How Practical is it for Women to be Submissive to Their Husbands in Modern Society

[Xantippe]

I’m thinking of the mom I know who homeschools the older kids while the youngest cries behind the baby gate for hours because, while her food/diapering/etc needs are met, she is lonely and doesn’t have anyone playing with her because mom and the older kids are locked off in the kitchen for studies. Dad’s not home during the day to see this, of course. The kids and mom are all somewhat stressed, and I’m betting that in the long term, they’ll associate both homeschooling and family life with either being terribly lonely and sad or having to listen to baby sis cry for attention.

That’s terrible!

I feel bad enough now about the fact that I used to pump breast milk 15 minutes at a time several times a day while the baby yelled in her crib.

Another issue–what about when mom’s pregnant and/or sick? I have a homeschooling friend who is newly pregnant, and she’s been sick and having complications. The last time I was pregnant, I had a lot of complications, too, but I just sent the big kids to school and everything went on more or less as normal, but if I’d been homeschooling, the kids’ education would have been seriously impacted.

As I’ve said before on CAF, up until the present day, nobody seriously believed that a mother of a large family could singlehandedly do a good job of educating school age children, care for small children, and be pregnant, while simultaneously doing all of the normal housekeeping chores. Either they had help or the home education was so-so. Also, it was practically unheard of for a mother to be the sole educator of high school age boys.

 

[Xantippe]

That’s the game they play. You act like Christ and love me unconditionally. But I will decide what submission really means, I will decide when to submit, and I will decide if you deserve submission at all.

I feel like CAF is not exactly a hotbed of that kind of wifely behavior, so it doesn’t make a lot of sense to bring it up here.

Several years ago, I had very different views on submission than I have now. At the time, I believed that I was honor-bound to fulfill any minor request from my husband no matter what, because that’s what good wives do. So, for example, if I was very sleepy and wanting to go up to bed, but my husband told me to stay with him instead, I’d stay, even though I was practically falling over and seeing double from exhaustion. I felt very resentful about it and I thought my husband was being very selfish and was choosing to hurt me, but I did what he said.

When I started to reexamine my views on wifely submission, this was something I spoke up to my husband about. It turned out that he had NO idea that I was tired and wanted to go to sleep when I said I wanted to go upstairs at 11:45 PM (!). So, he hadn’t been as monstrously selfish as I thought he was–he just didn’t know I was in distress.

Nowadays, I am much nicer to my husband, I don’t get mad at him nearly as much, I don’t assume that he is trying to hurt me, and this is largely because I feel much more comfortable occasionally telling him no. It’s not a big deal not to do every little thing he asks.

Now, what is wrong with that?

(To be clear here, I wasn’t so scrupulously obedient about large issues, but at the time, I didn’t feel like there was an excuse for not doing small things.)

 

[Lea101]

So when would do you something he asks?

 

[MonteRCMS]

Men die seven years younger than women.

They pay a price for laying down their lives … for protecting their wives and families.

 

[MonteRCMS]

google youtube men obsolete sommers

For most of human history, men have been the dominant sex because of their capacity to compete, take risks, and fight for resources. But some claim these masculine traits have become obsolete. Today we need other qualities: empathy, social intuition, emotional intelligence. Here it appears that women excel. Some say men are just passe. Is this true? AEI scholar Christina Hoff Sommers looks at the evidence.

 

[Xanthippe_Voorhees]

Men die seven years younger than women.

They pay a price for laying down their lives … for protecting their wives and families.

Except for the fact that married men tend to live much longer than their single peers

 

[TheAmazingGrace]

Men die seven years younger than women.

They pay a price for laying down their lives … for protecting their wives and families.

…or they just aren’t as good at taking care of their health.

 

[Xantippe]

Except for the fact that married men tend to live much longer than their single peers

Maybe it’s single men laying down their lives for us married ladies?

 

[Xanthippe_Voorhees]

Xanthippe_Voorhees:

Except for the fact that married men tend to live much longer than their single peers

Maybe it’s single men laying down their lives for us married ladies?

That would jive well with the “long suffering man who can’t get a woman to just be submissive” theory.

 

[Xantippe]

Probably 90% of the time I agree or do the thing right away, sometimes more. 5% of the time I want more information, and another 5% of the time, I have genuine disagreement, and I’m going to say no. The ironic thing here is that feeling free to say no and it not be a big deal helps me be much nicer, especially when we disagree. I used to feel that if we were disagreeing, it was a BIG deal and my stress level (and my volume) would go way up, because I grew up in a house where polite disagreement wasn’t a thing. I never heard a disagreement that didn’t involve yelling and/or rudeness when I was a kid, and anger was the only negative emotion that it was acceptable to express. It was a bit of a Morpheus moment for me to realize–it is possible to say no without yelling, and it is possible to disagree without it being a big deal, and it’s OK to express other negative emotions.

I still get mad, of course, but we’re talking about something like an 80% reduction in volume and frequency just from realizing, I get to say no sometimes and it isn’t a big deal.

When we got married, we were both, “Yay! Wifely submission!” but we didn’t think hard enough about what that meant, or revise our theories as we got more experience. As I discovered about 15 years in, we had been operating under different theories. I thought that wifely submission meant that I should acquiesce about small things but that if it was a big deal, I felt OK about having a fight about it. Husband, on the other hand, thought that I was totally free to fulfill or not fulfill small requests but expected a tie breaker vote for major issues. When we finally talked about this, he literally thought I had NEVER been submitting, because whenever it was a big deal, I wouldn’t give up. Meanwhile, on the other hand, I felt like I’d been eating a lot of dirt day to day, which he didn’t notice at all, because a lot of standard wifely submission is invisible to the husband. He doesn’t know it’s happening because she’s doing it without announcing, “Here I am crushing my will in favor of your petty requests!”

I think our very worst period was when Baby Girl was between 18 months old and 2 years. We’d left easy babyhood where I had nearly all of baby duty and it was awesome, and entered a period where Baby Girl could leap (dangerously) over her baby gates, so I could no longer pen her up to do small tasks. So, suddenly, it was really hard to do even small things like put in a load of laundry or sort a clean load. Likewise, while I used to stick her in a playpen and take a shower in the morning, she was able to jump out. Husband didn’t want to watch her–he wanted to know if I really needed to bathe every morning. Also, I had a pretty heavy load of school emails and paperwork for the big kids that I was always late on, and by the time Baby Girl went to bed at night, I was too tired to do it. I didn’t have a babysitter or any kind of childcare program.

 

[Xantippe]

So when would do you something he asks?

Here’s the second part:

Taking Baby Girl to the grocery was, of course, not a good idea, but when I used to ask my husband to watch her so that I could go to the store, he’d say things like, “Do you really need to go?” I’d get maybe an hour of help from him a month so I could catch up at home, and I’d bee madly doing laundry, reading and answering emails (many obsolete by that point), and by the end of it, I’d be melting down from the stress and feeling of failure. And then my husband would say that he didn’t see the point of helping me, because I just seemed so MAD afterward. Plus, one of my two good friends had moved, so I was feeling very lonely and isolated (a trip to the grocery or hairdresser might be the only time I talked to an adult other than my husband that week), and Baby Girl was at a stage where she wouldn’t allow anybody to do anything for her if I was available to meet her needs.

I was drowning, but he couldn’t see it. All he could see was that I seemed really irritable. I couldn’t even say what was wrong at the time (I didn’t know myself) but the sheer unfairness of the situation was increasingly obvious. My husband would ask me for things that he didn’t even need, and I’d usually do them, whereas I could ask him for stuff I desperately needed, and he didn’t seem to feel any sense of obligation to help me–it tended to be the start of a big discussion, where I needed to demonstrate that I needed help before he would consider helping me.

I don’t know how I did it, but I pulled together the paperwork for Baby Girl to go to Parents’ Day Out once a week for five hours just before she turned 2. cue harps Suddenly, it started to be possible for me to catch up laundry and paperwork and go to the grocery store, doctor and dentist without begging my husband for help. I started reading marriage books and started thinking seriously about what we were doing wrong. I worked on controlling my anger, but I also started telling my husband what I thought, and pointing out double standards. I pointed out to him the disparities, like that when he said he needed to go to the hardware store, I didn’t grill him incessantly over whether he really needed to go, but that when I wanted to go to the grocery store or to get a haircut, it would be the start of a huge discussion. (I’d literally have hair covering my eyes, and my husband would ask me, “Do you really need a haircut?”) I needed more respect. This post helped me a lot (although things were never as dire at our house):

July | 2014 | Explorations in Egalitarianism

Amazingly, it turned out that somewhere inside the ogre that I had started to think was my husband, there was still the smart, fair guy that I married. But he didn’t realize that he was being unfair or hurting me until I told him, and did so very clearly (like “This isn’t fair” and “You are hurting me”).

Three years on, I’m a much calmer, pleasanter person who sometimes says “no” and my husband isn’t mean to me anymore. Yay!

 

[Edmundus1581]

I wasn’t thinking of total or blind obedience, to be fair

…

And if I’m wrong, is there actually a real life example of a proper submission? Or is it just filled with flowery language to make us modern women feel less afraid of a Christian marriage? In my time here, I’ve seen the same things being said over and over in threads like this, but never a decent example to illustrate it

I saw this question yesterday, and thought it very useful.

I can give several examples from my own marriage, where there was an irreconcilable difference over a crucial family matter (religion, parenting, finances…) and where “paternal headship” as discussed here could have been applicable.

However, my marriage was rife with problems from the beginning, and ended in divorce after ten years, so is a questionable example. From the very beginning my wife undermined our Catholic faith and family, quite consciously and with intent. For example, she simply refused to accept Sunday obligation and refused to support me in getting the children to Mass. She also saw our marriage as being primarily for her own benefit, over the children’s.

So, I think that a presumption within this discussion is that both parents are believing, practicing Catholics, or at least supportive, and agree that the welfare of the children is the primary concern of the marriage. If you don’t have these then neither “headship” nor “equality” will work.

Bearing in mind these caveats, I will give a couple of examples from my own marriage, which I hope can answer Lea’s very good question.

The baptism of our first child. My wife wanted the child to be baptised in the parish we had attended during courtship and where we had been married. I wanted the baptism in our current parish. We both had good reasons and strong desires in the matter. We talked about it several times, and both dug in. The child was already several weeks old and no decision was being converged on, so I said: “You agreed that I would be head of the house. I’ve never used that before, but this time I’m going to.” (We had, prior to marriage, explicitly agreed on this principle). She looked at me with white hatred, but knew she was beaten - this time. The child was baptised in the parish of my choosing, however I never again invoked paternal authority.

There would be several fundamental disagreements over parenting and marriage, which I won’t mention here, but I can mention another which has some general applicability:

(continued below)

 

[Edmundus1581]

After several years of renting we were looking for a house to buy, and had different aspirations. My wife wanted an attractive home which suited her aesthetic principles. I wanted a home with a large back yard where the children could play, and was located close to schools and parks. Of course, our budget could not satisfy both aspirations, so we had to compromise. The compromise went about 70/30 in her favour, and very much against my better judgement. If I had been able to exercise paternal authority, I would have gone 60/40 for back yard and location over elegance of the house.

And, finally, one where I was able to get my way, simply because it involved money which we didn’t have. After ten years of marriage we had no savings and a $5000 credit card debt. My wife had always wanted to travel, and was becoming impatient. She pressured me to take out a $20,000 loan ($50,000 in today’s money) for us to have a second honeymoon in Europe. I said “No loan”, and she was furious. When she left me several months later, she mentioned this as one of her complaints. At the time, I felt “If only I’d taken out that loan…”, but I don’t regret it now.

The point is to not go back over these decisions, but to answer Lea’s very good question about examples where paternal authority and submission would apply.

I hope also that others with more successful Catholic marriages can provide similar examples, where there were significant differences, over important matters, and a decision was reached either from “headship” or “equality”*.

Thankyou for reading. I hope this helps.

*re: “equality”. Of course, where “headship” of the father is agreed on, that is not to say that both partners aren’t “equal”, but I use the word as a simple handle for the principle that “equality” of persons involves equality in decision making, with no provision for an authority.

 

[Vonsalza]

Would it be fair to say, then, that your participation on this thread is really just catharsis and a desire for validation for your actions from other people?

 

[Xantippe]

Would it be fair to say, then, that your participation on this thread is really just catharsis and a desire for validation for your actions from other people?

Or, to put it differently, I have relevant experience of what it looks like when people make a wrong turn with wifely submission or just haven’t thought it through.

After all, it’s not like anybody gets a road map for this. Young couples may be very enthusiastic about it, without having thought through hard cases. Edmundus1581’s wife, for example, seems to have accepted the idea of her future husband being head of the household and having a deciding voice without thinking very hard about the implications.

 

[Edmundus1581]

Vonsalza:

Would it be fair to say, then, that your participation on this thread is really just catharsis and a desire for validation for your actions from other people?

Or, to put it differently, I have relevant experience of what it looks like when people make a wrong turn with wifely submission or just haven’t thought it through.

After all, it’s not like anybody gets a road map for this. Young couples may be very enthusiastic about it, without having thought through hard cases. Edmundus1581’s wife, for example, seems to have accepted the idea of her future husband being head of the household and having a deciding voice without thinking very hard about the implications.

That’s what almost every post in discussions like this is. There’s usually no right or wrong answer - just our personal experiences, which, if politely presented, give information which other people can pick and choose from.

And, yes, there’s no road map. Young couples are bumbling through life, starting full of ideas and hopes, and working it out as they go.

There’s nothing wrong with “catharsis”, presented with some filter of objectivity and helpful intent. Especially in answer to a direct question.

 

[Vonsalza]

Vonsalza:

Would it be fair to say, then, that your participation on this thread is really just catharsis and a desire for validation for your actions from other people?

Or, to put it differently, I have relevant experience of what it looks like when people make a wrong turn with wifely submission or just haven’t thought it through.

Fair enough. Your posts have just felt somewhat cathartic.

So you feel like folks who draw conclusions on wifely submission (as you phrase it) that differ from yours are wrong on the topic?

Additionally, is it possible that your personal experiences are anecdotal and are not indicative of any broad objective truth or principal?

 

[Xantippe]

Fair enough. Your posts have just felt somewhat cathartic.

Well, yeah, I care a lot about the issue because having bad or confused ideas about wifely submission caused my husband and me a lot of unnecessary grief.

That’s why whenever some young or single person mentions that they want submission in their marriage, I have to ask what they mean. A lot of the time, they don’t know what they mean, or wouldn’t like it if they got it. People just don’t think through the more obvious problems with common theories of wifely submission. One of them, which I’ve certainly had experience with, is that a lot of women understand “submission” as clamping down on communicating distress to their husbands. Women can be suffering terribly, but feel that expressing that to their husbands would be unsubmissive, or that they only get to raise an issue once and then they need to drop it. Hence, it can happen that a husband can believe that everything is peachy when everything is going to heck at home. There is a real danger that the more heavily couples go in for wifely submission, the less the husband is going to know about his wife or the situation at home. A less conscientious wife may wind up limiting the amount of information she shares with her headship-loving husband. If it’s easier to ask forgiveness than get permission, there may (paradoxically) wind up being a lot more unauthorized activities than in a more egalitarian household. (Male readers may not be aware of this, but there are a lot of traditional methods of getting around husbands–I grew up seeing my mom do some of this stuff.)

The “tie-breaker” theory is extremely popular, but in practice a) it’s indistinguishable functionally from “husband always gets his way” and b) it’s not compatible with what Casti Connubii says about the limits of wifely submission.

 

[Xantippe]

So, I think that a presumption within this discussion is that both parents are believing, practicing Catholics, or at least supportive, and agree that the welfare of the children is the primary concern of the marriage. If you don’t have these then neither “headship” nor “equality” will work.

That’s really too bad.

I agree that the welfare of children is a non-negotiable, but I feel uncomfortable saying that it’s the “primary concern of the marriage,” as there was a marriage before children at home, and there will (hopefully) be one after the children leave home. (Young mothers are often reminded not to forget that.) I do like your formulation that “If you don’t have these [fundamental shared values] then neither “headship” nor “equality” will work.” As I’ve said more than once on CAF, when it’s actually going well, bystanders can’t really tell what the theory behind a couple’s marriage is.

When I was a young bride, I would have said very similar unwise things about wifely submission and husbandly leadership as your wife (in fact, we chose Ephesians 5 as one of our wedding readings). Looking back, I think I have to blame LOVE. Being very much in love and also inexperienced, I didn’t think that we could seriously disagree about anything for longer than two minutes. I also did not realize that both of us had the potential to be very stupid and very selfish, and I didn’t realize how complicated and hard life can be as a parent, and the unpleasant interactions of life-being-hard and us being selfish and stupid.

One strategy I do have to offer is that a lot of times, couples get into fights over things that aren’t urgent. Nowadays, I try to ask myself, is this an emergency? Is something on fire? Do we need to decide this right away? A lot of issues can be backburnered and consensus may appear organically. (Husband and I have had a number of funny incidents where we had an argument and then discovered that we each persuaded the other person and were assuming that we’d do what the other person’s original idea was.)

 

[Edmundus1581]

Edmundus1581:

So, I think that a presumption within this discussion is that both parents are believing, practicing Catholics, or at least supportive, and agree that the welfare of the children is the primary concern of the marriage. If you don’t have these then neither “headship” nor “equality” will work.

When I was a young bride, I would have said very similar unwise things about wifely submission and husbandly leadership as your wife (in fact, we chose Ephesians 5 as one of our wedding readings). Looking back, I think I have to blame LOVE. Being very much in love and also inexperienced, I didn’t think that we could seriously disagree about anything for longer than two minutes. I also did not realize that both of us had the potential to be very stupid and very selfish, and I didn’t realize how complicated and hard life can be as a parent, and the unpleasant interactions of life-being-hard and us being selfish and stupid.

Yes, indeed!

We selected Ephesians 5 also Marriage prep-was only two half-days in our time (1985) and neither of us took it very seriously. We thought we knew everything about “love”. That was foolish, and we certainly paid for it.

I do also blame my ex-wife somewhat. I think that during our courtship she said whatever she thought had to be said to get me to the altar (particularly on religion and headship), without really meaning it. I suspected this was happening at the time, and should have acted on those suspicions.