11 Reasons Why Wives Resist Submission in Marriage

Is it that Christian wives resist submission in marriage, or is the truth more along the lines of they don’t want to be the only ones submitting?

A few months ago, one of my readers sent me a video by a popular Kenyan marriage teacher. In the video, the man makes several claims, some of which I will highlight shortly.

My post today is for the audience of his message, those who told him they have a problem with how he teaches about marriage and he made a video about it.

The problem with wives:

In the video, he highlights some of the problems he has with wives and he prefaces that by saying his observations are from his experience teaching pre-marital classes for three years + a Christian study he leads.

Here’s what he says (the list is not exhaustive.)

• Men have a very clear understanding of what is required of them when it comes to loving their wives (“they don’t fight it”.) Unlike women who fight submission.
• Women have all sorts of “excuses” on why they won’t submit, including fear of “men who are doing God’s biding,” “men who are in charge.”
• The “sin of eve” “makes women think they know better than the Lord.”
• Christians wives should offer their husbands unconditional submission, the same way the church offers unconditional submission to Christ.

Christian Wives Resisting Submission

I want to speak to and affirm all the wives and wives-to-be who pushed back: we’re all right. Our discomfort and wrestling when we hear bad teaching are good and holy, not  “fleshly” and “sinful.” 

I have written some in-depth articles on submission, and you can start there. Today’s post is a commentary on some of the issues in the video, and a heads up: it is on the dry side.

Why Wives Resist “Submission” in Marriage

Before we start: Note the phrase “wives resist submission in marriage” is borrowing the original question posed in the video. More accurately, women tend to have a problem with wife-only submission. Not mutual submission. 

Lets dive in.

1. We all seem to agree that human beings make terrible gods until we get to the human beings with male parts.  

Women resist submission in marriage because they are tired of being told men are the agents of Christ over them.

To use the Church’s relationship with Christ as a mic-drop for how wives ought to unilaterally submit to their husbands insinuates men are the Christ. 

But earning submission via male body parts is not how anything works in the real world. (Of-course patriarchy but we know it’s flawed and harmful.)

The Biblical reality is that husbands have not been tasked with the role of Christ in women’s lives. Learn more.

2. Women resist submission in marriage because Christians are supposed to follow the “1 over 99” compass. 

Rather than putting all our efforts on the 99 “sheep”, (Luke 15), we’re supposed to be the kind of people who focus on finding the one “sheep” not in the sheepfold.

The women-only submission message shows we’re not. 

We say that some men will abuse the “husband-leads and wife-submits” concept if they are abusers. We say, “Anyone can misunderstand and abuse a godly concept, but it doesn’t mean the teaching itself should be thrown out.” (Looking at you, Dallas Jenkins.)

But that is not what is happening with wife-only submission. The concept itself is actually flawed. It does not work, and when it does, it injures.

And as we’ll see shortly, those who say they practice hierarchy in their marriage, who are healthy don’t practice hierarchy. 

If we were serious about protecting the one sheep, we’d have a problem with an idea that is said to work for most practitioners but is also used to coerce, exploit, and harm a minority. 

If we had a mindset that tends to the one in need over the many with no need, we’d change the “husband leads and the wife submits” teaching for something healthier instead of dismissing the harm as an exemption.

We would not be known for championing a concept that breaks apart and harms when followed to its conclusion. And this brings us to reason #3, why Christian wives resist submission in marriage.

3. Women resist submission in marriage because it doesn’t make sense to talk about their submission, while the concept being practiced is mutual submission. 

Couples who are happy and healthy, who believe in the husband taking the lead and having decision-making power don’t practice what they say they practice.

Christian couples who say the husband holds decision-making power in marriage, who are healthy, actually don’t have the husband operating as a decision-maker/leader. 

In the most extensive research on marital satisfaction for evangelical women to date, Bare Marriage surveyed over 20,000 women and found that while 62.2% of the survey respondents agreed that a Christian wife submitting to her husband’s leadership is one of the best ways she can love him (39.4% of the respondents believed that the husband should have decision-making power), 78.9% of those marriages functioned without a tiebreaker.

These couples are happy and healthy because they don’t practice what they preach. Read Does the Complementarian Marriage Model Contradict Itself?

It doesn’t make sense to talk about female submission when the actual thing being practiced is mutual submission.

4. Women resist submission in marriage because “love to your wife” is a broader highway compared to the narrow “submit yourself to your husband” dust path that is women-only submission. 

Male-loving systems will slap on the word “love” on a random, unremarkable, ordinary action that anyone, male or female, can achieve (e.g., praying before a meal, grabbing milk on the way home) and demand it be received as “loving leadership.”

That, compared to very specific and often strenuous concepts of female submission (e.g., let your husband make the final decision; you cannot teach; only men are allowed to teach) that women have to work with.

A man can bring home a packet of milk, and he’s honored as a loving, leading husband, but she has to give up her agency and autonomy, and that’s…submission? Come on. The asks are not even comparable.

The bottom line is that godly submission is mutual. Not a ladder we climb to earn brownie points. 

5. Labeling women sinful and easily deceived when they refuse to be controlled is uncool.

And it says a lot about the person saying that of women. 

The idea that women are easily deceived (“because they took and ate the fruit”) is more in the pile of junk theology than actual reality of anything. 

Without dusting out scholarly hats, which most of us are missing, it’s right there in Scripture that the man was with the woman when the fruit-eating took place. He, too, was there. See Genesis 3:6. Women are not more prone to error.

6. Christian wives resist women-only submission because they can.

We have something called agency and autonomy. 

And they are God-given. And very much worth protecting.

Women will not stop living up to the Imago Dei and its dignity and sacredness. They will keep on resisting, speaking up, and raising the issues in the Church they feel need addressing.  

Men just have to accept that women too have a brain and a mouth, and they use them, and God isn’t mad about it.

7. Saying that men do not have a problem being good husbands is actually news to everyone—men included. 

Healthy, self-reflective men will see the blanket statement “men do not have a problem loving their wives” and look around the room, wondering which men are being referred to.  

Character-sound men understand the “growth” element of loving their wives well. It’s humility of character not to tell a world hurting, questioning world, “I don’t have a problem being a good husband.”

Read More 18 Things Normal Guys Don’t Do in Marriage (And 12 Things They Pursue)

Rather than pontificating, you ask “how can we men do a better job of making you feel safe?”  

8. Women resist submission in marriage because abusive people don’t always announce themselves ahead of time. 

The reason covert hoarders and misusers of power get away with it is because they can play the two-face game long after everyone has roofed the ball and gone home.

Fact, they’ll be playing when nobody else knows they are part of a game. Read Why Women Don’t Know If Their Marriages Are Harmful.

Many coercing exploiters know how to charm and deceive those who they want to charm and deceive all the while harming those they want to harm.

So to say wives should assess who they are getting married to (good point) and then just trust their guys once they get married (bad idea) is naive at best and setting up wives to be coercively controlled and harmed.

It is not operating in fear to expect someone to continue to earn their place in your life and the relationship. It is prudent. It is common sense.

It is only in “Christian marriage” and relationships that women are expected to drop their guard and have zero expectations on their men..because they are men.

But just because you got married or are thinking about getting married doesn’t mean you must give each other some kind of a hallway pass to do whatever, whenever. A relationship needs a solid foundation and a solid foundation includes ongoing discernment and common sense.

9. Women resist submission in marriage because partnership does not go one way. 

When the sole beneficiary of “partnership” is the man, it’s not a partnership.

Wives being asked to consider that arrangement a “strength” (while the reality is erasure) is rubbing salt to a wound.

Partnership happens when both people honor and defer to each other. Where only one person is deferring, the correct terms are coercion, control, oppression, enslavement. A “strength”, it is not.

10. The “sin of eve” is a made up theology.

It’s not scriptural. “The sin of eve” is something cultures came up with so they didn’t have to take responsibility for how male-loving systems have harmed and oppressed half of humanity.

“The sin of eve” is used to shame, guilt, control and dominate women. “Women believe they know better than the lord” is slander.

And ps, when a man claims or insinuates that they came up with an awful belief, it is not the flex they think it is. 

11. Christian wives resist submission because they suspect respect and love are conditional

As human beings, we can give one another the respect and love due as humans. 

Alongside that and relationally speaking, we earn our place in other people’s lives. We conduct ourselves in ways that honor and respect others and our actions and mindset bear fruit in the form of a close/intimate relationship.

That conditional aspect of relationships – the idea that access to others is not automatic – is an anchor in marriage. Both people hold up their end of responsibilities and continue to earn their place in each other’s life.

A human-to-human relationship is different from God-to-human relationship. How God relates with us can be an example for how we relate to others: We can learn and model our lives after His example.

But any modeling and learning still takes into account that these two relationships are still different. One is conditional and the other is not. God loves without condition.Human beings love and have needs and limitations. Their needs, limitations and hopes necessitate boundaries.. and hence conditions.

So women innately know, (or can come to the the knowledge) that it is not “the sin of eve” to expect a mate to keep living in a way that aligns to healthy relating.

They know that anyone championing a relationship where people give unconditional respect is actually championing broken relationship foundations. And they don’t have to put up with that.

Why Christian Wives Resist Submission in Marriage: Conclusion

Women resist submission in marriage because they will not believe teachers who are busy setting up systems for harm.

When Jesus-loving women resist submission, it is more likely they are resisting the one-sided type. Read More 15 Reasons Why Women Stop Believing in Wife-Only Submission

To you dear women. Continue resisting. Continue noising and voicing. Keep pushing back against men (and women!) who tell you to ignore common sense, your gut instinct – which btw God gave you to keep you safe – and Christ-centered example.

Walk out of the room. Push back when it’s safe to do so. Change will come but not via those benefiting from your diminishment. Change will come but it will start from the pews, not some pulpits.

To my Kenyan and African Christian friends who sit under conservative fundamentalist teachers, who believe the husband being the head of a wife is the universal practice of Christianity: there’s a hermeneutic which sees mutuality in marriage.²

Are you tired of religious refrains being used to justify your hurting reality? 

Sometimes, the problem in marriage is that one person is being encouraged to spiritualize issues while the other is allowed to keep their irresponsible, non-Christian lens. Christian values were never supposed to cause or perpetuate harm in relationships. You deserve more. Courage Reflections and Liberation for the Hurting Soul is for women who are tired of harmful theology and bad marriage advice. You deserve more. Order Courage on Amazon I PDF

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FOOTNOTES

• 1. I’ve actually met him and his wife in real life. I’ve also sent him the latest findings on how some Christian teachings have harmed women. I thought about linking his video here but I hesitate to send more “views” his way because social media algorithms will consider it engagement and push the video to more people.
• Additional Context: I’m Kenyan, born and raised. We’re pretty conservative. Kenyan pastors and teachers are heavily influenced by fundamentalist, evangelical, prosperity-gospel-type American Christianity. The deconstruction (and decolonization) movement is growing but it’s not easy going about re-inspecting cherished spiritual beliefs in conservative culture.
• 2. Check out theologian Marg Mowczko who explores the biblical theology of Christian egalitarianism.