Headship and Submission

It seems many people (Christian and non-Christian) have qualms about the issue of headship and submission when talking about husbands and wives (see Ephesians 5:22). I recently read a particularly interesting quote by John Piper on this topic that will hopefully bring some clarity:

‘When sin entered the world it ruined the harmony of marriage not because it brought headship and submission into existence, but because it twisted man’s humble, loving headship into hostile domination in some men and lazy indifference in others. And it twisted woman’s intelligent, willing submission into manipulative obsequiousness* in some women and brazen insubordination in others. Sin didn’t create headship and submission; it ruined them and distorted them and made them ugly and destructive…[we are now involved] not in the dismantling of the original, created order of loving headship and willing submission, but a recovery of it from the ravages of sin’’ – John Piper

*since we should all be adding to our dictionaries of life AKA our vocabularies- obsequiousness is defined as “abject or cringing submissiveness”