About the author
More posts by Moderator
I was in high school when I first went to a Basic and Advanced Seminar, and my family enrolled in the Advanced Training Institute (ATI) homeschool program. Prior to that, my folks hadn’t attended a Basic Seminar in nearly a decade. While they appreciated what they had learned the first time around, they didn’t implement much of it. Until they decided to enroll our family in ATI.
I don’t remember where it was that I first heard about a concept called “listening to the cautions of your wife,” but it was a doctrine espoused pretty liberally by the Institute in Basic Life Principles (IBLP). Basically, IBLP taught that God would warn a man against bad decisions through uneasiness felt by his wife. The doctrine was backed up by all sorts of stories and illustrations where men had listened to the cautions of their wives and saved friends from suicide or avoided a business calamity. There may have been stories illustrating the opposite –where a man didn’t listen to the caution of his wife and reaped terrible consequences. My Mama was kind of headstrong anyway, so she was delighted to learn that Daddy had to listen to her, because God said so!
As my family sank deeper into the ATI lifestyle, Mama became our own little “Oracle at Delphi”–meaning Daddy was somewhat afraid to make any big decision unless Mama approved. By default, we sons, who had no wives of our own, were instructed to “listen to the cautions of your mother.”
Around the time my family enrolled in ATI, I distinctly remember Bill Gothard admonishing sons that parents were a “training ground” for marriage. God would use friction in our relationship with our mothers (if a son) or fathers (if a daughter) to prepare us for the same friction we could expect from our spouse. It seemed to make sense, so I plunged headlong into making Mama happy. After all, I wanted to be a good husband someday, and here was my chance to ferret out all of my character flaws, work on them, and someday be a perfect husband for my future bride. If I recall correctly, Bill Gothard said that it was only when you mastered your relationship with your mother that you’d be ready for marriage.
The only problem was that no one stopped to consider whether Mama might be wrong. Whether Mama might use her powers to be selfish and manipulative. And, worst of all, whether God might actually speak directly to Daddy or one of us children.
Things were fine for a few years, while I jumped headlong into “marriage training.” Mama was stubborn. Great! My future wife was probably going to be stubborn, too (or God wouldn’t have given me a stubborn Mama). Mama was unreasonable. My wife was going to be unreasonable, too, and, since I was learning how to suffer an unreasonable mama, my marriage was going to be destined for happiness because my wife and I would never have any fights stemming from her being unreasonable. Mama was arbitrary. God was testing me to see if I would love her unconditionally and thus prove my ability to love my future wife unconditionally, too.
While I had a few disagreements with Mama during the years that followed, over things like what vocation I should train for and who I should marry, it always ended with my deciding that Mama was right and that my character was simply lacking.
I’ll never forget the day God opened my eyes and I saw the woman whom I later married in that special light. You know, the one where your heart starts to flutter and it’s as if the rest of the world goes dark. You can’t stop thinking about her. You pray and pray, “Please God! If she’s not the one you made for me, make these feelings go away!”
So I told Mama about it. Her response, “I really like her, but I don’t think she’s the one for you.” So I assumed that I must not have guarded my heart appropriately. A few months passed and my feelings only intensified. I continued to pray. I broached the subject with Mama again and her response was the same. “I really like her, but I don’t think she’s the one for you.” That cycle continued for a year, until one day Mama had a special revelation from God, that this girl was, indeed, the one for me! Daddy put his rubber stamp on it (which seemed to be his modus operandi most of the time).
I resisted the urge to be frustrated, to gloat, to question. God surely knew that I needed more time to prepare for marriage. And now that I had Mama’s approval and blessing, it meant there would be no friction between Mama and my bride once the wedding took place.
I couldn’t have been more wrong.
During the engagement, Mama began to display strange behavior. She’d criticize my fiancée for petty things. I’d ask, “Are you saying you have a caution, Mama?” She would concede that she didn’t. She loved my fiancée. She’d criticize my future in-laws. Again, I’d ask, “Are you saying you have a caution?” She didn’t.
When I moved into my first place, her body language was angry. Weepy. Even violent. She said it was a terrible day. The worst day of her life.
After my wife and I returned from our honeymoon, things were blissful for a few months, but two things began to happen. First, Mama became increasingly competitive with my wife. And, at home, I found my marriage to be somewhat bumpy. My wife and I had long, long talks, and two things became very apparent. First, I could not serve two masters. I could not please my wife and Mama at the same time, so I cut Mama loose. Her happiness was no longer my concern. Daddy could worry about that.
Second, all those years of training for marriage by obeying Mama’s every whim? They were more or less for naught. My wife was not very much like Mama. Sure they do have some similarities here or there, but I think that’s probable with any two individuals you compare.
Several years into our marriage, Mama was still incredibly unhappy, frequently lamenting that my wedding day was the worst day of her life. That she was not ready to not be a mama anymore. In frustration one day, she told me, “You never do what I say anymore!”
One day, after another argument, Mama hung up on me, and I decided I was too tired of all the drama to call her back. We didn’t speak for months. During that time, I learned about setting appropriate boundaries. I learned about things like passive-aggressive behavior and co-dependency. And my outlook not only on my relationship with Mama, but also on all that ATI had taught me about honoring and obeying my parents, changed.
We ultimately reconciled with Mama, but not until she had missed some very important life events. Unfortunately, we will never have the chance to get those back. Things are much better between us in that Mama now understands that we have our own lives. She may or may not agree with every decision we make, but she understands that, as adults, they are our decisions to make and that God is just as capable of redeeming our mistakes as He was of redeeming hers.
And while Mama might have had these struggles regardless of whether my family had ever heard of Bill Gothard or ATI, I have to think her struggles were exacerbated by a system that basically gave her absolute power over the lives of her family members.
I saw something very similar happen with my oldest brother when he got married, he didn't have a falling out with my mother but the power struggle was there, he is very stong willed himself though like my mother is, they are very similar so when he told her how it was going to be, he needed to run his own family and be head of it, she gave in and that was that. However with me, her oldest daughter getting married, that took many years for her to respect my decisions, still doesn't sometimes, but it is better. When I would visit without my husband, she would spend hours lecturing me on my faults. At the time I was living in another country so when I visited it was for a few weeks, and I was usually off schedule and would sleep in really late, only to awaken to her sitting on my bed with her Bible, waiting for me to wake up so she could lecture me!!! I didn't know how to set up bounderies at the time so I put up with it, I think she knows better now than to do something like that because she hasn't tried it in years
Listening to the cautions of your wife - this is a Gothard classic: a good idea with some practical, sound wisdom blown out of porportion and elevated to doctrinal status, one which has scant scriptural backing. Thanks for bringing an out-of-balance teaching and the potential consequences to light.
Ah yes. I was rather distressed to discover when I got married that I did NOT have a magic line to God that would just tell us what the right thing to do was. :-P That doctrine combined with wifely submission made for some very challenging decision-making--actually talking through a decision practically just wasn't on the table.
Yes, if your caution was wrong you must be out of alignment with God and if your husband didn't take your caution seriously then he was. It was a huge mess putting so much pressure on both spouses. My husband and I are only now beginning to listen to each other and feel validated for our opinions whether we agree or not.
Vohnda, I have been waiting for this kind of discussion to begin again. I call it the nuts and bolts discussion we ex-ATI IBLP families need to bring healing to our lives.
We have experienced the same thing that you described but I never really pulled out the listen to your wife trump card too much.
My kids may say I ran or tried to run the home. For many years I would have agreed with their assessment. No longer. Truth brings light and freedom.
We were put in the perfect storm with that whole submission teaching. My sons learned to see me as a controlling mother when in all actuality, I was being. a. mother. I wish them to be a bird on windowsills to see that mothers mother. It is not a bad thing but a good thing.
Now, did I micro manage? Oh my goodness yes! Would I have without the bilge I was taking in? No. I do not believe so. See, I was micromanaging in the name of the Lord.
All that to say that I am glad beyond words that our marriage made it and that my children spend time with me. In order not to see the changes made in our lives and marriage they would have to be blind. No more of that micromanaging and submitting heresy.
I have never been so free to be the me God wants me to be. That sounds awfully me-ish but it is all to His glory and for the perfect purpose of touching hurting people in this world. It is all about Him and we certainly got in the way of that with our principles and thinking we could do this armed with our own devices.
It is so nice to be sold out for Him who loved us to the cross. He can sort all of this out. God bless and reach Bill Gothard with exactly what he needs. Salvation? Sight? God knows. As for me and my house - we are never going back.
Hmmm I just realized this is a 4 year old thread! I am glad to have been brought back to it as many people are still leaving and needing help in these areas. I so enjoyed going over these comments.
I tend towards control. I certainly didn't need this type of encouragement to be more controlling.
I can relate to alot of this. I'm not a son, of course, but my mom definitely wears the pants in the family. (dad just thinks he does.. poor guy..) I remember this teaching. I think there is some credibility to the teaching in general, but not like this.
I think there is a grain of truth that women often have an instinctive or innate caution about situations, people, or decisions that men don't typically have. But I also realize that this "gift" may be taken to the extreme by a controlling woman. The opposite extreme, of course, is that the husband is controlling and doesn't listen or heed the cautions of the wife. As always, there should be balance, give & take in a marriage. But I definitely agree that a mother should not try and control or manipulate her son.
Reminds me so much of the book "Boundaries in Marriage". There are important boundary issues for both spouses to honor.
http://www.amazon.com/Boundaries-Marriage-Henry-Cloud/dp/0310243149/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1341861365&sr=8-1
Oh. My.
It's like the writer was writing about me. And it caused untold levels of agony in my marriage for the first SEVEN YEARS until I discovered that my wife could, in fact, be wrong. I'm still working through that.
Unfortunately, my mother has also lead my father to believe he's an idiot. She will "wait for his lead," while only giving her thoughts if directly asked for them. And then when something goes wrong, she states that she knew it was going to go wrong. Every time. EVERY time.
Our biggest fights occurred when I reminded her of the things she thought were good ideas before they were tried. She vehemently denied, and said she had always thought it was a bad idea. Whatever.
Been there.
I've thought, and said for a while, that Gothard blatantly gives credibility to a new mutant strain of the feministic virus. This just confirms it all over again.
Gothard: “[Jesus said] he who is the greatest among you be the servant of all. That makes the woman the greatest of all because she has served every single person in the world by being in her womb.” (Source, and my rebuttal:
http://www.quiveringdaughters.com/2011/02/bill-gothard-and-patriarchy-re-routed.html )
Moreover, Gothard didn't even need to say out loud that "mom is always right," or that a son must "master" his relationship with her before marriage. Only that impression needed to be there, imbalanced by Biblical emphasis on grace, for family relationships to grow more and more dysfunctional, and for a person's indwelling impulse to people-please, or to control, to be endorsed. And one doesn't need to have been officially in ATI, or even have directly listened to Gothard, for that false doctrine to spread like a "meme" and incidentally inform our thinking. Both the people-pleasing part and the use-it-for-control part must be directly uprooted, "by name," and mortified by the Gospel!
This, by the way, may be another reason why I hear of so many men, even in homeschool families, who are reaching their late 20s and 30s, and beyond, and are not willing (or able) to get married.
I wonder how many "patriarchal" evangelical families, even apart from direct Gothard or ATI influence, were actually disguised "matriarchies"!
My mom is identical. She latched onto the concept of "listen to the cautions of your wife" and used it to browbeat my father into submission, all the while piously proclaiming that she was a submissive wife.
And I thought I was the only one with an Italian mom! My parents being Italian (1st generation) kept very tight hold on me after I got married. For my first 2 marriage anniversaries, I HAD to pay my own way to fly home to spend time with THEM (after all, your husband had you for the WHOLE year, so we get you for a while). It was very stressful as I hate flying and we did not have the money and most of the time while visiting there was "what did we do to you that you had to move so far away? Weren't we good enough for you?" guilt guilt guilt and my mom NEVER met or knew of Mr. Bill.
Ironically, after Dad passed away, my mom spent her last 4 years with us. We even took in her nasty white cat that hated everyone (I called her White Trash).
"We even took in her nasty white cat that hated everyone (I called her White Trash)."
LOL! Can't stop laughing...and I love cats!
My favorite story about "the submissive wife" is a lady I saw in a church where I was new. She wasn't there long but she wore a head covering.(I think we all know that the head covering is a sign of submission right)Well I asked about her and a friend told me she wore the head covering against her husband's wishes! Too funny and too sad!
Boy, this sounds too familiar. I had a good childhood, but after we got into the seminars in my teens, things deteriorated. My relationship with my mom really has never recovered from the damage. This particular teaching, combined with the "spiritual gifts" personality tests, reinforced my mom's belief that I was unable to be sensitive, either spiritually or emotionally, and that therefore, my judgement was questionable. I think she somehow expected that when I married, my wife would bring me properly to heel, and when my wife backed me up instead, friction resulted. There remains a definite belief of entitlement to control and manipulate even though I am in my thirties and have been married over a decade.
Yup. I was married to a "Mama" type for 21 years. One of her constant refrains when I didn't want to make a decision the way SHE wanted it made, was "You know God speaks through the wife," or "You're not honoring me if you decide that way instead of this way." In our arguments, I would say "Who needs a Holy Spirit? I have you."
I stayed in that marriage so that my kids could be raised with some semblance of at least one non-manipulative parent, all while enduring our tenure in ATI/IBLP. Of course, after I divorced their mother, they stayed there and refuse to have anything to do with their "sinning" Dad, to the point where they want to change their last names to their mother's.
I pray for their eyes to be opened one day.
Wow, that's terrible! I'm sorry to hear that!
@Bill That is very sad. I'm sorry for you and your family.
Out of curiosity did you re-marry?
I'm just about to, Wes.
It goes both ways, huh? There's extremes in everything, and we've seen both. But, with both a husband listening to cautions of his wife, and a wife respecting her husband as the head of the home, it should balance out, huh? The key is in Ephesians 5:21 "submit TO EACH OTHER in reverence of Christ", which is said before the instructions are given to husbands and wives. If neither know what to do? You come to the Lord together and ask Him, which can include asking Him whose counsel you may need to seek. Did Bill Gothard ever talk of any of those things together? I hope and pray that if he DOES read here that he can learn to seek God for ways to teach them both and avoid extremes.