My wife will never submit to me...should that matter?

[RPRPsych]

My point is not necessarily getting her to convert, that would be great but he can still work on becoming the leader in time with hard work regardless of her conversion.

My wife is not Catholic and is quite liberal actually while I am religious and quite conservative. She doesn’t have much of a problem of me assuming the headship.

I did not have to do any of this stealthy as she generally agrees with the principles of MMSL, that leadership and masculinity is much more attractive as well a something that makes her feel calmer and less aggressive in the relationship. I discussed some of the issues with her.

But your mileage may vary and I recommend not discussing it with your spouse unless you know she is open to at least some of the ideas. “Hey I am going to do some negging now” might backfire

This raises an interesting point: is this a sacramental marriage in the first place?

Were the OP and his wife married in Church?

If not, then even if she refuses to convert, a rectification (or equivalent procedure) would be a good first step, and would give them both the chance to study authentic Catholic teaching on leadership, submission, and the like.

 

[severus68]

---

Again – one can read scripture with a fundamentalist protestant mind or as the Catholic Church interprets scripture.

Read the following by Pope Benedict XVI-- in his presentation of the compendium. Again take note – the CCC as the " full, complete exposition of Catholic doctrine, enabling everyone to know what the Church professes, celebrates, lives and prays in her daily life".

Thanks for this. I was about to say that the CCC is comprehensive.

 

[SuperLuigi]

Okay, so this thread has gotten a bit off track…

To answer the OP, it sounds like you want to change the dynamic of your relationship but that you have a wife who doesn’t trust you, and by your own admission, she’s justified in that.

So start being a man that she can trust! Follow through with what you say you’ll do, dedicate yourself to being as well informed as you can about decisions to show that you want to make the best one possible, be responsible and excel in your professional life, be responsible at home, etc. After you’ve proven yourself for awhile, take on more responsibility. Then talk to your wife about your relationship dynamic and what you want to change. If you feel emasculated or unwanted, tell her. Try to work through this together as a couple. If you can’t seem to make headway, counseling could help you with your communication and trust issues.

I agree with the spirit here that showing is better than telling. :yup:

 

[Sochi]

…Look at the big problem first- it’s not that she won’t “submit” to you, it’s that she is still bitter over past mistakes and you two have different beliefs when it comes to faith. Work on that, again, love her like Christ loved the Church, because you won’t win her over or convert her by any other way.

I like the tone and content of you post. Personally, I’d back off on the “like Christ loved the Church,” but I get it and admire your perception and simple approach.

 

[Sochi]

which Catholic teaching would that be? I thought Catholicism was Christian.

Where is your Boolean logic? Catholic may be christianist, but only on of the about 41,000 denominations is Catholic, bar, I think, a few in communion with Rome.

 

[holy_face]

---

Again – one can read scripture with a fundamentalist protestant mind or as the Catholic Church interprets scripture.

Read the following by Pope Benedict XVI-- in his presentation of the compendium. Again take note – the CCC as the " full, complete exposition of Catholic doctrine, enabling everyone to know what the Church professes, celebrates, lives and prays in her daily life".

And again my response is the same, **scripture is part of the infallible doctrine of the Church **just as much as anything else, such as holy tradition of new doctrines that the Church has adopted over time.

There is no new doctrine that says the husband is no longer the head of the family.

This is NOT an fundamentalist interpretation! Reading scripture is not fundamentalist, only if it is Sola Scriptura, believing in scripture alone and not accepting any other teachings and traditions of the Church.

The Church still teaches that that man has the headship in the church based on scripture, I have heard it from no less than 5 different pastors during their homilies.

Please prove otherwise because the Church, regardless of their ability to make new doctrine, can not simply overrule and dismiss holy scripture which is deemed infallible by them.

Nothing has changed regarding those many passages in scripture, the husband is the head of the family, there is really no question about it at all.

 

[holy_face]

Where is your Boolean logic? Catholic may be christianist, but only on of the about 41,000 denominations is Catholic, bar, I think, a few in communion with Rome.

Scripture is still Catholic, the Catholic Church teaches scripture, it is part of their infallible doctrine. Just because it is not ALL they consider doctrine does not make the scripture part go away.

 

[Xantippe]

holy face said:

“There is no new doctrine that says the husband is no longer the head of the family.”

The words are actually stronger than “head of the family”–it’s “the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the Church.” I’m not even sure that the expression “head of the family” appears in scripture. (OK–it looks like it does, but not in descriptions of marriage. In the Bible, it looks like “head of the family” is more like a tribal leader, rather than just the head of a household.)

Bear in mind that it’s not automatically clear what “head” means in practice. Even in the world of commerce, there are lots of different ideas as to what “boss” or “manager” means. For some people, it means telling subordinates what to do, taking illicit advantage of the position, being impervious to information from subordinates, and generally lording it over them and running the company into the ground. For others, it means being the first one in the office in the morning, the last one to leave, a teacher, his or her employees’ biggest fan, and collecting the best new ideas. The two things couldn’t be more different, and yet they’re both bosses or managers.

There are also always going to be situations where it’s not even theoretically possible for a husband to exercise more than symbolic headship–dementia, for instance, or severe mental illness or addiction. There are quite a number of mental conditions where one loses the power to make good decisions. Our OP, for example, may be one of those people who simply have no judgment and it may not be something that he is capable of improving.

 

[Xantippe]

While I’m thinking of it, in Catholic thought, we also have a lot of thinking devoted to the question of to what extent one has to obey legitimate authorities when they order us to do things that are wrong.

At home, we talk to our kids about this. They are supposed to obey the teacher or principal when the teacher or principal is asking them to do school work, but if they were asked to go steal candy for the principal, they should refuse. We’re not explicitly explaining this, but we want to plant the idea that if someone in authority were to make inappropriate sexual overtures to them, they don’t have to obey just because the person is in authority. Authority comes with limits.

In the secular world, even the military has this–soldiers are not supposed to obey unlawful orders. (I forget the terminology for this, but it’s a real thing.)

By extension, a wife would not be wrong to refuse to obey a husband who was demanding that she do something morally wrong or imprudent.

.

 

[Xantippe]

On reflection, I think we probably have to have particular details of particular situations to figure out if obedience is appropriate. There is no legitimate authority that has the power to order us to obey, no questions asked, and with no exceptions.

I was just thinking about some real life examples where wifely obedience would be immoral and a dereliction of duty on the part of the wife.

It often happens when a child has a serious disability that the dad is the very last one to understand that there is something not right. There’s a lot of denial. Unfortunately, if you wait for dad to come to terms with a diagnosis, time is slipping away, and the child is being harmed by the delay in intervention. I know a family pretty well where the dad hasn’t quite noticed yet that his 5-year-old has at best the verbal ability and social functioning of a 3-year-old. If it were totally up to the dad, who knows whether the kid would be doing ANY extra therapy or whether he’d be talking at all.

Likewise, I’ve known a case where a mother went into a weird postpartum hormonal state. She was was wigging out and having very specific fantasies about self-harm. She was just together enough to know that it wasn’t right and she was seeking medical help, but her husband didn’t think there was anything wrong and that she was wimping out. He thought she should just pull her socks up and carry on. That’s what Rusty Yates was probably like–right before his wife drowned their five kids. In the case I’m thinking of, it would be that woman’s duty to pursue medical care for herself, even if her husband didn’t want her to.

As I said, we are supposed to obey legitimate authority–but only up to a point.

 

[Bluedogtalking]

Xantippe, you really have me cringing with this statement:

It often happens when a child has a serious disability that the dad is the very last one to understand that there is something not right. There’s a lot of denial. Unfortunately, if you wait for dad to come to terms with a diagnosis, time is slipping away, and the child is being harmed by the delay in intervention.

That’s really a cultural attitude. There’s little by way of evidence to sustain a claim like that.

Flexibility of mind, empathy, non-solipsism, ego-supression in the face of countervailing data … all the things necessary to recognize “hey something is wrong with my kid!” … none of these are uniquely or specially male or female traits. They are, on the other hand, virtues we should attempt to foster in the adult formation of men and women alike.

It is anecdotal, but my son has a serious problem. For years we just didn’t know what it was. My ex wife was prepared at any stage to apply all manners of solipsistic or simply errant diagnoses to the condition, all of which would have only served to harm him. I steadfastly had to resist this as every stage up to and including false accusations that would have put me in prison were it not for the professionalism of those we were fortunate to have assigned to our case.

My son is properly diagnosed now and receiving good and correct therapy. All throughout though I had to combat this attitude that I was (like the “typical” obstinante male I obviously am) hindering the care of my son by resisting half-baked, bandaid diagnoses. It really is not a matter of gender.

That said, I wonder again if we’ve strayed from the OP.

Every time someone brings up “submission” in a forum like this it turns into a referenda on Biblical headship or feminism or whatever. Taking the OP at his words, I think he just has marriage problems and a doctrinal debate won’t help much.

 

[Sochi]

~Bluedogtalking: Every time someone brings up “submission” in a forum like this it turns into a referenda on Biblical headship or feminism or whatever. Taking the OP at his words, I think he just has marriage problems and a doctrinal debate won’t help much.

Thanks, Blue! This is an excellent point, and applicable to most any “problem” on here that I’ve seen. Difficulties are more often in the field feelings, and while many give themselves to agonizing over the applications of tenets and dogmas, the situation is overburdened with considerations that go into the realm of debating about dancing angels and pin heads. As beloved Pope Francis is showing, the substance of the Church is not in the spectacle and edifice of the Church, but in common decent behavior based on an inclusive, practiced, and mature Love that has transcended personal ego. That done, there is little need for parsing doctrine, save for pedants who are more concerned with the checker game of jumping concepts.

 

[Bluedogtalking]

Sochi,
Agree.
+1

 

[kozlosap]

I guess I shouldn’t be reading this thread when I’m taking cold medicine, because I have failed to see the word partnership in any of the responses. At age 61, the only marriages I have ever seen where the men considered their wives subservient to their decisions all ended in divorce. In one situation the man paid for a mail order bride so he could be the master of his universe with no complaining. Thank goodness that this concept us never taught in the parishes I have attended. I don’t think that the women or men would think it appropriate in the year 2014.

 

[Xantippe]

Bluedogtalking said:

“That’s really a cultural attitude. There’s little by way of evidence to sustain a claim like that.”

Yes, there is.

I’ve seen it myself in real life a couple times, my relative the psychologist has mentioned the problem, and it’s well-documented if you do a little googling. If you are familiar with the subject of life with an autistic child, the issue of dads’ denial comes up a lot–and not just from women–a little googling turns up a number of pieces from fathers talking about the problem. There really is (on average) a gender difference in willingness to accept an autism diagnosis, just as there is a gender difference in many other areas of life. Obviously, there are exceptions, but that is the rule. (There’s also a tendency for fathers of autistic children to bolt from the scene, which could be interpreted as a very extreme form of denial.) I am less familiar with other disabilities, but a similar pattern would not surprise me. The special difficulty of autism is that because of the genetic and gendered character of a lot of autism and the fact that the fathers of autistic children often have milder versions of the same characteristics, it’s very natural that a father who has some autistic features would tend not to notice a more pronounced version of himself in a child, even if mom, teachers, psychologists, and everybody else does. Put very crudely, if dad has poor social skills and a lack of insight into other’s emotional states, he’s not going to notice that junior does, too.

Autism definitely affects males more strongly than females and there are very noticeable disparities in numbers. Apparently, a 4 to 1 ratio of autistic boys to autistic girls is fairly common, although you can get different numbers in different surveys.

autism.org.uk/about-autism/autism-and-asperger-syndrome-an-introduction/gender-and-autism/autism-why-do-more-boys-than-girls-develop-it.aspx

There has been some speculation (much criticized, of course) that the autistic brain is a hyper-male brain. Despite the criticism, I think there’s a lot to that view.

(None of this should be read as slagging autistic people. My oldest has a diagnosis and both my husband and I definitely have autistic features. I think of it as more a feature than a bug, if you don’t have too much of a good thing.)

kozlosap said:

“I guess I shouldn’t be reading this thread when I’m taking cold medicine, because I have failed to see the word partnership in any of the responses. At age 61, the only marriages I have ever seen where the men considered their wives subservient to their decisions all ended in divorce.”

I don’t think you missed it, because you’re right, I don’t think the word was there.

Also, what is the point of marrying somebody you respect intellectually and then not taking advantage of her (name removed by moderator)ut into important life ? That’s a really weird and wasteful thing to do–it’s like hiring a lawyer at $300 an hour and then not listening to a thing they say.

 

[robwar]

Scripture is still Catholic, the Catholic Church teaches scripture, it is part of their infallible doctrine. Just because it is not ALL they consider doctrine does not make the scripture part go away.

I think this whole thread is spinning wheels over a unreal situation. Holy Face, I honest beleive along with the books you recommended which are not Catholic that you are interpreting this with a good old fashion fundamentalist mindset straight out of Bill Gothard seminars. Even if another poster quote the CCC, you haven’t changed. I don’t know what to say to you. Your ideas are not supported by the CCC and are straight from the fundamentalist playbook.

 

[robwar]

Robowar commented that a licensed therapist meeting the couple face-to-face is more helpful than anonymous internet advice and your answer was:

I suppose you could.

Not all marriage therapists are competent. That’s a given in any field. Maybe the couple could critique the first session together and run to a different therapist if they agree they found the therapist unhelpful. Could be a bonding moment.

On the other hand, a significant number of people who claim the marriage therapist was misogynist or feminist went to therapy either fearful of (and oversensitive to) being blamed for every problem OR expecting the therapist to agree that everything was the OTHER partner’s fault and then were surprised and angered when the therapist concluded the other partner had been right about SOME things and he or she had been WRONG.

As for internet questions and answers, well … Sometimes the possibly well-meaning anonymous internet Agony Aunt/Uncle has such clear problems with their own thinking that reading their opinions - especially if they are repeated again and again over the course of hours or even days - can help a perplexed person see how NOT to approach a dilemma. That’s helpful, I guess.

Internet answers that seem based on clear thinking and compassion could be constructive, if the person posing the question gave all the relevant facts and phrased them honestly. Only that anonymous person knows.

I agree with the idea that the OP might be making up a situation to have fun on the internet, though. Let’s see -

“I (probably) forced my wife to support us both for various periods of time while I went from job to job and went to school (then dropped out) and oh, I added to the bills I wasn’t helping to pay by consuming porn and, oh yeah, I didn’t treat her well either. Then I converted to a faith that teaches I should have the headship over her and she should be submissive to my decisions. Is it a problem if she won’t buy that?”

Ann Landers would have put that in the Yale Fraternity Prank circular file.

first of all, the Op hasn’t come back yet to clarify his situation which makes it look more trollish than real. Second, anyone can come on the internet and twist their story to whatever usually making themselves look good and then well meaning people respond usually in support of the poster. We don’t really know what is the truth here, what is real and what isn’t. With that in mind, it is some what risky in asking and giving relationship advice over the internet when we don’t have the whole story and situation in front of us. That is why when people come on with rather complicated situations, it is always better that they are directed to go to someone live, face to face to get help. To start to give advice that Op should demand his authority or even be supported to do so when this whole things could be bogus to start with demonatrates the limitations of asking and getting advice over the internet.

 

[robwar]

I guess I shouldn’t be reading this thread when I’m taking cold medicine, because I have failed to see the word partnership in any of the responses. At age 61, the only marriages I have ever seen where the men considered their wives subservient to their decisions all ended in divorce. In one situation the man paid for a mail order bride so he could be the master of his universe with no complaining. Thank goodness that this concept us never taught in the parishes I have attended. I don’t think that the women or men would think it appropriate in the year 2014.

EXACTLY! some of the unhappiest marriages are those found in fundamentalist circles where this heavy handed men are the head because the Bible tells me is lived out.

 

[Xantippe]

I think the “submission” talk definitely has a strong fundamentalist flavor.

I think a big reason for the difference between the fundamentalist approach and the Catholic approach is that Catholics are much more concerned about having the relationship last, we have a much longer track record of thinking about the fine print, and much more pastoral experience. The Roman mind is always thinking, “but what about…?” For example, what about dementia, pedophilia, sex addiction, mental illness, gambling addiction, alcoholism or heavy drinking, drug addiction or drug use, brain damage, ADHD, mixed marriage, or any number of fairly common complications. At some point, we start realizing that those “special cases” cover easily 50-75% of the male population, to some degree or another, at some point in their lives (a lot of us are eventually going to suffer dementia).

Also, based on the body of his writings, I feel that St. Paul was a very practical, pragmatic person. If we had the chance to ask him, “Fr. Paul, my husband wants to use our rent money for hard drugs–What should I do?” or “Fr. Paul, my husband is senile and keeps wanting to drive–What should I do?” or “Fr. Paul, my husband wants me to prostitute myself” I think you’d get very reasonable, practical, pastoral answers from him. I suspect St. Paul would think absolutism on the subject of wifely obedience ridiculous–of course there are always limits to our obedience to any earthly authority.

 

[RPRPsych]

I think the “submission” talk definitely has a strong fundamentalist flavor.

I think a big reason for the difference between the fundamentalist approach and the Catholic approach is that Catholics are much more concerned about having the relationship last, we have a much longer track record of thinking about the fine print, and much more pastoral experience. The Roman mind is always thinking, “but what about…?” For example, what about dementia, pedophilia, sex addiction, mental illness, gambling addiction, alcoholism or heavy drinking, drug addiction or drug use, brain damage, ADHD, mixed marriage, or any number of fairly common complications. At some point, we start realizing that those “special cases” cover easily 50-75% of the male population, to some degree or another, at some point in their lives (a lot of us are eventually going to suffer dementia).

Also, based on the body of his writings, I feel that St. Paul was a very practical, pragmatic person. If we had the chance to ask him, “Fr. Paul, my husband wants to use our rent money for hard drugs–What should I do?” or “Fr. Paul, my husband is senile and keeps wanting to drive–What should I do?” or “Fr. Paul, my husband wants me to prostitute myself” I think you’d get very reasonable, practical, pastoral answers from him. I suspect St. Paul would think absolutism on the subject of wifely obedience ridiculous–of course there are always limits to our obedience to any earthly authority.

When I want examples of male leadership, I look at the Saints. Not at a neo-Evangelical idea of submission that even Luther or Calvin would have shied away from. (It’s worth nothing that both those men were, by all accounts, happily married.)