Cooperative Autonomy

    The Bible says that when a man and a woman get married, the two people become one. I've always took that to mean that they don't keep anything from each other. They work together like a well-oiled machine. They support each other, and present a united front against trouble. I don't think the Bible ever says exactly how a man and woman should function as a team, just that they do. A wife should be "submissive," following her husband's lead on all things important. The husband is supposed to love his wife more than he loves himself, because if he does that, he'll do what's best for her.

    In my team, we're joined at the heart but not necessarily at the hip. We act in cohesion not adhesion. We share beliefs and many opinions. We have some common hobbies and similar interests. We hide nothing from each other. When it comes to being friends, we're the best, but when it comes down to it, we're both very independent. Even though we're joined for life with a mutual identity, we both recognize that we have our own separate identities as well. If either one of us forced ourselves to totally conform to the other person's way of doing things for the sake of  "becoming one flesh," we'd shortly become two.

    So, we adopt ways to be a team without stealing each other’s autonomy. we don't got everywhere together. We give each other space. We'll run errands in separate cars and rendezvous for lunch.  He'll go home for a visit while me and the baby stay behind to go on a play date. Josh and I also choose not to join our Facebook accounts. We don't see the point. He posts about superheroes and I talk about feelings. He likes to keep his profile picture the same for months on end. I like to change mine almost every day. We don't need a Facebook account to tell the world we're married. We have rings and a license for that. We have different ideas on how to manage money too. He's the spender. I'm the saver, but we're equally responsible. So to avoid stress and bankruptcy, we split the bills and split the funds. Rent gives me heart palpitations, and buying groceries makes him scream. So we drop the pennies in different piggy banks and do our things. 

     We've come to the conclusion that that exactly how the team works is up for interpretation as long as the principle remains the same. That principle being: the man is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the Church. Some my think it odd, but in our partnership, we're independent individuals who choose to work together. We could function without each other, but we don't want to. We're best friends who got married, and we intend to stay that way. The goal, I believe, is to be an unbeatable team, and we accomplish that through cooperative autonomy.