Unilateral Submission In Marriage

Some insist, resorting to to fallacies that invalidate everything in their arguments, that marriages just don’t function healthily when husbands either generally submit to their wives or embrace mutual submission in their marital relationships.  These complementarians do not even bring up the fact that even if husbands generally had difficulties submitting to wives, it is not as if complemtarianism would be affirmed in the slightest way: traditional American ideas about marriage would be responsible for many such “difficulties.”  Being raised with certain rigid, but purely arbitrary, expectations about gender and marriage would heavily distort the way that individuals would otherwise naturally behave.

The truth of the matter is that forcing any person into marital or social roles that don’t fit his or her personality is problematic and likely destined for pragmatic failure.  This is not only true of men.  Complementarians do not admit this because to do so would erode the entire basis for their asinine claims about men, women, marriage, and moral obligations.  Once a person realizes that personality is purely rooted in individuality or in cultural/familial conditioning, he or she sees the only possible foundation for any gender-specific gender roles vanish.

There isn’t anything wrong with either spouse--a wife or a husband--voluntarily submitting to the other in a relatively unilateral way.  As long as the leading spouse doesn’t demand that the submissive spouse sin or demand that he/she comply with extra-Biblical rules, both of which would violate Biblical commands, there is nothing sinful about this.  But to expect or demand that a spouse submit or lead simply because he or she has certain genitalia is inane, irrational, and contrary to the entirety of Scripture.

Because of their individual personalities, some couples may embrace the conservative model of marriage where the husbands generally lead the wives.  It works for them solely because it is a model that only works with such couples.  If a couple practices a “complementarian” model of marriage, even if it is inverted, it should only be because of a mutual decision (Ephesians 5:21)--and I use quotation marks because this element of mutual choice means that such a marriage is not truly complementarian.  Complementarianism is only what it is because it holds that traditional roles should be practiced by default because of alleged pragmatic or Biblical reasons.

Mutuality is the basis of all healthy marriages even if mutual agreement leads to seemingly complementarian practice.  When spouses assume things about each other’s competencies and desires, they set themselves up for disappointment, strife, and frustration.  The only way to avoid the negative consequences of such assumptions is to not make them at all.

It only takes intelligence to recognize this.  Unfortunately, intelligence has been scarce for all of recorded history.