I married my best friend! My husband married his best friend! We did everything together, even shopping. We had a wonderful relationship. We understood each other. Although, I have always been a very strong woman, my husband has always been the intellectual type; very smart, we made a great team.
Relationships are hard enough without the influences of what someone else thinks your marriage should be. Sure, advice is a wonderful thing, when properly dispensed especially with experience to back it up. However, even that can become tainted depending upon what type situation one is dealing with.
Take the Bible, for instance, everyone seems to base marriage on what the Bible says about the man and the woman. "Therefore shall a man leave his mother and father and cleave unto his wife." Wives, obey your husbands," or does it say, "wives submit to your husbands?" Either way, we all seem to think these are the proper steps to a long and happy marital relationship. How many times have people told me that my husband is the head-is my head. How many times have I heard that my role is to submit and obey?
Millions upon millions of times I have heard support your husband, he comes first. It seems that so many people have defined the key roles of a husband and wife based on what is written in the Bible. We even see most weddings taking place in a church, the ceremony performed by a minister; even when the bride and groom are not affiliated with a church a all. Even when the bride and/or groom do not believe or live according to anything in the Bible, almost everybody will go straight to the Bible to define their roles as husband and wife.
The man is supposed to be the head. The head of the household, the head of the family, the head of his wife. That is his role. The wife is supposed to submit-that is her role. Give me 5 stinking breaks one after another!!
If there is anyone who defines their marriage this way and try and live it successfully, I take my hat off to you. I have seen more unhappy wives who just put up with this type role because they are afraid to disagree. I have seen more men try and force their wives to be, not submissive, but subservient, and ruin what could have been a beautiful relationship. Some where down the line, other people who had been married in this traditional manner decided that it was their duty to try and force other couples to live this way.
We have men telling other newly wed men that they need to teach their wives how to obey, control them and make them submit to you. We have women telling newly wed women that their role is to take care of the man and submit to whatever he says or does.
One day I asked my husband, "why is it that before we got married, none of this came up?" Before I married my best friend, all we talked about was our love and being together and our plan for our lives together and what we would do once we lived together as husband and wife. Even when we went through pre-marital counceling, we were in such agreement and so in love. Now all of a sudden, everything is about roles.
I must say, there are some older men who have schooled him well about me. I don't understand how it is they seem to know me better than he does. But we no longer talk about our love and our lives together, we only talk aobut his role as the head and my role as the submissive one. His friends have wives that say how high when they say leap. These women have to ask for permission to breathe. Our relationship has never been that way, until other people began to interfere. They felt it their responsibility to teach us what our roles are.
Who decided that just because the man is labeled as the head that he should just automatically get his way? Who decided that just because the woman submits that she should not have a brain in her head? That her husband should do all the thinking for her. Who decided that just because the role of the man is to be the head, he should handle all the business, whether he is capable or not? Who decided that when a woman handles the business of the household per her husband's request, that she is not being submissive. Just because you see her out front does not mean she is not submitting. What gives us the right to define these roles the way we think they should be?
We have a foundation for a marital relationship, but we got stuck on the foundation. Just like everything else. We have kept marriage in the dark ages. We have a tendency to think that just because we can't get any more out of it than we already have, no one can. That's because you are stuck. You have defined yourself into a jail from which you cannot escape. By your own words and thoughts, your own definitions, your own stubbornness; now, you wish everyone to share the same cell in which you are kept prisoner. Your own ego and pride has put you there because you refuse to build on the foundation you already have. A foundation is no good unless you build on it. Key roles are not all there are to relationships. Commitments would dictate that you live for me and I live for you. Vows would symbolize that I committed to make you happy and whole. Many times this means shutting out the interference. Just because your 18th century method of marriage is all you know does not mean it is for everybody!
Men cannot see a carbon copy of himself every time he comes into contact with another husband. Women cannot see a carbon copy of herself every time she comes into contact with another wife. You do not set the standard.
Personally, I am convinced that we still have much to learn about relationships. Until we get past the idea that everybody wants it to go their way, we are doomed to see more break-ups and divorces. Until we decide that we need to sit with that book called the Bible and figure out what some of these things really mean, we are doomed to repeat our same mistakes over and over again. I will not live by your convictions, I must live according to my own convictions. Oh boy, I'm happy!! I must be doing something wrong! Thats how we think, and then we set out to destroy what ever we think is happy.
I wish that others would just stop trying to define my role for me. I wish others would stop trying to define what a marital relationship is, at least until they absolutely find out for themselves what it is.
You tell me that its okay for my husband to hang out with you all the time, even when he neglects his own home, my role is to just submit. You tell me that its okay if my husband is not intimate with me, just submit to that. You tell me that I am the strong one and I should carry him, always, but I must also submit. You tell me that my husband should be out front and receive all the credit whether he did the work or not, I should be proud to just submit.
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