43 Alison,

In my conversations with my spiritual mentor, who is trying to teach me a more “gentle” complementarian philosophy so that I lose my independent spirit before becoming a wife, I’ve wondered, without asking, Where’s the PROOF for complementarian ideas, other than the twisted interpretations of a few texts?

The only time we are told to lose ourselves is when we die to self so that Christ can be formed in us. Losing ourselves so that our personhood can be taken over by another person is a very dangerous thing. I would have thought that we had learned that lesson already, but it seems like we keep going around the same bush. The thinking then becomes that losing ourselves to a man must be good for us since he is supposed to be our head/ruler/decision maker. It seems to me that men who are able to think and reason and actually feel for their wives should be able to get that this is not a good thing. And many must be able to get it because a good majority of marriages, even comp ones, are actually lived out as egalitarian. Both husband and wife actually benefit from the wife having her own personality and freedom to chose.