A defense of marriage

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I'm a Christian Aspie happily married to a non-theistic NT male. We've been married several years, but have known each other since 2004, and were engaged for awhile. Our relationship and marriage is a very beneficial one. This isn't to say it's been perfect, but the benefits FAR outweigh either of us being alone, and we take MUCH mental, physical, spiritual, and loving refuge in each other, and have corrected/learned from past errors. It saddens me to see so many eschewing marriage nowadays, an institution that has served humanity well for millennia, particularly when enacted for the right reasons.

For further background context, I'm a Christian, and in the New Testament Bible, the Apostle Paul writes that the woman is commanded to submit to the husband, while the man is commanded to love the wife in marriage. Other religions also tend to place males at a certain degree of leadership or headship, with all the best-balanced interpretations also giving women worth, dignity, and some agency.

I think part of the reason marriage is on the decline in Western societies is that we've eschewed these things, due to extreme feminism as well as extreme individualism, both of which value selfishness above sacrifice. My husband may not be theistic, but he's very loving. And I may enjoy certain privileges afforded to Western women, like college education, a job, and the right to vote, but I also highly value submission in marriage. (My husband actually wishes I would submit a little less and try to assert myself a little more instead of rely on his judgment so much, but he's otherwise quite content with my role.)

I think there are also certain tasks that are broadly better suited to each gender. I emphasize "broadly" because I realize there are always exceptions when certain conditions and variables come into play. Nonetheless, generally speaking, women are better at household chores like laundry, cleaning, and doing the dishes, while men do better out in the working world with systems and such. (I'm a lot more systematic than the typical woman, hence my autism diagnosis, but I still cannot bring myself to reach the heights of the greatest mathematical and scientific achievements of the human male. I could probably have done coding, and maybe some forms of scientific research, but not to the extent of the best males in the fields.)

So in summary, I would like to see less degradation of marriage from feminists and angry males. If these women and men would concede more submission and love, I think they'd see the benefits of what marriage was ultimately designed to be.

I have nothing against the institution of marriage. I'm a romantic at heart.

It does cause practical problems, though, when the couple wants to "move on."

Having been in a submissive marriage as a Christian wife, I have had the opposite experience. It was degrading, demeaning, offensive, and...I’m running out of negative adjectives. I need to drink more coffee!

I wouldn’t be against a marriage based on equality, but I don’t think that a piece of paper necessarily has a whole lot to do with love.

The Bible is a misogynistic handbook. There’s no reason why women can’t achieve the same things men have (unless it’s being able to hit targets with their pee).

Marriage is an excellent thing once each member of the partnership holds his/her end of the bargain. When you have a virtuous man and a virtuous woman in a marriage, the partnership is much more than merely the two people involved.

I'm not a believer in "submissive" marriage myself.

Even though sitcoms of the 1950s portrayed the traditional housewife, both members of the partnership usually seemed to complement each other well. In these shows, the women spoke up when they had to speak up.

In real life, though, it was often a different story.

I've been in my marriage for over 10 years now, we both move without really settling somewhere on christian-agnostic spectrum. With all our issues and troubles, we have each other and it's great.

I've never really been submissive. I do my best to be respectful and supportive but those differ from submissiveness. I make a lot of decisions and I can't accept it when my husband's parents try not to include me in decision making that would affect me or the children. I don't want to rule my husband, either. We are a team, facing challenges of life together, with unique sets of strengths to use.

I'm much better in complex Math than in keeping my house clean, lol Before my burnout I did compete with the best males in my field and I still hope to go back there when I get better with my health.
My husband is way better in cooking than me. I manage children way better than he does. His talents (engineering) are more marketable, he earns much more than I can.
I believe every couple should sort these things between themselves. As long as there is mutual love, respect and will to work things out, they will find solutions that will suit them. If love-respect-good will lack, neither traditional nor feminist ideology would help.

Ten years together----with kids----sounds like a strong partnership.

I think your husband is very lucky.

I’ll never get married so I don’t care either way

I'll start off by saying that I am a feminist. I strongly support women having equal rites & I believe women should have the rite to control what they do with/to their own bodies. I do NOT believe that the male dominated right should have the power nor rite to control what women can & can not do.
That said I take marriage VERY SERIOUSLY & believe the big reason there is so much divorce nowadays is because either one or both parties refuse to take their marriage seriously. I believe if they would both try to work together to make the marriage work, things would go alot more smoothly. In the OP's case this involves having a traditional type relationship where the man is in charge. In other relationships it is more equal & I'm sure there's even some where the woman is in charge. If one person wants one type of realtionship while their partner wants something else, they should try to find a way to compromise where both get some of what they want while giving their partner some of what he/she wants too. I'm NOT saying people should stay in marriages where they are getting majorly abused but I believe that if the abuser took the realtionship seriously as well, the abuse would not happen.

I've been living with my current girlfriend for 6 & a half years now. We would of got married when we 1st moved in together but we're both disabled & marriage would majorly screw up her benefits which we can not afford since we have a lot of debt as it is. Our relationship is far from perfect or what lots would consider perfect but we are both willing to do what we can to try & make things work. The problem is that we each have our own issues & disabilities that don't mix together perfectly. We both love each other thou & want what's best for the other even if it's not with us. There are times when it's best or easier or seems like it would be where we go along with what the other wants but there are other times where we feel we have to stand up for what we want/need & then arguments happen. After it's over we usually both feel guilty for making the other feel bad. We are both willing to work on our issues or at least try to & we do what we can to help the other work on theirs. There are times when each of us needs to be pushed to work on something & then arguments could happen but as I said we both feel bad after. What's important is that we both love each other & are both willing to put forth the effort into trying to make our relationship work & improve things in our relationship. We have a LONG ways to go but in some ways our relationship is a lot better & stronger than it used to be.
As for the religion thing goes, I'm a Secular Humanist & Cass is a Panthiest. I'm kinda agnostic I guess & believe we should focus on humanity instead of worrying about interpreting & doing what god wants. She's more spiritual & believes god is part of everything. We were both raised Christian. My family is Catholic & I went to some Catholic skewls but that's more because I was having problems with bulling in public skewl. My family isn't very hard-core with practicing religion either. Cass went to Christian church very regularly & liked the community. She also celebrated the Jewish holidays & festivals thou because the original Christians were converted Jews. Cass gradually realized that there's lots of things in the Christian bible that don't make sense & that there is a lot of intolerance in the religion. She started researching & studying other religions & took bits & pieces of them that she likes & agreed with & made them into her own beliefs. One of the things she has problems with is that she cant talk to me about her religion & spirituality since I'm not into that but she realizes that her religious beliefs are very individualized & there's very few people she'd line up well with on them.

Posts like this make me very grateful I wasn't raised Christian.