I understand the sentiment, but it’s utopian.

In every single relationship you have, whether romantic or otherwise, one or the other person has more power, de facto. That’s the reality of it. Even in the most dyed in the wool “equalist” marriages, it isn’t really equal if you look under the hood – one or the other has more power, even if it is exercised in a particularly subtle way.

I fully realize that the idea that men should be “in charge” is repugnant to many women because of their ideological programming. It isn’t about “subjection” — it’s about leadership. Men should not be domineering or subjugate women — but relationships simply work better for men and women when men lead them, at least overtly. I agree that some men make poor leaders, and these kinds of men generally also make poor (or at least very dissatisfying for their wives) husbands, and probably have no business being married. The reason for that is that the the currently common “equalist” marriage where women are de facto in charge is ultimately dissatisfying for women. The reason it’s ultimately dissatisfying for women is that many of the women eventually (perhaps even unknowingly) yearn for their mates to push back at them, but the men don’t do that in order to avoid the conflict (because men don’t handle that conflict as well psychologically or emotionally per a number of LMFTs as I mentioned in my post above), and eventually this leads women to think less of their husbands, and become bored with them. This is a common pattern in relationship failure today, and it directly flows from the fact that most of the equalist marriages are, de facto, female led.

Again, I am not making this up. A very interesting article by Sandra Tsing Loh appeared in last month’s Atlantic which is well worth reading. In it she documents her own feelings as well as those of her age cohort upper middle class female friends in LA about their husbands — all of whom are in equalist marriages, and all of whom contribute a lot around the house and are great fathers and so on. But the women were deathly bored. The men were emasculated in most cases due to the equalism, in several cases the women were the leaders of the family (unhappily so), and found themselves wishing their husbands were like men of yore who had mid-life crises and chased their secretaries. Bright feminist women like Cristina Nehring are writing entire books about how equalism in relationships has killed off love and passion, and she pines (with quite well written prose, I might add) for unequal relationships, saying that these provide the basis for true passion, something which has been lost in the relentless ideological drive towards equalism as an absolute value. It’s fascinating to see feminists come full circle on this, but that’s a topic for another thread.

Feminism and its aftermath have convinced women, intellectually, that they want equalist marriages … but the facts on the ground suggest that in many of these marriages the relationship simply becomes unsustainable because the woman, who de facto becomes the one “in charge”, becomes unattracted to her husband (and he to her, likely), the sex dries up, and the relationship falters.

All of that is much less likely to happen when the male is leading (not domineering or subjugating — those kinds of situations lead to unhappiness, too, of course) because that (1) preserves his wife’s respect, (2) garners and maintains her attraction (regardless of what feminist studies tells her to feel), (3) supports his attraction for her. Of course this presupposes the man’s ability to lead with competence and confidence, and men who do not have that are better off not being married, because their risk of divorce skyrockets. The reverse situation — of female leadership in marriages — leads to a mess of dysfunction in many cases and unhappiness for men and women alike. The third option of “true equality” is really utopian and unrealistic. It applies to no other relationship we have in life, and expecting it to apply to this one is a rather unrealistic approach.

The reality in “equality marriages” is generally the following: what the woman says *ultimately* goes. As a *practical* matter that is the way most “equality” marriages work — someone is still in charge, in effect, because practically speaking because it is terribly inefficient and friction-causing for a family to be constantly renegotiating itself. So the woman is in charge, by default, in equality marriages. What I mean by being “in charge” is that generally she decides what happens — sure, there is the appearance of “equality” because things are “discussed” (perhaps even ad nauseam in some cases), but in effect she decides what happens –> either by agreeing to what her husband wants or not, but ultimately it’s her call in the end.

Why is that? For a few reasons. The first is the real and tangible power that family law hands her: that’s the ultimate power that women have, and they are well aware of it, and it casts a shadow over “power” in marriages. Another is that women seem to be much more comfortable with marital/relational conflict than men are. So what you typically see in “equality” marriages is that there is a lot of discussion about what happens (at least at the beginning, that is), but ultimately to the extent that there are disagreements about significant issues, almost always it’s her view that prevails, either because the man is worried about provoking her under family law or because she ups the level of conflict to a level he can’t or doesn’t want to deal with, so he gives in and she wins. This isn’t me making this up: LMFT’s like Richard Driscoll have openly stated in print that women tend to win most relationship disagreements in this era of “equality” because of the mismatch in the way men and women experience relationship conflict — to wit, women have a huge advantage because they do not react as negatively to relationship conflict, and therefore tend to drive their perspectives home fairly consistently, at least where they care enough about the issue. Driscoll says he has observed this pretty consistently in his practice in both marital and non-marital relationships, and that women fairly often admit that they “win” most disputes — which in effect means that they are the ones “in charge”, even though that takes place under the veneer of “equality” due to the presence of “discussion”, which women generally win.

For all of these reasons, there are very few marriages where things are “equal”, but in most “equality” marriages, women are more or less firmly “in charge” despite window dressing to the contrary.

1) I’m still glad there’s separation of church and state here.
2) There are many things to be said for Confucianism, but there’s a reason my mother (and two of my cousins) left Korea…
3) Why is it always one submitting to the other? How about trying actual equality for a change?

Because I don’t think our problems can be solved alone, input is very valuable. However, it does take some time to digest, so it might take me a while to come up with a comprehensive response.

One thing that gives me a bit of pride (hopefully not too much) is the thoughtfulness and intelligence of the comments. The majority of comments I get here are definitely worth reading, and that makes the effort worth it.

Maybe I’m a bit foolish to think so, but I do have faith in American minds. I think we really can make a difference with some mental effort and cooperation. If not today, for posterity at least. That is the point of writing, after all.

I think it will be hard to make the adjustments to our culture in order to shepherd it through, or past, this quite messed up period we find ourselves in. We really don’t have a firm enough foundation, yet, for that, I think.