This post is inspired by an email sent to me by a TCF reader and she writes:
PS – some parts of her message have been omitted to protect her privacy.
“Hi Paige. Love your posts on fb.
My husband and I have been married for 15 almost 15 years……. He is the man of the house in our home but he also gives me a fair bit of freedom. Decisions like what to cook for dinner, what groceries to buy, clothes to buy, managing finances (bills), he lets me handle them. But when it comes to major decisions like involving our son, or spending a big amount of saving for something or our jobs, that’s where he’ll want to be involved.
He’s been so amazing, he doesn’t control me and I don’t feel like I’m overstepping. If I do, I’m always honest with him and we have an open discussion.
Anyway, just wanted to share my piece”
MY REPLY TO HER:
Thank you for sharing your beautiful story. It sounds like you and your husband have managed to have a traditional marriage that is also very healthy, and not controlling or abusive.
He is a keeper for sure! Wishing you both many more decades of happiness.
This, dear TCF readers, is what a healthy marriage looks like. It seems like they both work and if they are coming up to a 15 year anniversary, then it makes sense for both of them to work as their son is not so young that she needs to be at happy with him in the crucial early years of development.
The early years of a child’s life are the most important for healthy emotional and psychological development and that is why it is always preferable that mother is home with their young child until the child is at least 7 years old.
The most important thing about her email that I wanted to emphasise is how she and her husband navigate their marriage and family life.
A healthy trad Catholic marriage does not have any form of abuse or control, so please do not listen to any of the so-called ‘alphas’ in the manosphere who are lurking in trad Catholic communities and spouting rhetoric synonymous with abuse. These are not genuine Catholics; they are abusive men preying on Catholic women…….like this male who claims to be a traditional Catholic and lay Dominican, yet thinks that it is okay for husbands to be physically violent and abusive to their wives.
Or like the man that another TCF reader told me about who is actively in the trad Catholic community, serves at Mass, is a knight of Columbus, but is actively engaged in pornography use.
Do not be fooled and bamboozled by the apparent ‘qualifications’ of these so-called trad Catholic men. It doesn’t matter how religious, spiritual, or successful they appear to be; OBSERVE THEIR FRUITS – WHAT THEY SAY AND DO. If there is a discrepancy, you are dealing with a predator. People don’t just willingly get into relationships where they are used, manipulated, abused, or killed; abusers get their victims by pretending to be good people.
In a healthy trad Catholic marriage, where the wife feels safe enough to willingly submit to her husband, both parties respect each other, work together, and are able to have open, sincere, and solutions-oriented communication with each other. The husband doesn’t lord it over her and there are secrets or control, especially around money.
You will never find this in an abusive marriage. Abusive men think that being trad entails control, abuse, and dominance over their wives. She is not allowed to have a say in anything and his word is always final. He is demanding, abusive, and controlling. Essentially, he is her master, not her husband and she is treated as a slave, not loved as a wife in the way that Christ loves His Church. It is not a sacrificial love, but a SELFISH love…..ME, MINE, I all the time, where it is only his needs and opinions that matter and that must be catered to at all times. Please note, this is NOT a trad Catholic marriage – at all!
If the man that is dating you is showing traits of abuse, dominance, or control, or even spouting this rhetoric in the things he says to you or that he posts on social media, girl, please run!! This will not get better and it will get much worse if you continue to date him or if you marry him. You will now become an easily accessible target for him to enact his evil and abuse on. It is an unequally-yoked union and it will never prosper because God will not bless such a union.
Do not be so desperate for a trad relationship that you mistake control for love and saddle yourself with a predator and abuser. A trad feminine woman is discerning, wise, picky and does not cast her pearls before swine.
Our Lady, Seat of Wisdom, pray for us!
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ad Jesum per Mariam
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Traditional Catholic Femininity 🌹🙏🌹 
Dear Paige, I am so glad you are here for the community of trad women, because it really seems like this discernment, distinguishment, and definition of what is and isn’t trad vs. abuse is NECESSARY!! And perhaps we aren’t hearing it from the male leaders enough. I think I mentioned to you once, an America trad mission-giver Fr. I. R. who gives me PTSD recalling his local parish mission ten years ago. And that is what i find so sad. It’s disturbing to me that this lady wrote that her husband “also gives [her] a fair bit of freedom”— like, what?? What was she expecting from her future husband? What was she taught to expect? And him wanting to be “involved” sounds like what the Lord intended for marriage: a prayerful partnership between the sexes. Forgive me, but I think, in our desire to take back the culture from the ravages of radicalized feminism, we trads have been allowing this problem of headship vs. abuse by reading select verses of Scripture too literally in a very Protestant way. Without denigrating the headship of the man in the family, his role of protector and provider, we are forgetting the Gospels, in which Our Lady freely spoke up, had the speaking role, if you will, and showed maternal authority at Cana. Thank you and God bless you for speaking up.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Because Black lives matter, I don’t vote Democrat.
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