Cheryl Schatz

gengwall,
We all loved the movie The Princess Bride. My oldest son and his best friend memorized most of the lines in that movie. It is quite an experience to watch two teenage boys become the characters in that movie at the drop of a hat. Gengwall, I suspect that you too could quote all of the dialog.

It is a bit of a comic relief for me. I am really busy these days but am also struggling with the wounds that have opened up with discussing authority and submission in marriage. On an older post that has become active again through the comments of a comp, I was told that my experiences through years of marriage as a comp were not the true comp lifestyle. Old wounds hurt and make me want to just stay away. I will have to deal with that. The problem with what this comp is saying is that the comp marriage model that is the true model is not the soft model that many experience today which is really 99% egalitarian in disguise. I experienced the true model and many others have also experienced that model of having one’s will overridden and it is painful to relive even though we dumped that model many years ago. The truth of the matter is that the comp marriage model encourages abuse when it is taught to men who really in their hearts want to do their best as husbands but are told that they have a responsibility to “lead” the marriage with a God-given “right” that the wife doesn’t have and a God-given “trump card” that assures them that their “leading” will be followed. When the wife balks at the leading, the fault, according to leading comp teachers, is the wife’s, not the comp marriage model. But it is interesting to note that almost all leading comp teachers who have been open about their marriages have expressed the need for counselling because the wife at some point became a non person and was experiencing distress because of it. For some wives the recognition of becoming a non person happens early in the marriage and for others it happens late in life when the children leave. A man really cannot know how his wife feels inside and often he does nothing about her pain until she falls apart. It is then that the hard comp model of marriage is softened because of necessity.

It seems to me that the comp model of marriage should come with a warning sticker. “Be careful and handle with care. Your wife’s soul and her very identity as a person is at stake.”