Our marriage is not what I thought it should be

What I'd Tell You Over Coffee No. 01

What I’d Tell You Over Coffee is an imprint of Legacy Living featuring advice I'd share with an engaged or newlywed woman if you came over to my house for coffee☕. My take on living out Titus 2:3-5. A series for the woman who wants a team-based, thriving, healthy marriage.

A few weeks ago, I shared about how I've been working into settling into my views and beliefs.

Today, I wanted to start talking about how my views on marriage have shifted. This is part one. Part two will go out next week, because otherwise this would be wayyy too long of a post to read 🙂

Okay, here we go!

How my views of marriage were shaped growing up

I grew up in a conservative, religious, immigrant Slavic community where women were raised up to be young wives and moms (most girls I grew up with got married as young as 17). Anything beyond that was rare, at least for my generation. Few women got an education or ever worked outside the home.

In conservative Christian communities like mine, marriage is taught as a very clear hierarchy: God, husband and wife. But, growing up, all I heard from that was "make yourself smaller and quieter so your husband can lead and thrive. It's all about his goals and making his life easier. You exist only to make his life better and to raise children."

It made me think that a marriage of being a team and partnership didn't exist for Christians, because what I saw most often was how small wives were made to be, shuttered away in the home to cook, clean and raise babies. Their opinions and dreams held no value; their contribution limited to "women's work."

I witnessed many of these women become ghosts of humans, exhausted, worn out and with no joy left in them. They did all the things they were "supposed" to as good Christian wives and moms but there was no life in their eyes, and when the kids grew up and moved out, all that was left of the marriage were roommates (divorce is rarely an option in our community, especially for older generations).

This wasn't every woman's story in my community, but I saw it often enough growing up that it made me wary of marriage.

Note, my parents had as much of a "team" marriage as they could given that the only work my dad could find as an immigrant with limited English skills and no education was truck driving. He worked over the road or night shifts doing local deliveries, and my mom stayed home with ten kids.

But even though I grew up in a household with a good example of what marriage could be, to younger me, marriage and motherhood represented the place where my personal dreams and ambitions went to die.

Because ever since I was a little girl, while other girls dreamed of being wives and moms and made that their sole goal, I dreamed of an education, a career and traveling the world.

I figured I'd become a wife and mom eventually, "as a good Christian woman should," but to younger me, it was a yoke to be delayed, not something to be desired.

I hated being different in this way and often wondered if I was somehow broken for not wanting to be a wife and mom above all else.

When my views of marriage first started to shift

In my early twenties, God took a hold of my heart and my dreams and desires began to shift.

Because the first thing God pointed out to me?

That I had to let got of my fear of marriage.

Slowly, He began to show me what He envisioned for marriage .... and it was not exactly what conservative Evangelicals preached.

My heart dared to hope that a marriage like that could exist, for I saw few marriages that were true partnerships in my Slavic community.

I yearned for a partner in life; to build something impactful and long-lasting with someone who viewed me as a partner, not as subservient.

The origins of complementarism

Before I got married, I thought was I complementarian. Even as my views on marriage shifted through my own study of the Bible, complementarism still made sense to me to capture the Biblical mandates for marriage.

Complementarians believe that men and women are equal in value, dignity, and worth but have distinct, God-ordained roles that complement each other. In marriage, the husband is seen as the head of the household and the wife is called to submit to his leadership and support him as his helper.

The opposite school of thought is egalitarianism, which is based on the belief that men and women are equal in value, dignity, and worth and are equally capable of serving in any role, with no gender-based restrictions. In marriage, egalitarianism emphasizes mutual submission, where husband and wife lead together as equals, sharing decision-making responsibilities.

Did you know this theory of "complementarism" is actually relatively new?

It originated in 1987, when a group of conservative religious leaders, including John Piper, met in Danvers, Massachusetts to prepare a statement that is now referred to as "The Danvers Statement on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood." Afterwards, Piper and Wayne Grudem ended up writing a textbook called "Recovering Biblical Manhood & Womanhood" as a "response to evangelical feminism."

Essentially, religious leaders saw that feminism was making its way into the church, and so they decided to create a term to summarize what the Bible had to say about gender roles. They called it "complementarism."

Another fun insight for you: the English Standard Version (ESV) Bible was modified to make it more compatible with complementarian views.

When I realized what I was taught didn’t align with reality (or the Bible!)

A Bare Marriage study surveyed over 20,000 women and this is interesting to me:

1. 62.2% of the survey respondents said that that one of the best ways a Christian wife can love her husband is by submitting to his leadership

2. 39.4% of the respondents believed that the husband should have decision-making power;

3. and yet 78.9% of those marriages functioned without a tiebreaker.

So, it appears that healthy complementarian couples often say one thing (that the husband is the leader, has the power and makes final decisions), but live another way (submitting to one another, working together as a team, and largely not needing a tiebreaker).

This captures Daniel and I well.

Before we got married, we talked about gender roles within marriage and what our beliefs on this topic were. Overall, we both agreed that complementarism seemed like a sound theology of marriage, and yet, we both desired for our marriage to be a team.

But, as we close on four years of marriage, I'm finally letting go of trying to make our marriage fit into a complementarian framework.

Because even though complementarism sounds good in theory, I'm learning it's not completely applicable to every couple and marriage. It’s not that complementarism is wrong or bad, but more so incomplete?

It's like when you study a topic in a textbook and then go apply it in real life, and realize that no textbook can actually capture what happens in reality.

I don't even fully know how to explain it, honestly.

In my mind, in complementarian marriages, as seen and taught in conservative Christian communities, there appears to be a separation between the wife's and husband's "spheres" in the home and in family life. The husband is at the top of the org chart and the wife is to the side and slightly below him, and that is lived out in every area of their marriage and life.

The wife is the "keeper of the home" so all domestic and child rearing duties are on her. The husband is the "provider" so he is the only one that should work for pay. In the most conservative marriages, there is very little to no cross over of gender roles or spheres.

Yoked, but not truly equally yoked. One flesh, but not really because these roles are "yours" and these over here are "mine."

For a long time, I thought that's what a true, Christian marriage should look like, but in practice, being married, I'm realizing that clinging to such a structure can make it very difficult for a couple to truly build anything substantial as a team.

What my views of marriage are now

Now, I won't go as far as to call myself an egalitarian either. Instead, I am learning

1. Submission can exist in a marriage that operates as a team. It just doesn't look like how conservative Christians describe it - I've learned it looks more like embracing your partner's strengths and contributions instead of thinking you know best.

2. The husband should be and is the leader in a Christian marriage, but it doesn't put his wife under him or make her a doormat.

3. When a couple is united in values and vision, and thus truly operating as one, there is very rarely a need for a "tiebreaker."

4. Healthy marriages require mutual respect.

What we get wrong about Biblical submission & spiritual leadership

If you think about the concept of being equally yoked, it's not one party leading while the other party follows behind.

Picture two oxen yoked together: there's no way they're going to get any work done if one oxen is pulling the other along - that's only going to cause both of them pain and hold them back.

Instead, the oxen work as a team. They have to be of similar height and weight, and you can't match up a donkey with a horse. They have to walk in step together as a team to make any real progress.

But even that analogy isn't the best fit because it still implies two separate entities. Maybe that's another issue I take up with concept of "complementarism." The term itself implies that there is something to be completed. It's almost like the soul mates theory, which is based in Greeky mythology, and says that we are all looking for other "half" to complete us.

But, in my opinion, as long as you allow yourself to entertain the thought that you and your husband are separate, that you're not truly one flesh in every way, then even the tiniest splinter is a gap the Enemy will try to exploit to cause division in your marriage.

To me, complementarism is a Christian way of keeping couples separated (it's the same issue I have with trad wife marriages).

I used to think that a marriage had to be 49% / 51%, with the husband holding the "tie-breaker vote," but since being married, I'm realizing we don't need that in our marriage. It's a moot point when you are truly one.

Do Daniel and I never disagree? No. But it's never a point of contention for us. Because we are one, it's never me against him, it's not my sphere or his sphere.

Just like the math of 1+ 1 = 1 doesn't make logical sense ("and the two shall become one flesh; so they are no longer two, but one flesh" (Matthew 10:8)), neither can we as humans capture into a neat little box how a marriage can be a partnership, and also include "traditional" Biblical marriage concepts like the husband being the head of the household and his wife submitting to his leadership.

It's something incredibly hard to explain or capture clearly. We try, but we will always fall short.

Ephesians 5:23 says "For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior."

It's yet another Biblical mystery that we as humans cannot fully comprehend - how can God, Christ, and the Holy Spirit be separate but also one? To help explain the concept, humans coined the concept of "trinity" (it is not a term that was in the original Bible).

Notice the similarities?

We try to conceptualize becoming one in marriage as either "complementarian" or "egalitarian," and to explain God, Christ and the Holy Spirit as a "Trinity." Our brains cannot fully comprehend how this works, and so we try to put it into some sort of framework or structure so that we have a "rulebook" to follow.

So, to make things easier for our human minds, we do things like outline marriage "roles" (e.g., who does the dishes, who works, or who stays home to be the primary parent) and come up with org charts and hierarchies.

But by trying to put ourselves and our marriages within our own human interpreted labels and rules, we limit the potential of what our marriages could be; what God designed marriage to be.

A kingdom marriage is not about who does what at home or if wives should work outside the home, but whether you are within the bounds of God's Word and working together in executing a shared vision by using each of your strengths and talents to grow His Kingdom.

There's no his and hers. We are one. It's all ours and for His glory.

Because there's truly something powerful about a couple that operates as a team and truly lives out becoming one; a couple who is building something together that is bigger than themselves: a life with eternal impact and a legacy that endures generations; where leadership is servant hearted and submission brings freedom.

Next week, I'll share a concept that helped it "click" for me why not every marriage can, or should, fall into a traditional complementarian framework.

Until next time,

P.S. If this resonated with you, I'd love for you check out our Dreaming Together & Legacy Guides - these are workbooks for couples to work through together to define a family vision.

The Dreaming Together Guide is great for engaged couples and newlyweds.

The Legacy Guide is perfect for married couples who want to stop merely existing and living like everyone else and instead build a life of impact and an enduring legacy.