The Day I Stopped Trying To Convince My Wife I Was Right

I used to be a man who needed to win.

Not at chess. Not at sports. Those were fine. I could lose a basketball game, shake the man’s hand, and go home.

I needed to win at home.

I needed to be right at the dinner table. I needed to be right in the car on the way to church. I needed to be right when she made an observation about the way I had handled something with the kids that did not flatter me.

I was a Christian man. I had a Bible open in my house. I was reading more Bible than most pastors I knew. I quoted Ephesians 5 every chance I got, because Ephesians 5 says wives submit. I left out the next verse most of the time. The one that says husbands love their wives the way Christ loved the church.

I was right.

I was so right.

My wife was so tired.

I told myself I was leading the household.

I told myself the headship verses obligated me to win. I told myself a wife who disagrees with her husband on a small thing today is a wife who will disagree on a big thing later. I told myself the argument was about the principle, not the toilet paper, not the weekend, not whether the boy needed a coat.

I built a vocabulary.

I learned how to be calm and right at the same time, which is worse than being loud and right because the woman cannot tell you you are out of line. I quoted Scripture in the middle of arguments because I knew she could not push back on the Word, and so I was using the Word as a weapon.

The Word did not deserve that.

I was effective.

I won most of them.

The marriage got correct.

It got lonely.

She stopped bringing things up. That is what a wife does when a husband has trained her that bringing things up will cost her thirty minutes of correction. She gets quieter. She gets functional. She runs the house like a co-worker. She kisses you on the cheek before bed because that is what a wife does, and you go to sleep next to a stranger you happen to be married to.

The text in the Bible the modern church does not preach often enough is this one.

“Likewise, ye husbands, dwell with them according to knowledge, giving honour unto the wife, as unto the weaker vessel, and as being heirs together of the grace of life; that your prayers be not hindered.” (1 Peter 3:7)

That last clause is the one men skip.

That your prayers be not hindered.

A husband who does not dwell with his wife according to knowledge cannot pray. The line goes dead. The phone stops connecting. He kneels in his closet and says the same words and nothing comes back.

I was praying like that for a long time.

I did not know why.

Then one Saturday I lost an argument I knew I had not lost.

I cannot tell you what the argument was about. I will not, because it does not matter, and the wife I share a roof with does not need her marriage on a Substack.

I can tell you the shape of it.

I was right. I knew I was right. I had the verse, I had the logic, I had the example. I had her cornered in the kitchen and I was about to land the line that would close it down.

Then a phrase from James 1 walked across my mind.

“Wherefore, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath.” (James 1:19)

Three things.

Swift to hear.

Slow to speak.

Slow to wrath.

I had been doing all three backwards in my own kitchen.

I was the slowest to hear of any man in my own house. I was the fastest to speak. I was the man who knew exactly when to bring the wrath down softly enough that nobody could call it wrath.

I had been doing this for years.

I was a Pharisee with a wife.

I closed my mouth.

I did not finish the line.

I asked her what she was actually saying.

I had not asked her that question in three years.

I started losing on purpose.

I do not mean I started agreeing with things I thought were wrong. I mean I started releasing the small ones. The ones that did not matter eternally. The ones I had been winning every week for a decade as a way of running my household when really I was running a debate club.

I started saying I do not know out loud when I did not know.

I started saying I see what you are saying when I saw what she was saying, even if I was about to disagree.

I started reading the next verse.

“Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it.” (Ephesians 5:25)

The verse I had been quoting at her, before the verse I should have been quoting at myself.

The Christ in Ephesians 5 did not win arguments with the church.

The Christ in Ephesians 5 gave himself for it.

The husband is not the prosecutor of the marriage. He is the one who lays down.

I was going to take a long time to learn how to lay down.

I am still learning.

“If you are reading this and your kitchen has gone quiet, the deeper marriage writing lives behind the paid wall. Become a paid subscriber.”

P.S.

The wife you are married to right now is the wife the Lord gave you. The argument you are about to win on Saturday is not worth the marriage you are about to lose by Tuesday.

Lose the argument. Keep the woman.