MY FELLOW WOMEN: FIND A HUSBAND YOU CAN OBEY

 

When I was a teenager in Cork in the early noughties, I was interested in hearing the life-stories of some married couples who I grew to know very well when I was passing from girlhood to early womanhood.  Particularly, I was fascinated as how they fell in love and why the women had said "yes" when the men asked them to marry them.  Nothing succeeds like success, and the reason for my being a nosey-parker into their affairs was because these women had happy marriages, with a harmony between them and their man and a palpable mutual respect.  Their marriages were not cut and pasted from the pages of a steamy romance novel.  But they had survived the test of time.  The women in question had been on the dating scene in the 50s and early 60s.  

 

Cork is a snug, closely-knit community and Corkonians are famous for commenting sharply on other people's business.   In at least one case where the wife was very good-looking, I heard others remark, "Oh she could’ve married a better lookin’ fellow."  Getting to know the wife better, I learned that before marrying her husband,  she had "done a line" with a much more handsome fellow – there had been lots of sparks, lots of fun and romance – but the woman had broken it off.  There had been "lots of chemistry" to borrow modern parlance, but the man showed poor judgement, did not respect her enough,  and did not have enough maturity. It was like he was forever a boy. Marriage is not for children. 

 

In several of the other cases, I learned that the women had been "doing a line" with other men before meeting the man who would be their husbands. They had not said, "no" to marrying these other men because they made bad decisions, drank too heavily and squandered their wages, lost their jobs due to poor performance: all signs of poor self-control.  Some of the men showed signs of being very controlling and signs that they would be bullying husbands. 

 

There had been pain when the women had stopped dating men who were not head-of-the-household material, but they had no regrets in finding and marrying a decent, good-natured man who treated them chivalrously and who had enough good judgment to lead the family.  These women would draw a lot of scorn and be scoffed at, by modern husband hunters who are given the advice to find a "hot" man who the woman thinks she can command.  What marked these pre-Vatican II women apart from the younger women who had married later in the 60s and 70s was that this band of women were looking for a man who they could vow to obey in the sacrament of marriage.  

 

Bear with me, I know the word "obey" is so loathed by feminists that anyone who used the word post-70s was hung out to dry. Now, the word is only used in dog-training, or Cocker Spaniel show trials.  But returning to the happily married Catholic women of the early 60s – whether or not they could respect a man’s will was a big factor in deciding to marry a man before women were puffed up with the mushrooming pride of feminism that grows in darkness – and teaches women that they are inferior if they are not in charge of the family. 

 

I’d like to make a case to my fellow women that it is in their best interests to reject feminist credos that argue a woman is effectively a well-trodden on doormat if she follows St Paul’s Epistle to the Ephesians (5:22-24) "the husband is the head of the wife, as Christ is the head of the Church…Therefore as the Church is subject to Christ, so also let the wives be to their husbands." 

 

It must be stressed upfront that this does not mean a woman conform to the man’s will in occasions of sin, nor does it mean that the woman must be a mini-slave, catering to the man’s every whim or silly fantasy.  I’d like to be clear that I’m not arguing that society will be instantly better if all married women start blindly obeying their husband like automatons.  

Vowing to obey a husband was a concept that made me uncomfortable for years not least because I’ve seen women who are married to rotters who make their lives a living hell. 

 

I’m not agitating for men to be allowed to abuse their power as head of the family.  But I have spoken to women married to bullying husbands, and many of them have told me that if before getting married they had asked themselves hard questions, perhaps the hardest being if they could abide by the bully’s dictates, then they would never have gotten hitched in the first place to this man.  Feminism teaches women that they are the lesser if they are not going to take control of the family, and often times when a woman falls for a bully, she self-deceives herself into thinking that the marriage will work because she will have power over him, and she may even change him! Ha!

 

Here’s the heart of my thesis:  if before marriage, a woman filters her suitors on the basis of men who are kind-hearted, have a balanced mindset and who have got what it takes to lead a family, they may well pick a man who would make a good husband/head of the household and enjoy a much better marriage. Then with better marriages taking place across the land, it will, with the grace of God make for a better society. 

 

The huge majority of priests that I’ve ever met are too embarrassed to make a case for St Paul’s teaching. If put on the spot, a priest formed in the seminaries where they are taught never to challenge feminism, will start wringing their hands and their cheeks will go strawberry red and their eyes will be glued to the floor.

 

If young Catholics – especially women in this instance – are not told that following St Paul’s Epistle to the Ephesians (Eph. 5:22-24) is in their best interests then will we be surprised when more bad marriages are made?  As anyone in a failed marriage or sham marriage knows, prevention is a million times better than cure. 

 

I have not made a bad marriage, but many, many times in my younger years I called off a romantic entanglement because I knew I would never trust the gent enough to obey him. It has been incredibly liberating not to be limited to picking a man based on chemistry, his good looks, and how much money he has. These things are good in themselves, but more importantly is finding a good’un whose will I respect.

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Classic painting of a father blessing his daughter and her husband on their wedding day was executed by Pascal Dagnan-Bouveret in 1880. 

I wrote this article some years ago for The Mass of Ages when I was single. At the time of publication, I did not post it here. But I feel a strong call to post it now.  I am no longer single yet I stand by my words all the more.