The Wife's Complete Surrender

There are actually a lot of religious women in the US who follow this model. "Submitted wife" is the term I have seen used.
Both my grandmothers, and to some extent my mom fall in this camp. It worked out for them as all the men involved are decent and benevolent. My paternal grandma was no pushover however and if something was totally unacceptable she stood up for herself and anyone that needed it.
I have also seen more dictatorial arrangements among people of my grandparents' generation (my way or highway types), and these households always had a simmering tension.
I can see the appeal in these relationships. (Un)fortunately I have inherited a double dose of my patti's strong will so I cannot see myself living like this.

 

I guess in today's generation it takes an extremely naive wife to think husband knows everything and is always correct .

i treat my husband as my equal and human who is capable of making
mistakes just like me.

I am too worldly wise to accept such arrangement and surrender completely .

 

From my observation of this type of marriage (here in USA) the woman as the decades progresses becomes more and more clueless and out of touch. And as men have such a proclivity for dying off before their wives, the woman then has a very rude awakening that she doesn't know a lot of things that she thought she knew (and possibly lectured others about) when she has to take care of it herself.

 

Good thread...

I recently read a (budding Tamil author) story about a woman having trouble with her marriage life because she looks at her in-laws as bad and always suspecting their motives. In her childhood, she saw how her mom was ill-treated by her grand-parents/aunts and felt that her dad didn't protect her mom. Even though, her mom seems to happy with her life, the little girl wasn't convinced. As a married woman, she didn't trust her husband and made life as living hell for both the families. The story is about how she failed to understand 'what goes behind the closed door between the parents and what made her mom cheerful in life (indirect support and security given by her dad?), regardless of earlier in-laws problems'. My point is, our childhood view of marriage life, knowingly or unknowingly plays a role at present. Do we see the world through a clear glass or through a tinted glass?

The education may give us some protection in marriage. But, there is no one solution fits for all. The marriage life is like 'roll of the dice', draw of the luck and it could go either way.

At the beginning, I trusted my DH 100% and now, later in life he started looking up to me for suggestion. How or when it happened, I really don't know.

 

hmm... It depends... Highly depends on the equation between the spouses.

Let me give you some examples within my family.

I have loads of exposure. Diverse exposure as like meeting with very vulnerable people to high level authorities, and working together with them. Thanks to my career.
Now I can't shut my mouth from opining when it comes to anything that matters to me/my family/my society/my world.. and the list has no end.
Even though I believe my husband would do his best, I still want to add some of my knowledge to make it better.
It is because, I strongly believe "I have some knowledge about this and that".

Contrastingly, my own sister doesn't have that kind of exposure as me. She studied in our home city, worked in the same city and never traveled abroad alone. She is a perfect house-wife, mother. But when it comes to outside matters, she highly depends on her husband.
Her husband has loads of exposure and worldly knowledge, plus experience.
More so, he is 7 years elder to her. This way my sister believes her husband is great at making decisions that concerns outside matters. But when it comes to household matters, she has a strong say.

In my bro's family things are very old fashioned. My SIL never worked outside of her home. She is happy and content with her submissive housewife role. She is too young and sometimes naive too.
Since she doesn't have worldly experience, exposure and family support (her parents lives in Australia- recently migrated); she believes her husband is her world.
She blindly supports whatever her husband says. She feels it is more comfortable rather than taking a risky step and suffer later. This suits her non-risk loving character very much.
Therefore, my brother runs the show in their family. His decisions from breast feeding the kid to cooking the menu to investment etc..etc.. are always respected and accepted by my SIL. Hence, they never quarreled about it.
My SIL believes her husband is perfect, and I am sure she would tell her little DD one day, that "follow what pappa says" without any hard feelings.

As I said above... these things highly depend on the equations between you and your spouse.

 

Very interesting topic Rihana. Never been discussed here before, as far as I know and a topic on which one single individual can have opinions and then further opinions with caveats.

Sorry if this turns out to be a looooong essay!

When I look at the kind of life women are leading today, I am forced to wonder if our grandmas did not have it better. Yes, they had no say in any matter, they just cooked for the family, created huge families and that was the end of the story. Or was it so? To be very honest, I have never known my dad's parents. My grandma died well before I was born so all I know about her is through hearsay. I hear she was quite the terror to her dils but my mom was fond of her and says the mil had a soft corner for her. She was extremely courageous (defined by the fact that she was not scared of snakes ) and capable despite of the lack of formal education. My aunt (dad's sis) barely got to go to school till class IV. But when I see what she is capable of without formal education, I can only wonder what she would have done if she had been 'educated'. My mom's mom was the queen of the house and the outside affairs were looked after by my grandpa. My dad took care of all financial and 'outside' matters while mom took care of the kids, grandkids, home but she was certainly no walk-over. For all this, I doubt they were ever taken for granted. I can well imagine the degree of influence they had without it having been very obvious. In the two years of my marriage before fil passed on, I have seen fil depending a lot on mil emotional as well as mentally.

Cut to today's situation. Leave aside all the household work plus work outside plus bring up kids scenario which is not uncommon (to say the least) I wonder if we can truly say that a large percentage of women really have much influence over what is done or not done in the house - until they become mils. Is their influence proportionate to the strides they have made in the past couple of decades, not to mention all the jokes about "I am the boss of the house and I have my wife's permission to say so". That remains what it is - a plaque on the wall.

Would I be able to let go and trust my entire life to the BH? Finances, yes, because I don't know what they mean except that I live sensibly without blowing up unreasonable amounts of money, don't buy up gold or diamond mines etc. That is the beginning and end of my knowledge of finances. A load of other policy matters? Even if I chose to, the BH would procastinate over decisions and then come back after 5 years and do what I had been pestering him to do 5 years back and then pretend it was his own idea. So no, I don't think I can "trust" him to do what is needed without chewing up his brains for a bit and then sitting back and giving him 5-10 years to decide - 5 years to decide whether we should get the house painted and 10 years to decide whether a holiday is really called for!

The dynamics have changed quite irrevocably. Neither men, nor women are quite what they used to be in our grandparent's time. They are neither as self sufficient, nor do they seem to be made of the same mettle as the men and women of old. To me it appears that we just bumble on thanks to as well as despite each other.

As for whether it is desirable to have complete division of labour - NOOOOO. I have seen elderly widowed men being at the mercy of others because they can't cook for themselves and the elderly women in my life being dependent on others to run their financial affairs because they were clueless when it came to handling financial matters. (I really need to get a grip on myself and learn to handle finances myself!)

Sorry once again for this post of "epical" proportions.

P.S. After reading this, I feel like I am reading Vikram Seth's "A suitable boy", meandering from one point to another. Should I delete the post. Wait, BH has gone out. Let him come back and then I shall take his opinion in the matter though I know what he will say "just endless rambling"!

 

Life with clear demarcation used to be simpler (when intentions good from dh and dw). But complexity that has now taken over is irreversible, i suppose.

@satchitananda
No worries, since overall IL = ER
(Reg endless)

 

thinkingsmiley Hey Ragini, thought the puzzles were reserved only for the Neurites thread. Now scratching the remnants of my neurons to figure out what ER stands for other than of course the royal insignia!

Aha! Got it! Thanks Ragini! :-D

Well, that's my concession to morning exercises. I choose to exercise my fingers today.