World subscribers may have read my column in the Jan. 21 issue called “Quite Contrary” (I didn’t pick the title but it’s a good one). Columns about male-female relationships, especially in marriage, always gets a large response. None was greater than “Upside-Down Headship” last March, when some men accused me of beating up on husbands while some women shared heartbreaking stories about being emotionally beat up.
The response to “Quite Contrary” was significant though not as great in volume. The springboard for the column was 
an article on the Atlantic blog about a translation controversy with the English Standard Version (ESV) of the Bible. Way back in 2000 or thereabouts, the editors of WORLD made a style decision to use the ESV for all scripture quotes used in the magazine. So the article caught my attention. Apparently several Bible scholars have protested a decision by the ESV translation team to update their rendering of Genesis 3:16 to read “your desire shall be contrary to your husband” rather than “your desire shall be for your husband.” To the disapproving Bible scholars, this puts women in an unnecessarily negative light. I understand that response, but the point is not whether the translation is unnecessarily negative but whether it’s true—both to the original sense of the passage as well as to the behavior we observe around us.
And is it? Probably not in every single case, but surely in mine. I desire a loving relationship, but I want it on my own terms. What those terms look like is often contrary to my husband, and it’s been a source of bitterness. One little indicator: whenever anything goes wrong in my life, even a small thing like a habitually stuck drawer, my instinct is to blame him. Not every time, but often enough. Why? Because he’s not keeping up repairs or he made a bad business decision years ago or—or— There’s always something. But on a deeper level, it’s because my desires are so often contrary to his, and even contrary to him.
Some of the women who responded to that column have very interesting insights: “I react to my husband like I react to no one else,” wrote one (meaning, not in a good way). Yes! Another says, “[The common translation of Gen. 3:16] has long perplexed me, since by listening to most women, desiring their husband was not their strongest motivation. On the contrary, his desire for her was more of a concern.” Yes!! God created women to long for relationship, and we’re better at it—women tend to make friends more easily, bond to their children more quickly, and share their deepest thoughts with their husbands more easily (even if the guys are not always fascinated by our deepest thoughts). But it’s in our relationships that sin rears its ugly head, just as it’s the husband’s natural authority role that Satan loves to twist and corrupt.
Interesting fact: only one man disagreed with me about “Quite Contrary,” and it was more about the Bible translation I was using than the point of the article. The wives agreed: Yes, that was me until I recognized what I was doing. Many more men disagreed with me about my “Upside-down Headship” column, or they agreed in principle, but wanted to make sure I gave the faults of wives equal time.
My non-scientific instinct is that men tend to be a bit more defensive about their marriage relationships than women, which bears out what God said back in the garden: Your desire shall be contrary to your husband [relationship is where sin gets to us] but he shall rule over you [authority is where sin snares our husbands, either in the abuse of it or the neglect of it]. All the more reason to be grateful that God’s desire for us is greater than our tangled desires here on earth.