In the last lesson we started looking at dealing with being accused of something you didn’t do by considering how my wife can see me as being critical when I’m not trying to be. I shared four reasons: She’s critical of me, therefore, she assumes I’d be critical of her, she’s critical of herself, therefore, would assume I’d also be critical, I sound more critical than I realize, and she assumes I’m critical of her when I simply have a different opinion. I then mentioned there was a new idea that came to me before writing: “To be continued.” I guess it’s only fair I continue now as I said I would… so here goes.
A Sunday in the not-so-distant past, I was having a particularly difficult Sunday morning. I was exhausted from a long week, my wife was tired and sharp, and the kids were being… special. After keeping myself emotionally contained as best I could, I had to install the toddler seat that was somehow acting like a terrible toddler. My tired brain and hands likely had something to do with it, but that pushed me over the edge. Fortunately, this Sunday morning my wife and I had to take separate cars to church, which gave me the space to finish getting the kids in the car and then drive away on my own. This was the perfect Sunday for that because I wasn’t fit to be around anyone else. I needed to be alone and allowed to vent out all my frustrations (aka I screamed a lot). There is something particularly wonderful about being angry and alone in the car, so you can say anything you need at a volume you want without fear of scaring anyone. This scream-fest quickly turned into a complaint session to God. If most Christians heard me that morning, they would’ve been angry at and/or scared for me: “How can you be that honest to the One who knows your heart? You’re supposed to pretend you’re fine.” While I was sharing my feelings in a less than gentle way to God, this Bible verse came to mind: “Submit to one another.” (Eph 5:21a) This verse is the answer to so many relationship fights: submit. What was the problem I was facing? My wife and I struggle to submit to one another (one of us more than the other… but I’ll let you guess who I’d say that is… and yes, I have a very biased opinion). When this verse came to mind, it gave me one of those lightbulb moments, and I was left wondering how I hadn’t thought of this sooner. It’s so simple and clear: Pride destroys relationships: “This is their fault!” “I deserve better!” “Why don’t they meet my needs?” whereas submitting is about gentleness and kindness.
This idea follows the theme of the scale we’ve been looking at these last few months:
Inferior Based (-10) —— Humble (0) —— Superior Based (+10)
This idea of submitting definitely becomes more of a challenge depending where you land on this scale. Being Inferior Based, submitting will naturally come easier, but there’s a difference between submitting and being a pushover. Submitting means self control and holding back, which can lead us to being proud of ourselves in a healthy way. Submitting is about strength. Being a pushover, however, leaves us feeling weak, ashamed, and/or wishing we were stronger (aka inferior). The great thing is sometimes the only difference between these two is how we want to see the situation. We can tell ourselves it was choosing to hold back rather than simply taking the hit because we were afraid to say anything.
The other problem with submitting for Inferior Based people like me is instead of submitting, we can be tempted to have very strong defensive behaviors where you feel the need to “stand up” for yourself, which really just means you act like a jerk. The other day my wife and I were both really upset about the lawsuit we’re pursuing against the roofer who left us needing to redo a third of the roof and have the skylights reinstalled because he put them in wrong, which led to thousands of dollars in damages. The short of it is we were told by a lawyer that even if we win, there’s a good chance this person will never pay us since he canceled his insurance, which means we’ll lose out on the $20k he cost us with his negligence and now proven disgusting character. We were both already on edge with emotion, which is never a good start to a conversation. In passing, I said something my wife interpreted as correcting her while I meant for it to be a helpful suggestion. Either way, however, it was a comment she clearly didn’t want or appreciate hearing as it led to her using her wife voice (husbands know what I mean by that). My move was similar to a guy trying to offer a problem-solving solution to a wife who’s sharing and not looking for advice – the best thing would’ve been to say nothing. Yes, I fell into the common trap for men, which connects to another stereotype for married couples: As the husband, I see myself as on the Inferior Based side with her while my wife sees me as being on the Superior Based side, which leads to her wanting to knock me down. If you see someone as prideful and condescending, it’s natural to want to knock them down a few pegs, but I was already down those few pegs. These moments leave husbands confused by our wife’s response leading to the guy offering more dumb words, which leads to more wife voice. This leads to… you guessed it; more dumb words leading to more wife voice.
My wife is better than many wives for limiting how long she vents at me for things I’ve done wrong in her eyes (and yes, that’s a compliment/complaint in one sentence). In this particular situation, however, while she “talked” at me, I heard the same voice in my head that told me the submitting verse say, “Just shut your mouth. Nothing you say will be helpful in this moment,” which is the equivalent of “What you say can and will be held against you in the court of marriage.” It was a strange experience, but it was a very wise inner voice. I’ll admit, it was still incredibly hard for me not to say something to defend myself from what was being said, especially since I had a few clever comments to throw in that would make her feel foolish (that would’ve been less than helpful). I also had a couple simple rude comments like “Yeah, I get it!” and “Okay, the horse is dead; stop beating it!” (arguably even less helpful). In that moment, if I said anything, it would be fuel to the emotional fire my wife was feeling, and the end result would be more wife voice – the opposite of my goal. If I wanted this venting to end, I needed to start by not fueling it. This is what submitting looks like: “I really want to say this, but I’ll let you get the last word in.” Submitting makes for a better future: “It would feel so good in this moment to say/do (thing) to you, but that will add hurt instead of bringing healing, so I’ll hold back.”
What was interesting was about 15 minutes after my wife was done her couple minute vent (I told you she was shorter than the average wife), I was in the middle of something, and the voice said: “Aren’t you glad you didn’t say anything? It might have felt good in the moment, but isn’t this better?” This was an interesting moment because sometimes you don’t say anything and it can feel like you suppressed something, but in this case, I felt fine about not saying anything. I knew the moment was just because my wife and I were both upset about something else, and she misinterpreted something I said. Even better, I felt good about not having made the situation worse. I didn’t feel sorry for myself or have any lingering resentment. In short, I was proud of myself. Submitting made my life better.
This leads to an important point, and guess what that point is… another scale because I have an addiction to them:
Selfish/Defensive (-10) —— Submitting (0) —— Suppressing/Pushover (+10)
This reinforces the idea that submitting isn’t simply taking the hit. We never want to let others hurt us. If someone is attacking us, we want to love them enough to help them stop hurting us. Of course, we also want to love them enough to get them to stop in a loving way. That means if someone is angry, we should call a Time Out with a Time. Walking away will only look like we’re brushing them off, and cause them to want to follow us and yell louder. We want to interrupt their rant with an “I need 10 minutes,” or whatever time you need. If they won’t stop talking, which is often the case because, when someone is in that angry mode, it can be hard to stop, you need to reinforce this: “I said I need 10 minutes,” and then you need to runaway. Submitting means not giving a jab comment: “I need 10 minutes because you’re an idiot!” We also don’t want to throw in a last word as we walk away. We need the self control to bite our tongue and regroup to figure out what it is that we want to say, which should be a request or two option question to make the situation better.
This connects to my point in the last lesson: People should be allowed to have a different opinion than us. If we submit to one another, that means we’re willing to learn and not jam our point down someone’s throat. If we submit to one another, we can talk about religion, politics, and money with those with different ideas… but good luck with that in our current world.
The major problem we’ve encountered in our current culture is a lot of mental health professionals have encouraged people to say what they “feel” and to be “true to themselves,” but isn’t that being selfish? How is what you feel benefiting the other person? It’s all about you: (spouse) “I need to say this to feel better.” (other spouse) “But do I need to hear it because it’ll make me feel better or will it make me angrier?” Maybe it’s me, but I’ve never encountered anyone who’s shared how they feel in a way that made the other person suddenly think: “Oh, shoot, is that how I’ve been coming across?” The worst thing is people who give a letter sharing their heart and hurt. That never ends well. Unless the letter is simply apologizing (doubtful) or guessing how the other person is feeling to help them feel understood (not a chance). We’re making these situations all about us, which inevitably makes it worse. The simple truth is sharing our feelings or defending our motives/feelings only causes the other person to be hurt.
The answer to so many conflict situation is simple: We need to start submitting to one another.
Rev. Chad David, ChadDavid.ca, learning to love dumb people (like me)
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