That’s a nice way of thinking of marriage and what I suppose is really being “submissive” to another. A bit of an idealist view, but one that should in theory be pretty natural.

Anon – I discuss this in some of my previous posts you might want to search the archives for mutual submission. In short, women do not need to submit to men; wives must be submissive to their husbands. In other words, this submission is limited to the Great Mystery that St. Paul talks about in Ephesians 5. It is not a general requirement of women to men. This is important.

However, even in the Great Mystery of Ephesians 5, it begins exactly as you intuit. St. Paul says that husbands and wives must submit to each other out of reverence for Christ. He focuses on the wife’s submission to her husband as the Church submits to her Bridegroom. This is your answer as to why wives must submit to the authority of their husbands. The husband is given authority over his family in order to guide them in the ways of Christ so that all are sanctified. But this authority, as Jesus says, is one of service not of power or caprice. This is the same as submitting to Church authority or submitting to secular authority. Authority is participation in God’s authority for the sole purpose of serving. That is the point the commenters are making–if a husband lives up to his responsibility of serving his family for their salvation, submitting is a joy not oppression.

So what is this mutual submission? Well the husband is not a divine person as is Christ. He does not have all of the gifts necessary. As Pius XI points out, and John Paul the Great continues, women have primacy in the order of love. The husband must submit to his wife’s primacy in love. The result of this is that proper decision making is done in mutual reciprocity. A consensus if you will. However, there may be some cases when this is not possible. In the end, the husband will have to answer to God for the way he has used his authority to serve his family.