I’m not a submissive person.
My mother raised me to be a feminist. I was told, “Always have job skills – you can’t trust your husband to provide for you.” I saw example after example in my own family of men betraying women or their own families – sexual infidelity, alcoholism, or sheer pigheadedness. After my youngest brother got into elementary school, my mother always had her own job, so she lived her words.
On top of that, I’m a maverick. I don’t follow the herd – heck, I usually don’t even realize the herd is there. I don’t follow trends. I listen to my instincts. I speak my mind.
So it’s a shock to me that I am in what can only be described as a traditional “submissive” marriage role. It should have felt alien to me, like putting on flippers with a wedding dress.
But – it didn’t. And it doesn’t. It feels profoundly right and even freeing.
The S Word: Submission!
It sounds sinister, like slave-and-master. Like Handmaid’s Tale. Women chained and gagged, identities erased, barefoot in a filthy and primitive kitchen, surrounded by miserable, puling infants, hand on forehead, wishing so hard she had chosen a career.
But that’s not it at all. Submission means not insisting on making that final decision: where you’re going to live, HOW you are going to live, who gets to be the leader in the family, the CEO. We never talked about it, my husband and I – except I told him, the day we got engaged, that I was taking his last name AND that if we disagreed on the big things, I would defer to him, trusting that he would make the right decision.
And why not? The important decision was the one I’d just made – committing my life to him. If I was willing to trust that to him, I’d better be ready to trust him with everything else. Nothing else – where we would live (which, for 20 years, Uncle Sam decided) how we budgeted, even housekeeping issues – were as important as the idea that we belonged together.
In return, he listens to everything, and I mean everything, I have to say, good or bad. Most of the time, he makes the decision he knows will make me happy; the few times he decides against it, I admit later that he’s right. And he supports me in everything I do, even when he’s sure I’m wrong. (Right, Clark? Right?)
It never meant I had to silence myself. I was never in chains. Instead, I discovered one of the strangest things about the human psyche: I was freed to be more BECAUSE I suddenly had boundaries rooted in my responsibility for another person. I no longer have to be self-reliant, a terrifying and lonely thing sometimes – instead, I have a true partner.
Our Culture Lies
Feminism says marriage and children will erase you. You’ll lose yourself in diapers and dishes, chained to a man who will inevitably let you down. “The Handmaid’s Tale” is waved around like prophecy: submit, and you’ll wind up barefoot, pregnant, and miserable.
So women are told to “cover yourself.” Get your degree, keep your career, make sure you have an escape hatch. Always prepare for the divorce that hasn’t even happened yet.
That’s not empowerment — that’s building your life around distrust. It’s expecting betrayal before the vows are even said. No wonder so many women today feel rootless, exhausted, and alone.
I ignored the “just in case.” I trusted the man I married. And my reward wasn’t chains, it was joy.
Baucis and Philemon
There’s a great Greek myth that talks about this. Zeus and Hermes were traveling around in disguise, and one village turned them away when they asked for shelter – all but the poor elderly couple living on the outskirts of town, Baucis and Philemon. They feasted the two strangers, giving them their best. In return, when Zeus revealed himself the next day, he granted them a wish. They did not wish for riches or power, but rather to remain together until death. He made them the keepers of his temple, and when they died, he transformed them into two trees that grew and intertwined until one could not tell them apart.
A submissive marriage is like this: neither partner is really dominant, but rather they are interdependent. They both share loyalty and submit to one another – and to something greater than the two individually. As a reward, they grow together, intertwined, rooted in one another. This is true love, deep love, the kind one longs for.
A Submissive Woman Is Strong
She is brave enough to give up a piece of herself – her independence. And so does her husband. He commits to carrying the weight of her trust, to providing and protecting even when he doesn’t say it out loud. A man who refuses that role feels hollow.
Submission isn’t servitude. It’s a choice. It’s trust. It’s the freedom that comes when two people agree to pull in the same direction.
Our culture twists the word “submissive” into a chain. But look closer – at Scripture, at the best marriages you know, even at ancient myth – and you’ll see the truth. Submission is not bondage. It is the soil in which love is rooted, and its fruits are both enduring and wonderful.
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