Brainwash be gone. A podcast for women who've left a high control, high demand religion. In every episode, we deconstruct one specific rule you were taught so you can let go of the harmful conditioning and live an amazing life on your own terms. Today we'll be talking about:
"Submit to your husband."
So you're gonna wanna listen to the end of this episode if you want to uncover how being conditioned to be reflexively obedient to other people has impacted your life so far. And if you wanna own your power as an independent adult human being, no matter what your gender, it's an amazing shift that provides you so much freedom.
 
So let's get to it.
The concept of submitting to your husband is extremely common in high demand, high control religions, and even in our culture generally, What's kind of funny, if you observe the people who are presenting this lesson, you know, if you kind of observe it as an outsider, once you know that you're no longer listening to what they say, basically, you'll notice that a lot of groups, especially the ones that are trying to still act like they're somewhat mainstream, oh, they'll be so hesitant to explain this.
They'll be like, yeah, well you must submit to your husband, but we're not saying that. You're not equal, it's just that God made a hierarchy. It's just that of course he should ask you your opinion and take that into account. And of course he should still be loving.
It's just that, and basically they won't say outright what they actually mean and what the system actually produces, which is. A structure where men are more valuable and important than women, where adults have different rankings of the level of authority that they have over their own lives, which is insane.
Like it's crazy, and I spent so many years trying to listen to. These teachings and like, I mean maybe I just have a different but complimentary role and actually, and just like it is such bullshit, oh my gosh, I felt so much better once I finally realized, hey, you know what? I don't believe any of that.
I'm an adult and I have the authority over myself the same as any other adult. So anyway, we're gonna talk about that today. Okay. So first, as we always do, let's talk about the explanations that are typically given for this type of teaching. You may have heard as I sort of already mentioned, arguments about.
Divine order or hierarchies, you know, the husband is submitting to God and the wife is submitting to the husband and the kids are submitting to the parents. And basically there's gotta be some kind of hierarchy involved. Or sometimes there are creation arguments brought in. You know, men were created first.
We were created to be their helpers, their sidekicks. So you know, that has to continue indefinitely. Sometimes there'll be symbolism, like, you know, the church is the bridegroom of Jesus type things, where we're gonna say, well, the congregation's submitting to God and wives are enacting that same symbolism.
That's a pretty tenuous connection, let's just be honest. There can also be logistical arguments like. I mean, someone has to be the single final decision maker because that will prevent conflict. Like somebody has to be the tie-breaking vote, or they'll say different roles that are complimentary. They're equal in value. But they're different. And it just so happens that only one of those roles has any actual power over anyone's life and finances and decisions.
And it's like there's a reason the Supreme Court struck that down as not being a reasonable argument in terms of segregated schooling, like separate but equal. You're like, no, that's just not, that is not true. We're not falling for that. And then sometimes also. It is presented as a way to give your witness or your testimony, wow, I'm so submissive that it's spiritually persuasive to outsiders or even to my spouse who's unbelieving.
Like this is the ultimate show of what, I don't know, that you can mindlessly follow unsubstantiated rules. I'm not sure why anyone finds that persuasive, but when we're in that mode. Sanity is not the driving factor. So it's, we definitely need to give ourselves a break for any of these things that we thought might be reasonable or that we tried to understand or believe for so many years.
And believe me, I have been there too. So no shame. We're just moving forward toward freedom, which feels amazing. so what do you think the potential additional unspoken motives for a rule like submit to your husband might be? I think it's pretty clearly designed to be a power structure.
It's designed to create ease for the people in control. If men are in control and they want to have these continuous help mates that can't protest, that can't critique, that can't provide their own ideas, and I'm not saying that. That's even favorable for men. But if that had been the system previously that they're accustomed to, it can feel really threatening to give that up to allow other people to assert their authority, their autonomy as adults.
It also can just create some ease of administration where you're like, Hey, you know what? We're not gonna talk about any kind of nuance. We're not gonna get into the messiness of interpersonal. Interhuman dynamics because that's hard and it's easier just to be like, because I said so
so I think a lot of these factors together have definitely given a strong motive for a lot of these groups to really buckle down on how hardcore they're gonna be about submit to your husband. While of course, also pretending that they're not saying you're not worthy.
Oh, it's hard for me not to be. I try not to get too far into the negativity and sarcasm about this, but Oh my gosh. Stuff like this just gets me. I hope you can feel me on that. You know what I'm talking about. Hoo. Maybe we should just stop and take a deep breath before we continue this episode. Yes.
Okay. Let's talk about the impact of being in a group and being taught to submit to your husband or being a husband taught that your wife should submit to you, or being a child, having seen this dynamic with your parents or with other members of your community.
Having seen this play out in general church leadership where women are not in leadership roles because they are in a submissive role. The worst impact that I see of this rule is that it takes away the independent adulthood of women. Literally in this system, we're relegated to being adults, in quotes, who are never empowered to be fully ourselves.
We're never empowered to have authority over our own lives. Essentially, it keeps us as. Quasi children indefinitely. And that's only if we actually buy into the system, which often we do 'cause that's how we're trained. But it's actually an illusion.
It's not true that we don't have authority. We just might not realize that we have authority. And that's a lot of what we're talking about on this podcast, right? The waking up to realize. Oh, I am an adult person fully in charge of my own life. I have self authority. I have to make the decisions about what happens next.
And there's actually no way to get out of having that authority. Because if you think about it, even if you're in one of these high control groups and you've been told that someone else is the authority over you,
you are the one that gets to decide. Whether you agree with that or not, whether you buy into that truth or not.
And let's say you're in a position where you do feel like, okay, I wanna give my authority completely over to this other group, you know, to make my decisions for me, you would still be the one to decide. Which group it is. Is it the group I'm currently in? Is it a different group? It's like there's no actually escaping having authority over your own life, even if you're just giving your authority away.
You have the authority to do that. And I'm not saying that with blame at all. For the many of us who have just been raised in this or gotten tied up in these high demand religions, and we did not know we had a choice, but this is about waking up and seeing the choice that we have. 
in addition to losing your entire personhood as an impact of this rule, I think that there are some other impacts. Increased vulnerability to abuse. Often abusers would be exploiting this rule to silence their spouse to Alize harm that they're causing. To delay different kinds of help seeking.
That would be a normal response. There can definitely be mental health costs, anxiety, depression, learned helplessness, having internalized shame for normal amounts of assertiveness, or recognizing your own needs.
And there are parenting effects where children are adopting these same gender roles and the girls are. Under developing their leadership capacity and their assertiveness, and the boys are overly identifying with control and their own positioning in society in a way that's harmful for everyone.
It also really hurts relationship quality., There's resentment, emotional distance, hidden power struggles, performative compliance. You know, in a system like this, women can only use. Passive aggressive or covert manipulative tactics. To express their opinions or their needs.
Since they can't do it directly, they have to just try to manipulate from a distance because that's their supposed role, which is terrible. That's a terrible thing to encourage people to do. And then community wide, of course there's a loss of female leadership talent.
Lack of female perspectives that could provide, you know, better technical solutions, more complete policies, and more varied works of art. It's such a loss,
So let's talk about the logical fallacies that we see in this role of submission. there's definitely a lot of generalization and stereotyping saying that all women are the same and require this specific role, and that all men are the same and require this other role, which clearly is not true.
People have quite a bit of different skill sets and interests and personalities and capabilities. There's a false dichotomy here where it's like, okay, either men are leading everything or else it's, you know. Chaos and it's basically ignoring all types of collaborative consensus communication models, which are common in the world now.
People have studied, people are doing,
it's an appeal to authority because they're saying it's true because scripture says so and there's not any independent reasoning.
I think the biggest logical fallacy in this rule is that in order for this rule to work. And when people are talking about the benefits of this rule, they're always using an example of a husband who is like the absolute pinnacle of human morality. So you've got this man who's basically Jesus and Buddha rolled into one who is, incredibly.
Good, humble, loving, kind, supportive. He has this role of authority over his wife, but he doesn't use it to his own advantage over her. He honors her, he cares for her. He checks in with her and has communication, and then he makes the best decision for the family. And it's like, yeah, that's the best case scenario. If you're gonna be in a situation like this where one adult. Has had their adulthood taken away from them.
And it's like the best case scenario is the other partner sort of like gives them some of their personhood back. But first of all, there are so few people like that, just people in the world. There are some, but if your system relies on. One of the partners first reaching this incredible level of like human development, where they're basically enlightened and that's what's required to make this rule work.
That just seems like, huh, that seems like a bad system. You know what I mean? Because first of all, a dangerous person given that kind of power will absolutely abuse it, and it's extremely dangerous. An average person. Given that sort of power, we'll also abuse it, not grow in a way that helps them reach that pinnacle of moral authority.
It's like rules and systems should really work with sort of like how the average human is showing up. You know? And this one definitely doesn't. It's terrifying. And furthermore. A lot of us women growing up in a group like this, we were not given enough information about men or any information about men.
we didn't have enough contact with men or dating prior to marriage so that we could see the red flags of all the men who subscribed to this system. Who are the worst of the worst, the ones that are dangerous, the ones that are gonna be controlling in a way that's going to harm you, and it's absolutely terrifying.
We didn't even have the information to figure out which ones those were to avoid it, and so it's a flawed system. In conclusion, this is a flawed system, as you know, anyway. Where do we go from here?, How does this impact our lives moving forward? We need to take care of ourselves to learn to. Trust our own judgment to learn, to exercise our own authority, and it is a beautiful but sometimes challenging process to do that.
It's my viewpoint that each adult. Has sovereignty over their own selves, just like how nations have sovereignty. You know, like the United States has its boundaries and the United States decides what's gonna happen within its own, area, and then it interacts with other sovereign countries to come to decisions about how they're going to relate to each other.
I think that people are like that, or ideally should be like that, that each of us decides. Okay, this is what's happening with inside of me. Here's what I choose to do. Here's how I'm going to interact with other sovereign people. And that ideally for me, if I'm gonna be in a relationship of any kind, whether it's romantic or work related or family, in order for my sovereign person to be involved with someone else, I would require that they would be willing to.
Have open communication with me that they would talk about their needs and interests and so would I. And we would figure out where our interests align and then figure out how we want to interact with each other or choose not to. But that ability to make your own decisions and interact with people appropriately is so huge and it's the biggest gift ever.
Oh, and I love it. It's been so great.
So here are some things to reflect on related to this episode. When did you first hear the phrase submit to your husband? What emotions did it evoke? Then, what emotions does it bring up for you now? What are the standards that you wanna hold in your interpersonal relationships, whether a spouse or a friend, or a colleague or a family member?
Are there any skill sets you'd like to work on as a result of a lifetime of being trained for obedience to outside parties? I'll say for me, I've been working a lot on stating my needs more clearly telling people no without justifying. And just simply not self-censoring my own opinion,
so where is that for you? Where are you at with that?
 
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Topics: Religious trauma, spiritual abuse, deconstruction, exmormon, exmo, exvangelical, recovering catholic, excatholic, former jehovah's witness, women's empowerment, feminism, leaving religion, self-worth, high demand religions, high control groups, high control religion, cult, cult recovery, brainwashed, high demand religion, spiritual trauma, church abuse