Young Ladies, Be Careful What Kind of Marriage Advice You Take

 

This is a bit of a follow-up to my last blog post, naturally prompted by another post full of bad advice from the Titus 2 blogger. Here is the post in question, with her info removed. (Some of you know who she is, but I am serious about not driving traffic to her page.)

I am always amazed how low she and Debi Pearl (her favorite “godly wife” and the author of the worst marriage book ever written) set the bar for the men in their lives.

My first thought was that this advice was given because she (and Debi Pearl) are married to guys who don’t do anything around the house and don’t treat them very well, and this is their advice to already married women who have the same issue.  But this blogger fully admits she used her head and not her heart to decide to marry her husband, and that she married him because he would be a good provider and he loves Jesus.  That’s it.  She settled for a comfortable situation (just like Charlotte Lucas in Pride and Prejudice.) And she regularly tells young single women that these two things (good provider and loves Jesus) are all they need to look for in a husband.

While I realize some of us may have unrealistic expectations of our husbands that we have to revise over time (and because we love them and we all have to adjust to living in a home together), I think setting such a low bar in finding a mate for unmarried women is unwise and downright dangerous.

I believe the list she provides above is the bare minimum, but a guy who meets those minimum expectations isn’t necessarily going to be the right one for you.  Women are not second-class citizens or household servants.  But this woman (and Debi Pearl) make it sound like the man works 40 hours a week and the woman works 24/7 and should never expect anything out of her hardworking husband when he is home from work. In her terrible book, Created to Be His Helpmeet, Debi Pearl goes so far as to tell women to mow the lawn and watch YouTube videos to fix things around the house themselves so their husbands need never lift a finger at home.  Let him go fishing, she says, and do everything around the house for him.  She also criticizes a woman who had sick kids, including a baby with a fever, for being upset with her husband for being angry she didn’t have dinner on the table in time for him to eat before choir practice.  Debi says the wife should have just done better, despite the sick kids, and the husband was in the right to be angry.

Dear young ladies, do NOT marry guys who treat you like this.  You are not a second-class member of your marriage. I remember very clearly in our wedding sermon that our complementarian pastor backed all the way up to Ephesians 5:21 and told my husband that if he wanted to go out with the guys and I asked him to stay home, he should consider staying home.  It seemed like he was a strong advocate that leading a household was a very big responsibility, especially since the charge to the man is to love his wife as Christ loved the church. And sometimes both spouses have to not do what they might prefer to do in order to love the other.

If I had any sons, I would have insisted that they help around the house just like the girls did.  We all live here, and there is nothing wrong with a boy learning how to do dishes or put in a load of laundry just like his sisters. After all, he may wind up a bachelor and mama isn’t going to come over and do his household chores for him. And while I have always done the bulk of what would be considered housework, it’s really okay to ask your husband to help you, in particular if you are overwhelmed.  My husband taught our daughters how to do dishes. And he always helped me with our little ones when it came to bathtime and the bedtime routine.  You can’t do it all.  Even if you are not working for pay, your work is every bit as important as your husband’s.  A kind man will want to help you around the house, especially when your kids are small and cannot help.  But after the kids got old enough to help it was always all hands on deck around our house, and that kind of teamwork makes for happier people all around. No one has to get upset because they feel like they are shouldering more of the load of keeping things going.  Also, since “Many hands make light work,” you get necessary tasks done faster so you can all relax…together. And now that it is just the two of us, we do things like the dishes together.  Because it gets done quickly that way and then we can go for a walk.  Again, together.  Because we like to spend time with each other even after 31 years. 

And while I don’t think either spouse should be in the practice of ordering the other around, it is also a bit sad to me that she teaches younger women to ignore their emotional needs, to stuff their feelings into a box and that emotional needs are fake and invalid, going so far as labeling emotional needs as evil.  Emotional needs are part of the lives of every human being, and to act as if women should not have any of their emotional needs met in their marriages is to rob them of the joy marriage can be if we all work to treat others better than ourselves.  And also, she actually lists some emotional needs in her first list without meaning to. One major emotional need people have is to feel secure.  So a good and faithful provider will meet that need. The need for a bit of autonomy, the ability to direct/control some things in our lives is also important.  This “teacher” does not believe women have that right.  Husbands are allowed to dictate every minute of the daily schedule and even what the wife reads in her worldview. 

An emotional need for attention is also important to all people.  While this influencer will tell women not to expect any attention from their husbands, the wives are to be very attentive to their husbands. Who wants to live with someone who completely ignores you all the time but expects you to cater to his every wish?  Don’t marry a man like that.

The ability to make mistakes without being browbeaten and the need to be heard are also important.  While I don’t think a wife should be controlling or use things like the silent treatment to manipulate, it’s really okay to talk to your husband about feeling neglected or like your opinion isn’t important to him.  But if you marry a guy who loves all of you…including your talents, interests and even your flaws…this will never be an issue.  (This influencer used emotional manipulation tactics like tears and the silent treatment to control her husband, so naturally assumes
ALL women are just like that.)

The attitude your husband has towards helping around the house and how he treats you is important to spot BEFORE you marry.  Because after you marry you are going to have to decide how you deal with your lot if you marry someone who does only the bare minimum described by this “Titus 2” influencer.  I learned from Ma Ingalls “Marry in haste, repent at leisure.” And a little bit of time to make sure you are marrying a good man who will love you like Christ loves the church will make a huge difference in whether you have a happy, relatively easy marriage, or whether you have to turn to bitter ladies like the ones offering this advice and stuff your feelings for the rest of your life in order to be happy.