Practical ways that a husband should lay down his life for his wife?

[bitterhope]

Some don’t even wait! I actually see this rude behavior in public more from women towards their spouses than the opposite these days.

I agree whole heartedly with this and actually was talking to a few people about this very thing earlier today. It is everywhere and completely ugly. If men spoke to their wives the way these women speak to their husbands people, even complete strangers, would jump all over that man. But when women do it, most people don’t even bat an eye. And what’s worse is sometimes they will even blame the husband for the way his wife treats him. It is sad and very disgusting behavior.

And no, a husband cannot quit his job. Marriage is for life. Even if he decides to leave and get divorced in the eyes of God he is still married. That is similar to saying a baptized Catholic can decide to undo their baptism if they no longer want to be Christian. No, the sacrament remains for eternity. As for the bad captains, well how are they being viewed? Just because not everyone is living up to the demands of their job (or vocation) does not make it acceptable for no one to do so.

 

[EasterJoy]

bitterhope said:

“The reason I think the man has the harder role is because as the one who must make the final call, if it goes well–great! But if he made the wrong call, he is the one that not only has the fault, he must also live with the fact that he made the wrong decision.”

That’s a very good point, and I think that’s a strong argument for not making any major decision without buy-in from both spouses (barring emergency situations).

“The husband, as leader, has a ton of pressure placed on his shoulders to perform well.”

I don’t think he should have to take responsibility for non-emergency decisions that can be decided via deliberation and consensus by both spouses.

“Unlike the head of a company, husbands can’t quit when things get hard.”

They can, actually.

“They are like the captain of a sinking ship instead.”

Quite a lot of captains involved in recent maritime disasters have behaved very, very badly.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MTS_Oceanos

If I say, “yes,” then we have decided. We are one. There is no “your decision was terrible, why did you make me go along with that?” It is “that is what we decided, we’ll live with it.” Otherwise, in what way is the decision really supported?

Wheher you are a man or woman, marry someone whose mistakes you are willing to bear with them. Two people, one life.

 

[Xantippe]

bitterhope said:

“Your post was long, but I wanted to touch on the part about abuse being a cop out. No, it’s not and I don’t think you really do either. Anyone who is abused has the right and obligation to walk away and protect themselves and their children. The Church will even instruct abused spouses to do just that. Abuse is never acceptable under any circumstances.”

Here’s the thing, though–you will not find an abuse exception in Ephesians 5. If it’s possible for you to point to Ephesians 5 as a justification for wifely obedience in all cases except abuse, it’s possible for me to say that the legitimate exceptions are more expansive. I think I can make a good case for exceptions where the husband’s requests are unreasonable, immoral, degrading, imprudent or otherwise destructive to family welfare and happiness. And I believe we could probably find Church documents to back that position up–in fact I believe that somewhere in one of these huge threads, we’ll find more or less that. Not to mention actual Church practice, which does not recognize a blanket duty of obedience to a husband. There are many examples where if you ask a reasonable Catholic or your pastor, should a wife comply if her husband asks her to do XYZ, the reasonable Catholic or your pastor would say, “No, that’s not a reasonable request and you don’t have to do that.”

Also, “abuse” is a fairly expansive category, and may in fact consist largely in making unreasonable, immoral, degrading, imprudent and destructive demands of the wife and children.

Also, “I was just obeying orders,” was a lousy excuse when Nazis gave it, and it’s a lousy excuse for a wife to use it. She has a brain and a God-given moral sense–she should use them and not allow her husband to lead their family into disaster out of some misguided sense of wifely duty.

Needless to say, “unreasonable, immoral, degrading, imprudent and destructive” is going to be subject to disagreement between spouses. A husband, for instance, may enjoy a sexual practice which while not strictly immoral, embarrasses and disgusts the wife–should she submit to activity that humiliates and disgusts her on a regular basis? Or he may have a hobby which is consuming huge amounts of family resources (both time and money). We could discuss many different situations on a case by case basis.

“I admire the spouses who do live their roles in tough situations though. Maybe the reasons no one on here has given the advice to be more submissive to a woman, or give of himself more to a husband, is because most people don’t believe it is important in modern society.”

I can believe that some submissive wives have corrected their ogrish husbands. I would add that I suspect that the mechanism is positive reinforcement, and that the wives may be accidentally training their husbands to act in ways that will trigger positive reinforcement, while the wives ignore (or what trainers call “extinguish”) bad behavior. That’s theoretically very respectable. I suspect, on the other hand, that positively reinforcing bad behavior (which some submissive wives will wind up doing accidentally because they are intimidated into being more submissive the worse their husbands behave) will lead to a spiraling effect of more and more bad behavior.

(I’ve read a fair bit about positive and negative reinforcement–Don’t Shoot the Dog, Transforming the Difficult Child, etc. Even Lundy Bancroft’s Why Does He Do That: Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men can be viewed from that angle–the abusive men are being positively reinforced whenever they are abusive and it winds up getting them what they want.)

Likewise, many spouses have straightened up and flown right because their spouses stood up to them and put their foot down and said, “no more”. There are a number of regular CAF posters who have been on either side of that situation and it saved their marriage.

In general, I don’t think it’s possible to have a very useful discussion about this without talking about specific cases.

 

[Xantippe]

Again, I think husband and wife should strive for win-win solutions. To be focusing on whether she wins or he wins over any particular issue is a mistake. They should be working hard on producing decisions that both can be happy with.

Example:

Our oldest is almost 12 and has never had any music lessons outside group recorder lessons at school, and she has at least a little musical talent. A couple of years ago, she taught herself how to play Ode to Joy and a number of other tunes on the recorder just from books and was very passionate about it, with nobody at home bugging her to practice.

Here are our starting positions:

1. My husband grew up with a sibling who was a talented classical musician. The family put huge amounts of money and years of effort into that sibling’s musical education and instrument (which cost as much as a nice car), and it all turned out to be wasted for a variety of sad reasons. My husband is tone deaf and sees no value in music at all and would be happiest if none of our kids ever touched a musical instrument. He thinks even music class in school is a waste of time and resents the Christmas and spring concert at school. He hates the sound of practicing.
2. I successfully dodged music in school (I “forgot” my recorder pretty much every day in 6th grade). My dad refused to let me have piano lessons as a child when grandma offered to pay (and I honestly wasn’t that keen on it)–my dad thought grandma would feed me too many cookies and I’d get fat (!!!). However, despite my own checkered past, I can see that our 6th grader has a certain amount of talent and interest and a lot of my peers have had kids in music lessons since they were tiny. I also know that for a lot of musical instruments, you have to keep on doing lessons and practicing, or you might as well never have started. Also, I’m aware that kids sound TERRIBLE on a lot of conventional instruments for a long time (see the violin, for example). Also, I’m not interested in adding “nagging about practicing” to my usual list of responsibilities. Also, I hate the idea of devoting money or real estate to an instrument that will not be used. Furthermore, we don’t really have extra money to start years of music lessons and we’re very busy during the school year as it is (even avoiding extracurriculars to the best of my abilities), and are only going to get busier. But again, a “good mother” would have her child in music lessons, or at least try.

So, what to do? We have one parent who is against (husband), one parent who is ambivalent and a little guilty about neglecting DD’s talents (me), and one somewhat (but not exceptionally) musically talented child. (Husband’s sister was exceptionally talented.)

I finally started researching local options, having in mind flute, keyboard (husband’s preference because of the headphones) and guitar. I put out a few feelers about flute, but haven’t heard back anything. However, when I went to the local guitar center, I got a pile of fairly helpful information and discovered that we could get our oldest a full-size Fender guitar kit (with various doodads) and 4 30-minute lessons for $260 (plus tax). Knowing our oldest, that might well be all she needs to start teaching herself. And we had that money available in our summer camp fund.

My husband was still not excited, but he did look up the guitar kit on Amazon and found a cheaper price than the guitar center. Then, he looked up “How long does it take to learn the guitar” and read a thread on Metafilter. He was pleased to discover that a lot of people learn guitar very quickly and need relatively little formal instruction to make a lot of progress. (That aspect of guitar has also struck me–one is always meeting people who have taught themselves a little guitar and aren’t half bad.) He told me that he’d dropped his opposition. With guitar, we wouldn’t need to pour huge amounts of money and effort into the instrument, and then have nothing to show for it.

Yay!

That sort of situation happens a lot at our house. I have an idea and I ask my husband. He says no, but then does some research or hears some new information, and eventually he says yes. If I took the first “no” as the Voice of God (and there are a lot of “nos”), I’d be mad and/or sad and frustrated all the time. He pretty much never says yes to anything right off.

 

[bitterhope]

Xantippe,

What are you trying to say? I am really confused by a lot of your posts on both this thread and others. You keep saying you have ideas, husband says no, you work on him and he may very well change that no to a yes. How is that different than what any one who believes the husband is the head of the family is saying? That is exactly what the heart of the family does–she works to convince the head to see her side, particularly if it something she feels strongly about or knows more about than he does. And a good husband lays his life down for his wife, so yes, a good husband is open to communication. Not a single person has said that a man has the right to say no simply because he chooses to. What we are saying is that often times if we allow ourselves to trust our husbands, we find out that he truly does have our bests interests in mind. Not everything has financial reasons behind them, but most of your posts tend to revolve around money, or at least include a lot about finances. And it also appears that you do abide by his wishes until you convince him otherwise. You submit to him because you don’t just go on and do as you wish when he wants you to do something different.

I don’t get what you are saying about abuse not being included in Eph 5 or any other place in Biblical passages about marriage. The passages are very detailed in what is expected of each spouse. Abuse is never allowed by anyone at any time. I don’t understand why you are trying to argue that it goes against scripture to make an exception for abuse and therefore any other thing should be an exception as well. Perhaps St. Paul and most other humans think that somethings should go without saying because people were given the ability to use common sense.

As Catholics we are called to be obedient. Nuns are obedient to their superiors. Priests are obedient to their bishops. We are all called to be obedient to the Pope. Children are obedient to their parents. Husbands are obedient to their families, and wives are obedient as well. Obedience means that we do as we are told or asked as long as it isn’t immoral, but we are able to work towards a different solution. Of course we are all obedient to the will of God. We still pray and ask Him for things and we pray and ask Him to change situations, but we must accept that in the end, God has the final say. Just as a superior in a convent or monastery. Just as the Pope. Just as a parent. And just as a husband does in the family.

And just a tip from one mom with musical children to another–if your child or children want to start an instrument, allow them to choose their own instrument. They are much more likely to practice and accept the discipline it takes to learn an instrument if they desire to learn that instrument. Choosing for them based on your or your husband’s preferences is likely to backfire in the long run. I’m telling you this as a mom how has a 15 year old that is regularly hired (yes, he gets paid!) to play weddings, funerals, and other events on an instrument that he chose for himself when he was 12, but still struggles at the instrument my husband and I chose for him when he was 4. Please, ask your child which instrument she would prefer before having her (or yourselves) commit to lessons and practice.

 

[Origen52]

The greatest sacrifice my husband can make for me is to ask directions rather than keep saying, I know it’s nearby" after aimlessly driving for hours.

I know this is silly, but I figured you could all use some levity

 

[Xantippe]

bitterhope said:

“You keep saying you have ideas, husband says no, you work on him and he may very well change that no to a yes.”

It makes it very hard to take what he says at face value if I know that the “no” is just a knee jerk and that he is just reacting negatively to the word “music” or “team sport” or some other hot button thing that he hated as a kid, so he doesn’t think our kids need, even if it’s clear that they actually WANT to do it. He has a lot of trouble remembering that the kids aren’t him. He usually comes round after he’s had some time to think or do research, but his off-the-cuff responses are often a sort of phobic reaction and not very well considered. There have been a lot of times where I said something like, I think we should do some research on XYZ, and he says no to the idea of doing research. Then we do research on XYZ and it turns out that there was actually more information we needed…There are a lot of occasions when just doing a little more research will totally settle a disagreement, and it’s hard for him to remember that.

Just today, I was encouraging him to start saying “I’ll have to think about it” or “How about we/you/I do some research on this” rather than the knee jerk “no” that I find so exasperating and frustrating.

I’ve actually found this thread helpful in realizing that this is an issue.

(My husband’s personality is a lot like Adrian Monk from the TV show Monk–he’s very, very smart, but at the same time QUIRKY as heck with a number of phobias. The quirky/neurologically atypical father is a very common type in his profession.)

“How is that different than what any one who believes the husband is the head of the family is saying? That is exactly what the heart of the family does–she works to convince the head to see her side, particularly if it something she feels strongly about or knows more about than he does. And a good husband lays his life down for his wife, so yes, a good husband is open to communication. Not a single person has said that a man has the right to say no simply because he chooses to. What we are saying is that often times if we allow ourselves to trust our husbands, we find out that he truly does have our bests interests in mind.”

The difference is that in the more egalitarian model, the wife has the same veto power that only the husband has in your model.

“Not everything has financial reasons behind them, but most of your posts tend to revolve around money, or at least include a lot about finances.”

Money does figure into a lot of dilemmas. With regard to kids’ activities, we have to allot a limited amount of money among a large number of interests. There’s also the issues of transportation (we have one car and my husband does about half the extracurricular driving) and family logistics (is this going to wreck dinner?).

I am naturally very much the spender, so living on a budget is really HARD for me, even though I’ve done it for years now. (I somehow seem to have blown almost all of our grocery money and there’s still another week of May left, which adds to .) Add in being a fat lady on a diet and NFP and there is a lot of self-denial involved. If you could see me living my daily life, you’d ask, where’s the self-denial, but subjectively, I do feel really pinched. That’s probably why I mind my husband’s “nos” so much. It feels like an unnecessary imposition for him to say “no” when he doesn’t even really mean it.

“And it also appears that you do abide by his wishes until you convince him otherwise. You submit to him because you don’t just go on and do as you wish when he wants you to do something different.”

Yes, and it’s hard and I hate it, especially when it turns out that he didn’t need to say “no” the first time.

“I don’t get what you are saying about abuse not being included in Eph 5 or any other place in Biblical passages about marriage. The passages are very detailed in what is expected of each spouse.”

No, they’re not. It’s very broad brush stuff, which is possible for there to be so much raging disagreement as to what it all means.

“Abuse is never allowed by anyone at any time. I don’t understand why you are trying to argue that it goes against scripture to make an exception for abuse and therefore any other thing should be an exception as well. Perhaps St. Paul and most other humans think that somethings should go without saying because people were given the ability to use common sense.”

Yes, which is why I think it goes without saying that St. Paul did not intend for either husbands or wives to go along with spouses who were demanding conduct that is immoral, imprudent, degrading, or otherwise destructive.

“And just a tip from one mom with musical children to another–if your child or children want to start an instrument, allow them to choose their own instrument.”

Our daughter is mildly interested in a number of different instruments–there’s no passionate commitment to any of them. She was really passionate about recorder, but there’s only so far you can go with it…

 

[Ashe_Faelsdon]

Lay down your life by:
Taking out the garbage without being asked
Taking care of the yard work when it wants doing
Helping with the housekeeping
Putting dirty clothes in the laundry basket
Clearing up after meals and doing dishes
Going to the store with her or for her
Carrying the bags for her at the mall
Helping her with the zipper in back
Taking the kids to the park so she can have a rest
Helping to select paint or wall paper
Doing the painting and wall papering
Taking her out to a show or the movies or a concert
Taking clothes to the dry cleaner
Fixing dinner now and then
Fixing her breakfast on Saturday/Sunday
Listen to her ideas and follow up on some of them
NEVER expect her to say “Thank you.” You are supposed to be doing these things. “Behold an unprofitable servant. I have done only what I am expected to do.”

I’ve hit just a few surface items. If you can’t think of more things on your own, you need professional help.