Women, how should catholic men treat you?

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tafan2 said:
Because of our fallen human nature. We stop treating women with deference, even a level of awe, and our corrupted nature is likely to kick in and we start viewing them as something less than they are. The evidence of which is all around us in our modern society.
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I think the same could be said of men.
tafan2 said:
Why do we treat the Blessed Sacrament with so much respect? Well, if our actions around the Blessed Sacrament reflect that it is something unworldly, that it is being held in awe, that affects our beliefs about the Blessed Sacrament. Why does the Good Lord, in the Blessed Sacrament, need to be treated with so much respect? Certainly Jesus is anything but delicate, certainly Jesus does not need our careful attention to details on his treatment.
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Jesus is God. A woman is a human being and I don’t think deserves extra respect just because she is a woman.
 
On these boards, a simple search will show plenty of posters who believe men in a marriage hold a position of authority over their wives and that wives are to be submissive.
Several studies – one from Cornell University for example – have shown that men in those marriages tend to find workplaces with women in authority to be difficult. My own experience would bear that out.

I’ve also heard plenty of men complain that women shouldn’t expect to be treated differently if they expect to be in charge. Mostly, they express a preference that the latter not happen. It sounds something like, “They better not expect me to be holding doors and letting them have seats if they think they’re going to be bossing me around.” I get that may not be you. I get that you’ve apparently never heard that. But I think if you take a poll of women in senior management positions, you’re going to find most of them have experienced some version of it.

Nobody here has said that women should chastise a man for common courtesy, such as opening a door. But men should also accept the same courtesy graciously.
 
JulianN said:
On these boards, a simple search will show plenty of posters who believe men in a marriage hold a position of authority over their wives and that wives are to be submissive.
Several studies – one from Cornell University for example – have shown that men in those marriages tend to find workplaces with women in authority to be difficult. My own experience would bear that out.
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All of which is likely true, you are just such behavior with the wrong cause. I grew up in a small catholic farming and ranching community. For the most part, very traditional households, families tended to be larger than today. Let be tell you, wives and mothers had lots of authority. The idea of men holding Paul’s letter to Ephesians over their wives would have been a very strange thing. Women ran the households with complete authority.
JulianN said:
I’ve also heard plenty of men complain that women shouldn’t expect to be treated differently if they expect to be in charge. Mostly, they express a preference that the latter not happen. It sounds something like, “They better not expect me to be holding doors and letting them have seats if they think they’re going to be bossing me around.”
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I have been in professional positions my entire adult life, I am not doubting you, but I have never heard that expressed. But, again, you are looking at the wrong cause of the problem. Men being taught to treat women with proper respect does not lead to this attitude. More likely it is men who were never taught correctly in the first place.
JulianN said:
Nobody here has said that women should chastise a man for common courtesy, such as opening a door
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Nobody here has accused any of you of saying such.
 
tafan2 said:
Nobody here has accused any of you of saying such.
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You did not. But the implication that one “gets into a snit” by another poster could be read that way.

I don’t have any problem with men holding doors, walking on the outside, opening car doors. My husband does all those things for me, and I appreciate it. However, he also treats me as a complete equal, and appreciates the things I do for him – which sometimes involve holding the door, mowing the lawn, etc.

There are many men who do not use any of this as an excuse to treat women inappropriately in the workplace – but it does happen, and it’s not infrequent.

I’m really just saying that, in response to the OP’s question, I want to be treated with courtesy and have my courtesy respected as well. And I want to be treated as an equal (in authority as well as dignity). I understand not everyone would answer the question the same way – but it’s what I want.
 
Really? That seems strange for me, if a man were behind me ofcourse I’d hold the door that I’m just going through. But certainly I will not walk in front of a stranger man close to me as we are both headed towards the door to hold it open for him, as they have done for me. (and I have appreciated) because that would freak us both out. I would do it for the elderly.
 
The Church does teach husbands have authority over their wives. That authority comes from God (not the Church or any human). When husbands fail to be the head of the house the whole family suffers. And when the wife attempts to take over that role she neglects her own role which is the heart of the family…and again, the whole family suffers.

Authority over the wife doesn’t mean a license to abuse or neglect. Just as a CEO will never get anything done if he ignores or abuses his employees, neither will the husband have a happy, moral family if he treats them poorly.

The problem, today, isn’t that this is no longer true but that many people have never seen it play out in an actual family and assume the worse.
 
KathleenT said:
When husbands fail to be the head of the house the whole family suffers. And when the wife attempts to take over that role she neglects her own role which is the heart of the family…and again, the whole family suffers.
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That has not been my experience. I understand yours might be different – my husband and I function as equal partners and it works very very well for us. I have no problem with the head/heart analogy, as long as its extended to understanding that some decisions are made by the head and some by the heart – and neither has authority over the other.
 
KathleenT said:
When husbands fail to be the head of the house the whole family suffers. And when the wife attempts to take over that role she neglects her own role which is the heart of the family…and again, the whole family suffers.
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Great point. The key error is confusing DIFFERNT with UNEQUAL. Just because husband and wife have different roles doesn’t make them unequal. We see this all time outside relationships. A soccer team has a goalie and a striker. They do different things, but they’re not unequal - without the goalie the team will lose since other team will easily score and without the striker the team will lose because probably wont get any goals. Same with husband and wife traditional roles - the mere fact that they’re different doesn’t make them unequal, in fact both husband and wife equally critical to the family. But in my opinion this is the key error.
 
I’m not young but even back in my day when a man invites you out for a date and he pays for dinner, chances are more than likely that he expects sex from you.

This is what I and my friends experienced and this was back in the 90s.

So on dates, I pay my own way in order to keep this sort of expectation from cropping up.
 
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It is not about experience. The Church teaches the husband is the head.

You have a very narrow interpretation of what that looks like.

Women can and do make decisions all day long about the house, children and any other areas the couple has agreed on. But just as the CEO is responsible for the whole of the company, the husband is responsible for the whole of the family.

I’m sorry, equality doesn’t enter into marriage. Marriage is about love, children, and family. It is about self-sacrifice for the love and good of others. It is about serving others. Marriage isn’t about us and what we get out of it, it is about our family and what we can do FOR them.
 
Who in the world were you dating!?!

If any of my dates had that expectation, they wisely kept it to themselves.
 
And not one of those things requires that a single person be “responsible for the whole company.” It is quite possible to have an equal partnership (since we’re talking in business terms, a law firm is an example) where two partners have agreed on division of responsibilities, etc., and make “whole company” decisions together.
 
But that’s not the Catholic view. Which is why I used CEO not law partners.

The Catholic view is the husband is the head.

The wife is still responsible for the family, but she’s responsible under her husband’s headship.

I am not giving you my opinion. That’s the teaching of the Church. I don’t always like it either but God didn’t ask my opinion.
 
We’ll have to agree to disagree. My husband and I believe a marriage in which both people are equals is what works best for us and our family. He’s been really surprised as he’s been reading this over my shoulder; this is not a concept any of our friends or family uses within their marriages.

I believe you structure your marriage however it works best for you. If having the man be the head is what works best for you and your family, then great. It is not what would work best for us, and is not what we want to model for our children.
 
Sarcelle said:
I’m not young but even back in my day when a man invites you out for a date and he pays for dinner, chances are more than likely that he expects sex from you.
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No. I suspect that was one of those things women (radical feminists) would say to each other about men but was/is not true about men.

A man paying for a date is a sign of respect for a woman.

If a man is after sex on a date it won’t matter to him who pays.
 
For what it is worth, on the door-holding debate, I think it is nice when a man holds a door for me. It is a sign of respect for women that I appreciate. I actually find it weird and awkward when a fellow woman holds the door for me, though, unless my arms are full. I would just prefer they didn’t.

Also, yes, a good man will give up his seat for a lady. I have given up my seat, though, for pregnant women and elderly; that should be common courtesy.

I am also old-fashioned enough to think that a man should pay for a date, at least if he was the one who did the asking. In an on-going relationship, you could take turns after a while, but my now-husband almost never let me pay–which I was fine with. 🙂
 
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