Five Ways to Harm Your Husband by Being a “Good” Wife
This is not a new problem for us humans. Whether it’s yelling at our kids to be quiet or speeding down the highway to avoid being late to an appointment, we regularly--although often unintentionally--conduct our lives under the assumption that the end justifies the means. Wendy’s post also got me to thinking about how this kind of pragmatism can invade our relationships, specifically our marriages.
Is it possible that in our attempts to reach an ideal, in our progress toward becoming “good” wives and husbands, we could actually be harming each other? I think it’s more than possible; I think it’s very common. And like so many areas of Christian living, the danger is not so much in what we’re doing, as what’s happening in our hearts and revealed through the process of doing them. And while I can’t speak for the men, here some problematic tendencies I’ve observed among Christian women—they are simply things I’ve heard, things I’ve seen, and truthfully, things I’ve done myself at times.
Let’s just file them under: “It’s a bad thing when…
1) You encourage your husband to be a leader… the same way you encourage good behavior in your child or pet. Many women I know are not truly satisfied with their husbands, but they are “gracious” enough to give them time and space to develop. Much like they are gracious enough to give their children time and space to mature. While waiting, they offer false praise or over-praise them for small acts of kindness or what they consider to be “growth.” This is dangerous for two reasons: First, it is fundamentally condescending. And second, people know when you are not being truthful. What your husband learns is the same thing that any of us learn once we realize praise is false or overinflated: he learns that he cannot fully trust you or worse, that you didn’t think he was capable of success in the first place.
2) You heap massive expectations on your husband to be the god-figure in your home… and then are disappointed when he isn’t perfect. Perhaps worse than underestimating a husband’s potential is over-estimating it. When a wife looks to her husband to provide what only God can, she sets him up for failure. And there is nothing more damaging to a man’s spirit than failure—especially failing those he loves. When you expect him to be what he in his humanity simply cannot, you set a trap for him. He never even has a chance. Instead recognize who your husband is and who he is not: he is your fellow traveler, your fellow sinner on this road to glory. Celebrate his strengths; accept his limitations. And love him regardless.
3) You don’t disagree with him… because privately you don’t believe he can handle it. On the surface keeping quiet when you don’t like what someone else is doing can pass for deference when in reality it can be arrogance. Some women don’t disagree with their husbands simply because they don’t really believe he can handle it. They see his manhood as fragile, so much so that he is in constant danger of emasculation. The irony of this is that refusing to disagree with him has less to with respecting him than it does with feeling superior to him. Of course there are ways to engage in debate that can belittle and harm another person—but that’s true regardless of gender or marital status. In the long run, disagreeing with your husband (with kindness and a keen sense of timing) may be the best way to respect him because it says that you see them as the mature human being that he is.
4) You pray for your husband to be a better a) father, b) husband, c) leader, d) all of the above… and ask others to pray as well. Now of course, you should pray for your husband, but there are ways of praying that are actually harmful. (Just ask the Pharisee and the publican.) If you pray for your husband out of a heart of discontentment, you are fundamentally praying a prayer of judgment. You are telling God (and anyone else who is praying with you) that your husband does not meet your expectations, that he is not performing well enough, that he is a disappointment. Instead your prayers for your husband should be like Christ’s prayers for you – prayers of unconditional love, protection, affirmation, and support. They should be prayers directed toward what GOD is doing in his life, not where HE needs to pick up slack. If you are really struggling with a behavior or habit of his, love him enough to actually talk to him about it. Love him enough to engage him instead of whispering behind his back—even if it’s only to God.
5) You don’t confront him when he sins… and then taking it personally when he fails. While wives must accept that their husbands are human, they must also accept that God has providentially placed them alongside them as helpmeets in their struggles. Sometimes when a husband sins, his wife won’t approach him out of fear that doing so will somehow usurp his spiritual headship. And so instead of being the first line of defense against spiritual attack, she stands by and watches as her husband gets pummeled. Worse, she takes it personally and feels like he is somehow failing her. But our husbands are just as much flesh and blood as we are, and we are best their helpers when we actually…. help them. This is something of what Solomon was referring to in Ecclesiastes 4:
Two are better than one because they have a good return for their labor. For if either of them falls, the one will lift up his companion. But woe to the one who falls when there is not another to lift him up... And if one can overpower him who is alone, two can resist him.
Ultimately, we have to remember that simply aiming to be a “good” wife will never accomplish all that God has ordained for us in marriage. It will never make us more unified, it will never make us more sanctified, it will never make us one. That road is a lot harder and there are simply no shortcuts. And it is a road we walk--one day at a time--through honest communication, unconditional love, and large doses of grace.
Nancy Drew and True Womanhood
I’m not talking about the newer series post-1970s that’s filled with nasty bits and epic romance – my nine-year-old self was quite content with an amorphous Ned who appeared ever few chapters to escort Nancy to a seasonal BBQ or give her an occasion to wear her new taffeta party dress. And as far as violence, for me it was pretty dicey when Nancy was bound, gagged and left to starve.
No, I’m talking about that classic Nancy Drew that lived somewhere in the magical world post-high school but pre-matrimony. Old enough to drive and travel independently, but young enough to still need her dad. And, always, regardless of the situation, mature enough to help others with grace and style
I’m not the only one who thinks so either.
In this NY Times piece, all three women Supreme Court Justices identify Nancy as a formative literary role model. What captured them probably has less to with Nancy’s white middle-class upbringing and more to do with the essence of Nancy herself. As critic Melanie Rehak recognizes, “Nancy was courageous and independent but she never used that independence in an overtly rebellious way. Instead, she used her freedom to have adventures, but they were always in the name of doing good and serving justice.”
And that’s one reason why I’m purposefully directing my daughter to these books. (That and it gives me an excuse to re-read them myself.) I’m not vying for her to be a Supreme Court Justice one day—heaven knows we don’t need the High Court adjudicating whether or not Barbie Fairytopia is in copyright infringement of Disney’s Pixie Hollow—but I do want her to have a robust view of womanhood. I want her to know how to bake a cake for the elderly neighbor next door and have the guts to chase away the intruder who’s trying to steal said neighbor’s family silver. I want her to be smart and kind, pretty and unpretentious, appropriate and daring. I want her to be forgiving and humble, gracious and accomplished.
All at the same time.
Certainly I’m not conferring faith or belief on Nancy. And maybe it’s simply an example of common grace, general revelation, or the two times a day that the stopped clock is right, but a lot that I learned about womanhood came from having Nancy Drew in one hand and my Bible in the other. And the more I read the latter, the more I’m realizing that true womanhood isn’t an either/or proposition.
More than likely, it’s both/and.
It’s women with a hammer in one hand and a baby in the other. It’s women with the wisdom to defer an angry king and the kindness to minister to the King of Kings. It’s women with strength to lead and the humility to follow. And it’s women with the grace to move in society at the very time that they are turning the world upside down.
I’m from a generation that is quick to throw off anything that we don’t deem significant whether it’s marriage, motherhood, or social propriety. But I’m also from a generation that is perilously divided and grotesquely caricatured by our private definitions of what it means to be a woman. Perhaps the truth lies somewhere with a powder blue convertible, a twin set, and a pair of pumps. So as for me, don’t be surprised if you peek in the back of my minivan while I’m ferrying my children around town and see an overnight case packed with a change of clothes, pajamas, a toothbrush, and a bathing suit.
Just in case.
Love and Marriage (without the Horse and Carriage)
My husband and I were having coffee with friends, sharing our spiritual highs and lows of the previous week when he saw the warning signs. It was subtle: a rise of my shoulders, an intake of air, leaning forward, my mouth beginning to open, and he knew. He knew what I was thinking and what I was about to say. He knew that I was prepping myself to be argumentative and to say something unnecessarily controversial.
So he nudged me under the table. Just once.
In full disclosure, we’re not the stereotypical conservative couple—we simply don’t fit the personality paradigm. He’s type B; I’m type A. He’s quiet; I’m outspoken. He actually enjoys cleaning and after ten years, I think I finally believe him. (He says he likes bringing order to chaos, which on further reflection shines significant light on why he fell for me in the first place.) But there in that moment when he expressed his disapproval with the slightest nudge of his big toe, I immediately stopped.
Most conservatives would hail this as a great victory, that this is exactly how marriages should function. Husband directs, wife obeys. But I have to admit, my response to him in that moment had little to do with an immediate understanding of headship and hierarchy. It wasn’t mapped out by a complementarian flow-chart. It wasn’t because of a role.
It was because I love him.
Over the last couple of decades, there’s been a strong push to recover a Biblical understanding of roles in marriage. But somewhere on that path, we’ve started taking short-cuts. Short-cuts around the gospel and right into legalism. And these short cuts have led us to think that obedience to the roles, that our ability to have perfect families and properly ordered homes, will show Christ to the world. So we end up talking more about paradigms and less about people, more about rules and less about Spirit.
Maybe it’s time we remembered what it’s all about in the first place. The truth is that we were never made for roles; we were made for relationships. And just as Christ had to remind the first-century Jews that man was not made for the Sabbath but the Sabbath for man, we have to remember that marriage was not made for roles but roles for the benefit of the marriage. That the relationship, the one flesh unity, the loving communion is what is of greatest significance. That this, the love we have for one another, is what will show the world that we are His disciples.
And if you think about it, the differences in marriage are one of the greatest opportunities to do just that. Because here you have two sinful human beings--so diverse that even their molecular composition is different--who must learn to live in loving, daily communion. Not temporarily, but for a lifetime. And we learn that as we fail each other, as we selfishly demand our own way, and as we run to Christ for mercy. For only there do we experience true love and only there will we learn to extend that same love to each other. We will never learn it by simply conforming to roles.
So in that moment, when my husband nudged me, my deferring to him had less to do with performing my role as his wife than it did with loving him already. And quite frankly, why would I have done anything else? Why would I have chosen to barge ahead knowing that the man I loved didn’t want me to? Why would I have insisted on my own way when I knew it would make him uncomfortable? What wisdom, what convoluted sense of liberation would have led me to do something that he thought was unwise?
And so I didn’t.
As quickly as he had understood what I as about to do, I understood his objection. We looked each other in the eye and smiled that knowing smile that comes only from living and loving together. I settled back into my chair and comfortably nestled my head against his shoulder as if to tell him, “Yes, dear, of course I won’t.”