Can we talk COMPLEMENTARIANISM? What happens to marriage when couples act out the commonly taught doctrine that husbands make the final decision in marriage?
After surveying 20,000 women, we now know!
A thread with fun stats stuff:
Let's start with beliefs: 62.2% of Christian wives believe that a wife submitting to a husband's leadership is a way that she can love him. And 39.4% of wives believe that the husband should have decision-making power in the marriage.
And you know what? When women believe this, it doesn't affect their marriage. It's neutral--not good or bad.
UNLESS--and this is a big unless--they actually act it out.
You see, most people who believe this do not practice it.
In only 17.9% of Christian marriages do wives report that husbands make the final decision (even if they consult with the wife first). The vast majority of Christian couples practice collaborative decision-making, where they work towards an agreement.
What happens to those who let the husband decide? The chance of divorce skyrockets--it's 7.4 times higher (similar to the Gottman Institute's results: these types of marriages have an 81% divorce rate).
These women are also far more likely to say that their opinions don't matter in marriage as much as their husband's do. And when that happens? Sexual satisfaction plummets.
When wives feel their opinions don't matter, they're:
* 6.74 x less likely to say their husband prioritizes their pleasure
* 3.24 x less likely to be aroused during sex
* 1.31 x more likely to experience sexual pain.
* 3.61 x more likely to have sex only because they have to.
In summary: believing husbands should make the final decision doesn't hurt marriages. But those who act it out are more likely to get divorced, & the husbands are far more likely to be selfish lovers. If a belief is only benign if it's not practiced, is it a belief worth keeping?
Why not instead teach couples to seek the Holy Spirit? To do the hard work of wrestling through a decision, rather than taking shortcuts? To value each other? That points people to Christ. It helps the marriage. And it creates stronger families.
You can read even more stats about decision-making in The Great Sex Rescue, along with even more data about the obligation sex message, the "all men struggle with lust" message, the gatekeeping message, and more!
Now that Josh Duggar has been indicted on possession of Child Sexual Abuse Materials (child porn), some depicting toddlers, we must confront the sexualization of children in evangelicalism.
Let's start with teenagers, and go all the way down to toddlers.
Shaunti Feldhahn, in For Young Women Only, tells girls "82% of boys feel little ability and little responsibility to stop the sexual progression." Telling girls that boys have "little ability" to stop legitimizes date rape and puts the blame at the girl's feet.
Furthermore, in a post to teenage girls, she warns that their date's dad will be tempted to "visually take in, linger on, and fantasize about all the details of this great body he's seeing." Let that sink in. Teens are being told that it is normal for adult men to sexualize them.
Best-selling evangelical books instruct women to give their husbands sex to deal with their husbands’ porn addictions.
If any reporters are working on stories about Josh Duggar, I’d love to give background on how wives in these communities are told his porn use is their fault.
We just conducted the largest survey ever done of evangelical women’s marital & sexual satisfaction for our new book The Great Sex Rescue. One of the things we were looking at was the teaching, “women should have frequent sex with their husbands to keep them from watching porn."
In November 2019, Focus on the Family, in their broadcast, said the reason men watch porn is that women aren’t having enough sex. Every Man’s Battle (the book series sold 4,000,000 copies) told women they were like a “merciful vial of methadone” for him when he’s quitting porn.
So @markgungor said yesterday: "At it’s core, marriage is a sexual contract. Refusing sex to your partner is a violation of the contract."
In our recent survey of 20,000 Christian women, we found that his take on sexless marriages is completely off base. Here's how.
When women (1) have high marital satisfaction; (2) frequently orgasm during intercourse; and (3) have husbands who don't use porn, marriages almost NEVER become sexless. Sexlessness is a SYMPTOM of a greater problem. Women don't suddenly up and decide to give up on sex one day.
Now there are many reasons why a marriage might become sexless. In this thread, I'm only going to address the most common scenario: She never orgasms; she feels distant from her husband; and she's one of the 16% of women who say their primary emotion after sex is "feeling used."
It's time for the evangelical church to realize that the way we talk about sex and lust and porn poses a danger to women, as the Atlanta shooting all too horrifically showed us--and 8 people, including 7 women, died for it.
Apparently the shooter has said he had a "sex addiction" and the spas were "a temptation ... that he wanted to eliminate." This language sounds a lot like how Every Man's Battle describes the temptation to lust.
Defeating lust involves "bouncing your eyes" away from women. The 1st step is to "make a list of your greatest enemies." Among your potential enemies? Female joggers, or a "female co-worker who tends to dress a little suggestively." Or women at the beach.
Biblically, sex is INTIMATE, MUTUAL, and PLEASURABLE. The whole point of 1 Corinthians 7:3-5 is mutuality. And sex is about intimacy; God describes His relationship with us in sexual terms.
Therefore, any interpretation of 1 Corinthians 7 that says to women, “You need to allow your husband to use your body on demand, no matter what you are feeling,” is completely unscriptural and taking that out of context to weaponize it.