A woman's disbelief in her husband seals the lid on his potential leadership. Answering the most common objection: 'he won't step up anyway'.
Is a woman leading the family a diagnosis?
The previous post on this topic sparked a lot of discussion and a few questions. If you haven’t read it yet, skim part one first for context.
Some women wrote that while they’re busy “giving up the driver’s seat” to their husband, their family will simply collapse under the weight of its current problems.
Their argument is that they know for certain he won’t step up anyway, so sooner or later they’ll have to take the leadership functions back.
The catch is this: when you live inside a broken family model for a long time and suffer in it, you get so used to that state of affairs that you simply stop believing things could be any different.
A woman leading her family often finds it hard even to imagine that her husband could genuinely take good care of her and the children.
Her disbelief in him is so strong that it lies like a glass lid on the coffin of his potential leadership.
But thinking about your man that way doesn’t pay. You’re shooting yourself in the foot.
A man will not try to “win back” your trust and respect and prove you wrong about him. If you consider him less than a man, he will live up to your “high opinion.”
He’ll most likely live by the principle: “Don’t waste your strength, love — just sink to the bottom.”
When the woman is the leader of the family, there are no easy or simple solutions.
It’s a choice between bad and very bad.
Either you keep carrying everything yourself (until you burn out completely) — that’s the VERY BAD scenario. Or you give him the driver’s seat and your family faces all the consequences of his clumsy driving at first. That’s BAD, but better than option one.
The difference is that in the second scenario there’s a chance he’ll eventually learn to “drive” well and you’ll finally have a rock to stand behind. In the first scenario that chance doesn’t exist and never will.
Many women, of course, comfort themselves with the idea that sooner or later they’ll divorce and find themselves a “real, strong man.”
But most of the time that isn’t what happens, because you didn’t choose this man by accident either. He matches your standards and your subconscious beliefs.
For instance, it may be that on a subconscious level a woman doesn’t trust men in general (most often because of her father), and it follows logically that she’ll pick a man who never steps up while she carries everything.
This relationship scenario matches her inner conviction: you can only count on yourself.
I believe that almost any man can open up and take a leadership position in life. Yes, first and foremost that’s his own direct responsibility and role.
But you, as his wife, can either help that process along as much as possible, or throw a spanner in the works — and then suffer from having to solve every problem alone.
Isn’t it easier to free up the driver’s seat?
Read on: When the Man Leads the Family. Part 3.