Stereotypes that belong back in caveman days

One woman's saga of Sterling/February 1999
By the one-time girlfriend and now wife of a Sterling Graduate

Mr. Ross, your site has indispensable knowledge about so many groups. The one that I have been most concerned about is the so-called Sterling Institute of Relationship.

The reason that I am writing is to thank you giving me knowledge that I have sought for a few years. I hadn't thought about this organization for a quite some time, until KNBC Los Angeles had a storyabout on them on the 11pm news (2/16/99) called "Love, Honor or Obey?"

In August 1993, my fiancée enrolled in the Men's Weekend. I didn't know what to think and I couldn't find any information out about the organization, other than their promotional literature about how thisis about relationships. My fiancée wouldn't (or couldn't) tell me anything.

His "sponsor" told me just before the weekend, that I should drive up to Oakland around 4 in the morning to pick him up. I didn't know then that doing this would put me in the position of potentially being recruited into this organization. Thankfully, I was selfish enough (as the sponsor put it) to decline and think about my own safety. I was not about to drive from San Jose to Oakland in the middle of the night to wait in a parking lot for a couple of hours. I suggested coming up around 6 am, when the weekend was supposed to be over, but was told that it wouldn't matter if I came that late and that he could get a ride. I would have to be there, prepared and waiting for when he came out of there. That he would need me as soon as it was over. Need me for what--a ride, someone to talk to, or someone to recruit?

When he returned to his house, I was there taking care of our dog, and he was beyond exhausted--emotionally and physically. Sore muscles across his shoulders and arms. Rope burns on his hands. Rug burns on his knees. I never knew what happened to cause that., but no matter how hard I tried to get moreinformation, he wouldn't talk. Said confidentiality bound him by a promise. I found out from someone else that he only had 3 hours of sleep that night, constantly sitting on a bench listening to Justin's propaganda, very little food with very little rest. For days afterward, he said very little to me about anything.

He would go to these weekly meetings (Sundays and Thursdays, and sometimes an additional meeting), without fail. He'd leave around 5:30 or 6pm and wouldn't get back most nights until 11 or midnight. And the phone calls--we signed up for 3-way calling just do that the weekend or morning team phone calls could happen. Without fail, at least once a week at 6 in the morning (or earlier), there would be a phone call and he would shut the door to his office and not come out until it was over. Sometimes not for an hour or more after it was over. Not knowing anything was driving me crazy. We had been such good friends with no secrets. Now there was something excruciatingly private about this and it raised all sorts of red flags with me.

Then came the pressure that I should take the Women's Weekend. It only came from him a couple of times, until I got wise and stated that I felt very secure in my relationship with him. I said that I didn't need someone else telling me how to fix things that were wrong because I didn't see anything that was wrong except his involvement with Sterling. Then he stopped. But his team members kept thinking that I needed the weekend. And other women would call him and not give me any peace. I'd be at his house (thankfully, I didn't move in with him before the wedding) and answer the phone and some strange woman would say,where's so and so? And who was I? Or, why didn't I take the weekend? I began getting names as soon as they asked for him and he wasn't available, and then hanging up on them if I knew they were from Sterlinggraduates.

I came very close to calling off the wedding until he and I talked it over. Sterling was important to him, it was a support group. The weekend was about learning how to be a better person in a relationship. OK. That's all you had to tell me a year or more ago and I would have been content with that. I bought it, I loved him more than anything and whatever happened I knew that I could work with him and get through it. So I got involved with ICSD--fixing up schools, or other community buildings. It was a worthy cause, d I didn't have to be part of the Institute and it was only once or twice a year. I felt good about what was happening for the community. I promptly got uninvolved after working with a bunch of women whotold me that they were part of the weekend. The only dividing line that I could see about the whole thing when these women spoke was that they either realized that their man was the bestthing that ever happened to them (and therefore someone to be revered)or that he was a slimeball and they dropped him.

Shortly after my experience with the women and after long debate with my significant other, he realized my point. That is, well-adjusted, stable, know-where-they're-going women don't need this weekend. He promptly championed my point of view with his team members.

They stopped trying to get me to the weekend after I started asking more strategic questions about things. Getting them to slip up and give me bits and pieces of information. Occasionally, someone would tell me that one of my friends needs the weekend and I'd counter with--"they don't need to be any more screwed up than they already are." That would end that. I actually briefly thought about going to the Women's weekend just so I could learn and then start telling the world what they're about, but I was too scared and didn't want to put myself through that kind of abuse. And for $500 it wasn't worth it, no matter the personal satisfaction.

My fiancée took up smoking cigars--a disgusting habit since we had both been anti-smokers and he always said that he couldn't date a smoker. I went to a couple of the functions that family could go to and got the most leering looks from some of the men. More and more things about North American Indian rituals would be brought up.

We married, I got pregnant, and the meetings continued. The night I started having contractions with my first child (a week after the due date) he was at a meeting and I could not reach him. They were about 5 minutes apart when he finally got home at 11:30 that Sunday night. Thank goodness they started to subside shortly after--false labor. I gave him hell that night. What if I had to go to the hospital without him? What if something happened to the baby or me? What was more important--the team or the event that was about to change our lives--our first baby being born? He was supposed to wear that cell phone he had on him, but he didn't take it to the meetings. How did I know, because I called it when the contractions came closer and closer and the phone rang in the other room. He was going to wear that phone if I had to solder it to his hip as far as I was concerned.

He missed a really important meeting that occurred while I was in labor and was almost ostracized from the team because of it. He couldn't call them while I was in the late stages of labor. Soon after, it became less and less frequent that he would be going to meetings. By the time the baby was 8 months old, it all had stopped. Three years after it all had begun. Three years of worry, stress, and increasingly uncomfortable feelings finally went away.

Now, three years after our first child was born, he still (rarely, though) sees some of the guys, but never in the structure that it once was. Anyone that he tried to recruit (his brothers and brother-in-laws, friends, co-workers)--either was smart enough after the "Open House" to not commit to it, or took the weekend and didn't stay with the team atmosphere. One man told me privately that he was surprised that my husband went through that "obvious attempt to brainwash us that women are worthless human beings".

Justin [seems to] play on the mob mentality and group dynamic when it comes to those weekends. I was able to obtain a copy of Justin Sterling's book "What Men Really Want", which is full of propaganda about women being submissive to men (without directly stating as such). It says men are warriors, that women need to stroke their man's ego at least 45 minutes every day, that women are healers not hunters. This was all what my mom, friends, society, and most importantly, what my heart was telling me NOT to do. That book scared me. I thought [Sterling] was a cult from the first time I saw my loved one after the weekend, and nothing will ever convince me of otherwise.

Your site helped me learn even more information. Justin Sterling and his "Institute" abuses people, takes their money and brainwashes men and women to fit into stereotypes that belong back in caveman days. Again, Mr. Ross, thank you so much for your site.