Submissive For Your Approval

I got into a random discussion this morning with a friend about equality in relationships. She comes from a Christian family and was going on about how she's butting heads with her sister about whether or not women should be submissive to their husbands. The sister is married with four kids, stays at home and essentially gave up on her own dreams for the sake of her husband's. He told her that once he left his previous job, which took him and the family all over the country at a moment's notice for the past decade, she'd be able to go out and do some of the things she wanted to do. That time came and he flipped the script, claiming he was now being called to enter into new ventures and thus she'd have to remain a stay-at-home mom. And she's doing just that. There was no discussion, no argument, he just told her what to do and she's doing it without questioning anything or bringing up how she feels about it. Her sister is also a Christian but is the polar opposite; unmarried, working on her career and unwilling to become a submissive housewife at any point. And that's caused tension between them because one is living out her dreams and the other is not. Things came to a head recently when one sister told the other one to speak up and was met with a lecture on how she's not a true Christian because she isn't settled down and submissive. According to her, men are the providers and the ones who make the decisions and women are the ones who sit down, shut up and blindly support whatever the dude wants to do.

I've heard this thinking before and it always baffles me that people are able to actually get through life with that kind of attitude. I also hear quite often that most men supposedly want a submissive woman and don't like to be challenged. If that's true, then count me amongst yet another minority. I dated someone who half-bought into the whole submissive thing and, needless to say, it didn't work out because that ish is just crazy. I get that some people still want the whole 1950's thing of the man making the money and the decisions and the woman taking care of the house, but I don't agree with those who claim it's a religious thing or that it's the way every relationship should be conducted. This is why some Christians creep me out; because their views on things are either very simple minded or everything is attributed to Jesus. "He" wants women to submit to their men on all matters, "He" would've sent a more open-minded man if women were meant to question their husbands. Pardon my French, but that's crap. And if you end up in a relationship where you're unhappy about deferring to your husband on everything, it's your own damn fault. You have free will, exercise it if you're unhappy.

I tend to be drawn to strong, independent women who have their own thing going on so it's not like I'd end up in this kind of scenario anyway. But I don't understand why there has to be a dominant and a submissive in a relationship at all. I want to be in a partnership, which means no one leads and no one follows. Decisions are made jointly, each party contributes and each party is heard. If you're unhappy with something, you speak up and shit gets solved. Life is too short to be unhappy for any stretch of time. I have a feeling that this chick is going to come out of all of this in 20 or so years, realize it was a mistake to give everything up for a man and by then, it may be too late for her to go out and do what she wants to. She's complained to her sister for eons about how she's not thrilled with the situation she's in. But her equally religious friends and family all tell her the same stuff about how she's a wife and she signed up to be this way when they got married. Hell to the no.