I promised to "submit" to my husband and it had nothing to do with that awful book. It is because it is a biblical principle.
Ephesians 5 says
"21 Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.
22 Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. 23 For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. 24 Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.
25 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her 26 to make her holy, cleansing[b] her by the washing with water through the word, 27 and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. 28 In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself."
The submission of marriage in the Bible isn't one of being a doormat. It is of mutual love and submission to each other. Just as my husband should be loving me as Christ loved the church, so putting me in front in everything and thinking of what is best for me in everything, I, because this is the Biblical pattern, submit to his leadership. I don't blindly follow and am not a doormat, but we love and care for one another.