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By: Rosario Alfaro Martínez (psycotherapist)
Marriage should not be a kind of modern slavery for women, but a kind of interpersonal relation that allows her personal fulfillment. That is why it is necessary to be a new kind of wife.
Unfortunately, some people think that marriage ties the other person to your life in order to totally immobilize him/her and take his/her freedom away. Making the other person do what you expect him/her to be and not letting him/her be who he/she really is. But when you see marriage that way, you also end up paralyzed and becoming a shade.
For many years it has been a belief that the woman must be “tied” to her husband; and sometimes even worse than if she was a prisoner, in some cultures women are seen as slaves incapable of making any important decision.
When Catholics speak about marriage and even declare that it is a sacrament, (it means that we consider it to be an alliance between man and woman, as a sign of the Alliance between Christ and the Church), and it consequently helps to achieve sanctity. For this reason it is called to achieve unity and indissolubility and to give testimony of love to the world. We do not think it is a sign of sick dependency or modern slavery. The problem is that such characteristics as (unity, indissolubility and love) are not well understood; and for this reason many people think that marriage is kind of a contract of purchase and sale where one of the parts is tied to the other, as if each of them lost his/her personality.
The challenge here for men and women, but since we are referring more to women we will talk more about her; is to be a new model of wife and for this end it is necessary to go to the roots, go to the essence of what it was expected from a wife.
The Bible gives an equal treatment to wife and husband, Saint Paul says, speaking of marriage:
“Give way to one another in obedience to Christ. Wives should regard their husbands as they regard the Lord, since as Christ is head of the Church and saves the whole body, so is a husband the head of his wife; and as the Church submits to Christ, so should wives to their husbands, in everything. Husbands should love their wives just as Christ loved the Church and sacrificed himself for her to make her holy. He made her clean by washing her in water with a form of words, so that when he took her to himself she would be glorious, with no speck or wrinkle or anything like that, but holy and faultless”. (Ephesians 5: 21-27)
This text has provoked many conflicts through the years because the word submission has not been well understood, thinking it means being inferior or in a second place, or that it means women should let somebody else manage their life. It is true that the word submission, in Spanish, means that, but in the Bible the word submission comes from the Greek word HIPOTASSO, meaning literally, to let oneself be taken care of, be guided, be held, it is a willing attitude of handing over, cooperate, let others to guide us, advise us, take care of us. To hold means that someone holds our hand so that we do not fall down, that is the biblical meaning, therefore, it does not have anything to be with control or hierarchical power, when you hold someone’s hand it is because he/she is by your side.
What God ask from us in the Bible is that a woman let her husband take care of her. We often complain that men are not gentlemen any more, that they do not let us walk first, that they do not open the door for us, that they do no pay attention to our needs. Well the Bible says exactly that: ˇLET YOURSELF BE TAKEN CARE OF! Because although all women like to receive attention, the real thing is that it is kind of difficult for us to let that happen and many times it is our fault that men are not gentlemen anymore.
Another connotation of this text is to know how to ask for help, many women want to assume that the other knows what they think that if somebody loves them, they should know what they want and need; they think that if their husbands cannot guess what they need it is because they do not love them enough.
Being another kind of wife has to be with this, that you willingly decide to let the other take care of you, to be docile, to learn to ask for help or to learn to ask for what you need, without expecting the other to guess. This does not mean to be weak nor loosing your character, it only means that the decisions you make now are not only yours, they have to be made with your couple, it means helping each other, in words of the Bible: “Be subordinate to one another out of reverence for Christ”. (Ephesians 5, 21) In other words, marriage does not mean two people living together with parallel lives, but two people taking care and protecting each other, because they are mature enough to ask for help and to be helped.
It does not mean either, to let your life in your husbands hands, ˇNO!, that would be like being with someone for fear or obligation only, because we do not know how to escape. Being a new kind of wife, means let yourself to be loved, not considering love as a prison. It is to love within God’s freedom without wanting the other to be my source of happiness, or to be everything for me, nor expecting that the other depends on me in every sense. It is to accompany someone because of the love we feel for him, respecting his dignity as an individual, his ideas and ideals, his dreams and wishes, not wanting the other to be like me, but letting God to work with him at his own pace.
The challenge of today’s woman is being a new kind of wife, that is:
• Being submissive, without being dependent.
• Ask for help, without wanting the other to guess.
• Being of some help, without doing everything for him.
• Being only one flesh, without loosing our personal essence.
• Being able to accept our affective needs, without becoming a martyr.
• And above all to learn that marriage is an interdependence and do not try to change your husband nor him changing you.
If we see things like this we can understand why Proverbs says when speaking about wives: “Her husband’s heart has confidence in her, from her he will derive no little profit. Advantage and not hurt she brings him all the days of her life (Proverbs 31:11-12). Because being a wife is not being a burden, nor a self sacrificing martyr, nor wanting anybody tied to our life to give us identity. On the contrary, being a wife is creating good and not bad, and making the best moment of your husband’s day: when he comes back home!
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