The post What Does it Mean to Have a Voice in Your Marriage? appeared first on Imperfect Homemaker.

Generally I explore that question one-on-one with the person at the other end of my inbox. I find out more about why they're asking, and we have a conversation about it that is relevant to the details of their specific situation.

But for those who are searching publicly available books and articles to find answers to their pressing question about how to be a good wife, I want to address some of the common themes that I see regarding this question.

Basically, I have two main points:

1. Sometimes asking how to be a good wife is a great question to ask!
2. Sometimes asking how to be a good wife is not the right question for your situation.

So let's dive into what I mean, ok?

When I was first married, being a wife was all new to me. I loved my husband so much, and I wanted to be the best wife I could be for him. He also wanted to be the best husband he could be for me, and we set about learning and growing together as a couple. We would talk about our likes and dislikes, and we would ask each other questions to learn more about how we could better serve the other person.

Because we loved one another, we wanted to please one another, and we learned everything we could about how to best do that. As the wife in the relationship, the question from my end was how could I be a good wife, and it was a good and healthy question to ask myself.

Yet even in a relationship where both of us were mutually loving and serving the other, I discovered a pitfall where the question of how to be a good wife could be taken too far. This pitfall came in the form of books and articles that are written to Christian wives. Now, I'm not saying that no one should ever write books or articles for Christian wives (it's what I'm doing right now, after all!) But what I discovered was that many of these Christian women's books go far, far beyond what the Bible actually teaches. Instead, they offer up collections of opinions that pass as “Biblical” teaching but are really man-made (or woman-made) rules about things that a good wife should do.

My husband and I are both book lovers, and we hadn't been married long when we came across a thrift store that had piles and piles of books that were all free! Wow! I was in heaven! Because the books were free, I was pretty quick to add anything to my cart that was by a Christian publisher, whether I was familiar with it or not. I figured if they weren't any good I could toss them later.

My husband was the bread-winner and I chose to be a stay-at-home wife. This meant that before I had children I had lots of time to read. But I wasn't just sitting around relaxing; I was reading all the books from that thrift store that teach women how to be good Christian wives. I wanted to learn as much as I could! But boy, did I have a rude awakening. These books weren't teaching how to be a good wife at all. Their implicit and explicit messages were teaching that men have “needs” and that wives were created to meet them. They were teaching that to be a good wife meant submitting to your husband even when he is harsh, cruel, and selfish (aka letting him always have his way like a spoiled child.) That isn't what it means to be a good wife; that is enabling your husband's sin and selfishness. (I just read this fantastic Facebook post that speaks more on this subject.)

I haven't picked up any of those books for many years, but recently I've pulled some of them back off the shelf because I get messages sometimes asking me what I think about some book or another. Inside I find the scribblings I wrote all those years ago refuting what the author had said. I wrote things like, “That's not in the Bible, but they keep using the words ‘biblical advice', which puts a guilt trip on the reader, making them feel that if they don't follow this man-made list of ‘rules for good wives', they'll be disobeying God!”

There were plenty of books with overt messages teaching women to cater to selfish, domineering husbands. But perhaps even more dangeous was the subtlety of all of the books with more palatable, yet still wrong, messages about what it means to be a good wife. These are everywhere. In bygone years, I have written such articles myself right here on this blog. These are the articles and books that tell you that you need to keep your house cleaner. That you should be a wise steward of your family's money. That you should make your home warm and inviting. Don't get me wrong – these things are not bad. But what I've seen in my own life and many other women I know is that the cumulative message of all of these books and articles is that being a good wife is about what you do.

However, being a good wife isn't about doing more, more, more.

Being a good wife is about who you are. The point is not to “do all the things” in order to build up your home. The point is that when you seek to be a wise woman, the natural result is that your home will be built up.

Ok, so far I've addressed that asking “how to be a good wife” can be a good question when the dynamic is that both the husband and wife are simply seeking to know how they can best love and serve one another.

I've noted that even with this dynamic you need to be aware of the pitfall of thinking that your value as a wife is found in the things that you do.

Now I want to address a different marriage dynamic in which many women find themselves.

This is the dynamic where the husband believes he is king of his castle and that his wife exists to serve him. In this relationship, a husband has expectations for his wife that can extend into any area(s) of her life. For example:
-What she cooks
-The way she cleans
-The way she dresses
-Who her friends are
-Which groceries she buys
-Where and when she goes places
-How she manages her health, weight, or fitness
-And so many more.

These expectations may or may not be verbalized, but the wife in this relationship knows that her husband expects her to behave a certain way. How does she know this? Because when she does not meet those expectations, there are negative consequences.

Over time, she recognizes a pattern that when she has not pleased her husband, she may receive some form of the following:

-Silent treatment
-Withholding intimacy or on the flip-side, forced sex
-Verbal abuse or put-downs
-Rage
-Intimidation and threats
-Physical aggression – punching holes in walls, breaking things, driving dangerously
-Physical abuse (note: he doesn't have to punch you for it to be physical abuse. Examples: pulling hair, dragging, grabbing, pushing, spitting, blocking in a room, pinning against a wall)

My friend, let me put it honestly. If you are in a relationship like this, you are experiencing what is called coercive control. A husband who acts this way is abusive. I strongly urge you to read more about what coercive control looks like here.

I have received messages from wives in this type of relationship, and the question is almost never, “How can I stay emotionally and physically safe?” The question is usually, “How can I be a better wife?”

See, a husband who believes he is entitled to having everything he wants, when he wants it, the way he wants it, will always use manipulative words to turn everything he doesn't like in life to be his wife's fault. At first, she will find ways to explain hurtful situations to herself when they happen. “Oh, I must have misunderstood him. Surely he couldn't have meant it that way, right?” But as time goes on, hurtful things continue to happen, and every time he tells her it's her fault, she begins to wonder if maybe she really is the problem.

“Maybe I just need to be a better wife.”

“If I could just be:

-More respectful (which to an entitled husband just means more catering to whatever he wants)
-More organized
-A better cook
-Better at managing my time
-More sexy
-etc.”

“Maybe he has a reason to be irritated with me, and I just need to get my act together as a wife.”

This dynamic is when asking how to be a good wife is not the right question.

If your husband is controlling, selfish, a chronic liar, or has a pattern of engaging in otherwise hurtful behavior, you are not the problem.

I'm not saying that you've never sinned or never made a mistake as a wife.

I'm saying that searching for ways to be a better wife will not make your husband stop being selfish, controlling, deceptive, and hurtful to you.

If the above relationship sounds like yours, it's time to stop asking how to be a good wife, and it's time to start asking what you are going to do to get physically and emotionally safe.

And if you are the friend of someone who confides in you about her husband's chronic mistreatment, don't give her books about how to be a better wife.

There's a big difference between serving your husband because you want to, and doing it because he's going to be mad if you don't.

One is love, the other is slavery.

When your solution to a demanding and entitled husband is to work harder and harder to meet his expectations, you are catering to his ungodly belief system — the belief that all of life revolves around him, and that you are responsible for his happiness. He is idolizing you as the source of his happiness and fulfillment, and his goal, although he might not even realize it, is for you to idolize him by centering your all of your thoughts and actions around appeasing him like an unpredictable god.

So, if “How to be a better wife” isn't the question to be asking in a marriage like this, what can you do?

Here are some excellent resources that can help you get started sorting out your situation and deciding what your next step should be:

The Emotionally Destructive Marriage by Leslie Vernick
Is it Me? Making Sense of Your Confusing Marriage by Natalie Hoffman
Lots of Resources at Hope for Hurting Wives

If you'd like to talk with someone, you can request an advocate from Called to Peace Ministries.

It is possible to be a good wife and to be safe at the same time.
It is possible to love your husband well while also saying no to his sin and selfishness.

Summary:

1. Asking yourself how to be a good wife is a great question in the context of a mutually loving, serving relationship.
2. Asking yourself how to be a better wife is not appropriate if your focus is on doing rather than on being. (Read this post for further explanation.)
3. Asking yourself how to be a better wife is not appropriate if your purpose is to try to stop your spouse from mistreating you, lying to you, neglecting you, or being hurtful to you in any way.
4. Asking yourself how to be a better wife will not change the wrong beliefs of your spouse.
5. If you recognize a pattern in your relationship where you keep thinking that if you were only ______ (more organized, a better cook, quieter, thinner) then maybe your husband wouldn't be in such a bad mood, there is hope and help for you (but it won't come in the form of a book teaching you how to do those things.) I highly recommend speaking with a trained advocate one on one who can help you assess the seriousness of your situation and help you determine your course of action.

If you're curious to learn more about what an abusive relationship might look like in a home that is supposed to be Christian, and want to learn how you can help someone in this situation, sign up for the email series below:

The post Why “How to be a Good Wife” Might not be the Right Question appeared first on Imperfect Homemaker.

Why is it important to talk about marriage being hard?

There is a prevailing sentiment that circulates in conversations about marriage, especially in a Christian context, that marriage is hard. For most people it seems to be a given that marriage is hard. I polled my followers on both Facebook and Instagram, and the vast majority said they agreed with the statement that marriage is hard. I think one reason this thinking is particularly prevalent among Christians is that no one wants to be that person who “takes the easy way out.” Most Christians believe that divorce is never an option, so they remind themselves and others that “marriage is hard” (and often add “but so worth it.”)

But the reason we need to talk about this is that the definitions different people have of “hard” can vary widely.

For one person, they may be thinking that it’s hard to hold in critical words when their spouse puts the toilet paper roll on the wrong way. Maybe it bothers them a lot and they have a feisty personality, and they’ve had to work hard to respond to little irritations with grace. For another person, they may be thinking that marriage is hard because life keeps them so busy that it takes a lot of effort to regularly make time to connect with their spouse on a deep level.

These are totally legitimate reasons to feel that marriage is hard, and there definitely is a certain amount of effort required to build up and maintain habits that make for a healthy marriage.

However, there are a great deal of people who are not hearing anything like what I’ve just written when they hear that marriage is hard. Many people are being horribly mistreated and abused by their spouse, and they do not even realize it because they have always heard that marriage is hard.

Consider some of the following:

• “I was constantly walking on eggshells. I bent over backwards and tolerated things that most people would not have to deal with because I thought marriage was supposed to be hard.”
• “I was always told that marriage takes sacrifice. So when my husband was using pornography and verbally abusing me, I kept sacrificing and giving him more and more of myself. I was told that if he cheated on me he would come back to the haven that I’d created for him.”
• “I should have seen the red flags of abuse, but because I had always heard how hard marriage is I thought it was normal. I thought it was all my fault because marriage was supposed to require a lot of sacrifice.”
• “My husband treated me horribly and cheated on me. I spent the whole marriage working hard to sacrifice my own selfishness so we could have a good marriage.”

Do you see why this is so important to discuss? The number of women who tell me that all the books and sermons about marriage they’ve read/heard only made it more difficult to recognize the abuse is astronomical. I believe that most people who write and speak about marriage mean well, and from their perspective they’re not speaking to someone in an abusive situation. But when you’re in the midst of abuse, it’s very confusing (purposely so on the part of the abuser), and the victim does not realize that what she is experiencing is abuse. She only knows that…
“Marriage is hard.”
“You have to sacrifice.”
“Marriage requires lots of forgiveness.”
“You have to set aside how you feel and keep your commitment.”

I don’t want to be a part of contributing to an abuse victim’s further confusion and entrapment, do you?
So, when we make statements about marriage being hard, do you think we could all work together to define exactly what we mean?

In no way am I discounting the particular aspects of marriage that you have truly found hard. I’m not asking you to minimize your own experience or telling you not to say that marriage is hard when you really have found it hard. But, can we be sure to clarify that “life is hard, and navigating those hardships as a team takes work, but it should never be your spouse who is causing your life to be hard”?

Did you know that 1 in 4 women will experience domestic abuse in their lifetime? And did you know that those statistics are the same among churchgoers as among those who do not attend church? Abusers love to infiltrate the church and put on a mask of goodness because church people are so quick to believe the best about others and readily forgive offenses. But this means that the women you associate with in your ladies Bible studies, the ones you chat with in the restroom, and the ones sitting near you in the service may be trapped in an abusive relationship. Rarely do people speak of abuse and teach others how to recognize it. It’s not usually on the radar as something that needs to be said in church; it’s more often perceived as something that occurs “out there” in a bad neighborhood somewhere. So when those godly women in our church who have been targeted by an abuser come to our Bible studies and listen to our conversations, they only know that “Marriage is hard.” They don’t know that “Marriage shouldn’t be hard because your spouse makes it hard.”

So why is marriage so hard? Let’s look at some examples of real, legitimate reasons a person might find marriage hard:

• Some seasons of life are highly stressful for both spouses (loss of job, illness, grief, etc.). It takes extra work to remain gracious when we feel emotionally drained.
• Misunderstandings take place, and it takes work to communicate and find out where things went sideways.
• Life is busy. It takes work and planning to go on dates or spend dedicated time together.
• Some people enter marriage expecting a fairytale life which doesn’t exist. When life isn’t endless romance, but instead includes bills, housework, and waking up to a bedhead spouse, they find themselves resentful of the life they now live, and have to work to process how they feel and come to terms with reality.
• Past trauma can make it difficult to trust your spouse, even if they are a trustworthy person. It takes work for the injured spouse to overcome those emotions, and it takes patience and grace on the part of the other spouse.
• Everyone makes mistakes, and it can be hard to swallow our pride and apologize when we’ve said something unkind or acted selfishly.
• What you thought was a given due to your family background (e.g. the table will always be formally set for family dinner, and we will always use proper manners at the table) may be the opposite of what your spouse thought was a given (this is our safe place to relax; let’s use paper plates and not be so formal with our manners.) It takes work to compromise on situations that aren’t harmful to the other person, but can damage the relationship if we always insist on our own way.
• Marriage can be hard when one spouse is chronically ill and the other has to carry a larger portion of the load.

All of these hard things can be overcome when both spouses are humbly submitted to the Holy Spirit’s working in their lives. They can face the misunderstandings, the stresses of life, and the little annoyances together. But it’s so important that we highlight the fact that the hard things in marriage have to be overcome together as a team. One person cannot single-handedly keep a relationship strong — a relationship takes two.

On the flip side, if any of the following examples are reasons why you feel like your marriage is hard, it is important for you to realize that these are NOT normal or legitimate reasons for your marriage to feel hard:

• Your spouse expects you to keep everything perfect at home but doesn’t do their part to help
• Your spouse tells you that you are being lazy when your work doesn’t meet their criteria
• Your spouse treats you like a child, inspecting and criticizing everything you do
• You are expected to take the blame for your spouse’s bad behavior (“I wouldn’t get so angry if you would just ____.”)
• Your spouse twists every discussion around, confuses you, and makes you feel unsure of reality
• You discover lies and deception on the part of your spouse and feel that you are supposed to just forgive and move on
• Your spouse is addicted to pornography
• Your spouse blames childhood trauma or an alcoholic father for their current bad behavior
• Your spouse requires you to have permission to go places or spend time with friends
• You don’t feel to safe to say what you really think or want
• You have to ask permission for money to buy household necessities. You find it difficult to prepare meals with so little grocery money, yet your spouse always has enough money to buy the things they want.
• You are distressed at the cruel way your spouse treats your children or pets
• You feel pressured to have sex with your spouse any time he wants it or in ways that make you feel uncomfortable
• Your spouse makes mountains out of molehills. For instance, if everything is not 100% spotless at home they will be enraged.
• Your spouse repeatedly hurts your feelings, puts you down, belittles you in public or in private, expresses disapproval about everything you do.
• Your spouse regularly makes decisions that impact you without regard to how you feel about them
• Your spouse accuses you of being selfish or ungrateful when you try to address a problem or express a need
• Your spouse does not want to spend time with you; never wants to hear about your day; is not interested in your life or your feelings
• Your spouse does not protect you when you are vulnerable. You are still expected to keep up with housework even when sick or in pain.

This is destructive behavior on the part of your spouse. If your marriage feels hard because of your spouse’s destructive behavior, scroll to the bottom of this post for some resources that will give good advice for your situation.

For those who do not find marriage hard due to any of the reasons above, let’s talk about ways that we can discuss the reasons why marriage is hard while also being extra clear about what we mean.

Perhaps we could start by using the word “but…” in our conversations.

• Marriage is hard because miscommunication happens sometimes, BUT we resolve it in a healthy way.
• Marriage is hard because there are a lot of real-life responsibilities that have to be taken care of, BUT we work together as a team to get them done.
• Marriage is hard because life throws hard things at you, BUT we support each other through life’s seasons of stress and grief.
• Marriage is hard because it’s difficult to make time to connect with each other, BUT we enjoy being involved in other’s lives and it is worth the extra effort.
• Marriage is hard because it requires me to give up some things I want for the good of my spouse, BUT my spouse does the same for me. We both look for ways to serve each other.
• Marriage is hard because sometimes my spouse unknowingly hurts my feelings, BUT I feel safe to discuss it and know I will never be blamed for being “too sensitive.”
• Marriage is hard because it requires work to develop tools for being an emotionally healthy person, BUT we both take responsibility for doing that for ourselves. I am not required to carry the emotional load of us both.
• Marriage is hard because I have past trauma that makes it hard to trust people, BUT my spouse always tells me the truth and has shown by their actions to be a trustworthy person.
• Marriage is hard because sometimes we do or say unkind things, BUT we apologize to each other and make it right.
• Marriage is hard because sometimes we have strong opinions that are opposite of our spouse’s, BUT we both work at seeing things from the other’s perspective and don’t insist that the other person adopt our viewpoint.

If the main thought you have about marriage is how hard it is, something is wrong. Marriage is intended to be a picture of Christ’s relationship to the church, and should therefore be a safe place, full of joy and blessing.

In the words of some of my friends who are abuse survivors:

• “Two are better than one. If being part of the two actually makes your life harder then what’s the point?”
• “Life throws a lot at you, but marriage should be a team working through things together. If the team itself is hard, the team might not be working.”
• “For better or for worse means no matter what life throws at us, not no matter what you do to me.”
• “Life is hard. Marriage should not make it harder.”
• “Hard is not the same thing as harmful.”
• “Every marriage has circumstances that you will have to work through, but it should never be your spouse who is causing the hardships.”
• “The hard work of marriage should be about becoming who God wants you to be, not about putting up with your spouse’s bad behavior.”

So the answer to the question “Why is marriage so hard?” is that we live in a world that is broken down by sin. We have unrealistic expectations about life, we are sometimes selfish, and we have to deal with many hardships that come along as the result of an imperfect world. But marriage should never be hard because of the destructive behavior of our spouse.

Can we work together to make sure we are very clear in the way we speak of marriage?

So many who heard the conversation about marriage being hard testify that instead of knowing the blessing of a God-honoring partnership, they experienced this:

“My love for God and desire to serve and sacrifice even when it was hard kept me in a destructive marriage for too long.”
“I didn’t recognize the abuse in my marriage because I thought it was normal for things to be that hard.”
“I went into marriage expecting to suffer as a direct result of my spouse. I thought I was supposed to suffer.”
“I was led to believe the abuse was my fault, and that I had the ability and responsibility to change him by loving him more, meeting his needs better, and working even harder around the house.”
“I couldn’t even imagine marriage being something good. I thought it was supposed to be terrible.”
“I was taught that it was wrong to say anything bad about my husband, so when things were hard because of him, I went along with the idea that it was because marriage is hard.”

How do you think we can change the way we speak about the realities of marriage? How do you think we can address the genuinely hard aspects of marriage while making it clear that marriage itself should be a blessing and a joy; not a hardship to endure?

Resources for those who wonder if their experience of hardship in marriage is beyond the range of normal:
(Disclosure: some of the following are affiliate links.)

The Emotionally Destructive Marriage by Leslie Vernick
Is it Me? Making Sense of Your Confusing Marriage by Natalie Hoffman

While you wait for your books to arrive, you can spend some time taking this quiz and watching this webinar.

The post Why is Marriage So Hard? appeared first on Imperfect Homemaker.

As I have already pointed out in part one and part two of this series, I believe Love & Respect’s biggest fault lies with the fact that the author presents his theory (what he calls the “Love and Respect Connection”) as Biblical truth. The natural understanding is that if one chooses not to follow the author’s advice, they are really rejecting what God says. 

Observe the following quote from Love & Respect: “Men’s deepest need is respect and women’s is love. When your husband makes you feel unloved or your wife makes you feel disrespected, that is because you have not met this deepest need of theirs. Therefore, husbands love your wives (so you can meet her deepest need,) and wives, respect your husbands (so you can meet his deepest need.”)  To say that this is what God said in Ephesians 5:33 is to add a whole lot to the word of God, and to make a whole lot of assumptions.

If one looks closely at the endnotes of the book, he will find the author’s admission that “The Love and Respect Connection is what the author infers from Ephesians 5:33 and is not its actual theology.  Although he paid lip service to acknowledging that this “Love and Respect Connection” is only his theory, two sentences later he goes right back to presenting his theory as scripture: “Ephesians 5:33 reveals that a wife needs love and a husband needs respect, and when those needs are unmet each spouse reacts at some level” (from chapter one end notes). In the front matter of the book he promises his readers that couples who “submit themselves wholeheartedly to this biblical design for marriage” will have “limitless” potential for improving their marriage,  I will not rehash the many other ways that he misled his readers into believing the material was God’s word, but if you read parts one and two of this series you will see that this message pervades the entire book. 

If the “Love & Respect Connection” is nothing more than a theory, and if the author knows that, why on earth does he make such bold promises that these rigid interpretations of each gender’s needs have “limitless” potential to improve their marriage? (I do not have an answer for that. Only he knows his heart, and I will not assign motives to him, but it is a tragedy that so many people have been hurt by placing their hope in what they were told was the Biblical “key to any marriage problem.”)

What about couples where the wife would much rather feel respected than anything else or the husband would rather feel loved?

Because the author has already presented his theories about each gender’s needs as if they are Biblical fact, there is no room for him to say that perhaps every individual is different in regard to their personal values, needs, and feelings. While there are no doubt generalities that will apply to most males or most females, there are no dogmatic rules regarding who would most like to feel loved and who would most like to feel respected. 

The author addresses “exceptions to the Love & Respect Pattern” in Appendix D, and his explanation basically says that women who prefer to feel respected are actually at their deepest core seeking love and men who prefer to feel love are at their deepest core seeking respect. In other words, the author uses circular reasoning to hold to a dogmatic position of each gender’s needs. He states his conclusion without any evidence (men need respect; women need love), but when men and women try to assert that they feel differently, he refutes that by saying that they don’t actually feel differently because respect and love are the primary needs of men and women.

Some additional problems with asserting rigid gender stereotypes:

The author’s assertion that a man’s primary need is respect and a woman's primary need is love is based on two things. First, as has already been expounded upon, it is based on his own theory. Second, it is also based on a survey question used by Shaunti Feldhahn in her book For Women Only: What You Need to Know About the Inner Lives of Men.

In the survey, she asked 400 men which of the following, if forced to choose, would they prefer to endure: a) to be left alone and unloved in the world or b) to feel inadequate and disrespected by everyone. Out of the 400 men who answered the survey, 74 percent of them said that if they were forced to choose, they would prefer to be alone and unloved in the world (Love & Respect, p. 49).

The problem with drawing rigid conclusions about each gender from this survey question is a multi-faceted one.
1. The survey only asked 400 men this question. This is not nearly large enough of a sample size to draw any conclusions about “all men.”
2. The survey respondents were given a choice between which two things they would choose to feel, if forced. However, being presented with only two options and forced to choose between them does not necessarily lead to any conclusion that the choice one makes is their deepest need.
3. Shaunti Feldhahn's survey expert warned her that the men who responded to her survey may have a hard time choosing between the two answers. A pilot study of 10 men revealed that the men “fussed over” the question because “they did not feel the choices were different” (For Women Only, p. 23). In other words, how can one conclude that a man's deepest need is respect when he feels that feeling unloved and feeling disrespected are the same thing?
4. Women were not asked the same question. It is logically incorrect to assert that women's primary need is love when women did not even answer the question.

Along with making unsupported assertions that men's and women's primary needs are respect and love, the author of Love & Respect spends many chapters elaborating on specific types of behavior spouses can display that will make the other gender feel either respected or loved.

Although people write to him claiming that they feel differently than what he is saying (appendix D), he seems to dismiss their individual experiences in favor of holding to rigid gender differences.

Conclusion

I want to be clear that I am not dismissing the importance of either love or respect in a marriage. Neither am I dismissing the fact that there do seem to be general ways in which many women or many men think and act differently.

What I am saying, though, is that there is no Biblical or logical evidence that all men and all women have specific, gender-determined needs or that all men or women will interpret certain behaviors from their spouse the same way.

For example:
Some women may be the first to start a conversation when there is conflict while the man goes silent. In other cases, it may be the opposite.
Some women may enjoy having their financial or intellectual abilities appreciated while the man may not be talented in those areas and doesn't want his wife to pretend like he is.
Some women may have a higher sex drive while the man may not be interested as often.

I have no problem with an author presenting practical ideas that spouses can use to aid them in communicating with and understanding their partner. But as I have already made clear, the big problem for me all comes back to the author's presentation of the material – leading the reader to believe that his points are all clearly Biblical, then backing up those points with (illogical) “science”, both of which make the reader feel they are obligated to engage in specific behaviors that will meet their spouse's “deepest need.”

Instead of learning to interact authentically as unique individuals, spouses learn to alter their behavior to conform to a formula that has no firm Biblical or scientific foundation.

The result is that men and women with a destructive spouse suffer even further damage, and those with good-willed spouses learn to engage with their partner based on assumptions about them rather than on healthy communication.

To find all the posts in this series, click here: Why I Don't Recommend Love & Respect

The post Love & Respect is Based on Illogical Assumptions about Gender appeared first on Imperfect Homemaker.

In this article we will take a look at some of the other ways that Love & Respect misuses scripture.

Giving the Benefit of the Doubt

Truly, I could nitpick all day at some of the “little” ways that the author uses scripture out of context to prove a point, but I do not feel that it is worth our time to examine every single one.

For one thing, I want to give the benefit of the doubt. Some of these instances of taking scripture out of context seem innocuous enough, and perhaps they were not purposely used to prove an extra-biblical point.

I have not bothered to include any of these as I do not feel it necessary to split hairs about every little thing.

Subtle, Yet Problematic

Other examples, though they may seem harmless on the surface, are more problematic when one takes a closer look.

Take this section for instance:

“A husband is geared to hear the command, ‘Take courage…be men and fight’ (I Samuel 4:9)” (p. 50).

Knowing that the author takes liberties with declaring his own ideas as Biblical truth made me curious to look at this closer too.

Along with his theory that men’s primary need is respect and women’s is love, he presents supporting theories throughout the book about other ways that men and women are different. God made males and females, and I believe he created them distinct from each other on purpose. But the author takes this idea to an extreme and lays out intricate descriptions of how all men and all women are wired, and quotes scripture verses to support these descriptions. The understanding is that when a wife learns these unquestionable truths about how her husband is wired and acts accordingly, this will make him feel respected. And when a husband treats his wife according to how she is wired she will feel loved.

Now, is it important for husbands and wives to know what makes their spouse tick? Will they be much less likely to unintentionally offend if they know the other might interpret what they say differently than they intend it to mean.

Certainly so; therefore it’s important to learn good verbal and non-verbal communication skills.

But instead of teaching spouses to learn to appreciate each other’s individual differences, the author of Love & Respect expends a great deal of effort to prove very specific things that all men and all women need, and lays out specific male/female formulas they must follow in order for their spouse to feel understood.

My objection to this part about men being geared to fight is not so much about debating whether being suited for combat is a male/female difference. My objection has a whole lot more to do with the context of the entire book in which rigid gender needs are “proven” from out-of-context scripture verses.

Let’s take a closer look at I Samuel 4:9. In this passage, the Philistine army had battled and defeated the Israelite army. The Israelites determined that their best course of action was to bring the ark of the covenant to their encampment. When the Philistines realized that the ark had been brought to the Israelite army, they became afraid because they believed God himself had come into the Israelite’s camp. They knew that the God of the Israelites was powerful enough to defeat them. In the midst of their fear they said to one another that they must be strong like men and fight, lest they become servants to the Hebrews.

This account of a battle between the Philistines and the Israelites has nothing to do with proving that men are “geared” to fight in combat. But this type of proof-texting occurs frequently throughout the book, and if one does not take the time to look up each scripture verse in its context, one will take the contents of the book as Biblical truth. But placing scripture references in parentheses next to a statement does not mean it is Biblical truth.

The previous example is just one of many where the author misuses scripture by trying to extract something in order to assign labels to each gender.
Without these fixed gender labels regarding what each gender’s deepest needs are and how each gender views the world, the book falls apart.

As I noted in the article about Love & Respect equating theory with scripture, it is not wrong for an author to present his theories. He could have even presented his gender labels as “many women need…” or  “a lot of men feel that…” and he would not have been dishonest.

But to misuse scripture in order to present these gender labels as gospel truth, and to form an entire one-size-fits-all formula around them is misleading at best.

He does not provide any doubt that this strict presentation of gender labels is purposeful. Statements like these appear throughout the book:

“Paul is clearly saying that wives need love and husbands need respect” (p. 15).
“Peter is definitely talking about unconditional respect” (p. 18).
“To speak his language, remember: ‘the wife must respect her husband’ (Ephesians 5:33 NIV)” (p. 66).
“Ephesians 5:33 reveals that a wife needs love and a husband needs respect, and when those needs are unmet each spouse reacts at some level” (chapter one endnotes).

Pink and Blue Sunglasses

As yet another example of how the author tries to proof-text men and women into very specific boxes, he goes on to use I Peter 3 to construct an entire section about pink and blue sunglasses, meaning the different ways in which men and women see the world (p. 32).

But First Peter 3 has nothing to do with pink and blue sunglasses. If he would like to try to help husbands and wives understand that their partner may be looking at something from a different perspective than they are, he should feel free to do so, but to construct this advice around an out-of-context verse is careless and unnecessary.

The point of I Peter 3:7 is not at all to point out that men and women wear blue and pink glasses, respectively. It’s a command to men to honor their vulnerable wives. While there are some generalities that apply to most men or women, every individual sees things differently. If two people of the same sex are living together as roommates, there will occasionally be conflict between them because they will not always see eye to eye. This is not a unique problem only between males and females, and the answer to interpersonal conflict is much more complex than using  formulas of what “all males” or “all females” need.

Presenting these gender-based formulas as Biblical does a disservice to couples because it leads them to believe that they are guaranteed to work. It is unfair for an author to lead wives to believe that it is a Biblical guarantee that men “need to feel respected even more than to feel loved” and that “respect is the key to motivating a husband” (p. 49-50) when it is merely his theory and not actually a guarantee.

Wives Ask to Be Unloved?

“Wives virtually ask to be unloved when they ‘look down on their husbands’ (Esther 1:17 NIRV)” (p. 59).

Here is another concept this author teaches that he has extracted from a verse out of context. Let’s take a closer look at what this verse is about.

In Esther chapter 1, queen Vashti refuses the king’s command to come show off her beauty to the royal court. The king became angry and asked his advisors what should be done to Vashti. The advisors told him that there needed to be repercussions for Vashti’s refusal of the king’s command; otherwise all the women will hear about what the queen has done. Then they won't respect their husbands” (Esther 1:17 NIRV).

This passage has absolutely nothing to do with wives “virtually asking to be unloved!”

To even imply that if a wife is unloved by her husband it is because she “asked for it” is at best unfair and in many scenarios dangerous.

Conclusion

From my notes that I took as I read the book, I compiled a list that contains many more examples of the author’s use of proof-texting in order to present his concepts as Biblical truth, but I believe I have shared enough already to make my point.

Even if I agree with much of what an author says, I am not okay with that author leading people to believe that his theories are Biblical truth when what he has actually done is to manipulate the scripture in order to make his points.

The disastrous result of laying an impossible burden on people and claiming it is the “Biblical way” is illustrated by this heartbreaking comment I received from a lady named Wendy:
“Coming from someone who lived in an emotionally abusive marriage for over 16 years, this book encouraged my husband’s abuse and only made me feel that apart from perfection I was to blame for the abuse I was suffering…I can tell you the damage is huge to a spouse who has a heart for God and is in a marriage with a narcissist. Perfection wouldn’t have been enough. I was on one of the love and respect podcasts anonymously and was praised for my effort to continue to respect in spite of obvious abuse. Mr. Eggerich stated that if my husband didn’t change…I was to suffer for Jesus and continue to give and respect. 16 years later I found out my husband was living a double life of homosexuality, porn addiction, adultery with both women and men, and I was told he was a covert narcissist. My life was endangered, my children were in danger…if you are in a marriage with an abusive person…this book will only enable their behavior…I am grateful I am alive and my children are safe, but it was not without consequences.”

I am not okay with what happened to Wendy in the name of the “Biblical principles” taught in this book.

I am not okay with someone using scripture out of context to convince women it is their responsibility to motivate their husbands to love them.

I am not okay with an author telling women that if their husbands don’t love them it is because they “asked for it.”

I am not okay with an author telling a woman that if her husband mistreats her, she can just respect him more and it will make him love her.

That is my reason for this series. Too many people are suffering as the result of being encouraged by their pastors or counselors to read this book. It is promoted as Biblical and something that will revolutionize a marriage. And yet, it is not Biblical, and the only revolutionary change it has brought to many people’s lives is destruction.

Love & Respect is a best-selling book. Out of 33 million titles on Amazon, it ranks as of this writing at number 1,726. There is no telling how many thousands of people have read it and been harmed by their desire to obey what they were told was Biblical truth.

You can find the list of other problems with Love & Respect here. I hope you will pass this information on to others whom I hope will be spared from living a story like Wendy’s.

The post Love & Respect Uses Scripture Out of Context appeared first on Imperfect Homemaker.

This sparked a good deal of interest.  Love & Respect is quite popular, and many people had never noticed a problem with it when they read it. They wanted to know more about what ways this book could possibly harm people because that had not been their experience.

Up until a few years ago, I had never personally read Love & Respect. But when I became an advocate for Christian victims of domestic abuse, I became aware that many victims had suffered greatly due to the concepts taught in this book. So when I saw it at a thrift store I picked it up so I could see what it said for myself.

I fired up my computer while I read it, and whenever I saw something that was unbiblical or that sent mixed messages, I copied that section and wrote down my thoughts about it.

I did not have to get very far through the book before I concluded that it was not something I would ever recommend. But I wanted to be completely fair and make sure I had read everything in complete context, so I finished the entire book, including all the appendices and endnotes.

Now that I have finished, I’ve been able to look at all the notes as a whole and see that the problems fall into a number of different categories, which I will share momentarily.

I worked hard in this process to give the benefit of the doubt and to try not to read something into the author's words that was not there. While many parts of this book are problematic at face value, other parts could probably be defended by saying that the problem only lies within the reader's interpretation of them. I have done my best to be honest about the difference between the two. Nevertheless, both scenarios are present within this book, and I want to make my readers aware of both avenues of potential harm.

My Heart Behind This Post

But first, I want to be clear here. I am not writing this article to “bash” a book or its author. I understand that many of you have read the book and been helped by it, and I am truly glad for that.

I wish nothing but the best for you, and if you implemented ideas from Love & Respect that had a positive effect on your marriage, then I rejoice with you.

But it is this same fact of wishing nothing but the best for people which leads me to write about why I cannot recommend Love & Respect. Though you may have had a positive experience with the book, not everyone has had that same experience. Many people have been greatly harmed by reading and applying this book’s ideas. There are a lot of mixed signals within the book, and each person will pick up the signals that most strongly relate to them. So while one person may understand something in a helpful way, many others will understand it in a harmful way.

I fully acknowledge that many people may find this book helpful, but I am not willing to sacrifice an entire group of people as collateral damage.

So if you are in the category of people who have benefited from reading the book, may I ask one thing? May I ask that you not read this article as an attack on you or on a book that you liked? Rather than an attack against anyone or anything, this is intended to be a defense for those who have been hurt.

I hold nothing against you for reading and liking Love & Respect. I don’t think you are a bad or ungodly person because you liked it or were helped by it. Truth be told, had I read this book in the past, I most likely would not have thought there was a problem with it either. I would have read it through the lens of my own experiences, and would have formed some variation of the following conclusion: “My husband and I love each other deeply. But sometimes we misunderstand each other, and when we try to understand where the other is coming from it will enhance our communication and thus our marriage. The end. That's a simple enough message, so where's the problem?”

However, as I became exposed to perspectives outside of my own, and as I became aware that a great many people had been harmed as a result of following this book's advice, I knew that I had to examine it closely to see why that was.

This article is the result of that examination.

So before we begin I want to assure you once again that this is not about me trying to bash a book that you personally enjoyed. This is about my being thankful that you received help from it while also loving those who did not. Thank you for your willingness to consider a different perspective.

There is no way for me to thoroughly explain the reasons I don't recommend Love & Respect in just one blog post, so this article will serve as the “home base”, so to speak, and I will elaborate on each reason in its own post.

Here is the list of reasons I don't recommend Love & Respect:

1. Love & Respect equates theory with Scripture.

Theories are not in and of themselves problematic when people are aware that they are simply a theory. When an idea is presented as a theory people can try it knowing that it may or may not help them, and they are free to use or discard the idea as needed.

But a theory presented as “Biblical, unchanging truth,” communicates to Christians that it must be followed without question.

When this “Biblical formula” does not solve their marital problems, they will either conclude that God got it wrong (which I don't think most Christians would do) or they will conclude that they must be doing it wrong and they must try harder or be more patient. This does a terrible disservice to husbands and wives who only desire to please God in their marriage, but are led to believe they must follow a certain formula to do that. Many spend far too long in abusive situations, believing that this formula, which has “everything“ to do with what kind of marriage they will have (p. 15) will fix their problems in due time.

Read this post for further clarification about how Love & Respect presents theory as Biblical truth.

2. Love & Respect makes some of its main points with out-of-context scripture.

Along with his theory that men’s primary need is respect and women’s is love, he presents supporting theories throughout the book about other ways that men and women are different. God made males and females, and I believe he created them distinct from each other on purpose. But the author takes this idea to an extreme and lays out intricate descriptions of how all men and all women are wired, and quotes scripture verses to support these descriptions. The understanding is that when a wife learns these unquestionable truths about how her husband is wired and acts accordingly, this will make him feel respected. And when a husband treats his wife according to how she is wired she will feel loved.

Without these fixed gender labels regarding what each gender’s deepest needs are and how each gender views the world, the book falls apart.

As I noted in the article about Love & Respect equating theory with scripture, it is not wrong for an author to present his theories. He could have even presented his gender labels as “many women need…” or  “a lot of men feel that…” and he would not have been dishonest.

But to misuse scripture in order to present these gender labels as gospel truth, and to form an entire one-size-fits-all formula around them is misleading at best.

Even if I agree with much of what an author says, I am not okay with that author leading people to believe that his theories are Biblical truth when what he has actually done is to manipulate the scripture in order to make his points, especially when the results are disastrous. (Read the entire post here to see the effects this can have on people.)

3. Love & Respect is based on illogical assumptions about each gender's needs.

The author of Love & Respect uses circular reasoning and incomplete data to present gender-based assumptions about the ways husbands and wives should interact with one another. Instead of learning to interact authentically as unique individuals, spouses learn to alter their behavior to conform to a formula that has no firm Biblical or scientific foundation.

The result is that men and women with a destructive spouse suffer even further damage, and those with good-willed spouses learn to engage with their partner based on assumptions about them rather than on healthy communication.

(Numbers 4-11 will be updated and linked as I work my way through writing this series.)

4. Love & Respect does not define its foundational words.

5. Love & Respect encourages selfishness, manipulation and lack of personal responsibility.

6. Love & Respect absolves abusers and blames victims.

7. Love & Respect does not adequately address abuse.

8. Love & Respect presents serious marital problems as something easily fixed by a one-size-fits-all formula.

9. Love & Respect emphasizes behavior change over heart change.

10. Love & Respect presents an unhealthy and potentially dangerous view of sex in marriage.

11. Love & Respect can harm marriages even where neither spouse is abusive.

I know this list looks really terrible, and perhaps you wonder if I am intentionally wording it in a way that makes it look worse than it is.

I realize that if you were helped by this book, you didn't come away with the idea that you should accept abuse or that you had no personal responsibility for your own actions. Not every person who read the book is now focused on behavior change over heart change. To that I say, “Praise the Lord.” I am thankful that you have the humility and the sensitivity to the Holy Spirit never to find an excuse in something you read for selfishness and ungodliness on the part of yourself or your spouse.

However, the fact that these ideas are not what you got out of the book does not take away the fact that these ideas are actually in the book.

I have no control over who will take away any of the above ideas after reading Love & Respect, and because all of these ideas are either unbiblical or harmful I cannot recommend the book.

If you've already read it and didn't take away any harmful ideas, then why does this article matter to you now? 

Many of you know others who have not read it yet but will encounter it. Perhaps their marriage is in crisis and their counselor recommended it to them. Or maybe their ladies group at church is planning to do a study on it.

Although you did not have a negative experience with the book, that is no guarantee that people you know and love will not.

You can make them aware of the problems within it so that they can either a.) choose to skip it or b.) be fully aware of the problems before they read it.

What do I recommend instead of Love & Respect?

Since I do not recommend Love & Respect, I thought it would only be fair to recommend some alternatives that one could read instead.

At the risk of sounding snarky and holier-than-thou, I will say that I believe the Bible is the best marriage book there is. As a husband and wife grow in their personal walk with Christ it affects every other aspect of their lives, including their marriage.

However, I certainly have no problem with reading other books as well. They can be a great source of practical ideas.

Communication and Working Through Conflict:

Boundaries

This original book will help you understand what is and is not your responsibility, how to communicate your needs with others, and how to listen when others communicate their needs to you.

Boundaries in Marriage

This book will go further in-depth into how the concept of boundaries works within a marriage. Boundaries are not at all about making anyone else do what you want, but are all about learning what is your responsibility and taking ownership of it.

For Struggles with Sexual Intimacy:

The Great Sex Rescue

This book aims to expose wrong ideas husbands and wives believe about sex and to re-frame them in a healthier way so that couples can enjoy passion, intimacy, and wholeness the way God intended.

For Spouses in Deep Emotional Pain

The Emotionally Destructive Marriage

There is a difference between a destructive marriage and a difficult one. If you are in constant emotional pain, this book will help you sort out the difference between the two. You will learn steps you can take to resolve the conflict with your spouse and what to do if they choose not to change.

It is important to note that no book is a cure-all, nor will it necessarily be a perfect fit for your situation. As we explored in the first point of this article, following the ideas in a book as if they are irrefutable truth can lead one to great harm. The reason I am comfortable recommending these books is that, unlike Love & Respect, they do not claim that their theories are “not just a nice little theory” and are “the key to any problem in a marriage”. However, even when a book does not claim to be absolute truth, it is important to remind oneself not to read it as such.

I hope this article has spurred your thinking and has encouraged you to see the value of those who have been hurt by Love & Respect, not because your own experience is invalid, but because theirs is valid too.

The post Why I Don’t Recommend Love & Respect appeared first on Imperfect Homemaker.

In chapter one, the author lays out “The Secret Hidden in Ephesians 5:33” (p. 14). 

He says:

“Paul is clearly saying that wives need love and husbands need respect…As I will show throughout this book, the Love and Respect Connection is the key to any problem in a marriage. This is not just a nice little theory to which I added a few Bible verses.” (p. 15)

First, the author says that this Love and Respect Connection is the key to any problem in a marriage and is not just a theory to which he added Bible verses. He states in the introduction that this message on Love and Respect was God’s revelation to him and that these “essential truths…will never change — not any more than God Changes.” He tells the readers definitively that “The Love and Respect connection is clearly within Scripture” (p. 16). Pastors and counselors recommend the book as Biblical, and the description of the book states that it teaches husbands and wives (by means of the Love and Respect Connection) how to deal with conflict “Biblically.”

The result of understanding the Love and Respect Connection as “not just a nice little theory”, but as the clear revelation of God means that it is absolute truth and should not be questioned. It means it will have “everything to do with the kind of marriage you will have” (p. 15).

But if you take a closer look at his language, and also dig around in the endnotes, it becomes evident that Eggerich’s “Love & Respect Connection” is indeed only a theory and not an essential truth that will never change.

He refers to “my theory” twice on page 16, and another time on page 19. He says on page 17 that it is his experience as a counselor which confirms the truth to him that the wife primarily needs to feel love and the husband primarily needs to feel respect. Nowhere else in the book does he use any other scripture to back up the idea of the Love and Respect Connection. It is based only on his theory and his experience. Hidden in the endnotes in the back of the book is his admission that the Love & Respect Connection is his theory of Ephesians 5:33 and not actually the theology of it (p. 319).

This blurring of the lines between theology and theory does two things. First, it leads the reader to believe that what they are reading is unchangeable Biblical truth and must be followed unquestioningly.

Second, it increases the appetite of the reader to excitedly devour the contents of the book. Although it is presented as unchanging truth, it is simultaneously presented as a revolutionary secret. “This is the key that I have been missing;” “You connected all the dots for me;” and “You’re onto something huge here;” are all quotes that are used on the back of the book and as advertising material on retailer websites. 

If something is unchanging, Biblical truth then it is not a secret, revolutionary idea. But if it is only a theory, then it is wrong to claim that it is unchanging, Biblical truth.

Let me be clear. Ephesians 5:33 as it stands is unchanging, Biblical truth. 

But Eggerich’s “discovery” (p. 4) of “The Love and Respect Connection” is only his theory of how Ephesians 5:33 should be applied and not the unchanging revelation of God which he leads the reader to believe in the introduction.

The Love And Respect Connection, in a nutshell, is that love is a woman’s deepest need and respect is a man’s deepest need, and that when each partner meets this deepest need of their spouse, marital conflict will cease.

This one-size-fits-all formula is the theory which I am challenging. Although I have no objection whatsoever to an author presenting their theory, I do have a problem with someone writing an entire book that leads people to believe their theory is the unchanging word of God. The Ephesian husbands were commanded to love their wives and the Ephesian wives were commanded to respect their husbands, and that is all that one can unequivocally state from Ephesians 5:33. Nowhere does it say that this is because a man's deepest need is respect and a woman's is love, and nowhere in Love & Respect does the author attempt to prove this concept from any other portion of Scripture either. That is because it is only a theory, and not something on which every couple can hang their hat.

Theories can help people — when they know that they are theories and may or may not work for them.

But theories can also hurt people when they believe they are absolute truth and must be followed.

How many tender-hearted people with very complex issues within their marriage have endured years of unnecessary conflict because they chose to be obedient to what they were led to believe was God's unchanging truth and the key to any marriage problem?

All the posts about Love & Respect will be housed here.

The post Love & Respect Equates Theory with Scripture appeared first on Imperfect Homemaker.

THE BACKGROUND OF THIS POST 

Sheila Gregoire, who blogs at To Love, Honor, and Vacuum has written for years about the topic of sex in marriage, and over the years as she walked with women through their struggles in this area, she noticed that no matter how much healthy content she put out there, people still had the same questions and problems.

As she asked more questions of people and dug deeper, she learned that most people who were experiencing significant obstacles to physical intimacy with their spouse held deeply entrenched beliefs about sex that they had obtained from Christian marriage books. Some of the beliefs were good, but some were not. Some were subtly harmful, and some were more overt.

Here are some of the harmful ideas the women Sheila talked to had gotten from Christian marriage books:

-A wife cannot ever say no to her husband when he wants sex.

-Wives need to have frequent sex to prevent their husbands from pornography or affairs.

-Women whose husbands are addicted to pornography or have committed adultery are partially to blame.

-Wives whose bodies are not attractive as they used to be (even from life’s normal changes and not from lack of care) should work harder to be “hot” so their husbands won’t be tempted to lust after women with better looking bodies.

-Women’s pleasure during sex is not important; only the man’s.

-Husbands are entitled to having sex whenever and however they want with no say-so from the wife.

The effects that these ideas have on women are devastating.

Feeling obligated to have sex or feeling afraid that she is responsible for keeping her husband from sin makes a woman feel resentful, fearful, or used. In many cases those beliefs are the underlying source of sexual pain.

No one should experience physical or emotional pain from sex with their spouse. Sex should not leave a wife feeling resentful or fearful or used or even frustrated. Sex should be about experiencing deeper intimacy and oneness with one’s spouse.

THE PROBLEM WITH LOVE & RESPECT

As Sheila continued to ask more questions of the women who were reading her blog, she had her attention drawn to the fact that a best selling marriage book, Love & Respect, was the most frequently mentioned Christian marriage book that had done significant harm to women.

 (Side note: As someone who works with Christian women escaping domestic abuse, I can tell you that if you ask around among these women, you will learn that Love & Respect was their abuser’s playground. An abusive man uses the term “respect” as a weapon to control his wife. Any time she refuses his unreasonable demands he claims that he does not feel respected by her and that is why he acts unloving to her. He holds basic kindness hostage, knowing she will strive to meet every demand in order to feel loved. And when she still does not receive love from her husband, she believes it is her fault because she still failed to make him feel respected. Instead of realizing that this form of coercive control is abuse, she believes from the book that she can help him be more loving to her by doing whatever it is that he says makes him feel respected. She does not realize that there will be no end to his demands. No husband should be making demands, large or small, of his wife, and to do so by manipulating her desire to be a godly wife is ungodly on his part. There is nothing in the Love & Respect book that explains to a woman that this dynamic is abusive. Any offhanded disclaimer that a woman experiencing abuse should seek help is of no value because virtually all abuse victims do not even realize what they are experiencing is abuse. This is especially true if the abuse is perpetuated without physical violence but instead by using a godly wife’s tender heart against her by making her feel that she is to blame because she somehow failed as a wife.) Update: After more questions, I've started working my way through writing an entire series that explains the problems with Love & Respect very thoroughly. You can read the series on Love & Respect here.

So horrific was the abuse being perpetuated in the name of this book that Sheila tried to reach out to Focus on the Family (whose logo appears on the book and who promotes the book heavily) to make them aware of the hundreds of women who had told their stories of having Love & Respect weaponized against them by abusive husbands. She thought they would be horrified that so many women were being abused with this book’s ideas as one of the primary weapons. Unfortunately, they didn’t seem to be concerned. In fact, they at first ignored her altogether, and then ultimately stated that Sheila’s efforts to raise awareness about the problem was a “concerted campaign against the book” and that she was at fault for having misread and misjudged the book.

But here’s the thing. Perhaps enabling abusive men to use the book to control their wives was not the intention of this book. But that can’t erase the fact that hundreds of abusive men ARE using the book as an excuse to control their wives.

If someone misunderstands your words in a way that hurts them, wouldn’t you want to re-frame what you said in a way that undoes the harm? If having your words misunderstood in a way that harms women is regularly occurring why would you actively promote the words that are harming people? Why wouldn’t you seek to ascertain what is causing the misunderstanding and then re-word what you want to say in a way that cannot be misunderstood and cannot hurt people?  (Here is a link to an open letter Sheila wrote to Focus on the Family about Love & Respect.) 

SHHH…JUST LISTEN

If you are in a good marriage with a loving husband, perhaps your mind is having a hard time grasping exactly what I mean by “harm.” I understand. I have been there too. I have seen women who speak about their pain and thought, “Phsst. She just needs to grow up and quit getting her feelings hurt so easily.” Abuse and the emotional pain that women experience at the hands of a controlling, selfish husband is only a vague, nondescript idea in the mind of someone who has never experienced it.

It is only when you sit and listen to their stories – their descriptions of living in a world where they have no human value and are nothing other than an object to be played with – that you can begin to grasp how “not okay” we should be with what is happening to them.

I wish I could invite you to hear the stories I hear. Stories from women in churches just like yours. Stories where everything looks nice on the outside, but at home behind closed doors wives are made to stay up all night scrubbing the grout on the tile with a toothbrush while largely pregnant. Stories where their husbands will not give them money for groceries until they fulfill his repulsive sexual fantasies. They are told they are lazy and stupid when dinner is on the table five minutes later than their husband said it had to be. And then they clean it all up after he throws it on the floor. They listen to his words as he screams that he wouldn't have done that if she hadn't been so lazy. When they go to their pastor's wife, they timidly try to tell her that things are not going so well at home, but they don't realize they should tell her they're being abused. After all, they've read Love & Respect at the ladies Bible study, and want to be a godly wife, so they think that their husband won't do that anymore if he feels more respected. They will just work harder to get dinner on the table faster next time. Meanwhile, the pastor's wife, believing there are only some hiccups or communication gaps, gives her a different book to read which reinforces more of the wrong concepts she believes. “Maybe if I give him more sex he won't feel so grouchy.”

I cannot invite you to listen to these women's stories because they are theirs to share when and how they want. However, I can share the collection of public comments that Sheila compiled from her blog posts about Love & Respect. Comments where women told of how Love & Respect affected them. I invite you to browse the document and just listen to some of the snapshots of these women's lives. Don't listen to object, (“but that's not at all what I got out of that part of the book!”); don't listen to dismiss (“she used a curse word in her comment; her story is invalid!”); just listen. Listen to love your neighbor and to feel what she has felt. Your analysis can come later after you have taken the time to just listen. Please be swift to hear and slow to speak (James 1:19.)

You'll see stories like this:

“I can attest firsthand that following this theology with my abusive husband almost left me dead by his
hand. When we first dated/married, I would stand up to him when he was in one of his rages, and when
our marriage was fractured I turned to biblical advise to learn how to “fix” what was obviously my issue
if he was constantly so unhappy. When I lost my fight, so to speak, he turned even more dangerous, trying to provoke me into a fight. I left the day he genuinely tried to choke me to death, and I refused to stand up to him. I now know I did everything I could to save our marriage, but following this bad advice to be even more submissive almost cost me my life.”

Here is a link to the complete data compilation of comments Sheila received about Love & Respect.

Although the question as to whether or not Christian marriage books can be harmful has already been answered, perhaps the bigger question is, “Should we be okay with things as they are when our Christian marriage resources are being weaponized against women? If we liked a book and found it helpful should we dismiss the voices of those who were hurt by that same book?”

THE INSPIRATION AND IMPETUS FOR THE GREAT SEX RESCUE

The disheartening realization that a bestselling Christian marriage book was actively harming women while still being intentionally promoted by a large Christian organization caused Sheila to wonder what other Christian marriage books might be contributing to the same problem.

She decided it was time for her to dig deeper into the beliefs that were hindering couples from experiencing true intimacy and re-frame those beliefs in a healthier way. 

The first step was to collect data on exactly what ideas Christian women were taking away when they read these books. Together with her daughter and her friend Joanna, an epidemiologist trained in statistics, she launched “The Bare Marriage Project,” which is the largest, most scientifically sound research project into Christian women’s experience that has been done to date. This project surveyed over 20,000 women asking about their sex lives, their marriages, their beliefs about sex after marriage, their upbringing, and more. The data collected from this survey gave Sheila and her colleagues the insight they needed to identify what wrong ideas women were believing about sex in marriage.

The next step was to create a rubric and use it to evaluate books on marriage and sex based on twelve teachings about female sexuality. Books could score between 0 and 48 points, with 0 being the most harmful and 48 being the most helpful when it came to what a book taught about sex in marriage. The scoring rubric evaluated what each book taught about: lust and infidelity (e.g. whether a wife holds any responsibility for her husband’s sexual sin,) women’s sexual pleasure (e.g. does it emphasize that sex is meant to be mutually pleasurable or is a man’s need for release all that is mentioned,) and mutuality (e.g. does it emphasize the husband's responsibility to work toward intimacy or are all the expectations placed upon the wife.) (Unfortunately, Love & Respect scored a zero.)

The final step was to write a book detailing what wrong ideas about sex in marriage women were believing, which books had the most likelihood of perpetuating those beliefs, and then rescuing and re-framing those beliefs in a healthier way. The goal was not to have the last word, but to open up the conversation and encourage husbands, wives, and church leaders to entertain different perspectives beyond those that circulate in the best selling Christian books.

The result of this effort is called The Great Sex Rescue: The Lies You’ve Been Taught and How to Recover What God Intended.

It is obvious that this project is of grave importance to Sheila because she cares so much about people, and she is not okay with Christian marriage books helping some people if they are also going to harm others. I fully stand behind her in that. 

ADDITIONAL HARMFUL EFFECTS OF POPULAR CHRISTIAN MARRIAGE BOOKS

I mentioned the problem of husbands using the premise of Love & Respect to control their wives, but I'd like to share some additional kinds of harm that have been done by popular Christian marriage books. I will let the data speak for itself, in the form of quotes from The Great Sex Rescue:

-“Women who get married believing they need to have sex with their husbands to help prevent their porn use are 19% more likely to experience significant sexual pain unrelated to childbirth.”

-“What often makes this even worse for Christian women is that we feel like God condones our pain because we’re told the Bible says we can’t say no.”

-“To our amazement, and our great dismay, far too many Christian books include incidents of marital rape or other forms of sexual assault and then dismiss these incidents as unimportant.”

-“We are left with the strange situation in which the people who most strongly relate to the examples given in Christian marriage books are often the ones acting the least like Christ.”

-“We suspect that the teaching that sex is something men are owed by their wives is being used as a weapon by abusive husbands.” (As a domestic abuse advocate, I don’t just suspect this, I know it! It’s pretty much standard practice for abusers to use this concept as a weapon.)

-“When asked how they felt after sex, used was the word 16% of women in our follow-up survey chose.”

-“When the books, magazines, blogs, radio programs, and conferences in your Christian circle are all telling you that every time you say no to sex, you are being selfish due to the depth of his need, you may start feeling guilty about having any needs at all.”

-“Our concern is that many Christian books, in their efforts to free couples of sexual sin, reinforce pornography’s view of sex by encouraging men to use their wives’ bodies without consideration for their hearts.”

-“Of the thirteen Christian bestsellers we analyzed on our rubric, only three books asked all the following of husbands:

• stay faithful (without offering caveats)
• make sex pleasurable for her
• do not insist or expect sex of any kind when your wife is physically or emotionally unwell
• seek consent from your wife”

“However, these same books that couldn’t ask the bare minimum of men asked, on average, over five of the following of women (and five books asked all of them):

• Have intercourse as frequently as the husband would like.
• Have intercourse even if he is watching porn or has a lust problem.
• Understand that without intercourse, her husband is more likely to have an affair, and if he does, it will be partly her fault.
• Help him reach climax in some way even when she is on her period, recovering from postpartum and not sleeping, or during any other problem she may face, since her problems are not reasons to refuse sex.
• Prevent weight gain to stay attractive.
• Let her husband feel that he is a good lover (without necessarily any caveat that he should actually be a good lover.)
• Initiate intercourse and be enthusiastic.”

“Instead of saying ‘no man should be satisfied unless his wife is also regularly satisfied,' too many books have said, ‘men feel more satisfied if their wives are satisfied, so wives — make sure you’re satisfied,' without any charge to him to care for her needs.”

Below are some additional comments I have seen made by other women that were unrelated to The Great Sex Rescue which confirm the far-reaching negative effects of these wrong ideas:

-“I actually followed this [advice to have sex regularly to keep him from affairs] to a T  in my first (very Christian) marriage. Not only did he take advantage of this but he cheated on me. Multiple times.”

-“Women were taught to prioritize meeting that “need” no matter what they were feeling emotionally or what else was going on in their marriage.”

-“What an overwhelming message to Christian women and wives: you are disposable and valuable only for what physical pleasure you bring to your husband. No wonder so many women are unhappy in their marriages and struggling to be a good spouse and still trust God.”

WHO SHOULD READ THE GREAT SEX RESCUE?

-Anyone who finds sex within marriage to be a source of guilt or shame

-Anyone who has found themselves in physical or emotional pain after sex.

-Anyone who fears that having sex too infrequently will drive their husband to pornography or adultery.

-Anyone who enjoys intimacy with their spouse, but also hates the days they feel obligated.

WHAT IF YOU AND YOUR HUSBAND HAVE A GREAT MARRIAGE AND SEX LIFE?

I am truly happy for you and thankful you are in a marriage where both spouses seek to love God and each other well. However, even if you are not personally experiencing any struggles with sexual intimacy in your marriage,  I still strongly recommend reading The Great Sex Rescue. 

First of all, it will empower you to recognize teachings that have the potential to harm others. When you have a husband who loves you as Christ loved the church, you will read marriage books through that lens and you will speak to other Christian women from that perspective. But women whose husbands are not loving them well will read the exact same books and see them in a way that places all the responsibility for their husband’s sin on them.
Knowing what harmful ideas other women are getting and which books they are getting them from will give you the ability to steer your friends and those you mentor away from anything that has the potential to damage them or damage their marriage. There is no need to recommend books that have the risk of causing harm when there are healthier alternatives available.

Second, when you start to examine unhealthy beliefs about marriage and sex, you may realize that some of what you believe yourself has also been harmful in subtle ways. I’m not saying that I hope you dredge up some imaginary marriage problem that you never knew you had, but it’s possible you may find yourself untangling ideas that are not quite right. I’ve discovered over the years that the more I read perspectives that are outside of my own, the more I grow as a person.

And that is really the heart that I see behind this book – to help you think about marriage and sex from a bigger perspective. You don’t need to agree with every single word written in the book – in fact, you probably won’t – but you should listen and learn and grow. You can do a world of good for others when you listen to their experiences. You can protect other women when you realize what angle they might be seeing a certain aspect of marriage from and why the explanation of it from popular books is not what they need to hear.

Together, we can work towards stopping the harm that Christian marriage books have done to women, and we can encourage them with better messages that can help them untangle the lies they have believed about God's wonderful gift of intimacy with their spouse.

You can pick up your copy of The Great Sex Rescue here.

The post Can Christian Marriage Books Harm Women? A Review of The Great Sex Rescue appeared first on Imperfect Homemaker.

I sat up and groggily rubbed my eyes, then reached for my phone to check the time. Wow!  I'd slept really late!

And yet, I wasn't all that surprised.  My kids are all great sleepers, and considering the fact that we'd all been a little under the weather, I had gone to bed the night before assuming we would all sleep in.

I sat propped up in the bed trying to get myself completely awake, and after a couple minutes I heard the kids beginning to stir.  I knew they'd all be up soon.

The first sleepy-eyed child came tiptoeing into my room soon after, and I was looking forward to a couple minutes of snuggling before we began the day.

But he seemed timid about climbing into the bed.  “What's the matter?”  I asked.

“Is the baby sleeping your bed?” he questioned in reply.

“No…” I answered, somewhat puzzled.

“Well, where is she?  She's not in her crib.” He had a confused look on his face.

“Of course she is.  She was in our bed, but Daddy moved her to her crib when he left for work.”

“No!” he shook his head emphatically.  “It's just her blanket in there.”

“Well she must be under it,” I answered, knowing there had to be some logical explanation as to where she was.

“There's no way!  It's just wadded up small in the corner of the crib!”

Confused, I swung my feet over the edge of the bed, pulled on my bathrobe, and made my way to the girls' room.

EMPTY.  Her crib was most definitely empty.

Still half-asleep, I was trying to make some sense of where she could be.

She doesn't know how to climb out.

The “k” word briefly crossed my mind, but that didn't really make any sense.  There's absolutely zero possibility that family or friends would take her, and it didn't seem likely that a random stranger would break into the house, pick up my baby out of her crib, and then LOCK THE DOOR back when they left (yes, I had checked by this time to see if anything looked fishy about the door.)

BUT WHERE WAS SHE???

I went around and checked in the beds of all the kids who were still sleeping.

I checked every nook and cranny of the house.

I checked the beds again.

I checked the nooks and crannies again.

While I was checking, I knew that the only reasonable explanation was that my husband had taken her to work.  But taking your toddler to work isn't exactly standard procedure, and he certainly hadn't said anything to me about it.

Once I had determined that she was nowhere in the house, I picked up the phone and dialed my husband's number.

I knew that this phone call would either satisfy my curiosity as to why he had taken the baby to work or else it would usher in sheer terror for our family.

As I was dialing, I heard one of the kids holler from the kitchen, “Dad took the Suburban to work!  And the diaper bag is gone!”

It seemed my little detectives were coming to the same conclusion I was.

I knew as soon as I heard the “Hey” on the other end that he was expecting me to call.

“Did……you…take the baby to work??” I asked inquisitively, knowing by now that the answer was yes, but still incredibly confused as to why.

“Yeah.  Did you get some sleep?” he nonchalantly replied.

“Well…yes…but…why did you take the baby to work?”

“I knew you hadn't slept well all week.  I really didn't think she was going to get back to sleep and I wanted you to be able to get some more sleep.”

It was all true.  I hadn't slept well all week thanks to a lovely head cold and neither had the baby.  We'd both been awakened early that morning as my husband was getting ready for work.  I brought her into my bed hoping I could snuggle her back to sleep, but she was very restless.

Once my husband was ready for work, he picked her up and took her back to bed.  “You're not going to get any sleep this way,” he told me.

Only he apparently wasn't putting her in bed; he was taking her to work with him.

“Why didn't you tell me?” I asked over the phone.

“Because I didn't want you worrying about whether she was okay or whether I was able to get my work done with her here.  I knew you'd sleep better if you didn't have anything on your mind.  And I knew you'd know where she was when you woke up.  So anyway, now I'll bring her back home.”

So now as she rests comfortably back in her bed, and I sit here reflecting on the events of this morning, I ask myself what point I'm trying to make by telling this story.

And I guess it's this:

I was able to stay calm and assume that my husband probably had her at work even though I couldn't think of a good reason why at the time.
And he was able to make a decision like that, knowing that my reaction would be pretty much exactly what it was.

Why?

Because we trust one another.  And we trust one another because we know each other well.  And we know each other well because we work hard at it!

• Clear communication.
• Spending one on one time together regularly.
• Learning and making note of what makes the other person tick – what do they like, what do they dislike, what stresses them out, what helps them relax, etc.

These are all things we have to do to make sure we know each other well.

Daddy combing my hair

In conclusion, I have two things to be thankful for this weekend.

1. That my little girl was safe and sound with her daddy.
2. That her daddy loves both of us fiercely and works hard to show us that he does!

The post The Day My Baby Went Missing From Her Crib appeared first on Imperfect Homemaker.

“I can't even think with all the kid-noise and clutter!”

“We haven't had a date in months!  We don't talk about anything other than what's on the to-do list!”

If you're feeling burnt out and disconnected from your spouse due to the busyness of life and the exhaustion of kids, it's time to take a marriage retreat!

There are 5 great reasons to take a marriage retreat that I can think of, though I'm sure there are more.

1. Time to pray together.

Hopefully you're already praying together with your spouse, at least before you go to bed at night.  But I know from experience that when you're both completely exhausted, it can be hard to think coherently to spend a lot of time in prayer.  Usually by the time the kids are asleep and the lights are turned out, one or both of you is already halfway asleep!

When you get away on a marriage retreat, you'll have plenty of time to spend time in prayer together without waiting until you're both half asleep at night.

What a blessing to come before the Lord together and lay the burdens of your family at his feet!

My husband and I were recently blessed to spend several nights away at the Appleview River Resort in Sevierville, Tennessee.  Let me tell you, if you need some quiet time away, you should consider booking a few nights there.

A private condo was just the thing we needed to reconnect with each other and have some quality time to spend with the Lord as a couple.

It was all the more special to be there, knowing that the owners were outspoken Christians.  All of their material – brochures, email confirmations, guest information in the cabin, even their text message letting us know our unit was ready for check-in – took every opportunity to tell of their love for the Lord Jesus Christ and of their desire to use their property for his glory.

2.  Time to sleep.

When all the responsibilities at home are weighing you down, it's good to get away and just REST.  You don't need to go, go, go during your time away.  Take advantage of a nice place to stay and just hang out and sleep as long as you need to!  Getting some good rest will do wonders for a marriage.  Not only will it help refresh your spirit and give you a more pleasant outlook on life, it will give you a little more energy for physical intimacy with your spouse too.

I thought the bed at Appleview River Resort was super comfortable!  My husband didn't like it quite as much as I did, but he still slept comfortably.  It was either a memory foam mattress or else it had a memory foam topper.  Either way, I slept long and hard all 3 nights we stayed there!

Of course, maybe I was sleeping so well because I got to soak in this amazing tub every night!  It was so deep, and the water was so hot…oh I'm longing to go back just thinking about it.  My dream house has a tub like this!

3. Time to just be together.

It's nice to be able to just be with your spouse and enjoy them for who they are, with no expectations getting in your way.  No thoughts of household responsibilities can crowd in and ruin your time together.  Getting away lets you just be best friends with your spouse while leaving the cares of life behind for a while!

When we went to Sevierville, we spent time taking walks together, hiking, eating together, and shopping at a leisurely pace.

We didn't have to go far to enjoy a quiet stroll together.  Our condo at Appleview River Resort overlooked a lovely river walk, and we could go right outside and enjoy it any time we wanted to!

We also enjoyed quiet meals out on the balcony.

One day we went to Foxfire Mountain adventure park and took a hike through the property.  It was a beautiful hike, just difficult enough to be good exercise, but not so difficult that it was miserable.  We walked across America's longest swinging bridge and hiked up to a refreshing waterfall.  You can see a video of our day there below:

We also went out to breakfast a couple times!  We NEVER get to do that!  (It's kind of hard to get babysitters in the morning, you know?)

One morning we ate at the Applewood Farmhouse Restaurant.  It was right by our condo, and 2 complimentary meals came with the our room.  This is such a nice place to eat.  It's such a cozy environment, and the food is good too.  Applewood is definitely on our “must take a return visit” list!

Another morning we ate at Flapjacks Pancake Cabin.  My husband is still talking about the food he ate there two weeks later.  “Any time we are back in that area, we are eating there.  No if's, and's, or but's about it.  That is the best breakfast I have ever had.”  I'll have to agree with him that it was quite good.  I was super excited that they serve gluten free pancakes too!  The helpings were generous enough too that we had enough left over for breakfast the next day.  I highly recommend it!

We spent one evening walking around the Tanger Outlets, holding hands, browsing the stores.  It was nice to shop just for the sake of shopping and not have to worry about keeping track of kids or taking them potty.

There was a lot of evidence throughout the city of Sevierville of the respect they show for our veterans.  I thought that was really great.

My husband needed a new pair of work shoes.  He found a fantastic deal on some at the outlets.

4. Time to Plan

No matter your circumstances, you and your spouse no doubt have things you hope to accomplish, things that need to be done around the house, parenting and family goals you'd like to meet, etc.  The biggest obstacle we've found to meeting those goals is just finding the time to sit down an plan out how to get from point A to point B.

If you have family projects that are needing to happen or if you just want to re-evaluate how you're doing on your marriage or parenting, you need to take a marriage retreat and spend some time talking and planning together!

Here we are at our condo, getting a nice dinner prepared so we could have a planning session over dinner.

5. Time to have fun!

When is the last time you did something fun together?  When you go on a marriage retreat, you'll have all the time you need just to laugh and have fun!  There is something about having fun that is good for both the soul and the body!  (“A merry heart doeth good like a medicine.”)  Plan some good old fashioned fun into your marriage retreat and it will benefit you both!

We went out to Ripley's Old MacDonald's Farm mini golf one evening and had a blast trying to beat each other!  (I won't say who won, but it wasn't me. )  We laughed when I knocked the ball completely off of the course we were on.  We laughed at how seriously my husband took his shots, measuring the exact trajectory and speed he would need.  He cheered for me when I followed his suggestions and got a hole in one.  It was just plain fun.

One day we drove around looking for the cabin we had stayed in on our honeymoon, which was near Sevierville.  We had no clue which road it was on, but we had a vague idea, so we went hunting for it.  We never did find it, but we had a ton of fun getting lost in the mountains together, and we ended up being rewarded with a beautiful view!

If you're feeling overwhelmed, burnt out, and disconnected from your spouse, I encourage you to make the effort to get away and spend some time with your spouse praying, resting, playing, planning, and spending quality time together.

As you can see from the getaway we took, Sevierville, Tennessee is a fantastic place to do that.  It offers the quiet you need to recharge right along with plenty of options for having fun together.  I hope you'll consider investing in a trip for the health of your marriage!

Many thanks to the city of Sevierville as well as the places mentioned in this post for providing complimentary lodging and meals to facilitate this article!

The post 5 Reasons to Take a Marriage Retreat (And Where to Take It!) appeared first on Imperfect Homemaker.