Sometimes you run across wrong headed, mean, downright stupid and unrealistic marriage advice in Quiverfull and Evangelical. Silly advice, like Lori Alexander telling folks great marital sex does not require enthusiasm or consent, just lube and ten minutes. Sometimes the advice makes you laugh or is mind-boggling. Doug Wilson takes the side of a man over his wife with zero evidence of anything.

The funny part of it is one of the husband’s biggest complaints is that his wife is airing their stinking marital laundry online, while writing Doug Wilson who is doing the exact same thing. Hypocrite much?

Garrett, the husband, has written to Doug complaining his wife is posting all over social media that he is abusive. He swears he is not.

Comically Doug’s wife reached out to Garrett’s wife and it didn’t go well. Apparently she told Mrs. Wilson something like ‘Get bent’ and Doug is twittering on about Mrs. Garrett being on the edge of denying Christ.

All of this leads Doug to say he only believes Garrett in this ‘Me too’ world. Then he goes nutty ham on Garrett, blaming him for the entire troubles for a completely different reason. You just cannot win with these idiots no matter what you do. Doug will find a way to blame you.

Your whole approach to keeping your marriage together in peace has been an approach of lying to your wife. She is now therefore living in a bubble, but it is a bubble that you paid for yourself, and which you constructed for her. She is living in an emotional bubble, a financial bubble, a relational bubble, and much more.

Now here is a good place to interrupt the flow to say something about a husband’s “federal” responsibilities in marriage. As I have taught in numerous places, the apostle Paul teaches that husbands are to love their wives as Christ loved the church, and that they are therefore to function as covenant heads. This means that the husband is responsible for the state of the marriage. He is the head. This means that, bringing us back to the point, you are responsible for the fact that your marriage is on the brink of divorce.

Doug is accusing Garrett of lying for keeping the peace. I don’t know if Doug knows but most marriages require that type of give and take with both partners. Peace does not come natural to us as a people, and many times one or both partners will make the obvious choice not to fight. It’s not “Lying” to keep the peace. There is no law that says you have to blurt out every single thought in your head towards your spouse.

There is a difference between fault and responsibility. You are the head, and so you are therefore responsible. But part of your responsibility, had you assumed it properly, would have been to not give way to your wife’s more egregious emotional demands. If you are the responsible head, part of that responsibility would entail not telling lies.

According to your letter, you have been catering your wife’s alternative emotional universe from the time you first said I do. The arrival of three daughters reinforced this pattern. Your wife has trained them up in this same way of reacting, and you have subsidized it. You have sought to keep peace in your marriage and in your household, and you have sought to build this peace on the very shaky foundation of lies.

I would say to this guy, be careful what hill you choose to die on. So many things in marriage that people fight over just are not important in the long run. It’s okay to not agree on every single thing. It’s perfectly okay to disagree in a nice way without fighting and name calling.

Everything about Doug’s piece is bad, unless a divorce is what you are angling for. I don’t have time to unpack all of the rotten bits of this particular word salad. Heaven help Garrett! He needs to ignore Doug.

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