Not once, in 25 years
A complementarian trope vs. my real marriage
Gentle reader,
The husband and I are on the brink of celebrating 25 years of marriage; that number seems both impossibly short and impossibly long.
We’ve done what people do when they make a life together: loved, fought, prayed, rejoiced, grieved, and figured out how to pay the bills and make a home. We’ve raised four babies, all now teens or adults, and we’ve been part of four churches. We’ve changed, and we’ve stayed the same.
What we haven’t done, not once, is needed someone to have the “deciding vote” in a disagreement.
Some very young people walking into the unknown, side by side.
We’re a team, and we decide things together.
I haven’t found the origin of the frequent complementarian1 claim that the husband has the deciding vote in a marital disagreement. It certainly isn’t in scripture. (If anyone knows where this started, I’d love to be filled in!) But I’ve heard that claim made again and again and again. It seems meant to soften complementarian teaching about male authority; don’t worry, it seems to say, it’s not as though the man automatically decides, usually there is a conversation, perhaps some compromise, but—hey—somebody has to have the deciding vote in the event of a draw.
My husband and I have always tried to act in mutuality, in concert. But what do we do when we don’t agree?
The answer is this: we do a variety of things, because life is more complicated and interesting than the idea that marital decisions are made by vote would imply. A marriage is not two people with two sets of individual opinions which may or may not happen to match. A marriage is a one flesh union in which two people are always considering the good of of the other, in which their opinions are shaped by each other and the life they’re making together. A marriage is for fidelity, and sanctification, and fruitfullness (both biological and extra-biological), and marital decisions are aimed towards those ends.
Before we were married, we were in a department store registering for wedding gifts, and we found that we did not like the same china. He gravitated to the plain white. I found something with a blue and gold detail that I loved. So how did we decide?
We didn’t get two sets of china.
My husband-to-be quickly noted that he didn’t care about the china pattern as much as I did. Suppose intensity of caring runs on a scale from giving no figs to giving 10 figs.
Even though he could name a preference, my husband readily admitted that he actually gave no figs about the china. At best, he gave maybe half a fig. And I gave some figs, four or five of them even. So, he submitted to me, we got the set with the blue pattern, and I’m still enjoying it, displayed in the hutch by our table. I don’t think my husband thinks about it at all. This decision was, in one way, inconsequential. The kingdom of God has room for a variety of china patterns. But, in another way, it was of great consequence, for it contained our ability to care for each other, to see each other, to weigh even a small matter with the weight of love.
The first summer we were married, we were seminary students, and we did field education placements in rural churches. We were housed in somebody’s grandpa’s old cottage on the edge of a big farmhouse property. You could roll a ball down the slanting floors & bake a slanted cake in the oven.
My husband slept on the high side of the bed to balance that slant a little. The farmer’s twins would pop in at random times, like when I was bathing. There was no shower. One side of the house was part of the fence for the cows: so close we could have touched them through the bedroom window.
My husband’s supervisor had him at work early and late. Mine maybe had two hours of work for me a day, so I was alone a lot. So many people fed us homemade meals from their gardens that summer. No internet. No library. Grocery store 45 minutes away, but the head of my church’s evangelism committee gave me free fried chicken from his gas station counter. (The church’s evangelism strategy was this: bring chicken to anyone who visits the church.)
How did we get into this situation? We wanted it together; we agreed.
But the reality of the situation was incredibly mixed. We both learned a lot about our callings, but it was also an isolating and exhausting way to begin a marriage. This thing that we both wanted was a mixed bag, just like everything we’ve ever wanted, almost everything we’ve ever decided for or against.
Years later, there was a big thing I didn’t think I wanted. My husband really wanted it. I had fear. He had figs. He gave lots of figs, but he never would have tried to exercise a vote against me, when I had serious concerns, and the decision would matter so much to both our lives. Whatever we decided, we were both going to keep giving lots and lots of figs. In a moment of trust, both in him and in the Spirit, I said, “let’s do it.” I submitted. The results weren’t what either of us expected, and neither of us would ever take back that decision.
We roll with things. We go back and forth. We make some decisions knowing we’ll need to stay flexible, ready to change if that’s what’s needed to be faithful in our marriage, to our family, in our callings.
We mess up. Sometimes one of us calls an audible without consulting the other. Sometimes we have to apologize for those calls, but we also trust each other to make them when the game demands it.2 We’ve gotten things right, and we’ve gotten things wrong. We’ve needed patience, wisdom, and discernment. We’ve needed lots of repentance and forgiveness. We’ve needed mutual sacrifice. But never, not once, in 25 years have we needed a deciding vote.
We make decisions in ways that we hope will honor the other and help us to be faithful.
A backyard anniversary dinner during the pandemic.
We submit, one to the other. We submit, mutually, “subject to one another out of reverence for Christ” (Ephesians 5:21). We even submit to our children, though they might not know or appreciate it. Most importantly, we submit to the God who is love.
There’s a sense to the word “submission” that writers and editors feel. To submit is to lay one’s work before a trusted other, in the hope that said other will accept the work and help the author make it better so that it can go out into the world. This submission isn’t a giving up. It’s a building up, a partnership for the sake of the good, a way for both parties to do good work together.
And that’s what marriage is for: good work for the sake of the kingdom, for the sake of spouse and family and church and world: good work for God and for others. We give figs, and we give more figs, and we keep on giving figs. We give figs away. We tend the fruit. We pray for fruitful trees. We try to remember water and fertilizer. We get profligate with the figs. When we’re generous in giving, sometimes we get to see our tables fill up with figgy goodness: figgy pudding, and cookies, and jam, and more: fruit on fruit on fruit on fruit. The more figs given, the more received. Spirit grown.
Grace & peace,
BFJ
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An understanding of sex and gender which reads male/female complementarity to call for male headship and authority, asks wives to submit in a way not asked of husbands, and denies women ministry roles in the church.
Dearest spouse, look! I used a sports analogy.
Congratulations on 25 years! We just celebrated 20 and I heartily echo your experience that we have never needed a "deciding vote"; it's a give and take.
I once had congregational leaders respond to the idea of having a pastoral team with shared leadership rather than a "senior" and an "associate" with a very similar argument to the complementarian one you're responding to here. "The buck has to stop somewhere!" I would love to hear your thoughts sometime on how this kind of thinking about authority affects the church as a body who is "joined together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work."
Right on!