My Perfect Husband, and the Death Trap of Comparing Marriages
Last month, my husband and I celebrated three years of marriage, and thus far I can honestly say that I fall in love with him more every day. Marriage has been a beautiful adventure for the two of us, and the longer we are together, the longer I understand God's purpose in joining us.
One of the reasons I love my husband so dearly is his character. He has taught me much about strength, love, and sacrifice, laying himself down for me on an almost daily basis. In my eyes, he is exactly what a Christian man should be, a sentiment that conjures great respect in my own heart.
However, my esteem has a strange and unfortunate underbelly. I find in myself a tendency to compare the behavior of other men against the goodness of my husband. To me, my husband is the gold standard, so there is a temptation to judge other husbands against the perceived greatness of my own.
This bias is one of the unfortunate flipsides of being in a happy marriage. A good marriage and a good spouse not only provide insight into God's design for matrimony, but these blessings can also color our judgment. They can instill us with prejudice as we read scriptural teachings about marriage and draw conclusions from those teachings.
To understand the danger of this bias, consider a recent study conducted by researchers at Harvard, NYU, and the University of Utah. The study, titled "Marriage Structure and Resistance to the Gender Revolution," examined how married men with stay-at-home wives view women in the workplace. The study of 718 married men yielded the following fascinating results. The researchers write,
We found that employed husbands in traditional marriages, compared to those in modern marriages, tend to (a) view the presence of women in the workplace unfavorably, (b) perceive that organizations with higher numbers of female employees are operating less smoothly, © find organizations with female leaders as relatively unattractive, and (d) deny, more frequently, qualified female employees opportunities for promotion.
The use of terms like "traditional marriage" and "modern marriage" betrays an inherent bias. Nevertheless, the findings are fascinating. An article in The Atlantic helpfully summarized the study's significance this way:
The studies showed that personal views and the domestic architecture of male leaders' private lives helped shape women's professional opportunities. This held true in both surveys and lab experiments, including one that tested whether candidates with identical backgrounds, but different names—Drew versus Diane—should receive a spot in a sought-after, company-sponsored MBA program. According to the research, men in traditional marriages gave Diane "significantly poor evaluations" compared to Drew. It seems that husbands with wives working at home imprinted that ideal onto women in the office.
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Edone
Hi everyone, am edone from United States I can still remember 2months ago When I was left with a broken heart by my fiancee, I was unable to sleep, i wake up even i try to sleep and cry out my life, Everyone was saying he doesn't worth all my pains and love, but deep inside of me, he worth every drop of my tears.It was worse that i had to be buying sleeping pills to sleep at night. My fiancee left me with a 2months pregnancy few months to our weeding, he dumped me for another lady because of what i don't know. He said to my face that i am a looser and he never loved me, which i know its a lie, it was so surprising that he changed to a demon i never see in him. Then I noticed that the heart monitor was showing a beat! But this was only his pacemaker. each day has never been the same for me since that day. to worsen issue i lost my job and everything was like am drowning in an ocean i cant swim. There was a day i was just surfing the net and i saw a website of this spell lady, PRIESTESSIFAAGREATSPELLPOWERS.WEBS.COM, she sound so powerful that i felt that she can bring back to me all that i have lost. I contacted her through her email on priestessifaa@yahoo.com and she gave me hope that things would be back to normal with her spell, i did doubt because it was my first time to see spiritual work and since my liver could turn a demon over, so i believe anything can still happen. I gave her all details she requires to carry with the spell, An few hours later she came back to me telling that the gods reveals that the other woman did a very strong evil spell on me for my lover to start seeing me like and slot and hate me forever. This hurt even more than a nail in my head, i gave the spell lady a go ahead to do a go ahead to break and curse and return my lover to me. The most happiest part i expected and came to pass but was so fast and accurate was that my lover came to me after 4days begging with his life that he never knew how things went like that, he went back, to that lady, he beats and push her out of his house and never to see her again. Everything was like having my life back again all through this spell lady Priestess Ifaa. she is awesome and great with her spell and she is so accurate and fast with her work. My lover and i are getting married this december and in few months from now i will put to bed. Priestess ifaa is a goddess. meet her and heal your broken heart too.
Sarina Langlois
we can expect there to be a number of expressions of the Christ-church relationship, all of which reflect the one true type.
Margeret Desantis
To take the research further, scholars might also consider how women view men who work versus men who stay at home, or make less money, all in relation to their own family situations.
Shawnee Harter
whose wives stay at home. To take the research further, scholars might also consider how women view men who work versus men who stay at home, or make less money, all in relation to their own family situations.
K.
As for the attitudes of the men with stay-at-home wives, I don't think it's so much that their wives stay at home as it is their attitudes towards women overall. I've seen and experienced that men with complementarian attitudes towards women treat women with less respect at work and elsewhere than do men with egalitarian attitudes. Thank you for your comments about books on Christian womanhood! There is no one set way to be a woman, just as there is no one-size-fits-all Christian marriage. For quite a while, I've felt that the church overall has let Christian writers and the Christian publishing industry drive our views of women and marriage.
samantha
3 years is a piece of cake.I think up to the first 7 or 8 years are easy, How about you re-write this article when you and your husband have fallen off your pedestals and life is actually difficult, I'd like to read it then.... Too many christians talk about the fluffy lovey-dovey-perfect marriage they have "in Christ" and it's not all it's cracked up to be. Marriage stinks, it's hard, it causes us to grow and go through crap and hopefully in the end we are more like Christ, "refined through fire"...it's not a bed of roses... Grace and forgiveness and a commitment to Christ are the only way to make it work. I know this with my head but my heart doesn't so easily follow....
Belle
"Over the years I have read books and heard sermons about biblical womanhood that, as far as I could tell, reflected more about the wife of the pastor than the truth of Gods Word." Amen! Thanks so much for this post, I've really appreciated thinking about the studies you mentioned - a good reminder that the way my husband and I make our family life work (usually!) perfectly may not look like may of the other varieties of perfect out there. It's also good to think through how I represent families (to my husband, and one day, my son) who make different choices to us, and how I have at least some power to influence those two; may we always help each other to be more loving rather than more judgmental.
Kathi Vande Guchte
Ala Schechter, I'm so sorry for this pain in your marriage.
ala schechter
get back to us after 20 years; when you have 2 kids in grade school and your husband is trying, with very little success, to hide the fact that he's been spending too much "quality time" with a 25 year old newbie in his office.
Estell Matheny
To me, my husband is the gold standard, so there is a temptation to judge other husbands against the perceived greatness of my own.
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