Marriage and the Breeding of Intellectual Laziness?

I had an interesting conversation with a colleague a couple of weeks back - a conversation that I haven't stopped thinking about. The conversation progressed from just a discussion to some sort of debate almost tending towards an argument. I would like your feedback on this as I am interested in what you all think. The subject of women depending on their husbands for intellectual decisions.

As a newly-wed man, my colleague complained of how he felt like his wife had become more dependent on him for advice, general decisions, and even actions. He went on about how she had refused to fill out a particular form just because she knew he was available to do it. He admitted that his wife was very smart but he couldn't wrap his head around the new 'lazy' she had become.

In her defense, I told him that a lot of women liked to depend on their partners to do certain things for them in this age not because they cannot on their own do these things, but because they wanted to show their partners that they need them. I asked him how he would feel if his wife never asked him for anything, did it all by herself and always just informed him of her accomplishments after she was done? He argued that he would be satisfied with that and will be finally in a place of bliss knowing that his wife applies her God-given wisdom to something. It is not like I am in support of a woman being intellectually lazy, but I feel like marriage is a partnership, and where one is strong another could be weak and vice versa. I told him I am of the opinion that whoever was better at a particular task, should get it done, but he argued to the contrary.

He gave the example of two families he knows where the husbands have sort of lost respect for their wives because their wives had relinquished the role of intellectual decision making to them over the years. He didn't want his marriage to turn out that way and I totally understood him. In contrast, he also gave an example of his parent's marriage, where both father and mother were equally smart and applied themselves to the daily runnings of the home, charting their short term and long term course as a family together. From the details of his examples, I began to understand his thought process a bit more and also began to wonder what really makes women relinquish certain obligations to their husbands? Is it really that a lot of women get lazy after marriage or is it just that we as women are expected culturally to defer to the man as the head of the home, therefore, keeping your opinion to yourself or having none at all?

I remember an advice I got when I was about to get married from a well-respected person in my life. He said to me to let my husband do the talking in public and to defer to him as the captain of our ship. I had often wondered if that advice meant that I should not have an opinion? or I should keep my opinion to myself in public? or share an opinion with my husband in an intellectually stimulating environment in our home only? I have never gotten around to asking him what he really meant. Many women probably get this type of advice and just like me, they haven't bothered to ask what it really meant so they have acted or are acting in the way they consider best. I would like to know what you think.