🎭 I Loved a Mask. She Was Never There.

Evangelical Dating Scripts, Trauma Pairing, and the Walk-Away Wife Cycle
Church of NORMAL™ | De-Simping the Saints™ Series | Entry 005
By Pastor Matt | Loopwalker of Waseca | Codependent Unmasker | Ex-Husband of the Illusion

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“She changed.”

That’s what I used to say.

But that’s not quite true.

She didn’t change.
I just didn’t know her.
I knew the mask.
I loved the mask.
I married the mask.

And when the mask started to slip—
when her body changed, when her faith wobbled, when her suppressed trauma surfaced—
I had nothing real to hold onto.

Because the person I thought I married… was a fantasy written by both of us.

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💒 How Evangelical Dating Scripts Produce Unreal Women

Let’s be honest:

Evangelical courtship isn’t built for authenticity.
It’s built for performance.

• Say the right things

• Pray the right way

• Read the same books

• Don’t touch

• Smile through uncertainty

• Assume compatibility = shared beliefs + trauma repression

By the time you’re engaged, you’re not connecting—you’re collaborating on a Christian highlight reel.

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🧨 And Then the Mask Cracks

She starts unraveling.
Or deconstructing.
Or numbing out.

• Maybe it’s after the first baby.

• Maybe it’s after years of unmet need.

• Maybe it’s after a traumatic flashback she never processed.

And you’re left stunned, asking:

“Where did she go?”

But the truth is—she was never fully there.
Because you never met her.

You met a protective persona, scripted by purity culture, programmed by survival, and baptized in Christianese.

And you fell in love with the idea.
Not the human underneath.

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🤝 Enter: Trauma Pairing

You were a nice guy with a savior complex.
She was a broken girl with abandonment wounds.
You saw her pain and said, “I’ll never leave.”
She saw your loyalty and said, “You’ll keep me safe.”

Neither of you said:

“Are we actually emotionally equipped to build a life together?”

Because that’s not part of the script.

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🧠 What You Didn’t Know Then:

• You were anxiously attached. She was avoidant.

• You mistook sexual shutdown for spiritual discipline.

• She mistook your over-giving as control.

• You built a marriage on unspoken assumptions and emotional avoidance.

And now… she’s gone.
Or she’s still there, but you wish she wasn’t.

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😓 The Walk-Away Wife Was Born in the Courtship Hallway

She didn’t leave out of nowhere.
She left slowly.
She began detaching years before she packed a bag.

Because the mask was exhausting.
And no one taught her who she was underneath it.

So she went to therapy. Or yoga. Or some charismatic TikTok prophetess with a podcast.

And you?
You were still sitting there praying for the mask to come back.

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🛐 Church of NORMAL Benediction:

You didn’t marry a monster.
You married a mirror.
A reflection of your longing.
A construct built in a broken system.
A woman who was never allowed to become a full person—so you filled in the blanks with your own hope.

Don’t hate her.
Don’t hate yourself.
But stop romanticizing the mask.

She’s gone.
She was never fully there.
And now…
you can finally start meeting someone real.
Maybe even you.

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Next up:
“De-Simping the Saints: The Manual”
📖 A practical framework for recovery, masculine clarity, and covenant reconstruction.

✝️ #ChurchOfNORMAL #DeSimpingTheSaints #EvangelicalDatingScripts #TraumaPairing #WalkAwayWifePipeline #MaskMarriageRecovery #CodependentNoMore