I’ve seen so many social media complementarian messages telling women to take the initiative to fix things.

One particular one accused women of pride if they saw a problem in the relationship, but then thought: “he’s the leader, go fix it.”

Women were told to take the lead and fix things.

You’ve likely seen these over and over again too. I remember in Every Heart Restored, part of the Every Man’s Battle series, the authors were talking about how to repair things after a porn addiction:

I could listen dozens more examples, but over and over again women are told, “hey, don’t wait for him to fix it. You need to fix it.”

But here’s the problem.

The same people telling women to lead in the hard stuff teach that men should lead the marriage.

The same people who say that men are in authority over their wives, and that husbands should lead the marriage, spend an inordinate amount of time in their advice posts and books to women telling women that they need to lead when it comes to forgiveness, to relationship repair, even with restoring a sex life.

Women are the ones who need to do the heavy lifting here that requires vulnerability, and that puts them in a difficult and potentially unsafe position. Women are told that they need to resume sex before trust has been rebuilt; that they need to forgive before change has happened; that they need to take the initiative to fix things even if he has shut down. They need to be safe and welcoming and warm, even if he is still dangerous.

If leading is going first and taking responsibility and sacrificing, then it is actually women who are being instructed to do the actual leading in the relationship.

Now, I actually do believe it’s important for both husbands and wives to take initiative when it comes to repairing the relationship, and we looked at the data on this in chapter 6 of The Marriage You Want (with lots of fun cool charts!). But the initiative we’re talking about is the initiative to genuinely repair, not just to paper over and let someone off the hook. It’s peacemaking, not peacekeeping.

I believe that both men and women are partners in marriage, and so it makes total sense to teach both that they are each responsible for taking initiative.

Complementarians, however, actually believe the man is to lead. Remember the umbrella analogy that Bill Gothard used, that showed that women were under the man’s umbrella, and if she stepped out of it she’d be vulnerable to Satan’s attack? In this framework women aren’t supposed to lead.

Let me explain what 3 factors that are happening all at once in this mindset, that lead to the 4th unavoidable conclusion:

1. When it comes to abstract doctrines of marriage, complementarians teach clearly that men lead

When we’re simply arguing who is in charge, and who makes the decisions, it’s easy to argue that men should take the lead. Now, that argument isn’t correct, and we’ve talked about it repeatedly (I’ll put some links at the bottom of this post!). But when it comes to the abstract, that’s what they argue.

Here, for instance, is something that Jonathan Leeman, the president of the church planting network 9Marks, said:

It’s quite clear: the husband has authority over his wife in the same way that he has authority over the children, and the wife must submit in the same way the children do (basically obey). And, again, this is something preached by a person who leads a large evangelical organization.

This is a familiar argument; we’ve all  heard many variations of it.

But then there’s this sticking point:

2. When we get to particulars, though, women are often told to lead.

While in the abstract we’re taught that men are in charge, the same people giving this advice will then tell women to lead in practical ways. Women must initiate repair, which usually involves stopping asking for actual change and instead just letting things go. Women must carry the mental load for the family, looking after the children and the household even if they also work outside the home. Women must keep track of medical and dental appointments; keep track of important dates for his extended family; keep track of everything to make the husband’s life less stressful so he can “lead.”

None of the things that she is doing is called leading of course; but if you look at it, that’s exactly what she is doing.

So if she is the one keeping track of everything for the family, and if she is the one making sure relationships are smoothed over, then how, exactly, is he leading?

3. He gets to make important decisions

The way he leads, apparently, is by getting to make the important decisions, like what church to go to, whether the kids go to camp or not, whether he spends his money on this thing or that thing (and it often is seen as his money), whether she takes a job or not.

Basically, he is allowed to make sure that what he wants actually happens.

And in The Marriage You Want, we show how living this out destroys marriages, and how believing it, even if you don’t live it out, also makes marriages worse. Believing that he should make the final decision bears bad fruit.

So we know that men are told theoretically they are the leaders; in everything day-to-day and relationship based she is actually told to lead; but when he wants to, he can just make decisions that he likes.

That’s what much of this boils down to. Put all three together, and you’re left with this:

4. Male leadership in complementarianism is not about men leading, but instead about men being free from accountability and responsibility.

Think about it: she actually does the practical leading, at least if you look at the advice that’s given. The only way he leads is that he can make sure that what he wants or thinks is right is what the family does.

But by putting the responsibility for the daily things on her, including relationship repair, complementarianism frees men from the responsibility of much of the mental and emotional labor of the home, while also freeing men from accountability when they do things wrong.

In fact, women are told that they are disrespectful if they bring things up to their husbands that they are unhappy about. Remember the Love & Respect docuseries that talked about how Emerson Eggerichs’ wife Sarah was labelled disrespectful for being upset when he forgot her birthday?

This is what increasingly we are realizing: the whole complementarian doctrine is not actually about putting men in charge, but rather about freeing men from actually having to do stuff. It’s putting the labour onto women, while also blaming women when things go badly because of their lack of submission.

Even when men are told that the problem is that they’re not leading enough, the answer to that is always that she has to submit more.

As a woman wrote to me on social media, that inspired this post:

Now, I realize that many complementarians will also talk theoretically about how men are to love their wives.

Yes, they say many pretty things–even Emerson Eggerichs did in Love & Respect! But when you boil the advice down, as soon as you put one in authority over the other, what you end up doing is absolving one of the responsibilities for the family, and putting the work of the family onto the one lower down the hierarchy.

Again, we look at this from all different angles in The Marriage You Want. We look at what happens when people believe the husband should make the final decision; we look at what happens when only one person carries the emotional and mental labor of kinkeeping or making medical/dental appoitnments. We look at what happens when only one person tends to do the relationship repair.

And over and over again, we find the same thing: partnership works. Hierarchy doesn’t.

Complementarians may say that their doctrine is so important because it puts responsiblity on men, but it actually doesn’t. It ends up putting the responsibility for the relaitonship all on women. It’s a get-out-of-jail free card for men that they use while simultaneously convincing themselves they’re being selfless.

And that’s why it’s so insidious, and that’s why we have to continue to fight against it!

Here’s a quick video on complementarianism:

Am I being fair here? What has your experience been about who actually bears responsibility in complementarian marriages? Let’s talk in the comments!