A Well-Trained Wife: My Escape from Christian Patriarchy

At Tia’s new church, the pastor preached a doctrine of human depravity and divine wrath, framing suffering as spiritually beneficial, and Tia tried to understand her own suffering as a gift from God. While reading I Kissed Dating Goodbye, however, she realized that she did not want Katie to lose herself by living for others as Tia had, and acknowledged that she did not want such a life for herself either. Allan immersed himself in the writings of Doug Wilson and other covenantal theologians, using their framework to issue increasingly controlling directives: Tia had to wear only dresses, cover her head, address him as “my lord,” submit all creative work for his approval, and give him greater control over her money and household decisions. When she resisted or quietly circumvented these rules, Allan consulted online forums for patriarchal husbands and initiated a “Tia-audit” of her activities. The audit extended to their sex life, with Allan dictating a schedule for sex and her expected responses.

Tia discovered Allan viewing a sexually explicit image of a bound and gagged woman on the family computer, which he dismissed as “art” and “research.” Over the following weeks, he introduced Christian Domestic Discipline, a framework he presented as a God-sanctioned alternative to random fights and violence, directing Tia to study CDD forums. He insisted the practice—spousal spanking followed by intercourse—would resolve problems in their marriage. Tia reached out to her mother, who encouraged her to try counseling rather than divorce. At a First Baptist counseling session, Tia submitted a detailed written account of the abuse, but the counselor responded by saying, “I see this all the time” (146), before asking what Tia had done to drive Allan to this point and instructing her to honor and submit to him more. She left dissociated and disoriented.

Shortly afterward, Tia discovered she was pregnant with a fifth child and feared that random violence and fighting might somehow have contributed to Clara’s heart defect. She rationalized that allowing Allan to channel his violence through structured discipline might help him remain in control and prevent the same outcome. Under Allan’s insistence, she handwrote a statement promising not to characterize his actions as domestic violence. The chapter ended with Allan enacting the first CDD punishment, praying before removing his belt and striking Tia as she silently screamed into a pillow.

Embracing his new identity as a “Federal Husband,” Allan instituted rigorous family worship and catechism, becoming more confident as Tia, pregnant and malnourished, retreated into a haze of submission. Guided by Debi Pearl’s Created to Be His Help Meet, which taught wives to respond cheerfully and submissively even to difficult husbands, Tia hid her misery behind a cheerful facade to keep the peace, even as Allan’s physical “discipline” forced her to cancel three midwife appointments to hide the stripes on her thighs. Although Allan initially appeared calmer under the new arrangement, he began considering moves to increasingly secluded locations, while Tia worried about how she could protect her children in such isolation.

After she gave birth to her fifth child, Gavin, Allan continued refusing to pay the $500 remaining on Jo’s midwifery fee and prevented Tia from attending her postpartum appointment. Jo eventually stopped speaking to Tia, and Tia recognized the loss as another instance in which a supportive friendship had been severed. She reflected that women supporting one another could create paths toward freedom and change, while patriarchal systems kept wives isolated. As she relied on seven-year-old Katie to help care for Gavin, Tia also became increasingly uncomfortable with taking away part of her daughter’s childhood and confronted a growing dilemma: She believed leaving Allan would ruin her children but feared that staying would cause them to become like her.

Allan then announced that the current Christmas would be the family’s last, decreeing that they would no longer hold one sabbath day higher than the rest of the week. After his boss refused to promote him, calling him too black-and-white for sales, Allan punched him and was fired. He immediately instructed Tia to sell their house, revealing his plan to move them to Tennessee to join a specific covenantal church he had chosen. The house sold in days for a significant profit, and within three weeks, the family had packed their belongings and moved to Tennessee.

Tia and her family moved to Knoxville, Tennessee, into a small apartment chosen by her husband, Allan. They had relocated because Allan wanted the family to join the Covenant Reformed Evangelical Church, led by Pastor Dudley La Touche. While Allan was immediately at home in the patriarchal church, Tia felt uneasy with the pastor’s mocking tone toward those with different beliefs but initially felt relieved that she could relate to the church’s women through homekeeping and homeschooling. Despite a warning from the pastor that leaving the covenant was difficult, the family signed a membership contract placing them under the church elders’ authority.

While Allan worked with a commission-only job that required frequent travel, Tia found freedom with the family minivan. She explored the mountains with her children, joined a homeschool co-op, and befriended Leah, another woman who had been discouraged from forming a women’s group because the elders considered women gathering without a male head of household dangerous. Tia and Leah continued their friendship while downplaying its closeness at church. Tia also started a blog called Living Deliberately as a creative outlet and a way to update family. When Rafaela’s husband openly announced that his wife was going home for a spanking and Allan responded approvingly, Tia realized that other husbands in the congregation practiced spousal discipline and that Allan had sought out this particular church for a reason. Her blog expanded into book reviews, including one of Kathryn Sansone’s Woman First, Family Always—discovered via an Oprah episode—which introduced Tia to a mother who openly prioritized some of her own needs. As Tia posted more frequently, search-engine traffic increased until the blog averaged 80,000 hits per day. Its growing visibility drew the attention of the church elders, who objected to Tia representing her household in her own words and eventually told Allan that her writing should be in his name.

Tia confronted Allan, refusing to give up her writing. When he threatened to forbid the blog, she pointed out that her family would notice its disappearance, leading her to realize that “visibility meant safety” (171). Allan backed down and asked her to run posts by him when possible. Seeing him as exhausted rather than a triumphant patriarch, Tia recognized that she did not want to be a patriarch’s wife but an “artist mother writer hiker friend” (173). Still unwilling to choose between her two worlds, she resolved to work harder to keep them separate.