A Well-Trained Wife: My Escape from Christian Patriarchy

Allan is Tia’s first husband and the primary antagonist of the memoir. Initially appearing as a charming, devout Navy sailor, he seems to offer the marriage and stable Christian family Tia has been taught to value. His quick courtship, however, soon reveals a pattern of coercive control as he isolates her and demands increasing submission. Allan’s character demonstrates how patriarchal Christian teachings can provide religious justification for domestic abuse.

Allan tells Tia that he endured years of verbal abuse from his father, providing context for some of the family dynamics he later reproduces. The narrative focuses on how he uses religious doctrine to reinforce his authority over Tia. As he delves further into the teachings of figures such as Doug Wilson and the practices of Christian Domestic Discipline (CDD), he acquires a religious framework for regulating and physically punishing Tia’s behavior. He frames his violence as biblical “correction” and his control as his God-given duty as the “head of the household” (144). Later, his behavior becomes increasingly dangerous: He reports seeing demons, drinks heavily, threatens Tia, and becomes increasingly violent toward the family. These developments contribute to Tia’s recognition that she and her children are no longer safe. After she leaves, his intoxication, threats, and use of a gun further demonstrate the severity of the danger. Through Allan, Levings shows how teachings that place husbands in authority over their wives can reinforce coercive control and make abuse more difficult for women within such communities to resist or identify.

Judith Small is a mother in the Gothard-affiliated homeschool community who becomes Tia’s mentor in fundamentalist living. She shows how women can participate in reinforcing patriarchal expectations, teaching Tia the rules of submission and encouraging her compliance. When Tia seeks guidance, Judith offers a formula for a “blessed” life rooted in strict adherence to extra-biblical rules, from wearing denim jumpers to implementing harsh child-training methods. Her core philosophy is captured when she tells Tia, “We follow biblical principles, not instincts” (88), encouraging Tia to suppress her maternal intuition in favor of prescribed religious principles.

As Tia’s guide, Judith offers a path to belonging within the fundamentalist community that requires Tia to increasingly subordinate her own judgment to its rules. Judith helps Tia put IBLP principles into practice in her daily life, particularly through expectations surrounding motherhood, dress, and family roles. Judith’s character illustrates how patriarchal expectations can be reinforced through relationships between women as well as through male authority. She is both shaped by the system and involved in transmitting its expectations to Tia, becoming one of the models from whom Tia learns how a “well-trained wife” is expected to behave.

This group of men comprises influential proponents of different strands of Christian patriarchy that shape Tia’s life. Though they appear mostly through their writings and teachings, their influence is pervasive. Bill Gothard’s Institute in Basic Life Principles (IBLP) provides an early framework of rules and control that Tia and Allan adopt. His teachings emphasize obedience and extend religious authority into numerous areas of family life, from finances to child-rearing.

Later, Allan encounters the work of Doug Phillips through Vision Forum and embraces Doug Wilson’s teachings on male headship and covenant theology. Although their teachings differ, Gothard, Phillips, and Wilson each reinforce hierarchical gender roles that place husbands and fathers in positions of authority within the family. Wilson’s writings, alongside materials on Christian Domestic Discipline (CDD), provide Allan with religious language that he uses to justify greater control over Tia and physical “correction.” Collectively, these figures show how Tia and Allan’s increasingly patriarchal family structure is influenced by a broader network of religious teachings rather than developing within their marriage alone. In Tia’s account, these teachings reinforce expectations of female submission and male authority that make it more difficult for her to challenge Allan’s control and recognize his behavior as abuse.

Michael is Tia’s best friend from her youth group years and is an important link to the parts of her identity that she increasingly suppresses. Their friendship, based on shared interests in movies, music, and art, is one of the few relationships in which Tia feels fully seen and accepted. His pursuit of acting, art, and a life beyond the expectations of their church contrasts with the increasingly restrictive path Tia feels compelled to follow. One of the first signs of Allan’s coercive control is his demand that Tia end her friendship with Michael, cutting her off from a relationship in which she has been able to express herself freely.

Michael’s reappearance later in her life contributes to Tia’s growing recognition of how much she has changed. After seeing a family photo on Tia’s blog, he contacts her, shocked by her transformation. He tells her she looked “robotic. So dead inside” (187), an observation that contrasts the person he remembers with the identity Tia has constructed within her patriarchal family life. After her escape, their rekindled friendship becomes a source of support and continuity with the person she was before her increasing self-suppression. Levings later describes Michael as “the family I chose for myself” and states that their story “was always at the heart of this book” (287), emphasizing the lasting importance of a relationship in which she feels seen and accepted.