“You can’t always get what you want…”
-Mick Jagger

I attend a lot of wedding receptions. I’m playing at most of them, but I am also at an age where my sons’ friends — and my friends’ sons — are getting married. It doesn’t happen at every event, but you’d be surprised at how many of these evenings feature at least one man advising the groom that the key to marital happiness is to say, “Yes, Dear,” early and often. This doesn’t take into account the various men’s conferences I’ve attended that contained the same counsel. While I agree it’s a popular thing to say, with all due respect, this is terrible advice. Here’s why:

Women like pansies – when they’re up to their necks in dirt.

Being agreeable doesn’t mean you’ll always agree

First, the “Yes, Dear” strategy fails the logic test. It’s impossible to be in total agreement on every issue — and even less likely that this agreement can or will endure over an entire lifetime. Whether it’s what color to paint the hall bathroom or what to have for dinner, you and your wife will disagree. That’s natural and normal. If your default position is, “Whatever you want, Honey,” you are not only forcing your wife to carry your share of the load, you are also abdicating leadership that your wife wants and needs.

The source of our trouble

The fall –described in Genesis 3, explains where all our pain comes from. We were initially created sinless and immortal, but our first parents abused the gift of free will and rejected God’s loving instructions. As a result, sin, sickness, death and all kinds of strife entered our existence. As I have explained before, God intervened and explained the consequences to Adam and Eve.

Among other things, God intensified the pain of childbirth for women and explained that she would desire to dominate her husband, but that he would rule over her. Notice this. it’s important. In our fallen condition, a wife will try to control her husband.

You get what you reward

If your wife’s default program is to try to dominate her husband (that’d be you, man), your forever saying “Yes, Dear,” will create two undesirable outcomes. First, you will teach your wife to expect always to get her way. Second, and more ominously, she will come to regard you as weak, thereby losing respect — and attraction — for you. It is human to nature both to crave and to test boundaries. And make no mistake your wife will test you. Some people have another name for them, but we’ll refer to them here as fitness tests.

Anatomy of a fitness test

A woman competes with other women to secure the attention of the highest status man she can get. Even when she has a covenantal commitment from a man, she wants to be certain her man continues to rate. So from time to time she will put him on the spot. Sometimes it takes the form of a question. Other times, it’s an accusation. No matter what the surface of it looks like, she really wants to know whether or not you have what it takes.

Let me illustrate how this works a thought experiment. Think back to middle school and any day you had a new substitute teacher. If you were at all like I was at that age, my bet is you pushed the substitute to see what you could get away with. The ones with firm boundaries earned respect. The ones who didn’t have confidence and or that tried to be everybody’s friend were regarded as a joke.

You can imagine then how harmful it will be to your marriage if instead of leading your family you seek to be the weak sub who is everybody’s pal. It would be comical except for the harm it will do when your wife gives you the “I love you; I’m just not in love with you, ” talk as she seeks a more exciting — read: dominant — man.

To be clear, this won’t happen in one afternoon, but over time you can kill attraction in your wife by failing to lead.

Objection!

“But that isn’t Christian!” I hear you protest. “We took vows!” Yes, you did. And still, Christian couples seek divorces and annulments — thankfully not as frequently as the culture at large, but far more often than one would expect.

Listen, I affirm orthodox Christian doctrine, and it is foolish to ignore facts of nature that can kill or maim you. I’m thinking of things like sharks, bears and divorce attorneys. My motivation here is to help you build a biblically sound marriage that lasts until death separates you. Because I believe and teach orthodoxy, I love truth and I don’t deny it even when it’s uncomfortable. That should be your practice as well.

50 Shades of Reality

No matter what women say they want in a man, you can’t ignore how they vote with their attention. I have observed before how 50 Shades of Grey is a backhanded (and pornographic) refutation of feminism. Apparently women daydream of a man unafraid to take charge, a man who owns his opinion and is unashamed of his desire. Some of the 100 million+ women reading those books and buying movie tickets are regular churchgoers. Like it or not, you can’t say I never told you.

So how about you? How are you learning to lead your family? Add your comments below.

Note: In Part II, we’ll talk about some hows and whys of marital headship.