Sub= under thus to me submission is to be under or behind my husband’s mission. To help and support him and his decisions for our family. Of course that implies that I married a man which mission I support, trust and respect.

So how does submission come into it at all? That’s where the two sides come in….yes, women are to submit, but in the same way, men are to love and to cherish.(remember the model here is Christ and the church and Christ laid down his life for his church) So yes, my husband and I do work together in an equal partnership(I always tell him I also believe in equal opportunity so he is welcome and able to do everything I do including cooking, cleaning and grocery shopping….which he does by the way). So we do each play to our strengths and weaknesses and solve problems together and talk about them. So both of us self-sacrifice, not just me. So at the end of the day if there is a decision to be made and I don’t agree for some reason, it isn’t hard to submit to his decision and trust him with that.

I think the misunderstanding is that submission is a controlling husband and a wife that just says ‘yes dear’ without any communication or attention paid to her desires and needs. That just isn’t at all what the biblical teaching is all about. Quite the opposite in fact. In your example above, the husband who is loving as the Bible tells him too would in fact not move their family away and instead lay down his own desires for hers.

Didn’t mean to equate a husband/wife relationship with a human/dog one, of course. Just trying to say that you can love and cherish someone (or thing) and yet not be equal. And yes, it’s possible we’re using different definitions of “submission.” To me, submission implies that the man gets the final say in decisions that affect both partners. For example, if the man’s job requires him to move out of city or state, he has the authority to decide for him and his wife that they’re moving, whether she wants to or not. Should she leave her work, friends, and family for the sake of her husband? In my mind (and I suspect a lot of others think similarly), a “submissive” woman puts her husband’s wishes before her own. If he wants to move, she doesn’t fight him on it, she moves, and I don’t think that kind of constant self-sacrificing is healthy or fair.

Regarding your husband and yourself, it sounds like you are describing an equal partnership, in which you play to each of your strengths and solve problems together. Where, then, does submission come into it at all?

I would never say that a woman should submit to her husband in the same way that a child submits to a parent. Nor does the man have authority over the woman in a way a parent has authority over a child. And it has absolutely nothing to do with intelligence. It’s a choice that I make and we do it together. For example I am more gifted when it comes to numbers so I take care of all the finances in our family. We talk about the decisions we make but in the end I do it all….there is nothing about this that says that I am less intelligent than my husband nor that I am not capable of making the decisions on my own, because I definitely am more than capable.

I definitely would never tell you that you are offending nature(not sure where you got that idea) or that this has anything to do with your morality. My question to you would be this…..have you chosen to have a personal relationship with Christ? Having an understanding of the basis of the love relationship between Christ and the church is important to understanding the basis of the respect, honor and love aspect of the relationship between a husband and wife. Without that this becomes an argument which generates heat and not light. :-)