If both captains of the ship are trying to apddle in different directions, the ship won't go anywhere.
I am a Southern Baptist, a mother, and a wife. I greatly enjoy fulfilling my duties as such. I love nourishing my family with home cooked meals rather than eating greasy take-out nightly. I enjoy working with my daughter to clean the house as it gives us time to bond and allows me to teach her responsibility. I enjoy looking nice for my husband. I am embarrassed when I go out in public with aquaintances who wear sweatpants that are ripped and have stains.
I do not submit to my husband out of fear or a feeling of inequality. I submit to him out of love. God put him in my life. I trust God, and I trust him to do the right thing. Why would I marry a man and have a child with him if I didn't trust him?
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So, should we conclude that this husband doesn't love his wife because he doesn't submit to her? Should we conclude that he doesn't trust her because he doesn't accept a secondary, subordinate role to his wife? I doubt she would agree — she's more likely to repeat the party line that men's love and trust just happens to be expressed through leading and taking charge while women's love must be expressed through submission. If this causes women to be second-class members of a family or second-class citizens, well that's just reflecting the natural order of things as they were instituted by God. Right?
It is very authoritarian to assume that rather than two equal partners in a relationship, there must instead be two captains who will inevitably be pulling in different directions, that compromises aren't possible so that both can pull faster in a new direction, and that the only alternative is to have a single captain in charge while the second accepts a lesser status. The same argument can be and is made by authoritarians against democracy, the separation of powers, and liberalism generally. It's little wonder that authoritarianism in family matters is so often associated with authoritarian politics.
Amazingly enough, I as a feminist woman who loves another woman will try to look nice for my wife (even indulging her desire to try new looks on me!) and is proud to serve nourishing and tasty home-cooked meals rather than bags of grease. But I don’t “submit” to anyone, nor would I want anyone to “submit” to me. Rather, I try to give the best that I’ve got to the person I love, and expect the same from her. We are equals, and we work together towards the same basic goal, which is the good of us both.
I wonder what she thinks feminists, or even just self-respecting non-SB women, are. If she thinks not “submitting” means looking sloppy and letting everything go (which do not strike me as signs of self-respect any more than “submitting”). How sad for her.
The saddest thing about “wife submit to your husband” is all the women that belief it themselfs and push other women to do the same.
The stories where the daughter returns home after finding out her husband was having an affair and the mother telling her it is her duty to go back to the husband.
Wife submission is just another scam for the gullible, like submitting to god and the priesthood, tithing, restricting diet, etc.
What kind of man would want a woman who submits to him? In the sex department, a prostitute submits, albeit for money instead of love, but do women think that makes a difference? Men want a enthusiastic partner in the bedroom, someone who has sex because she enjoys it as much as he does, not someone who submits to it, regardless of the reason.
I think this whole “submit” thing is a sham. Any husband who thinks he is the captain of the marital ship is not seeing things objectively. A wife may let her husband “think” he’s the captain, but real dynamic is a lot more complicated.
Ironically I just had a conversation with my husband this weekend where I started out by saying, “I’m really glad to be living in a time where I have the opportunity to go out and earn my own living and to take care of myself. I’m glad I’m not dependent on someone else to ‘take care of me.’ In fact, if you can’t independently take care of yourself, then you are a slave in some regard. And what could be more key to someone’s happiness than their freedom and knowing they’re an independent person who can stand on their own if they need to?”
I hadn’t seen this article, and honestly, I don’t know what prompted my comment. It was just sort of something I felt all of a sudden–”How lucky I am to live in the here and now–as a female.”
I don’t really care if someone wants to stay at home and not work. But after seeing my own husband through a prolonged illness, where he was unable to work for about a year, and where medical treatment was through the roof, I can say I was damn glad that I had a job with insurance, and that I was able to pay the rent and take care of things while he was incapacitated.
I remember when we told my parents we were getting married. My father told my (now) husband: “Take care of my little girl.” My husband replied, “Tracie doesn’t need anyone to take care of her. She’s more than capable of taking care of herself. That’s one of the things I love about her.”
I LOVE to cook. And we eat extremely healthy food. We both clean. We both do laundry. And since I cook, my husband does the kitchen clean up and dishes. He does garbage, and we share most other duties. When we have an ideological impass, we either work to resolve it _together_, or we go for intervention (which we’ve done twice in our 7-year marriage, with fantastic results).
And I couldn’t agree more with Stephen Covey, who proclaims that if two people aren’t independent, and dependence is part of a relationship, it will only ever limp along rather than really take off.
Love.
Tracie. My wife doesn’t care about me at all! The only thing she cares about, is if I take out the trash on time. Oh-Oh! What day is this?
This reminds me of a book I recently read titled, “The Feminine Mistake,” by Leslie Bennetts. In it, she warns women not to be economically dependent on their husbands because a husband may become disabled, die, or divorce her. Then, even if she had a good education years ago, she will find herself unable to support herself (and her children if they are minors). Bennetts includes dozens of anecdotes about how women set themselves up to be “blindsided” by their loss of their economic breadwinners for one reason or another.
Every woman of any age (especially younger women) should read this book.
My mother “submitted” to my father, which my father wasn’t completely comfortable with; she’d grown up in a “woman must submit” environment, but he hadn’t.
I suspect a lot of women accept submission, not only because their religion encourages it, but because it’s much easier than negotiating good compromises. It also allows for nursing lots of private grievances against one’s husband, which some women seem to enjoy.
For myself, sustaining a supportive equal partnership for nearly 28 years has been work — sometimes a lot of work — but worth every bit of it.
Karen-
you hit on something interesting. I do think some women like to take the submissive role – that way when/if the relationship fails – it is the man’s fault.
Women like this also play the passive-aggressive role alot.
Nal:
>>And what could be more key to someone’s happiness than their freedom and knowing they’re an independent person who can stand on their own if they need to?
>Love.
There is a Covey passage that reads: “And to be trusted, it is said, is greater than to be loved. In the long run, I am convinced, to be trusted will be also to be loved.”
If someone loves me, but doesn’t trust me enough to let me be an independent person, they don’t really love me, because they lack respect for me. They think I’m not a capable, independent person. So, I’ll never be equal in their mind. Any “love” they have for me will be somewhat patronizing in nature, and that couldn’t possibly make me happy.
Of course, this goes to the root of “what is love”? But in my book “love” includes allowing someone to be independent–precisely because I know that they can’t be happy in the abscence of freedom and independence.
In other words, love should include wanting someone to be happy. And that equates to wanting someone to be free. No one can be happy who is not free to be himself/herself.
A person who is going to have a very difficult time respecting himself/herself as well, because they are making it clear that they doubt themselves and their abilities. If they are willfully dependent on another*, they are not expressing themselves as a whole person.
*To be clear, I’m talking about a person who, as I expressed earlier, doesn’t work, not out of choice, but out of their lack of belief in their ability to be capable of doing so.
There are a number of things that superceed love, in my book. Respecct comes immediately to mind. But, like Covey, I am not sure respect can be had for a person in the absence of love. But if it can, I would rather spend my life with person who respects me, without love; than with a person who loves me without respect.
But, again, I have a difficult time seeing how either of those choices could exist, since, to me, respect is part of what I define as love.
Respect.
I think respect is the most important thing. If I were to boil down all the lessons I teach my children to one word – it would be respect. Respect yourself, Respect others and Respect the world around you.
A person does not have to Love someone to respect them. To hold them important and valuable.
For me the only reason to not respect someone or something is when they do not respect my family, my beliefs or me in return.
With that said, I do believe that there are different levels of respect. The respect in close intimate relationships is much greater than to strangers.
Women ought to submit because of a group of mythological stories written several thousand years ago by people who had phobias? This is the 21st century. If I won’t submit to anyone else then I sure don’t want anyone submitting to me. People, both male and female are capable of making their own decisions but whether or not they can accept the consequences of those decisions is another story.
Having grown up with a very submissive mother, I think the big issue is the little girls in the picture. Unless there is an even stronger force showing them and telling them that it doesn’t have to be that way, they get the idea that the only way to be liked by men is to be weak and to play down their intelligence and strength.
I’ll never forget seeing one of my mom’s books on how to have a good marriage. Among its many “gems”:
-wives should always rise before husbands and put all of their makeup on to look perfect for their husband when they served him his breakfast.
-The book also told wives to lay in bed and wait for their husband to fall asleep before taking any makeup off!!
-avoid disagreeing with your husband at all costs.
-keep the home pleasant for him when he gets home from work, ie put his paper by his chair, lay out his slippers, tell the children to stay out of his room etc… Who honestly lives in a world like this? The book also didn’t mention how the wife was suppsed to do all of this if her husband got home from work before her… perhaps the assumption was that she was a housewife all day.
(This same book also had chapters on a women’s nightly “duty”, household chores etc…)
I am all for not nagging my fiance, looking good around him and keeping our home a pleasant and tidy place, TOGETHER. But obviously its ok and desirable to speak up when we disagree. Its much more fun to read OUR papers in OUR chairs while wearing OUR own slippers after work. And truly he can handle the sight of me without makeup! If he couldn’t then he wouldn’t be the right man for me.
(Besides who would have the energy for their “nightly duty” if they were busy doing all of that cleaning, not arguing, paper and shoe laying out, child shushing and the by the light of the moon make up routine in lieu of sleeping…)
I am so glad that I had my grandmother (who was NOT a submissive woman) to counterbalance all that submissiveness.
There are few things more insidious than religion convincing women that by denying themselves a set of rights, they are actually being empowered.
Just another barrier in the never-ending war against stupidity. Marriage is an institution in which two become one and one becomes nothing. (Just like Republican politics and its ideal)
I had an interesting conversation with my 20 year old daughter recently. She grew up in a single parent home with a professional mum. Yet, she spend the last two years in a relationship where she became more and more submissive to the point where she worked fulltime and did all the housework even though he was unemployed for over a year. She stopped seeing her friends, changed the way she dressed and spoke in a quiet voice because he told her she was too loud. He never hit her, never called on God as his justification, yet clearly this was an abusive relationship.
When I ask her why she had stayed, her response was she was terrified that he would leave her and she would be alone.Very sad!
what about submission? what’s wrong with it? (^_^;) when i’m ready to marry someone, i will submit myself to her, to our love, and to our marriage. i expect her to do the same, that’s it. it has nothing to do with “putting make up before the husband wake up” or “don’t work” … to submit to life partner is not the same with to be an underlink or a pawn. i say this things just got overrated.