Exactly. My mom was a prayer leader/deacon at a church we attended a few years back, and she was waiting to pray for people when a husband and wife came up to get prayer. The wife said she and her husband felt God calling the husband to be the leader of the family. My mom tried to ask him questions, but the wife kept answering for him. My mom flat out told her, "If you want him to lead, you have to learn to LET him lead. If you've been leading this whole time, you need to now learn how to support and respect him, by stepping back and allowing him to step into this role. It starts with you."
The woman was livid. I don't think they came back to our church. And I think part of it IS that neither spouse knows what leading looks like, or what support and respect looks like, for that matter. Respect and love aren't the same thing, and I often have trouble remembering that, for my husband, love isn't enough. He needs to feel trusted, respected and supported as well.
You broke the code. It doesnt matter how you want to define your marriage, truly, we all have different ideas.....BUT, the bulk vast majority today is a very very subtle (and its so normal the usual suspects here wont see it at all) normal way to set things up as something like:
1. Men need to step up
2. Women THEN will settle into being wives (whether that means submission, cooperation, whatever...it doesnt matter)
3. Now lets get back to the men stepping up
A. inappropriate content, abuse
B. Men cant communicate
c. Men are simpletons, give a burger and any kind of sport
D. Random joke about men
E. man gives tearful testimony about how HE finally healed, which is a good thing, he licked inappropriate content or drugs or booze whatever, but what it boils down to in melange is he healed FROM being a regular man in mans regular state which differs only by degrees, where by degrees men are all lushes or violent or relationally stupid at least.
To a point I do not blame women for how this goes. If I were a women and I heard this so much, Id do the same thing, which is the harmful part of the man step up that they do not realize...Id lower my expectations at minimum, and become suspicious and controlling at maximum. And I would absolutely take "husband step up" to mean MY husband has some ground to cover BEFORE I even need to think on myself....regardless the reality of where that husband is morally spiritually....all women don't fall into this......sooooooo many do, and its the root behind the divorce rate in church, and its basis is strangely on both low expectations of present state and at the same time ironically unrealistically HIGH expectations of his potential achievable state.
He is by default starting at the uber fallen level of his gender. BUT, just look at that guy and what he overcame and his wife is so happy and proud and he seems SUCH a wonderful man and I TOO can have a man like that, a man first broken of spirit then knit back together...why imagine the emotional highs I'm going to get to experience as I walk with him through this.....God is great and I will FEEL feelings and he hubby will share and cry and break down and oooooooo I get so emotionally engaged just pondering it. Its like a dang drug. Its like therefore the lack of such a transformative thing is showing that the husband is NOT stepping up....and frankly then he aint interested in the relationship and I aint happy because we arent connecting and we cant cooperate and I tell him Id cooperate if he would just step up (which means the above) and on it goes......NOTE...my example language is an exaggeration intentionally, I do not literally mean so many people want such extreme things.....the dynamic though I think is accurate...and it starts with teen girls listening at church and watching their moms how they manage these things. Ive taken my boys out of sermons that are like this, and folks think what the heck is the problem man, this is GOOD stuff, cant you see, men are weeping, wife's are comforting them....man this is heavy!
Its not about power that must be gained by one side and lost by the other, like a scale. It IS about stopping the facade of whatever you want to call it in your marriage I dont care your power balance, I dont even think I HAVE a power balance....we just have settled into something, that that THING absolutely had to get past this failed notion that the wife is somehow spiritually superior and therefore her word is final, her control even in so called submissive marriage...is ABSOLUTE. She gets to judge him, then react....If he is a good boy, she will let him drive and she will sit and NAVIGATE....some days she will drive AND navigate, and others, outsiders, see a traditional submission thing happening, while what it is is this warped thing thats created a set of layered enigmas that look like some entitlement. The most overtly submissive marriages, the ones that if seen, the ladies here who react to submission as if its a weapon, they would see something ugly and wrong....meanwhile, under one layer of that onion, just like C2W's example, there is a stern jawed women in full and iron control, while bringing coffee to a table for of men guests after church at the house....by laser vision and subtle flicks of the eyes, she "manages" her husband...the topics he can broach, the length of the visit, the men who are invited , because she just doesnt approve that so and so keep a bottle of bourbon in the cabinet.....this is my in-laws...they are the quintessential baptist small southern town servile wife who actually runs EVERYTHING and the man is like some kind of figurehead.
When that is the status of the so called traditional, what would be todays couples who blanch at the word submission, where the men (fearfully and chivalrous at the same time) RUSH to defend against any notion of any concept that remotely hints at any gender differences because he knows its (submission and equality) a more serious topic with worse consequences than even saying "yes you do look fat in that dress"
IOW, the fix will sting women's ears....badly, because the current way is the norm, the fix will seem outrageous, it will seem woman hating and misogyny allegations will fly...as women IRONICALLY tell their husbands "we are gonna find another church where I can be the kind of wife God wants me to be and be cooperative, and he will say yes dear".....HUH
Divorces will ensue, scorched earth even....its a purge before a rebuild, IF it were o occur before the end of days. Sadly I dont think it will, and a growing but small number of people MAYBE can live IN that mess but not OF that mess. Those marriages at least lower the possibility of a silly groundless divorce.
