To ask if you agreed to submit to your husband's authority when you married?

[GalaApples]

If so, what made you agree? Was it a good decision?
I recently found out that this is a thing among some evangelical Christians, in the UK as well as in the US. Has it worked out for you? How do you feel about the man being the "head" of the house, and have his decisions been good ones or not? How do you feel about him making the final decisions about your marriage and family?

This. I promised to love honour and obey and because my husband loves me as Christ loves the church he would never ever abuse that position. I feel loved respected and listened to 100% but I believe that ultimately my DH will bear responsibility for our family and so he has final say. Thing is I trust that his final say would be biblical and that's where I'm coming from to do I have no reason to disagree. It's why I prayed about marrying him before I did and made sure to we were on the same page. A 3 fold cold is not easily broken.

Bless you.

Thing is, I wouldn't. I believe I'd see a largely respectful relationship but any one person having the final say is not OK regardless of the rest of the context. Clearly we'll never agree on this and good luck to you but if you were my daughter, I'd be trying to get you out of this relationship and into an equal one. I.e.one in which neither person ever has the final say.

If two people in any situation have a disagreement on something, if they are ever to get past it, one person has to ultimately give in to the other. Unless a compromise is possible, something has to give.

But in a respectful marriage this is so rarely an issue. If both parties are communicating regularly and considering the other’s point of view, it almost never comes down to such a head-on battle of the wills.

Absolutely but on those rare occasions, if its always one of the people who capitulated, based just on their sex, that's not healthy.

Ew it makes me shudder

Few personalities can enjoy complete authority without it corrupting their thinking/behaviour. Even if they start out with pure intentions.
It is an arrogance to think you can remain objectively benign when in a dynamic like this it is so tempting to tilt the balance in your own favour at best and abuse it at worst.

Yes the marital covenant is supposed to be that this gifted power is tempered by only having the collective well-being at heart.
But sadly we see it time and time again where in reality the man's opinion and needs are firmly centred, often to the detriment of others with all discussion counter to this being silenced by the basis on which the marriage is founded.

Men are as fickle and human as women a good partnership recognises the strength is on the union not the submission.

The church doesn't submit to Christ.
The church protects it's own. You only have to look at their response to paedophiles and how they hid and protected them, endangering and harming children, to see the church cannot be trusted to act in the way Christ would have them do so.
Why is this? Because people are mixed bag of terrible decisions and questionable moral judgement. That's why no one should be elevated above another automatically.

Authority can be earned, we all choose to follow and trust people who show they deserve it. It shouldn't be granted automatically by virtue of your sex.

It’s not the way your own marriage works. I get that.

It makes you very uncomfortable and you’re worried it might be open to abuse. You’ve also never seen it working well in practice. That’s all understood.

But to jump from that to “it must be dysfunctional” or (as another poster has said) “abusive or a sign of some undiagnosed mental health issue” - that’s placing a label on something you personally don’t understand.

@Panapan

Its not that much of a leap.

It's not the norm to not want to be equal to your partner. To want to be treated as a submissive.

There has to be some underlying reason as to why you would think that was a good thing

Many women do, because they are married to great men.

Many women don't because they are married to mediocre men.

Many women /men are bitter, lonely and single, because society has twisted the role of men and women, demonised our traditions.

@BabyOnBoard90

Fuck any tradition that means women are viewed as lesser than men or means they have to submit to men

It deserves to be 'demonised'

No great man wants a submissive partner

To address your points in turn:

Absolutely it’s not the norm. But just because something isn’t the norm doesn’t make it wrong.

In the biblical model of marriage the wife is very definitely equal to the husband. The Bible is very clear that all people are equal before God. The language of submission is not used to denote inferiority. We are equal but different. I choose to submit to him because I love him and trust him and I trust that he has our family’s best interests at heart. When I disagree, I say so and we work through it together. Never have I felt forced to capitulate on any issue.

As to my underlying reason - it’s quite simply my understanding of the Bible and my faith. No abuse. No trauma. No mental health problem.

@Panapan

Then you're not submitting

It's like people who have sub/dom kinks.

They are role playing abuse.

You are role playing submission

I find it odd that's what God thinks a healthy relationship should be based on.

So I’ve explained what I believe biblical submission looks like and how it works in our marriage. You think I’m not submitting properly.

So let me understand your position: unless it actually is abusive it’s not really submission?

Simply not true, sorry.

@Panapan

You cannot be equal to someone you submit to.

Words and language have meaning

Chery picking and twisting definitions and calling it biblical is just made up nonsense to make it sound a bit better.

@BabyOnBoard90

Oh yes. Your totally convincing counter argument has proven me wrong. Not.

Big hairy bollocks to that!

There was a really lovely poster here called SueBaroo who had a marriage like this. They were part of a sect, I think. She was clever and funny - I'm not sure how she'd become involved in the sect, I don't think she'd been brought up like this. She was trying to get the strength to leave the marriage and wrestling with her conscience and eventually her husband ordered her off MN. It was awful.

I did, but it was sprung on me rather than a pro-active choice. Good job I didn't keep that particular vow or I'd still be married and very miserable.

I definitely didn't for my second marriage! DH wouldn't have had it either.

I think that’s the crux of where we disagree. I do think you can submit to and be equal to someone. Perhaps it’s our culture’s obsession with hierarchy that makes it so hard to grasp. For example, I believe the employee and the employer both have equal value, as do the teacher and the pupil. But in each case one party submits to the other.

Neither is a perfect analogy so please don’t jump on me and say “ah you think your husband is your employer”. I don’t. But I’m just trying to explain how I see the concept of being of equal worth but also submitting.

I realise I’m not going to convince you and that you think I’m mad, but I’ve tried to answer your questions.

Ultimately the OP asked for people’s personal experiences which is what I have tried to give.

@Panapan

Employer and employees are not equal

One has a position of power over the other.

They do not even have equal value as one will be paid more

Teachers and pupils again not equal. One definitely in a position of power.

If you view yourself as equal to your oh why the need for submission?

It doesn't make any sense. But that is true of most religious doctrine I suppose.

No one can/ has answered why god would want women to submit either

I don't think you're mad

I just think it's one of those oh it says it in the bible and it doesn't really make sense but we'll pretend we do it just cause things

I have a relation who, as a rather old-fashioned and generally committed type of C of E, now as well as then, decided to use the vows that contain 'obey' in her wedding, a few decades ago.

Fair enough.

Now I know that the theological interpretation of this 'obey' is quite complicated, but almost needless to say... she quite clearly hasn't been. In fact, it seems to me that in that relationship her husband bows to her will rather more than the other way around and possibly more than is reasonable.🤔

To answer your questions in full would open up so many cans of worms that it’s not worth it I’m afraid. I’m sorry if that sounds like I’m dodging them but it’s more a matter of what I think would be a productive use of time. I’m not expecting to convince you to change your own marriage. I don’t think you are expecting that I’ll now rush off to a counsellor/divorce lawyer either. So we may have to respectfully agree to disagree. I wish you all the best 😊. Thanks for the discussion - always a pleasure to have constructive disagreements.