He begins:
It is heartbreaking each time I hear of a good Christian man being divorced by his Christian wife. It seems that there is an epidemic of Christian wives being dissatisfied in their marriages or being the cause of blowing up their marriages with selfishness. I venture to say that this blog has saved many marriages already and will continue to do so, Lord willing, as it gets to the heart of the disease of feminism and a woman’s desire to be in control of her man.
"It seems" is hardly the wording you would use if you had done any legitimate research. I have no doubt the perception of someone like Ken is that women are indeed the primary culprit, but in the same way that the "perception" of John Wilkes Booth was that Lincoln was a bad President. I'm certainly not inclined to trust the opinion of either on these subjects.
Also, if by "saved many marriages" Ken really means that Lori's blog has turned many relationships with the potential for a fulfilling, satisfying bond between equals into a superficial empty shell based on nothing more than a contrived hierarchy that rules out any true intimacy, then I would be able to agree that Lori's blog has saved marriages.
By the way, I also ought to address where he alludes to the supposed desire of women to control their husbands. There is a sick irony in the fact that a man who literally believes he ought to have absolute authority over every detail of his wife's life actually thinks it's women who have a problem with wanting control!
Next, he shares his response to a friend named Bob who sought Ken and Lori's help with his marriage. Ken begins by telling Bob the following:
“Let’s first make sure that you are not the problem, Bob. How are you doing with loving your wife and living with her in an affectionate and understanding way? Let’s have you make a list of the things you can be doing differently and see if showing more grace and trying to meet her at her needs will produce the results you are looking for."
This sounds good, until you remember that Ken and Lori twist definitions whenever it suits them, so that they appear to be reasonable without actually having to be so. Ken is playing lip-service to the idea that the man may be the one at fault, and insists that he must make sure he's living with his wife in an affectionate and understanding way, but I would not put it past Ken to turn around and declare any behavior of the husband "loving" even if it is harsh. He could simply say that it was being done "in the wife's best interest." This is no different from how Ken and Lori condemn abuse but then withhold the right to decide what is and is not actual abuse. How interesting that I can't remember a single instance in which they did declare something to be abuse.
I also won't be easily convinced that Ken really believes what he's saying here. After all, this is the man who said in a Facebook comment once, "I am so happy I no longer have to try and chase down my wife's 'needs' as that was so tiresome to watch the mark move regularly because I could never satisfy her." Ken, you need to practice what you preach before we'll take your words seriously.
After the first phase of restoring marriage (determining whether the man is the problem), Ken shares the second phase:
The second phase of trying to restore a marriage comes with asking one’s spouse to do things God’s way in the marriage. Yes, these husbands were instructed to play the “submission card” that is so clearly given to wives in the Word, but to do so while maintaining all of the other principles of Christian love and living at the same time. They could not expect God to bless their marriage if they are not doing their part in it. But part of being in a Christian marriage is to be head and show loving and gracious leadership.
Ken either doesn't know (or doesn't care) that the Bible simply never declares husbands to be the "leader" of their wives. This is an idea in Western thought that originated with the philosopher Aristotle (definitely not a Christian!). Within a century of the formation of the church, many ideas of Greek philosophy infiltrated the church, and suddenly people "found" such ideas in the Bible. But they did not originate with Paul, and a careful reading of his words reveals this. For this reason, it is even less acceptable for a husband to play the "submission card." Wow, I just can't imagine this sort of "privilege" being abused by men!
Bob set about holding his wife accountable for her temper and angry words spewed at him and the children by simply calling her out on it each time she did it. When she overspent regularly and put the family in a lot of credit card debt, he took the family finances away from her and gave her a generous $1,000 a month allowance as she regularly complained about how “controlling he was.”
Besides the fact that this is manipulative and emotionally abusive behavior (despite Ken's flippant dismissal), let's remember how one-sided it is. Ken and Lori constantly remind us that it is not the job of the wife to change her husband, that she must leave this up to God. Apparently, however, God is not good enough for wives, so their husbands must take the primary role in changing them. None of this, needless to say, is remotely biblical.
In a men’s group that I am a part of, a young man asked what is he to do if his wife is no longer giving him sex because she complains that he is not loving her well. The main responses he received was that when he gets home each day, he needs to go about chasing down her needs. Give her affection, help with the children so she gets a break, make dinner, give her a foot massage and listen to her. All great things for a loving husband to do but guess what? It is just a short term bandage on the real problem. Many of us found out that no matter what we did, it only kept us on a treadmill of feeling we had to perform in order to be loved. When the degree to which our wife loves us is based on how we performed for her that day or hour, it is doomed to mediocrity and “tit for tat.”
Isn't it disgusting that people like this always use the phrase "giving him sex", as if sex is only for the husband? We should pity these people...likely they are having much worse sex than they could be, with a mindset like that! Seriously, though, it is very telling that Ken and people like him take something like sex that ought to be for the benefit of both spouses, and make it all about the man. And he still thinks he'll convince us that women are the selfish ones!
The rest of this paragraph is tricky. I agree that, to a certain extent, it is not good to withhold affection from your spouse if you're not getting from him/her exactly what you want. An ideal marriage is one in which both spouses are doing their best to love the other and be reasonable so that such battles are not necessary. However, the problem I must point out with what Ken is saying here is that he condemns wives for withholding something from their husbands because they're not getting what they want, but he sees no problem with husbands treating their wives however they want unless their wives "submit." In his mind, it is the job of the wife to earn her husband's good treatment and love by being "submissive." She must make the first step, or she has no right to expect him even to be kind to her. But no similar obligation is on the husband.
So where have things gone so wrong that eight out of ten Christian divorces are initiated by unhappy wives?
Ken and Lori love to quote this statistic, and as far as I can tell, it's true. But, of course, statistics must be interpreted. Ken is sure he knows the answer: that wives are selfish and impossible to please. But, of course, he has no basis for this claim. I discovered an interesting fact in the brief research I did: far more women than men initiate divorce, but the numbers are equal when it comes to non-marital breakups. I don't claim to have enough information to make any definite claims either, but could it be that marriages are more likely to be plagued with the disfunction caused by traditional gender roles? This is further backed up by the fact that women are more likely to be unhappy with their marriages while the men think things are going just fine right up until they go to counseling or a divorce is initiated? Could it be that men benefit disproportionately from such arrangements, while a much greater burden is placed on the wife? This certainly doesn't seem far-fetched to me. And it would shed some light on the statistic. It would be interesting to research further, but for now, let's turn back to Ken.
Bob, Joe, Fred, Dave, Paul, and John were all divorced by their wife last year, except one did divorce his wife after she left him and the kids for the eighth time and asked for the divorce. Lori and I are heartbroken each time we hear of another wife divorcing her husband and family. That’s right. The children know full well that Mom is the problem. Dad may not be perfect but he was the one trying to keep the marriage together and everything he tried wouldn’t work because his Christian wife had been poisoned by feminism and the appeal of the apple of happiness.
Ken continues using crafty language to paint a picture of innocent husbands victimized by their wives. But, of course, he has no knowledge of the vast amount of individual cases, and the picture he is painting is nothing more than a convenient assumption intended to prove his prejudiced opinion. If I might offer my own opinion, I suspect in at least a large portion of divorces, both spouses are at fault to some extent. That doesn't mean there's never a case in which it is overwhelmingly one spouse or the other, but I doubt those cases are the norm, despite what Ken wants us to think. I don't claim to know, this is just my guess. If Ken is allowed a guess, I am too.
Would that not be a radical vaccination program for the church if this next Father’s Day your pastor boldly stood up in the pulpit and repented of his fear of women in his church? Where He proclaimed loudly and boldly everything that willful wifely submission looks like and what love, true sacrificial love for a husband should be in Christian marriage? To do this might start a revolution where the church no longer bought into feminism’s lies that it is equality in marriage that is the key to happiness.
As if it wasn't clear before, Ken unambiguously declares here that his idea of the perfect marriage is one that is intentionally unequal. People like this often lie that they believe women are "equal but different." Don't believe them. They believe women are inferior, that God intentionally made them that way, and that men are higher, slightly more divine beings who must be reverenced by the lowly women who should be privileged that the men pay any attention to them at all. Only a narcissist who thinks his audience is a bunch of idiots could seriously try to convince us that equality is a terrible thing and that the only way to have a happy marriage is one in which the wife carries the entire burden of serving her husband, while her husband gets to be the ruler and center of everything. Pretty convenient which side of that arrangement Ken finds himself on!
One final point I must make is that I'm confused about the point of this blog. Lori's blog is supposed to be for women, but there seems to be little here for them besides an attempt to blame them for all divorces and scare them into staying married no matter what. It seems much more like a love letter and pat on the back to men, reassuring them that if there is a problem in their marriage, they most likely are not at fault. After all, Ken's "statistics" say so!
Link to the original blog: https://thetransformedwife.com/an-epidemic-of-christian-wives-divorcing/
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