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This brings me no pride but once, many years
ago, I lied during a job interview.
I was hunting that first spot
out of college, a shiny new accounting degree just weeks away, talking with any
CPA firm that would let me through the door. About the time I thought I’d heard
every question imaginable, a partner in a large national firm asked me who
balanced my checkbook. “You,” he pressed, “or your wife?”
I was
more irked than surprised. We had spent several years swapping college and
work; having completed her degree first, my wife was the breadwinner while I
studied and took on the household chores, including the checkbook.
“She
does.”
I
needed that job. The truth was not only the right answer, it was the right
answer. But I don’t like people poking into my personal life – that’s for
putting in the newspaper.
Pride got the best
of me, no question, though it wasn’t for whatever ego boost comes from balancing
a checkbook. This put me in violation of a key assumption of Laura Doyle’s “The
Surrendered Wife,” released earlier this month by Simon & Shuster and already on
the New York Times bestseller list.
Doyle’s premise is this: A wife should not try to
control, criticize or change her husband. She should be respectful. If she
slips up she should apologize. If they disagree, she should do what he wants.
And she should leave the checkbook, investments, and major purchases to him,
whether he can handle it or not.
This is one of
those books you don’t need to open to form an opinion; just the title will give
some folks hives. I toyed with the idea of leaving a copy on the kitchen table
before leaving for work one morning for the fun of it, but found the thought of
coming home that night considerably less amusing.
Still, it’s too bad Doyle didn’t call
her book “The Surrendered Spouse.” The basic tenets for a surrendered wife are
that she “relinquishes inappropriate control of her husband; respects her
husband’s thinking; receives his gifts graciously and expresses gratitude for
him; expresses what she wants without trying to control him; relies on him to
handle household finances; focuses on her own self-care and fulfillment.” Make
that spouse and gender neutral and it would be hard to find fault.
In principle, at least. Doyle admits
that some things are hard to let pass, like a husband (I would say spouse) who
spends the grocery budget on sonic fishing lures or those adorable collectible
plates with dressed-up animals at tea parties. But, she suggests, most people
will figure that out somewhere this side of bankruptcy on their own. Letting
them do so keeps trust and peace in the marriage.
The publisher’s excerpts make no mention
of faith, though occasionally a ruckus erupts over the Biblical admonition of
Ephesians 5:22-23: “Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. For the
husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body,
of which he is the Savior.” This happened recently when a large Protestant
denomination publicly affirmed the doctrine.
We men tend
toward short attention spans; it doesn’t end there, guys. Ephesians goes on:
“Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up
for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the
word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or
wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. In this same way,
husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife
loves himself.” It’s hard to wreak much marital havoc by holding one’s wife
holy and blameless, by loving her as yourself.
A little surrendering would do most of us good. We can only control ourselves
anyway, and much of that is illusory. Seeing how the changes we make in
ourselves effects the way others behave toward us might prove to be worth the
effort.
© 1997- 2002 Brent Morrison
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