Out-shined yesterday by the article by My Husband’s Wife’s (at 2536), I nevertheless boost my spirits and continue with this series. As easily concluded from MHW, submission is merely a tradeoff for harmonizing a relationship. Men may demand it exclusively, but that makes it no more right that they are right about everything else. But women have to teach them the difference between submission and submissive, competition and cooperation, discord and harmony. Leadership by example is always the best teacher. It means the relationship expert must submit at times in order to teach her man to recognize, respect, and hopefully submit to her ways in domains for which she is responsible.
I continue with situations that make women more aware of what’s happening mentally between the sexes.
11. This should be on her premarital checklist. Whether she and he are Christians or Bible believers or not, she can still ferret out some answers or spot red flags. She explores and discusses how each feels about each other relative to these passages and their present and future relationship: Ephesians 5:22-33. From what he says but mostly what he does, she should be able to determine—over a lengthy courtship—much about his worth to her.
12. With no CEO, families flounder from lack of leadership. With one CEO, they can thrive on effective leadership. Two CEOs invariably disagree, dispute, or fight over leadership issues and confuse each other and the kids. More importantly, spouses too easily succumb to blaming each other when things do not turn out as agreeably planned, expected, or predicted. Finger pointing both cripples leadership and injects sour notes into family harmony. The most acceptable and effective assigning of blame is the finger that points inward by the person responsible. (You can’t blame someone if they’re not clearly responsible and endowed with sufficient authority to do what they should. Also, they lack sufficient authority if their decisions are questioned or criticized. That is, their spouse fails to submit.)
13. People have to submit all the time. Children to parents. Parents to God. Employees to boss. In effect, submission is a natural function of two people’s authority relationship. Authority exists to provide the essential influence in one’s domain to fulfill their responsibility. By clearing up lines of responsibility ahead of time between man and wife, authority becomes clearer. Submission of one to the other in the domains for which they are responsible can lead to reciprocity and freedom from debate, resistance, and resentment. Examples: 1) Mother is chief child-raiser, nurturer of pre-schoolers, and disciplinarian for pre-pubescent kids. Father is her main provider/protector, supporter, and backup in her domains. 2) His domain is the home as chief executive. Her domain is how everyone will live in it as she is the chief operating officer. When push comes to shove, each submits to the other’s decisions in their domains. (Advice to wives: Always indirectly, in various ways keep impressing husband with this thought. When you make his castle in your home, he loves it. But don’t tell him that when he makes his castle in your nest, you can’t live with him doing that. Caution: If you make it your castle, he may not stay around very long.)
14. Aggressively or too assertively playing the power struggle game is dangerous to a marriage. Eventually destructive forces lead to split up. Without each spouse having a submissive spirit in the other’s domains, constant turf battles ensue. Prevention being better than cure, distinctly different domains for which each is responsible and has authority to control it helps clear the air for who submits on what issues. For example: Wife determines menus for home meals. Husband determines where they eat out. Although unstated, both yield in the other’s domain to encourage rather than expect that each please the other. IOW, mutual acceptance of domain assignment generates cooperation. Avoiding competitive situations helps prevent disagreement and stifle resentment.
15. The natural form of marriage works as a power game with a husband presuming himself to be on offense and wife on defense. Her best defense is to not lose whatever influence she has, which challenges her to fight back, which happens frequently in the early years of a marriage. If she loses her influential ability, it neutralizes her interest and de-energizes her spirit to cooperate. Her second best defense is to gain greater influence, which comes through patience, indirectness, and submission as appropriate for peaceful negotiation.
Can you use some more wife-promoting situational awareness? Come back for next posting.
What Women Never Hear 
Dear Sir Guy,
Can you please clarify this passage?
“(Advice to wives: Always indirectly, in various ways keep impressing husband with this thought. When you make his castle in your home, he loves it. But don’t tell him that when he makes his castle in your nest, you can’t live with him doing that. Caution: If you make it your castle, he may not stay around very long.)”
Your Highness Miss Gina,
I presume this confuses you: “But don’t tell him that when he makes his castle in your nest, you can’t live with him doing that.” It simply means, don’t complain if or when he overrides your wishes and turns your nice nest into his highly rumpled and distorted castle. It’s ultra hard to live with but find another solution instead of complaining.
Guy
Thank you. 😀
I think it’s REALLY easy to falter here because if you choose incorrectly, if you choose a man who is INCAPABLE of leading, who proves INEPT at leadership, you will ALWAYS be disappointed in him and nag and fight for power because you know you can do it better. It’s a consequence of women being encouraged to be independent and learning to do EVERYTHING for themselves. I especially see this in my community, the girls/women are encouraged to do it ALL for themselves, are told NOT to depend on ANYONE for ANYTHING, be educated and SELF SUFFICIENT at ALL costs, while the men receive NO such training. How are these two sets of people supposed to have a successful relationship? Won’t happen.
I would like to be pleasantly surprised by examples of exceptional male leadership, but these days it seems to be lacking in the upbringing of boys/men. If men don’t take this up for themselves in their adulthood, they become perpetual adolescents that disappoint women who are looking for leaders to lead their families into a life that thrives. Women can only feel comfortable submitting to a man who won’t lead them off of a cliff.
Lady Shermy,
you have just summed up my thoughts on the subject, pretty much.
Thank you for verbalising it so accurately as I probably wouldn’t have done it myself…But that’s another story.
We don’t have enough responsible male leaders – it’s enough to look at what happened in Britain after Brexit. We have more and more female leaders across Europe actually.
Women these days are better educated than ever before and don’t want to put up with second best.
I got married to a man who was leading the whole family off a cliff and continued submitting to him until it became crystal clear that I had a choice between jumping off the cliff with him or doing a U-turn.
I continued deluding myself that he would wake up to reality one day.
It never happened.
Not only are women encouraged today to rely on themselves completely but men are excused from any responsibility under the guise of equality or God knows what. Women are not even supposed to say we need a man for fear for scaring all guys away!
I read some posts on mumsnet.com recently where some women gave a good chiding to a mother of 2 who said she wasn’t willing to let the father of her children to see them because he wasn’t paying her a penny for their maintenance (while at the same time earning a good income).
She was told it didn’t matter whether he paid any money or not as he is still the father and the children have a right to see him and vice versa.
I have a huge problem with that because, as some other women pointed out, if we let men off the hook as easily as that, what’s to stop them from making babies left, right and centre and then leaving them behind for the mothers to feed, clothe and bring up by themselves?
It seems good guys are really, really hard to come by these days.
And women are told to have their own lives and friends and happiness and the man is supposed just to be the cherry on the cake.
What is to be done?
Dear Ladies,
If I may offer a couple of ideas…I think we ladies can let fear ruin our relationships with men. I think fear and guilt are the two female weaknesses. Perhaps, we “strong, independent” women have just traded fear of *our* failure for a fear of *his* failure.
This would be encouraged by the bumbling boobs we see men portrayed as in popular media. Speaking in general (not specifically of Lady Femme’s situation or any other), sure, there are some who really won’t man up when the going gets rough, but then we must own our choice of the man (there were probably red flags which we ignored) and own our need to get a little emotional intelligence, ourselves. This is not to say the man has no free will or responsibility in the matter, but to an amazing degree, we ladies have tremendous power to influence men indirectly, if we will learn to use it. Most men will respond.
When considering allowing a man to lead, it helps to remember that none of us knows it all ourselves, for all of our feminist indoctrination to the contrary, and we ladies make plenty of mistakes. I have come to cringe at the thought of what it would be like to be the spouse in a marriage led by *me*. It’s a whole lot of responsibility, and I personally wouldn’t want it.
My husband has failed a lot, as did Babe Ruth, but he has hit a lot of home runs, too, like the Babe. I was terrified of his failure at first. I learned, though, that both his and my failures are not the end of the world–in fact, recovery from failure usually makes for a better success. *Importantly, as I have learned to trust him and not express terror at his leadership but rather confidence in him, he has put more of his faith in me and made room for my ideas.*
As for emotional intelligence, the more we trust the power of pretty time, encouragement and support of the man, and feminine dependence to motivate a man to step up his game, the more manly men there will be. Sure we need to be strong, too, but sometimes being strong would include biting our tongues, being supportive, forgiving, and moving on when the man makes a mistake. We would wish for the same.
These are innate drives…the drive to step up to serve and protect an attractive woman who needs him is real for every man, but it may lie dormant until some feminine woman stirs it. The biggest killer of it would be that same woman’s disdain for his abilities or terror at his leadership. Sir Guy’s recommendations are going to get us where we want to be, but by an indirect route, if we will trust him.
Miss Gina,
Thank you for your insight, so feminine! I’m not so much worried about the women, as we are more encouraged to change our ways for the better, but Femme states directly my greatest fear at the moment, and keep in mind that I am 38 and have been seeing these patterns VERY clearly for the past 10 years…
“But when I asked “what is to be done”, I meant the bigger picture.
Because the fact of the matter is, more and more men (especially of the younger generation) seem to be falling into the category of damaged/incapable of leadership and it’s increasingly hard to find a man who doesn’t.”
I confess to being at a loss here. Sir Guy?
Your Highness Shermy,
No need for you to be at a loss.
I have reduced female problems with the current trend in men to this problem, sex without obligation in exchange. Hope to post something on it within a week. Four points capture the essence.
1. Men are weak in their love of a woman. So easily distracted that a man’s words mean much less and are far more conditional than stated. It’s natural too.
2. His devotion is much stronger and natural. It is based on his strong ability and drive to fulfill his duty toward those to whom he pledges to be responsible.
3. However, men have little or no sense of duty and responsibility unless their mothers taught them earlier than first grade with chores and mini-responsibilities to learn to accept work, fulfill duty, and thrive on responsibility—especially regarding females.
4. Conquest in exchange for nothing but sex is the real culprit behind feminine misery. Women earn no masculine respect, and a man neither loves nor devotes himself without first being respected by a woman. It begs the question, how does she earn masculine respect, and the answer is: Chastity before marriage.
I’m working on the article entitled, Ten Steps to Win a Man’s Heart.
Guy
Too true, Femme. It would be profoundly foolish to submit/continue to submit to a man who clearly doesn’t have the family’s best interests in mind or is actively seeking out trouble. A lot of self-help advice suggests we can on our own turn a poor situation around. That is not necessarily true, although with understanding we can certainly do our best, understand what’s going on and at least prepare ourselves for the next man in our lives. Some of us may not realize we chose badly until its too late and children have been had, houses bought, etc. All the understanding/patience/support in the world can fall on deaf ears if a man does not want to hear or is consumed by some sort of addiction, which seems awfully common in this current generation! Your femininity is for you and God and is a gift for everyone who encounters you, so no matter what keep a sweet spirit about you even during your travails, I can think of no better way to live….a good man will be attracted and inspired by it!
Dear Ladies,
thank you so much for the input. I feel passionately about the subject.
In my own personal situation, I’ve drawn my conclusions and more or less know which finger should point where. It did take me some considerable amount of time to figure out what stuff belonged to whom and to start attending to MY business, instead of concentrating on his failures all the time.
And I also made some crucial mistakes along the way, and taking responsibility for them has made me feel less of a victim.
I also agree with Miss Gina that having to be the leader in a relationship feels awful (not to all women probably) and I didn’t want to fill in that role until I really had to.
Yes, I chose him and ignored (or didn’t see) the red flags.
I think it is one thing if a man is simply immature and self centred and another when there were certain heavy issues in his upbringing that made him somewhat damaged but he doesn’t want to/can’t address them.
But when I asked “what is to be done”, I meant he bigger picture.
Because the fact of the matter is, more and more men (especially of the younger generation) seem to be falling into the category of damaged/incapable of leadership and it’s increasingly hard to find a man who doesn’t.
Again, looking at out male politicians – they messed up and then stepped down for a woman (Theresa May) to mop it all up after them!
Miss Gina, you are absolutely right about the fear or even terror and lack of trust in my ex husband’s leadership….His decisions (or sometimes lack of) have led us all to a place where I never wanted to be.
I have just recovered enough (after almost 4 years on my own) and sorted things out to the point I finally feel safe in my closest environment. The boat doesn’t get to get rocked every few days any more. It’s still not smooth sailing, but it’s easier.
The problem is, I have a huge trust issue now with men.