WINNING YOUR WIFE TO THE VISION: HOW TO LEAD YOUR HOUSEHOLD AND BRING HER WITH YOU

(Transcript from Brutal American Podcast 04/01/2026)

How do men do that? How do they win their wives to the Christian vision, to masculine Christianity, to biblical Christianity? How do you bring somebody along when they're not there yet?

The first one is obviously repentance. So you need to repent and you need to repent to whoever was affected by this. So it can be your kids and it's your wife.

That knowledge has to lead to some sort of obedience, which leads to some sort of fruit. And this entire process is what wins someone's heart.

The husband is convinced, the household is not.

What I found is the husband gets one over [verify wording: likely "won over"] to some flavor of masculine Christianity. They start reading their Bibles and they just kind of really get the scales removed from their eyes in terms of what does it mean to be a Christian? What does the Christian life look like? Why it doesn't exclude masculinity. It's actually a calling to be masculine. And there's a place for that.

Maybe they haven't been leading their house the way they should be. They repent, they try to repent to their wife. They try to repent to their kids.

But then they kind of find themselves in a weird place because they have moved further, right? Or more biblical or whatever you're going to call it, but everybody else in the family, especially wives and older daughters are not there at all. And they have not come along and as you try to bring them along, they're like kicking and screaming the whole way. They've been indoctrinated with third way feminism their entire lives.

And so you really are in a pickle. Like it's a difficult position to be in, to know, I know this is the truth. I know that this is the way that I'm actually supposed to be doing things, but everybody else in my life is fighting me tooth and nail on every little thing.

Especially the ones inside the home where de facto the wife has been ruling for your entire marriage. And some of these guys I know have been married for five, 10, 15, 20 years, and now they're getting to a point, but the wife has ruled the home the entire time and trying to break the ship [verify wording] and trying to go in the right direction is like a really, really hard thing to do.

Repentance has to be spoken, not just acted out

I think it's also very common to find guys that go through the exact scenario that you're talking about, but they get to the point where they feel like they need to do something. But rather than going into full repentance where they go, I've been doing this wrong and actually saying that to their wives and children and going, Hey, we've been doing this the wrong way and it's my fault. It's my responsibility to do things in a particular way and to lead you and shepherd you in a particular way and we're going to start doing that from now on.

Instead they just sort of like try to shift gears and start doing those things, which is still better than nothing, but it's not full repentance. Then the people who are under your care don't actually know what's going on. All of a sudden you just start doing different things.

There is a sense where like people are poorly discipled. And so owning that and taking responsibility and asking, repenting and then walking in repentance, I think is mostly what we're talking about is like, how do we effectively walk in repentance to get everybody else there as well?

Find a church that will back you up.

If you don't have a church that's going to back you up on this stuff, that is going to be much more difficult. If you're really tied into a local church, your members there, and then you start trying to make these changes in your home, and the pastors that are above you are going to fight alongside your wife to keep you from moving in a biblical direction with your family, that's gonna be really, really difficult.

I would argue impossible. If that's the situation and the pastors are not agreeing with you that this is the biblical standard, the household codes, if they're embarrassed by the household codes, then you either quit or you find a new church.

Because the pastors are super important, right? This is going to be counseling, marriage counseling. And if they're not willing to call out female sins, if they're not willing to say, yes, this is what God said about the home. This is what God said about, husbands love your wives, wives, obey your husband. Like if they're not willing to say that and be unashamed of it, you got to find somewhere else that will, because it is, it's such an uphill battle.

A lot of it is, like we say, is caught and not taught. And so if you're the only guy in a congregation trying to do this and everybody else is ruled by their wife and just doing the egalitarian thing, like you're going to stand out as the weird one. You have nobody to back you up. You have nobody to even ask, what's the ditch over here? So it's going to be exceedingly hard.

That would be my number one thing is like find a church that agrees with this. And it doesn't have to be like the most base church in the United States or something crazy. Like you don't necessarily have to come to Refuge [verify name], but you need to have a pastor with a backbone who will at least like not blush at the things that the Bible says.

Start with the authority of God's word.

Like we are talking about winning hearts, winning minds, winning people to a vision, winning people by the fruit. I think that's incredibly important.

And if we can't go straight to Ephesians five, then maybe it's like, well, why do I care what Ephesians five says? Do we actually agree on inerrancy? Do we agree on authority? And so you gotta figure out where you're at. You're gonna have to get biblical first. Like you're gonna have to care about the authority of God's word and then your practical obedience to it in your life for the goodness of your family and your children and everything else that you touch. And so like that comes first, if we can't get that right, good luck with all the rest of this stuff.

But ultimately I think my biggest point is like, you can't just give them a marriage book or give them a doctrine book. Like that's a component of it, but it's not the main thing.

Respect has to be established.

At a very base level, if your wife doesn't respect you to begin with, you've got to establish that along the way. If not first, then along the way in this process, similar to the way that we talk about like winning the hearts of your children and how there's a certain reverence that children should have for their fathers. And that's how you're going to win their hearts. And the same thing is true of your wife.

A lot of these situations, fundamentally the wives do not respect their husbands. This is a circular thing, right? Because the husband has never won their respect in doing these things that a man is designed to do.

Back to God's factory settings.

And I think the encouragement is, as bad as the propaganda has been, and as long as we have been drinking that Kool-Aid, we are, all we're looking for is revert back to God's factory settings. It's harder the longer you do it. And maybe people have been married for 10 years and they've got several kids and it's harder, but it's all possible because fundamentally like she's still a woman. You're still a man. God made us differently. God made us with different giftings and different weaknesses and talents. And so all we're asking for, all we're looking for is like to revert back to how God made us.

And I think that there is a spiritual and biological and just fundamental level where women want to do the things God commanded them to do, because that's why he made them. So I think there is a encouragement there that the things that we're looking for and the things we're asking for are actually innate. And so, it doesn't make it easy, but it does make it like, you're not looking for something impossible.

Women want to be led, men want to lead. And even if you're out of practice or it's been a long time, that is their natural setting. And there is something natural about being a mother, being a caregiver, being a wife, being submissive that even if it's been hardened for years, like it's still there. God made them this way. And so it's not completely obliterated. No matter how much the programming wants to do that, there's still a root of her humanity as a woman that's in there. It just has to be uncovered and shown the light of day and allowed to flourish.

How it happened in our homes:

And I think we've seen this with both of our wives. Like we didn't start this way when we got married. This was not the plan. I had never heard of any of this. This was something that came along after our first child.

She's got a master's degree. She was on track to shortly becoming the CFO of our local hospital where she was working at the time when we had our second kid. And then we like told people, yeah, she's not going back to work after the second kid's born. And people were like, wait, what?

Our wives are at home. We've come a long ways in a relatively short period of time and our wives are entirely on board.

And some of that was the foundation. Like we knew we're Christians. We knew we believe the Bible. And so when there is a thing like that, we're like, okay, well, we're going to let the Bible rule on this. Let's figure out what it says.

Grace, but most guys are too soft.

There has to be a lot of grace involved in this. That's actually part of your commandment here is to dwell with her as the weaker vessel. You're supposed to love her in a cherishing, gentle way.

But I don't think most people are failing there. I think most guys are being too soft. And I think that that works against them because women kind of do the crap test thing. And when they buck and the husband rolls over again, like he has, they're like, Oh, guess I'm still the boss.

You don't get to just say, well, my feelings are hurt. So you have to do what I want. Like that's not going to be in charge here. You're coming with me. I'm not going with you. You're with me. And making sure that that's solidly set in place. And it's something she can take pride in rather than feel like this pressure from.

Pick your hill, then win it.

And I think that actually can be something that wins your wife's respect and like wins her admiration moving forward. If you don't relent, like if you push back and push back and push back and push back and then finally flop over what you've just done is go, actually, if you just like fight harder than me, I'll give up.

So I think the principle there to keep in mind is that decide right off the bat is this something that is this a hill that I'm going to die on. If it is fight to the death. If it's not give it up and just move on and go, hey, that's all right. No big deal.

But don't do this middle thing where you start to fight on everything and then refuse to ever win. Like that is a losing recipe. You will never win. Because you're provoking her to wrath and making her angry and then going, yeah, but you can win. And then giving her the reins back.

I think a lot of people are in this situation where the husband gets frustrated and he wants to push back, but he won't ever just win. He won't ever outlast her. And so what ends up happening is that you have two people that are just in this lock struggle all the time in the struggle session over every little thing, but nothing decisive ever happens. And that's a terrible spot to be in. So either fight the fight or don't.

Be patient and change the inputs.

Another point here is that husbands have to be patient with this. You didn't go from being whatever you were to being like Mr. Pro-patriarchy William Gouge guy overnight. Like that's a slow burn. It takes time and a process to come to that conviction.

If someone's gotten to the point where they're like pro patriarchy and wanting to install that and live it out in their home, you probably went a while before you even really talked to anyone about this, unless you got like a couple of close buddies that are walking on the same path as you. And so give it some time. I think being really patient with her.

I know for us, we use the podcast here at New Christendom extensively. We listened to a lot of Kings Hall. We listened to Bright Hearth. We were listening to Hard Men back when Eric was running the show.

And as often as I could, when we were in the vehicle moving for, you know, anytime over a half an hour, I was trying to turn on something that would make me a little bit uncomfortable to turn on. And so I was trying to constantly go, all right, let's see if we can move this line just a little bit. And that was extremely effective.

So yeah, just being patient and understanding and allowing all the things that are affecting you to begin to affect her, I think is really helpful.

Give her a picture to aim at.

If you don't have anybody else in your life that you can point to, like this family is doing this really well and you can go be friends with them and you can have hospitality and dinner at their house. And you say, look how they've got grown kids. Look how great they are. I wonder what they did.

If you don't have that kind of thing, one, go find it. I think it just makes that winning the heart thing really hard.

I think there is a huge duty on the husband to tell his wife with words, like this is what you're doing and this is why it's important. Sometimes it's encouragement. Sometimes it's praising her for the good things she's doing, even if they're like very small beginnings. I know it's what they desire. And so the more that you can do that and say with words, the great things that they're doing or the, even the good things they're doing, I think that that goes a long way.

There is no bigger role.

So Chesterton, he had a quote on being everything to a few people. And so he said, how can it be broad to be the same thing to everyone and narrow to be everyone to someone? A woman's function is laborious because it's gigantic, not because it's minute.

But basically the idea being, okay, she's at work. She's boss, babe, whatever. Like you're a little bit to everybody, but at home you have these two, three, four, five, six, 10 kids and you are everything to them. You change their diapers and you fed them with your body and you make so many meals a day. But it's like, there is no bigger role.

To think that a woman is more useful in the workforce, sitting in a cubicle, putting numbers into a spreadsheet, or I don't know, whatever the thing is, then to literally bear children and bring new souls into the world that will be embodied for a time and then pass into eternity, to act like that's not valuable is actually the most upside down thing in the world. Like one of these is clearly way more valuable. And so it's actually an undervaluing of what the woman is designed by God to be, to take her and make her do something else. It's honestly absurd when you stop and think about it.

And I think that part is so important to winning a wife over and like being able to explain that to her and like, listen, here's what I think of you.

The other quote was from Spurgeon. You are as much serving God and looking after your own children, training them up in God's fear, minding the house, making your household a church for God as you would be, as if you had been called to lead an army to battle for the Lord of hosts.

What you're doing is so important and there isn't a more important work. And so the more that you can believe that and then tell your wife that you believe that and get her to believe it.

What about the money?

One common thing is the wife is working outside the home. Somebody else is raising your kids, somebody else is educating them. If the husband starts leading, if he says, Nope, I've been doing this wrong. I actually need you to come home. I actually need you to care for her home and to be a homemaker and to raise our kids.

One of the questions is, well, what about the money? Like, how will we afford the mortgage or how will we afford our standard of living if I'm not working?

I think on the one hand, the husband has to lead in saying like, the cost is worth it. If we have to go down into this tax bracket and we have to give up these luxuries that we have, like the cost is worth it. Is it more valuable to me than the raising of our children? It's not even close. Here's the budget. Look, the numbers work.

But I think when you add it up, actually the budget usually isn't that big of a factor. I know there are situations we've even counseled people where we're like, no, you're actually, your wife needs to get a part-time job. So I'm not saying like every situation is the same.

Like there are multiple ways of making this work. And it's so much more important in that scenario rather, what, more than where the wife spends her time and who she's working for is like, is the husband leading?

Celebrate every step.

Praising the things that she's doing well, if you can convince her to start doing some of these more home oriented things, then you want to continue to praise that. But I think you're always on a journey. You're always moving towards something.

And when we first started this, like my wife didn't know what sourdough bread was. And now we have our own grain mill in our kitchen, right? Like you incrementally take steps towards that.

I think really making a big deal out of each step and like being, you know, it's kind of like the carrot and the stick thing where you're just constantly going, all right, we're trying to get there, but Hey, we did take this step and that's huge. And I'm really happy about it. And constantly looking up at the right times to see the progress that's been made, I think is really big.

Resources to start with.

I think the first one that comes to mind is Bright Hearth. Bright Hearth is a podcast. It's Brian and Lexi and it's super helpful and they've covered a lot of domestic topics.

I love Masculine Christianity by Zach Garris. I think that's one of the most important books written in the last 10, 15 years. Just in terms of like understanding the times and where we're at and how we got here and what we're actually aiming for.

I like Reforming Marriage. I like No Mere Mortals [verify title]. I think these do a pretty good job of explaining, you know, the household codes and why they're so important and what the man's role and what the woman's role is. I don't think they're perfect, but I think they're pretty helpful guides.