Watch out for someone nitpicking their husband's hair, though.

Always Men to women. Meet my needs...isn't that what we are there for submit and subjugated and please the senses!

I always wondered what's up with Mormon women and their sons

You guys are hysterical!

Not near as bad as the strange single sister who adopted a gross mentally deficient teenager and let him sit in her lap during SM - where he constantly fondled her breasts.

Lord only knows what went on at her home if she allowed such behavior in public.

SHUT UP!!!!!!!

Oh you know she was lacking something.

Goodness isn't that child abuse? Especially because the child is challenged?


Oi Vey!

It's just SO FREAKING BORING in Sac Meeting that people are just looking for something to do with their hands to keep from going insane. Like those people who doodle or take notes or the one old lady in the ward who always knits. We used to draw pictures on each others backs as kids, when our parents thought we were too old for coloring books and word games and cheerios and took all our toys away. You had to guess what picture the person drew on your back. It was just a way to cope with the extreme boredom.

Now for nauseating PDAs, my family was in Utah on vacation when the Bountiful Temple was dedicated and mom thought this would be a fabulous time to get my non-LDS Dad to take a tour of the temple. The couple in front of us, who looked like their names were Jethro and Ellie May and were about 21 and 19, made out the whole, entire tour. I kid you not. We were bemused that they could walk through the whole temple in a lip lock, groping each other so profoundly and not either bump into something or get thrown out. My dad was understandably disgusted and my mom was furious they ruined the spirit but she didn't dare say anything to them because my dad hated public confrontation more than watching a public display like that.

I was thinking about this just the other day and wondered why it seemed so prevalent in LDS congregations. My parents would mention it after church sometimes and comment on how obnoxious SM PDA like that was. I'd see it a lot in the singles ward too, but didn't particularly care about it one way or the other.

One day during a singles ward SM, though, I was sitting beside another sister I'd just met the other week. She was a massage therapist by profession. Suddenly, she began to scratch and rub at my back. I was so surprised, but didn't say anything. The chairs were really uncomfortable, and it felt nice to get a free massage from a real massage therapist, LOL.

I do wonder what the surrounding members must have thought, though, since you most often see that sort of thing between family or couples. (Although, that sister didn't seem to care much about what others thought -- she was engaged to a Muslim man from India, and shared this information freely with everyone. She was one of the few people in that ward I liked, and I lost one of my few happy reasons for going to church once she moved away.)

In our ward it was older couples. EW! No one wants to see that. The woman in front of me fondling and putting her finger in her old husband's hairy ear, made me leave one time. I faked a coughing fit. The under-the-clothes rubs are the worst. Try being a divorced woman, never to marry again, having to endure watching that for the rest of her life. When I sat on the stand, I just stared off into space, or down at the floor. At least it wasn't in my direct line of view. It did embarrass me that my children were seeing all of that, though. Now we've left, knowing what we know now, most of them were perverts obsessed with underwear.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/27/2011 03:31AM by forestpal.

Yes I recognize it.
They're just rubbing the itch worms at the Yawn Factory
And it probably sometimes strengthens the sympathy feelings of some of the ones sitting behind them

May I just say that I've been in lots of different church services, and the LEAST "church"-like was the LDS; don't remember any back rubs on view, just a bunch of mostly bored or faking-it people simply following orders to be there on Sunday morning. Nope, didn't feel The Spirit. Nope. Sorry.
.

Closest I ever got to that was scratching my figs during fast and testimonkey. Funny how that meeting made my balls itch.

Just sayin'...

Ron

Pretty much.

[Sorry, Tristan!] ;)

In my family you were supposed to sit there and just endure. No one in my family would do anything so intimate as rubbing/grooming another.

But what really got me about the back rubs was that the sheer repetition of the hand circling figure-eights would make me feel actually car sick! That's why I hate the back rubbing thing! I couldn't bear to watch it--and I always sat in the back, so when the BR's started, I put my nose in a book.

I couldn't stand the back rubs at all. I tell mormons this and they act like I'm crazy

...that you are so TBM that you will never leave "the church."

I hated watching that public display of affection in church. It was like some crazy habitual life-affirming relationship-enhancing freak show to show other members how "eternal" your relationship really was...

Just saying.