Welcome to Thomistic Womanhood. In today’s video, we’re going to talk about submission. Should you submit to a man? This is kind of a hot button topic, it’s close cousin is the question, do you need a man? So we’re not going to talk about that. Today we’re going to talk about submitting. Needing a man, that’s kind of when like, there’s a problem and you kind of know you need him to solve it. Submitting kind of brings up a connotation of what do you do when you don’t think there’s a problem? You don’t feel like you need him, but yet he wants to step in and do something anyway? How do you handle that? Or how should you handle that? And so that’s what we’re going to talk about today.

Happy Thomistic Tuesday, in today’s video, we’re going to talk about submission, there is a lot of discussion about that. I watched a YouTube video about it today. And I had some thoughts. So I figured I would make a video and we could talk about it. So submission, submitting to a man that’s kind of like a hot topic now. A lot of modern women do not want to submit to a man under any circumstances, there is a lot of uncertainty about it. And there can be a lot of fear about submitting to a man. And so I’m going to talk about it today, mostly from the point of view of being single, I’m not married, most of you watching this probably aren’t married. And so submission for us looks a little different.

We all know the Bible verse, you know, Wives, submit to your husbands and the question of submission comes up a lot, especially in religious circles. If you’re Catholic, or you’re Christian, that is something that often comes up a lot. I date, predominantly religious guys, mostly Catholic guys, and that question is come up in the social circles, I tend to be in, and it is a hot topic, even there, a lot of men are quite happy, especially young men are quite happy to be insisting on a lot of submissions and I don’t think it’s always warranted. I think part of the problem is it starts at the very beginning. I think it starts with the word usage, a lot of men use the word Submit. And I don’t think that’s the best word to describe it. I do agree that wives should submit to their husbands. I do think in marriage, somebody has to be the tiebreaker. If two, if two spouses disagree, what are you going to do, you’re going to have a stalemate. So somebody has to be the tiebreaker to kind of break that up and keeps the family and the couple unit moving forward.

So, God’s just kind of decided, that’s the men and they get to have the last word. And so you know, you better marry somebody that you trust, because that’s kind of how it’s supposed to work. So I do believe that, but I don’t like to consider it submission, because that word kind of has a connotation of it being almost like you have to kind of turn your brain off and be like, Alright, whatever you want, and I don’t think that’s a good way of looking at it. I prefer the term cooperation. I think that’s a better way of stating it, you should cooperate with your husband, you should cooperate with men, think that I don’t know, submit, men use that word and I just, I don’t know, dude, I think that’s important. And then going back to the tiebreaker analogy and the whole submission in marriage, I think it’s interesting that we have a lot of submission in the workplace. How many of us have male bosses that we do whatever our boss asks of us. And it’s ironic how this whole debate about maybe you’re less good than a man because you’re submitting to him in the context of marriage. And it becomes this big debate over it’s like, gosh, is this a question of like, your identity? Is this like, your self worth, or men better and yet, notice that question never comes up in the workplace,  we submit to people all day long.

Let’s think of the demands of being professional. There’s a lot of things that we don’t get to do at work because it’s not professional, or it’s a career-limiting move and so that is a form of submission, we are subsuming our will, what we want to do, to the will of another, and nobody bats an eyelash about that, nobody thinks that you’re less good than your boss, or you’re not worth as much as your boss. Nobody thinks that employees are intrinsically less good than management, it just that’s the way it is. That’s the way the hierarchy is set up. And to have a smoothly functioning workplace, somebody has to be in charge. You know, somebody has to be the leader. A leader that comes up with the vision and then somebody has to be the execute or the person that implements that vision. And that’s how life is set up. And in a marriage, it’s similar to that you would hope that you and your spouse are on the same page, that you both treat having a family together as like a joint project, your husband’s off, like pursuing his own individual goals. And he’s trying to shoehorn you in the family into that, yeah, I can see how it would be hard to submit to that, because it’s like if he’s not viewing it as a joint project. So that can be hard.

Having said that, in all areas of life, there is often a leader and a follower, it doesn’t have to be a humiliating thing, especially if you’ve got the right man. This leads us to the second nuance of this whole submission debate. And this is where it gets a little weird when you run into a lot of young religious guys, they’re very big on submitting, women need to submit to me, I was recently in this Facebook group for single people. And the premise of the group is, it’s like a singles group. And you find a spouse there, you know, you’re supposed to online date in it because it’s a bunch of Catholics. And we’re like, really old school like theology-nerd type Catholics, a lot of it just turns into, like, a debate about we make these posts about what’s the role of the husband, and what’s the role of the wife and blah, blah, blah. And so it turns into a kind of like this cultural commentary issue thing, I don’t think I’m gonna get married off that group, I need a spouse from it. Because I do tend to, I don’t want to say argue, but there’s a lot of, I don’t know how to say this nicely. But like, there’s a lot of guys who haven’t accomplished much in life, and then they get in there. And they start kind of spouting off like some really weird ideas. And then, me being dumb, I should just be like, demure and feminine, and keep my mouth shut, and bat my eyelashes, the other guys in the group, but no, I’m over here like arguing with them. And so I’m probably not getting espoused off of that.

But in one of the posts that we had, the whole tangent I’m going off on is we had a post in this group, where one of the young men asked what signs of submission should a woman be displaying during the dating process so that I can know she’ll be a submissive wife later on. And, I’ve read this guy’s other posts, and like, he was one of the guys that DMed me. And so, you know, I had talked to him a little bit. So I kind of knew this guy, he meant, well, he wasn’t being like a weird incel kind of guy. But you know, it was a genuine question. And so I gave him a genuine answer. I told them, I was like, I don’t think you should be looking for signs of submission in a woman before you’re married to her. You can look for signs of cooperation, does she respect you? Does she follow along with your ideas? Because I get it, no guy wants to marry. (This might be triggering trigger warning.) But no guy wants to marry a feminist. Okay, like, Guys, they’re not attracted to those women that are really woken and really liberal. Guys usually aren’t into that.

And, you know, so yeah, no guy wants to end up marrying a feminist. And so it makes sense that he would want to look for signs of a more traditional outlook, as far as the gender roles. But one of the things I pointed out to this guy, and I want to mention this in this video, so if you’re dating, and if you’re religious, and you’re dating religious guys, or whatever, if some guy brings us up to you, and it’s like, well, you should submit to me and your dating, you should be very careful with that, because when you submit to someone, again, if this guy means in the spirit of I want you to go along with what I say, because I said it, as some sort of proof of your compatibility or your love, that can be dangerous, because it short circuits, the whole evaluation process, you need to be free to disagree, you and this guy need to both see, and this is what I told the guy in a Facebook post, I said, you guys both need to be free to be your authentic selves, and that requires some disagreement.

So if you’re expecting this girl to submit to you, before you guys have even been married, you are not going to be able to see who you both are. And that can have problems if you marry this girl. And then, later on, you find out that, well, she’s only just doing it because she thought that was the feminine, attractive thing to do. And now she’s got all this like, resentment built up. And finally, she snaps one day and she doesn’t want to listen to you anymore. You know? So that can be a problem. There’s not somebody else quoted in the script. They said they asked a priest about it. The priest said that submission is only warranted after marriage. You don’t submit to somebody you’re dating. And again, it’s because when you’re dating, you need to be free to disagree with this guy. So that you can see how he handles disagreement, is he going to be one of those men that are very insecure, and they just want to rule with an iron fist, and they just want to tell women what to do, and they don’t want any pushback whatsoever, that’s a problem, that’s going to be a really hard person to live with, at the same time, you need to be able to disagree so that he needs to see how you are. if you are just being submissive because you think that’s the feminine thing to do. there’s a lot of videos on YouTube about femininity now, it’s like a really hot trend, being a trad wife, and that’s good, it’s good that the traditional idea of gender roles is coming back, but at the same time, there, there are nuances to it, that you have to be aware of, and you have to kind of steer that car straight, so it doesn’t go off a cliff, you don’t want to go to any extreme.

And the problem with submitting is the sky if he’s gonna demand that you submit to Him when you’re dating, and you don’t even really know who he is, he’s also not going to see who you are. And that’s a problem, you may have an opinion on something that maybe he thinks is a deal-breaker, or maybe there’s something you like to do or some way that you want to live your life or some way you intend to live out your married life. And, if you’ve been watching videos or something that tells you you need to just submit the feminine, attractive thing to do. And you just kind of like, don’t say what you’re really thinking and you just go along with it, because hey, it sounds great. Sure, sure, then you’re robbing him of the opportunity to see who you are and make an accurate and informed decision about whether you’re someone that he wants to spend the rest of his life with. And that’s not fair for either one of you. So that’s why this whole question of submission is kind of tricky.

You have to evaluate these guys. They can’t just demand submission, because it’s something they want, this is kind of like I did a video on modesty, where men were really big on modesty, because it ultimately makes their life easier, and that’s fine. But at the same time, this is another one of those things, some men, not all men, some men will demand submission simply because it makes life easier for them. Men have a very hard time understanding women, we are very mysterious creatures to them. And sometimes men don’t want to do the legwork and do their homework on how to understand women, how to make a woman happy, how to communicate with her, how to navigate conflict with a woman they love. A lot of men don’t want to go through the work of learning how to do that because it’s painful, men don’t like failure, they don’t want to fail at anything that matters to them. And if they like a woman, and they take that seriously, they don’t want to fail somehow. Failing it making her happy, or having a fight and failing to resolve it. And so sometimes men in their insecurity, and their lack of confidence in themselves, they just insist on submission.

They’re like, no, let’s, I don’t want to work through all that messy stuff like women should just submit to me Look, it says it right here in the Bible. So that’s not good. Like I said earlier, though, some cooperation, once you’re married, once you’ve evaluated your a guy, he’s honest, he has integrity, he has good character, once you’ve determined he’s a good person, then yeah, when you’re married, some submission. I like to call it cooperation because submission just sounds a little too slavy to me. But some of that is necessary for the family to function smoothly, you know? So while we’re on the subject, another thing to think about is, how do you know if a guy is worth submitting to, when you’re evaluating this guy, and you’re thinking, well, when I’m married, I’m gonna have to cooperate. And, there may be times where we disagree, and I have to go along with his idea. how do you know when you have a good guy that’s worth doing that for? You want to look at his character,  is he honest? Does he have good ethics? Is he going to tell you the truth? if he’s trying to persuade you of something, is he going to lie and keep information held back so that you’ll go along with it easier? Is he going to refrain from telling you something that would maybe make you not want to do the idea? You don’t want a guy like that? You want a guy that’s open and honest with you, and he tells you all the pertinent details of something, again, does he have integrity? Does he do what he says he’s gonna do? Or does he say one thing and do another? You know if he tells you he loves you, but then he doesn’t call you for two weeks, like, what the heck so that’s, that’s important.

He has to have good judgment. Look at his life and this stuff takes time. This is not stuff you’re going to figure out. Three days, but does he have good judgment? Look at his life, what does he accomplish in his life? What are the decisions he’s made? Do you agree with those decisions? when you hear his life story, so to speak, and you look at the way he’s decided to kind of govern his life? Do you agree with it? Are there things that he’s done? And I’m not even saying like, you know, bad, like, broke the law or something. But I mean, like, as far as like, the choices he’s made in life, oh, he didn’t choose to go to college, he went to trade school, or Oh, he went to college. And then he went to the military. And then he left the military early. And oh, there’s kind of some shady details about why he left early. So you need to kind of dig a little bit and see, do I agree with this guy’s judgment? Does he make good decisions? or does he have a bad judgment? If a man has bad judgment, it’s going to be nearly impossible to cooperate with him after you’re married, he’s going to put forward an idea, and you’re not going to trust them. Because you’re going to think back and you’re like, Well, I know the choices you’ve made in your life, and you haven’t accomplished much, you know, I’ve seen you steer the car of your life off a cliff.

So how do I know you’re not doing that here, you know, so you want a guy with good judgment, and you want a guy that’s accomplished something he needs to have a vision for his life, he can’t be just like some bomb that’s just floating through life, you want a man that is going somewhere,  he’s got a plan, he’s got like a goal, he’s got something he wants to accomplish in life, and he wants you along for the ride to help with that,  that’s why, you can look at the word submission, another way of thinking of it is breaking it apart. And think sub mission, he has to have some mission in life that you like, a sub that you’re under, you’re working with him on that mission. And so then that way, things work together really smoothly, because there’s, there’s already a framework there for you to like, plug into, and submitting isn’t like this weird, unnatural thing. It’s like, Oh, yeah, this is where he’s going in life. I’m on board with that. I’m gonna be part of his life and help with that and then that’s, that’s really a good situation because then it’s not this weird submission thing. It’s like, you agree with the way he’s living his life. And you want to do that, too, and you want to help with it. And that’s important.

Women, there was a really good marriage and family therapist, and he said that women are like jetpacks, they will push a man farther and faster down the path he’s already on. And that’s why he was saying it’s important to pick him in who’s on a path that you support, and why it’s also nearly impossible to change a man he was saying, you can enhance them, you will send him down that path faster. Like I said, it’s like, you’re like that little jetpack, you’re going to send them down that path faster, but you can’t change his path. You can’t make them go down something completely different.

So again, that’s food for thought. That’s kind of how that is my opinion on submission, some thoughts to think about it. So anyway, hope that was helpful. If you have any questions or comments, feel free to leave them below. You can share, subscribe, do all that typical YouTube stuff or not, you can just lurk too, totally down with that. Just watch videos that help the algorithm to anyways, yep. So that is all for today and I will see you later.