Your response shows how little you know about the Bible and how much you repeat what you have heard. I encourage you to study Deborah. When most nations were ruled by men, God chose a woman to rule the Jews.

There are many Christian marriages where the man though “technically” head of his household recognizes the superior cognitive skills of his wife and delegates the critical decision making to her on major family and financial issues relying on her to put him and the family ahead of her interests.

Nothing wrong with that, it works. Differences are resolved. The man may not agree with the decision his wife makes, but it is easier to accept because he trusts her and knows she loves him and will put him first ahead of her own needs.

Now would you be comfortable always having to put your partner first as “head of the household” or would you resent not being able to put your own needs first? You see the “head of household” idea as a “dominance” concept. That reflects a serious problem you have with authority and most likely reflects problems you experienced with people who have abused their authority. Understandable.

In most “modern” marriages couples move on by divorcing… the most commonly cited reason… “irreconcilable differences”. Does that sound like a “better way”. Rather than having a mechanism to reconcile, the couple find they have an “irreconcilable difference” and so they simply end a marriage. Often the couple still love one another, but they just can’t get pass a major decision as a couple.

The modern alternative is “family counseling”. The couple has no internal dispute resolution process so just before they reach the point of divorce, they head off to have someone else (the majority rule concept) cast the critical vote.

But is this “third wheel” really able to resolve the resentment of the person who feels they “lost”. More often “family counseling” is a speed bump on the road to divorce, so both people can claims “we tried everything”.

Interestingly, the more often a person divorces, the more likely they are to divorce the next time… whether between the first and second, the second and third, etc. Now if you think marriage is also an institution you have no use for, then I guess you can work with the fact that you enter into a “union” with no way to resolve “unreconcilable differences”.

But have you ever wondered why our country doesn’t have two Presidents at one time or companies have two CEOs at one time. I was head of a company where we had three co-equal executives share the office of the President. It did work as the resolution process was based on “majority rules” and the person who was outvoted had to accept the decision and move on. But I am not sure most couples are ready to share their relationship with a third member in order to avoid “irreconcilable differences”.

The most important element to successful business partnerships revolve around dispute resolution. Some have “managing partners” (the head of household concept), others have a managing committee (another example of majority rules), but some often husband and wife partnerships just have the couple. I ran a very large franchise company with hundreds of family owned franchisees… one of the leading causes of businesses failures were divorces… sadly often the result of being unable to resolve differences in the business. People destroy all they worked for simply because they have no way to reconcile differences. Does this sound like a better more “modern” way?

What you wrote sounds “fair” and “logical” and totally collapses when a couple reaches a point of “irreconcilable differences”. I suspect your logic is that at that point the couple should divorce and in this modern era, most do. But many Christian marriages because of their built in conflict resolution process move on… and flourish. Again the most important concept is that the head of household mechanism works when it is driven by love and not power. I do agree when a man asserts himself as head of household and then uses it to satisfy his selfish desires, then it is a “flawed and broken” tool. But frankly I know of few women that have issues with a man that puts them first, you might be the exception…