Does complementarianism lead to good marriage outcomes?
I’m going to answer that question in this post, but I want you to keep something in the back of your head as you’re reading this.
One of these things is not like the other, one of these things just doesn’t belong!
Do you remember that song from Sesame Street? Here’s a refresher:
I want you to keep that song in mind (trust me, it will be in your head all day now!) as you read—it’s going to come up again at the end!
We’ve recently conducted a huge marriage study to see which things are associated with good marital outcomes.
We surveyed 1,300 matched pair couples, and another 5000 individuals, for our marriage study for our new book The Marriage You Want (here’s how to pre-order and join our launch team!)
We were asking, “if we wanted to give good marriage advice from the ground up, what would it look like?”
Our book is full of charts and graphs, but I want to talk today about how good things all tend to travel together, and bad things tend to travel together.
Here’s what I mean.
Basically, everything is correlated with everything else. If one thing gets better, chances are other things also get better. Likewise, if one thing gets worse, chances are other things also get worse. Good outcomes in one area tend to lead to good outcomes in other areas, and bad outcomes in one area tends to bring down satisfaction in other areas.
Makes sense, right?
One of the things that’s hard to do in studies like ours is tease out causation versus correlation.
Just because something is correlated with something else doesn’t mean it causes it.
Here’s an example from my husband’s pediatric practice. It’s been well known in the literature that families that eat together at least three times a week fare far better on many outcome measures than families that don’t. The kids are more likely to get straight As. They are less likely to use drugs or alcohol. Far less likely to get pregnant or end up in jail. Even less likely to have mental health issues.
Does eating together stop girls from getting pregnant?
No, the causation doesn’t work that way.
But if you’re the kind of family who eats together three times a week or more, you’re also the kind of family that exhibits other traits that make these things less likely. Plus you talk together at least three times a week. Parents know what is going on in the kids’ lives. Siblings talk to each other. Etc. etc.
So even if we can’t tease out causation, the fact that things move together tells us something. It matters.
Even though eating together doesn’t stop pregnancy, if you start eating together, you become the kind of family that does things that leads to girls not having unprotected sex.
It’s complicated, I know.
(Incidentally, one of the ways to tease out causation is to figure out which came first when you’re looking at outcomes. We were able to do that a little bit in our study for She Deserves Better, because we asked about two different time periods in a woman’s life—when she was a teen and when she was an adult. Still not perfect for many reasons, but it helps).
Let’s get back to marriage outcomes.
We looked at a whole package of marriage outcomes that are good—things like:
- my spouse knows how to make me laugh
- I’m frequently aroused during sex
- I can share my weaknesses with my spouse
- I feel like my opinions matter in our marriage as much as my spouse’s do
- My spouse doesn’t have explosive anger
- My spouse isn’t passive aggressive
- My spouse does his/her fair share of housework
- I feel like I can be myself with my spouse
- I don’t have low libido
- We have shared hobbies
- When we’re having a disagreement, my spouse takes pains to understand my point of view, even if he/she doesn’t agree
And I could go on and on.
But here’s the thing:
When one of these things is doing well, all of the other ones tend to do better too.
Here’s what that looks like in The Marriage You Want:

So when you believe that you’re part of a team with your spouse, all of these other good outcomes are more likely to happen.
For instance, when she feels like she’s a team with her husband:
- She is 15.96 times more likely to say “my spouse knows how to help me when I’m stressed”
- She is 9.26 times more likely to say “I feel emotionally close during sex”
- He is 4.07 times more likely to say “I feel emotionally close during sex”
When he feels like he’s part of a team with his wife:
- He is 6.72 times more likely to say “I am satisfied with my sex life.”
- She is 4.06 times more likely to say “I know how to make my spouse laugh.”
- She is 1.48 times more likely to say “my level of sexual desire is high.”
Good marital outcomes tend to travel together, and bad marital outcomes tend to travel together.
We have other charts in the book that show that bad things also go together—if he has the tie-breaking vote, that leads to bad things. If the mental load isn’t shared, that leads to bad things in other areas too.
I explained it this way on our Bare Marriage podcast last week (episode 268).
Imagine you have two groups of people who are going hiking—one who is wearing all purple t-shirts, and one who is wearing all green t-shirts. They start out at the same place, but they go in different directions.
The purple t-shirts are good outcomes, and the green t-shirts are bad outcomes. But they travel together. When one person goes ahead, the whole group tends to follow.
Now, as you notice from that chart above, some things move more closely than other things. You get a 1.48 times change in sexual desire levels, but an 18.75 times change in feeling like your opinions are being heard, when people feel like they’re part of a team.
So picture it like this. In any hiking group, some people are holding hands and sticking super close together, while other people are lagging behind, or are simply at the outer edge of the group. It may look like this:

So when “I feel like a team” jumps forward, “my opinions matter” is right there with them! They’re super closely related. But the sexual desire one may not move as quickly or stay as close—but it is still going in the same direction.
(Science nerds are likely shuddering right now and adding tons of caveats to what I’ve said, but I’m just trying to explain this in as simple a way as possible, so forgive me for oversimplifying!)
So we have a package of good things, and a package of bad things, and they tend to move in the same direction, even if they don’t all move at the same rate.
Makes sense, right?
Now, get ready, because you’re going to be humming the song again in a minute.
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Complementarianism, and its proxies, are part of the bad group.
Complementarianism is the belief that men are in authority over women in marriage, and that men and women have different roles. He’s to lead; she’s to submit. He makes the final decision and has the tie breaking vote in the case that they can’t come to an agreement in an argument.
And, often, he needs respect in a way that she can never understand.
We measured these things too. We measured:
- What happens when you believe when you get married that he has the tie breaking vote?
- What happens if, when you have a disagreement, he’s the one that breaks that tie?
- What happens if you believe that he needs respect in a way that she doesn’t understand?
And these things move with the bad group, not with the good group.
When he has a tie breaking vote, it affects that whole package of bad outcomes. Some of them are so far on the edge of the circle that they’re not statistically significant (like with everything we measure), but it affects a whole lot of them. And when it affects something, it moves in the bad direction.
Okay, now’s the time to start humming!
Complementarians say, “God put men in authority so that they could lay down their lives and live sacrificially for their wives, and they do it for the benefit of their wives”, they’re wrong. It’s like thinking you can have a green hiker in the purple hiker group, and it doesn’t work.

The green guy doesn’t belong here! The green guy belongs with the green hikers, with bad marriage outcomes.
Get it?
Complementarians claim that their doctrine produces the best marriages, but it’s actually the opposite.
Teamwork, and valuing each other’s opinions, and not having one in authority over the other produces good outcomes. Hierarchy produces bad outcomes.
It’s as simple as that.
Please share this post so other people see it!
Now, people will argue that “but the Bible says complementarianism is true!”
I know that’s what many people have been taught. But please understand, that is one interpretation of the Bible, but it is not the only one, or even the most accepted one. Among those who have studied Greek and Hebrew, and who have studied New Testament history, a majority believe in egalitarianism, not complementarianism.
And what does Jesus say we are to do when we are wondering if someone is a false teacher? He tells us in Matthew 7:15-20 to judge the fruit.
Well, here it is. We have a purple (good) group and a green (bad) group. One group is full of good fruit, and one group is full of bad fruit. The good fruit side is teamwork; the bad fruit side is hierarchy.
Take Jesus at His word.
Judge the fruit.
Because one of these things is not like the other!

Preorder The Marriage You Want to see more of our amazing charts and graphs, and to see what goes into a marriage that works—rather than a marriage that’s a hard slog!
And find out about our launch team and pre-order bonuses!
For more on complementarianism (and I’ve written so much), please see:
- Our podcast on the Danvers Statement (4 ways complementarianism can go wrong)
- The slippery slope of male hierarchy teaching
- Our podcast asking, “Are We Making a Strawman out of Complementarianism?”
- Our reply to Nancy Pearcey on why complementarian marriages do not do best
- My favourite books on God and gender!
So by your study what percentage of women and men believe they are a part of a team who are complementarians? Egalitarians?
Where did you “find” the people who took your survey? How many read your writing?
You are free to look at our demographics for our biggest survey here. It also passed peer review, and has been looked at by the academy, who was THRILLED that we had such a big data pool.
So you won’t answer two questions that are at the heart of the data? The first being, did you define team or did the couple (or better yet the Bible but hey who cares about that!) and who answered the questions? You understand that by cherry picking the majority of your survey is greatly skews the results! Peer review doesn’t mean anything when 60% of peer reviewed data can’t be replicated.
We used previously validated question sets for teamwork and marital flourishing.
Previously validated means they were able to be replicated. And we did.
Let’s follow your logic here: you can’t trust data, so you can’t be right! But if you can’t trust data, frigo, then you have no way of showing that you’re right, either. Please leave.
“what percentage of women and men believe they are a part of a team who are complementarians? Egalitarians?” Oh it would be fascinating if spouses were discordant on this. Did you have a way to look for that? If this happened, were there gender trends?
Any chance you’ll respond to any of the many questions asked of you on this post?
https://baremarriage.com/2025/01/podcast-why-teamwork-works-better-than-hierarchy/
Hello Sheila! Can’t wait to read all about this in the book! Could you please elaborate on a specific part of this article? Where you said:
“Among those who have studied Greek and Hebrew, and who have studied New Testament history, a majority believe in egalitarianism, not complementarianism.”
I would love to do some research on this, because everything I was taught seemed to indicate the opposite. Do you have a study or book or survey that I could look into?
Also, just out of plain curiosity—where and when are these scholars from? Are they mostly in the current era, or is this a church history thing? I would love more information! I would be thrilled to hear from biblical scholars who came to a different conclusion than my teaches and family and old church did.
Cheers!
After reading Kit’s post, I put together an exceedingly brief yet excessively lengthy overview of the origins and development of this debate. If it doesn’t belong, please delete it.
Some aspects of this debate [ex: gender distinction as an aspect of the imago Dei] do appear in church history but only as marginal voices. It isn’t hard to see why. If both must be present to constitute the image of God, single people are excluded, including the one called the express image of God [1Co 15:45; 2Co 4:4; Co 3:10].
Other aspects of debate occur throughout church history, if often in connection with other matters.
The Early church did affirm male leadership in church and home and read Ga 3:28 [no male and female] as a spiritual equality in Christ. But egalitarian practice did occur — deaconesses [Phoebe, Ro 16:1], patrons [Lydia, Ac 16], and martyrs [Perpetua]. Early tensions between spiritual equality and institutionalized hierarchy anticipate today’s disagreement.
The Medieval church reinforced gender hierarchy. See Aquinas on Aristotle’s idea of women as “misbegotten males.” Marriage was made a sacrament in which roles mirrored Christ’s relationship to the church [Ep 5].
Yet egalitarian practices persisted. Hildegard of Bingen and Catherine of Siena exercised spiritual authority as mystics. Re: challenging strict gender norms, Hildegard had the ear of emperors. She deserves more attention.
The Reformation church rejected clerical celibacy but upheld male headship [Ep 5]. More radical groups [as the Quakers] stressed Ga 3:28 and the Spirit’s empowerment, and they allowed women to preach.
The Reformers’ emphasis on canonical authority led to divergent interpretations. Complementarians retained hierarchical readings; later, egalitarians appealed to Luther’s view on Christ’s priesthood in which all share through faith in him.
The 19th century drew activism and theology into a symbiotic relationship [nourishing or poisoning as you see it]. Evangelical reformers [Lucretia Mott, Quaker, and Sojourner Truth (Isabella Baumfree before escaping slavery)] tied abolition to women’s rights by invoking biblical equality. Phoebe Palmer [Wesleyan] and others argued that spiritual giftedness validated women’s preaching. And Luther Lee [Methodist] used Ac 2:17-18 to defend women’s ordination.
This 19th-century use of Scripture in advocacy of equality laid groundwork for modern egalitarian appeals to liberation themes.
20th c. Modernism led early fundamentalism to codify male leadership as part of “traditional family values” against those trends. Second wave feminism [60s – 80s] influenced Christianity, with Mary Daly and Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza re-examined women’s roles in early Christianity. Organizations as Christians for Biblical Equality formed and argued for an egalitarian reading of Scripture.
Debate continues to evolve [to state the obvious]. Egalitarians stress the Bible’s adaptability to cultural change; complementarians warn against compromising “timeless” truths.
Egalitarianism draws from early Christian radical equality, Reformation radicalism, and 19th/20th-c. social justice movements. Complementarianism appeals to patristic hierarchy, medieval natural law, and Reformation conservatism.
Key issues: Were Paul’s 1Ti 2:12 restrictions on women situational [addressing Ephesian-specific issues] or universal? Complementarians cite Ge 2 [Adam created first] as normative; egalitarians stress Ge 1:27 [equal image-bearing]. Complementarians analogize male headship to Christ’s submission to the Father; egalitarians reject eternal subordination as heretical.
Exegesis and hermeneutics do captivate us; they are the engine that drive this and every churchly debate. How we approach this reflect our perspective on canonical authority [is the Bible a static rulebook or a dynamic narrative], cultural engagement [do we resist or redeem cultural shifts], and theological coherence [how do we reconcile equality and difference].
This debate is as much about how to read the Bible as it is about gender roles. That said …
“How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth” by Gordon D. Fee and Douglas Stuart is a classic, introductory level primer on hermeneutics. It has been used to train seminarians for decades. It focuses on genre-sensitive interpretation and avoiding common pitfalls. It is also accessible for beginners. Fee integrates principles for interpreting contested texts and is a leading egalitarian NT scholar.
What a great summary! Thank you for doing that — I know it took a lot longer to put it together than it did for me to read it! Nicely done!
That’s an awesome summary. I would also highly recommend Beth Allison Barr’s book “The making of Biblical Womanhood.” If you feel like you need permission or support to question the gender hierarchy you were taught, TMBW delivers! It’s written for a general audience, but it’s not fluffy. Barr is a trained historian, and it shows. Her notes and references will give you a wealth of other voices to explore, too.
Thank you! A very good recommendation that is!
I don’t want to divert traffic elsewhere. That said, I feel Zi would be remiss not to mention the site at https://juniaproject.com/
Thank you to all for the work.
Hi Kit! Current era. Just look worldwide at seminaries and at the theological journals. When seminaries do not require people to be complementarian, then over time the seminary turns egalitarian, because when you study it, that tends to be where you land.
And this shows up in the journals, too.
Where seminaries are complementarian, it is usually because they are forced to be and fire anyone who is egalitarian (as the SBC did, purging all egalitarian seminary leaders).
I know I saw a paper on it once, but I don’t know where it is now. But it isn’t hard to look at the largest seminaries and find this.
Sure, get rid of all the people who disagree, and voilà, you have unanimity!
Wow! I don’t have time to respond to everyone individually, but thank you all so much for the leads! I can’t wait to learn more. I didn’t even know that theological journals were a thing! I’ve got so much to discover 🙂
I had a laugh at the results for women’s exhaustion levels and men’s libidos!