Role Reversal In Marriage
How you see it makes all the difference!
What do you get when an emotionally immature man marries an emotionally immature woman? In a Religious Marriage, you get role-reversal. In a Kingdom Marriage, you get an opportunity to grow up.
Incidents of role-reversal are widespread! Role reversal and opportunities to grow up abound in marriage. So common is the occurrence that some reading this are experiencing this, and nearly all know of a couple that is challenged by what some view as an upside-down marriage. At one time I did too!
Role reversal in Religious Marriages is discussed as husbands taking on more of the wife's role and wives taking on of the husband’s role. In Religious Marriages, husbands are assigned the role of leadership, provision, and protection. And wives have been assigned a supportive role that includes domestic activities and care of the children. It’s not that these roles are wrong, it is the inflexibility of these roles that presents the greatest challenges. Not only do they not permit opportunities for growth, but the rigidity of these roles have been used to guilt and shame husbands and wives.
Bruce's story is a great example.
"Our marriage is upside-down and backward. I am the stay-at-home Dad. Between the four kids including our nine-year-old, Asher—I've changed 14,000 diapers. I do the laundry, the cleaning and most of the cooking. I worry over every cough and a bloody nose.
Roni is a corporate attorney. She loves power tools, hardware stores, steakhouses and playing the stock market. She warns me not to jump up every time someone skins a knee, so we don't end up with a houseful of crybabies. She organizes, plans, and strategizes. But even though she is Generalissimo Momma, we struggle over who's in control." (Ms. Magazine, June 2003)
According to Bruce, Roni was more educated, earned triple his income (and triple the hours away from home), leaving him largely responsible for managing the children and household chores.
This scenario has no place in a religious marriage. It defies the model of hierarchy, gender-based needs, and gender assigned roles. Religious marriage defines interactions between husbands and wives almost exclusively based on gender. Because the religious model of marriage is rigid and inflexible, when husbands and wives don’t fit the mold there is no recourse, rather guilt and shame.
The model of Kingdom Marriage is a relationship. God designed relationships for the exchange of love, connection, reproduction and to facilitate growth and change. All men and women come to marriage emotionally immature in one area or another. Marriage is one of the last chances men and women have to grow up.
Consider this. There is a generation of men that have been raised as players. They played sports. They played video games. They played women. And they are praised, paid and promoted for playing. In this same generation, females have been raised to be responsible for themselves, for others and things. Marry these two and the husband wants the wife to play more. The wife wants the husband to be more responsible. God wants them both to grow up!
And what emotionally growing up looks like is different for each husband and wife! If Bruce were part of this generation that learned to play and was rewarded for doing so, perhaps God wants him to learn how to take responsibility. And what better place to learn than in a relationship with one who is ‘super’ responsible? And while religion subtly and overtly guilt and shame Bruce, could it be that God is pleased by his willingness to take personal responsibility for people, places and things. Taking personal responsibility is required by all Kingdom citizens—male and female, married or not. Could it be that what looks wrong and out of order to religion is God bringing Bruce into Divine Order?
Let’s assume Bruce’s wife is part of the generation of females that learned to be responsible for self, others and things. She has been rewarded with more job responsibility and money to go with it. Perhaps God wants Roni to learn how to relax, play and not take things so seriously. And what better place to see and learn what play looks and feels like than in a relationship with Bruce? The same religion that guilts and shames Bruce also guilts and shames Roni into believing the exercise of her authority as a responsible somehow undermines Bruce.
Bruce and Roni could have a great relationship. Each one growing in response to Kingdom designated needs, whether to develop personal responsibility skills or play skills. And their home life may be very efficient because they are managing homelife based on skills and abilities. But also, each one’s developmental needs have the opportunity to be met. Bruce can learn how to be responsible. And Roni can learn how to relax and play. This is only possible in Kingdom Marriage because roles revolve around skills and abilities.
Despite Bruce and Roni’s relationship appearing to work for them, his last sentence reveals a religious mindset. Bruce writes, "But even though she is Generalissimo Momma, we struggle over who's in control." Perhaps Generalissimo Momma is a funny pet name, but an endearing one—I think not! The words that follow, "we struggle over who's in control", reveal an emotionally charged relationship whose foundation is built on hierarchy and fixed roles.
In Religious Marriage roles are gender-based. This is generally so, regardless of the strengths, skills and needs men and women bring to married life. Wives in these kinds of marriages are continuously encouraged to submit to and support their husband’s leadership. Many are guilted and shamed into dumbing down their skills and abilities to fit a super-imposed model of hierarchy. It is a hierarchy that ranks husbands and wives and regulates roles based on rank and gender. How does this approach help Roni with the developmental and Kingdom need to learn how to relax and play?
Husbands in these marriages are continuously encouraged to lead and provide. I can only imagine what it must feel like for the Bruces’ in the Church, who before marriage never learned personal responsibility, or how to provide for himself, let alone others. Could this be some of what is behind husbands’ feeling like they just don’t measure up—that they don’t have what it takes? Guilting and shaming these husbands is wrong. In Religious Marriage, Bruce’s rank and position in the hierarchy provides little opportunity or incentives to learn and grow in taking responsibility. From day one, Bruce must lead, provide and protect his family. It can be a severe learning curve with fatal outcomes for the relationship. It’s not the tasks that do husbands and wives in. Emotionally mature husbands and wives can separate tasks for who they are as individuals.
But for emotionally immature people, it’s all about how we feel about the tasks. Religious Marriage teaching contributes a great deal to how husbands and wives feel about the tasks they perform in marriage. Religious Marriage disregards the Kingdom's mandate that each citizen mature in the knowledge, values, and behaviors set forth by the King. I Peter 1:4-8 helps,
“As a result of this, he has given you magnificent promises that are beyond all price, so that through the power of these tremendous promises you can experience partnership with the divine nature, by which you have escaped the corrupt desires that are of the world.
So devote yourselves to lavishly supplementing your faith with goodness, and to goodness add understanding, and to understanding add the strength of self-control,
and to self-control add patient endurance, and to patient endurance add godliness,
and to godliness add mercy toward your brothers and sisters, and to mercy toward others add unending love. Since these virtues are already planted deep within, and you possess them in abundant supply, they will keep you from being inactive or fruitless in your pursuit of knowing Jesus Christ more intimately.
Every Christian male and female, husband and wife has and will experience the tension between what God created us to be and what religion teaches us to be. Religion is more concerned with husbands and wives appearing and doing right, than actually being right before God and with each other. For this reason, Religious Marriage assigns and enforces roles gender roles. It is a man-made attempt to create Kingdom Marriage. But lacks the substance and opportunities Kingdom Marriage offers husbands and wives to grow up as Kingdom citizens. It strips husbands and wives of the need to be vulnerable during this growth process. Intimacy can be measured by the degree to which husbands and wives are vulnerable to each other.
Kingdom Marriages focuses on the King, who is Christ and each one growing in devotion to Him as Kingdom citizens. The irony is that Jesus was all of these things—a leader, a follower, a provider, a receiver, vulnerable, responsible and playful. In the Kingdom there is no gender assignment, or re-assignment. That’s because in the Kingdom there is no male or female to assign these things!
That husbands and wives can experience, grow and relate in all of these ways is dynamic, liberating and uplifting. All this is available in Kingdom Marriage!