15 Things Women Need to Know About Marriage
My husband and I were recently watching a video highlighting the first all-female crew in Kenyan aviation.
Many parts of the world have had their first all-female-crew moment and it was great seeing our country in the hub.
Our conversation looped around the brilliance and hard work we’d just witnessed. It wasn’t long before we realized we live in a world where women can fly planes, but they still aren’t allowed to preach.
It’s strange how sometimes Christians are the last group of people to get it.
On other fronts, the general culture is trying to catch up with the reality that women are also brilliant, capable, qualified, and worthy, but over here? We (some of us, anyway) are busy manning the barriers so women don’t take up their God-given space.
Suppressing and overlooking women and their gifts as a core religious belief just does not make sense to me.
And today, I want women to know they deserve more. We don’t have to settle.
15 Things Women Should Know About Marriage and Commitment
Here are 15 things I want women to know about marriage and commitment.
1. I want women to know they are not “falling into the sin of Eve” (as some have purported) or slipping from their faith when they question bad teachings.
2. I want women to feel affirmed that, indeed, men are not little messiahs or personal reps of Christ over women.
3. I want women to know they are not more prone to error: There’s no gene, no mystery code, no hardwired peculiarity that makes women worse at being God’s children.
4. I want women to know that those who make distinctions, those who use the Bible to silence one part of humanity, are neither Christ-like nor compassionate. They can believe they are…and they have the freedom to stay in their universe. But women don’t have to stay with them.
5. I want women to know it is impossible to “good wife” their way to safety in marriage. God won’t be mad that they shrugged off the expectation to make their marriages good by ceasing to exist.
The way relationships work, it is a husband’s job – his alone – to do the work of becoming a safe, maturing human being. See How To Be a Good Wife To Bad Husband (Clarity For Wives)
6. I want women to know healthy people can self-reflect and grow. It is not a woman’s responsibility to cater to someone else’s delusion of superiority. It is not her job to accommodate “that’s just the way I am” whims when change is needed.
Good people (yep, includes those with normal human problems) do listen without always deflecting. They own their problems without always having a need to spread responsibility around. Good people exist and they don’t act like perpetual children in adult bodies. Read More 18 Things Normal Guys Don’t Do in Marriage (And 12 Things They Pursue)
7. I want women to know that healthy spouses don’t construct a mansion on top of a mistake and look for excuses to lower the bar. Those who tell you to fix yourself to fix the corrosive person did not tell you the truth.
9. I want women to know their growth doesn’t have to be comfortable, clear, or easy to be valid.
The entire process of (re)discovering their voice, holding space for feelings, limitations, and needs (and not overspending on others) can be uncomfortable and true. Uncomfortable growth doesn’t mean they are doing something wrong. See 8 Toxic Beliefs Keeping Christian Women Trapped in Bad Marriages
A few more things I want everyone to remember:
10. There’s no use in doing stuff to express love to your spouse if you’re not doing anything to become a better person.
Partners need to be better people, not just people who know how to do things better. There are words for when someone works to create an external story that does not align with their inner world: Manipulation. Deception. Two-facedness.*
11. Everyone deserves to know when a relationship has departed from the intent and boundaries of healthy relating into something else.
12. People deserve to know when their connection is no longer flowing in honesty and loyalty, and it becomes necessary to prioritize individual safety and well-being over a “team” mindset. See Why Change Without Lasting Fruit Shouldn’t Be Acceptable in Marriage (The Truth Hurting Spouses Deserve to Know)
13. No one ever changed the trajectory of a marriage by themselves. You can work till the cows come home, but unless the other person engages and does their part, there’ll be no lasting results.
14. There’s no actual connection if only one person is doing the work of connecting.
There’s no relationship if “the relationship” is just endless sacrifice by one individual and irresponsibility by the other. We can call it many things (bondage, devastation, discord, etc), but we can’t say, “There goes a Christian marriage” when the intent, essence, and hope of a marriage are absent in an arrangement.
Finally.. #15, Things Women Should Know About Marriage
15. I want everyone to know there’s nothing wrong with independence and freedom.
Individual autonomy is ours to explore, develop, and exercise. We can discern and make healthy decisions for ourselves. It is not “sinful” to get resourcing in that direction when our capacities were previously squashed and inaccessible.
Women deserve better.
And they will continue to create safe healthier stories and realities for themselves.. even if parts of Christianity don’t like it. PS. We don’t need to be liked. We need to be safe.
Go from confusion, brain fog, and betrayal …to confidence, clarity, and connection!
SHERO: Your WILD Guide to Warrior After Abuse, an abuse recovery program by Sarah McDugal is now open! It only opens a few times a year. If you’re ready to recognize red flags of abuse before you get sucked in, track the trauma toll on your body and brain so you stop wondering if you’re going crazy, take back fearless control of your own decisions like God intended, navigate bigger triggers without getting completely dysregulated, SHERO is for you. (Aff link)
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- FOOTNOTES:
- *Long after their spouse has made them aware they need inner transformation, not window washing.
Ngina, thank you so much! Especially for number 5 – that one really resonated with me in my situation. I’m in the process of ending a long marriage after the man who professed to live me decided he could just kill me off since I wouldn’t give him everything he wanted. It is so good to have people encouraging me since both my mother and my mother-in-law are telling me I have a forgiveness problem – but i have a safety problem! They want me to keep risking death in order to preserve the appearance of marriage. Sounds like idol worship to me.
I believe you. I’m so sorry for what you’re going through. I’m sorry there’s little support from your closest community..you deserve to live in peace and safety and to be affirmed in the direction of peace and safety.
First. I really appreciate your blog. It’s been a huge, eye-opening source of clarity for me. I do have a question about your comment regarding women preaching. That’s one that has always seemed very biblically clear to me. Would you be willing to expound on that and share your perspective?
So glad the blog has been helpful!
I recommend checking out theologian Marg Mowczko’s articles, exploring the subject…here’s a link She does a great job!
Hi Kate, the reference in 1 Timothy two refers to a woman (not all women forever and always) addressing a specific situation in that church. The epistles are letters containing doctrine but also containing examples. No one should usurp godly authority. Timothy was a young man whose youth was despised, told to drink wine and a lot of other things most people would not make a doctrine from based on a single passage. The scriptures are not written exclusively to me, so proclamation is given for all of us for all time. If this were not true, the angel at the tomb did not understand he was to wait for the guys to show up to announce the resurrection. He had a group of women proclaim that truth to the apostles. There were women who prophesied of Paul’s imprisonment (they did not use hand signals), Priscilla and Acquilla, Anna in the temple, Hulda and Deborah in the Old Testament and on we could go. Junia, sometimes changed to Junias because it is awkward to have a woman’s name in such a well known list, was proclaiming Jesus. They were not speaking to all women groups. Many passages would seem to contradict themselves in scripture: Jesus said both, “He who is not for me is against me” and “He who is not against me is for me”. Did he get confused? No, both things are true depending on the circumstances. I used to hold a more narrow position on this but the more I studied scripture the more I realized the contextual nature of many of the instructions in the epistles, what was clearly doctrine, and that there is indeed Jew, Greek, bond, free, male or female…those things are erased in Christ’ Jesus. I think we need more decent male leaders in church as women tend to be more spiritually sensitive, and I often speak with my husband but he has intentionally allowed people to introduce “Rev” followed by our last name and had me stand up and deliver the message.