“My husband asks for my input, but then he usually doesn’t take it.”
This showed up as a comment on a post about submission (in marriage). I don’t mean to pick on the comment’s author; she was merely voicing what many wives are thinking…and yet perhaps not fully thinking through the implications of.
What is Input?
Input is not a decision or conclusion. Input is information or data. If you gather input from several sources (possibly including yourself), you then use the totality of that input, process it based on your own worldview, context, etc., and arrive at a conclusion.
What I think, feel, and believe is important to my husband. He’s also interested in observations I’ve made that he might have overlooked. But most of the time, that isn’t all the input he has to work with. He has his own thoughts, feelings, and beliefs. He has his own observations and research. Depending on the situation, he might also be receiving input from someone else — like one or more of our children, or the wise counsel of a friend or church leader.
Just as a computer tabulates all the data before producing a result, so a wise husband will consider all the data before making a decision.
Women do this, too. Although it’s not a serious issue, consider this common scenario: “Honey, which looks better — the black shoes or the navy?”
Husbands sometimes wonder why their wives ask, since the wives often settle on the opposite! The simple answer is that the wife didn’t want her husband to decide which shoes she should wear; she wanted her husband’s input on which shoes to wear — and she used it along with other input to make her own decision.
Do You Want to Give Input or Rule the Roost?
If our expectation as wives is that our husbands will ask for our input and then do what we want, we don’t actually want to give input; we want to make the decisions. A good husband will seriously consider his wife’s input. But if we truly desire to submit, we need to avoid taking offense when our preferences don’t line up with what our husbands deem best for our families.
The trick I have is knowing when to give input. I have a hard time waiting until I am asked, which is when I feel with certainty the input is appropriate. My struggle comes in when I am *not* asked, and when the outcome of the decision at hand really has no eternal consequence. I feel I ought to be silent, because saying something might cause my husband to steer our proverbial ship in the direction *I* choose, when that is not God’s best for our lives.
I am working to trust both God and my husband more so that I can feel that even when I “mess up” and “speak out of turn,” my husband will do what is right, ultimately. I just don’t want to be a Delilah! LOL!
You’re right; that can be a hard thing, too. And it probably depends a lot on the husband. It’s probably something a wife needs to be more cautious about if her husband is not very confident in his decision-making and tends toward just doing whatever his wife prefers. It’s probably something a wife needs to worry about less if her husband is consistently firm and confident in his decisions. (And having a good track record for taking it well when he doesn’t go the direction you suggested can go a long way toward helping him be the latter!)