Older Christian Women Paint an Unappealing View of Marriage

I’ve seen a lot of the "Titus 2" influencer set giving what they think is helpful marriage advice. I've read several of the popular Christian marriage books. I have also been married for 31 years, and I have wondered for a good while why a lot of this advice seems to be stuff that doesn’t apply to my life.

And I finally came to the conclusion that much of what they say doesn’t resonate with me because they start from the premise that marriage is very hard and they are telling you how to survive.

This was clearly on display on X (Twitter) the other day when a woman was responding to the very toxic influencer I have responded to before.  The woman’s comment was this: “We stay married because we fear God and love our children. Make sure the man you marry fears God and is shown by his behavior. Teach your daughters this.”

This comment struck me as super odd. If that’s the only reason to stay married, you must be just sticking it out, not joyfully living as husband and wife in a well-functioning and joyful household.

In another comment the same week, the influencer she was responding to posted something about smiling at your husband often.  Having a cheerful countenance is very important in these circles.  Someone said to her you can smile when you are happy.  Her response?  “Even when you’re not!”

You see, deadening your emotions is a big part of the marriage advice women like this give out.  Submitting to your husbands, to them, means you never speak up, you just smile and cheerfully go along with whatever your husband says, even if you know it is going to go poorly.  They become a pretend shell of themselves, deadening themselves to very real emotions and disappointments.  But by deadening themselves to the bad, they also become immune to experiencing true joy.  While I will agree that we need to be careful not to be led by our emotions, having emotions is part of being a human being and we all have them.  It is a false notion that women are the emotional ones and men are never led by emotions.  Men and women are simply led by different kinds of emotions.  Anger is an emotion, is it not?

These Titus 2 influencers lay every bad thing in marriages at the feet of women.  Your husband is irritated?  You probably talk too much. He cheats? You didn’t do enough to keep him satisfied.  He’s cruel?  Get over it.

Might I suggest that we teach both our sons and daughters to put others’ needs ahead of their own?  Unselfish and caring attitudes go both ways and would make society as a whole a better place, not just improve our marriages.

There is an attitude among these influencers that the man works hard outside the home to provide, so the woman should basically work 24/7 to make his life at home one of ease.  Never, ever ask him to fix things, pitch in, or do anything.  That’s your domain.  I always thought this attitude was lopsided.  No one works harder than a stay-at-home mom with young children.  I am reminded of the scene in A Christmas Story where the wife gets up repeatedly to serve her husband and sons, and the narrator says “My mother had not had a hot meal for herself in 15 years.”   It strikes me as odd when the husband retires but the homemaker is working just as hard as ever taking care of things around the house.  When does she retire? (*Not saying household chores don’t still need to be done.  They do.  But the retired guy could pitch in, couldn’t he?)

I recently visited one of my favorite young moms, and she made the comment that she was going to teach her sons as well as her daughters to do things like dishes and laundry, both because her sons may be on their own one day and for the sake of their future wives.  I have no sons, but it would have been the same for us.  I certainly don’t see myself or many other women going over to my bachelor son’s apartment to do his laundry and dishes for him. It doesn’t hurt your sons to put in a load of laundry or take a turn with the dishes instead of watching his mom and sisters do it all for him.

And this brings me to another point: many of these Titus 2 influencers teach that God will never call a woman into anything but being a wife and mother, and as such, they should spend their late teens and early twenties securing a match.  All that is necessary is that the man loves Jesus and is a good provider.  This has such Jane Austen era overtones that it makes me cringe.  If all you are looking for is a comfortable situation, I suppose it would be fairly easy to smile and be meek and catch an eligible provider.  But do we really want our daughters in marriages this shallow?

I know I don’t. While I can’t say that the years I have been married have been a complete picnic, the turbulent times are less from being married and more related to things people go through as adults, married or single.  We have had periods of constant car trouble, health challenges (for our children and ourselves), periods of busyness leading to a little less connection, and lots of changes with our kids moving out and leaving us empty nesters.  This year has been dubbed “The Year of Broken Things” by me.  Since January, we have had to repair or replace the following: furnace, water heater, garage fridge, treadmill, garage door opener, and our camper (that one was because of an accident on the service lot, so not on our dime.) We also had to finally spend more than we wanted to so we could fix an erosion problem in our front yard.  Do these things stink?  Yes.  But having a capable and loving man by my side who is truly my best friend make these things more of a bump in the road, and around him, I don’t need to pretend everything is fine when life throws these dumb things at us that everyone experiences at one time or another.

And isn’t that the best part of marriage?  Having someone who knows the real you, knows you aren’t perfect, but enjoys being around you anyway?  Someone who will still be there once the kids are gone, someone you can go experience new things with?  Not just a nice enough guy who pays the bills.  Someone you would rather hang out with when given a choice.  That is a far cry from staying married because you “fear God and love (y)our children.”

So I prefer to teach my daughters to marry a guy who will love them the way Christ loves the church and that they genuinely enjoy spending time with once the infatuation period has passed.  Anything else resigns you to the misery described in most Christian marriage books, something you have to learn to survive.  And I don’t want to ever see my kids wind up in a marriage like that.