Page 47 - Sarah's Children

fruit.

One dynamic that I discovered was this: a man by his very nature hates to disappoint
someone whom he knows thinks highly of him. If a man knows that someone is
standing behind him as a cheerleader and they are rooting for him, pulling for him,
and wishing that he will be victorious and successful in the things of life that really
matter, that man will exert supreme effort to not disappoint such a one. If a man
knows that a woman reveres him and holds him in high esteem, the man will seek
to be worthy of her opinion.

I also saw another dynamic. If a woman chooses the lower course and she begins to
correct her husband and to speak to him of all that he is doing wrong, then the man
will see her not as a cheerleader, but as a critic. A man has no such drive to appease
a critic. A man might be hounded into changing his behavior in some matter, but his
relationship with the woman who criticizes is invariably altered. Rather than seeing
her as a supporter, he will view her as an adversary and contention will result. He
will have no inner drive to rise up to her high and lofty opinion of him because he
does not perceive that she has such a mindset. Rather he sees that she finds fault
with him and has deemed him to be deficient and lacking.

Had my wife scolded me when she observed my action, I might have apologized, but
more likely in the state of anger I was in I would have said something unkind to her.
However, by choosing the course of restraint and encouragement, she produced
within me a desire to attain to a place of gentleness that was not yet mine. There is
a world of difference between the man that is goaded into a course of righteousness
and the man who eagerly pursues the course. My wife produced in me a desire to be
more gentle and to control my anger, and she did it by revealing that she admired me
and thought highly of me.

It is little wonder that so many marriages today find the husband and wife pitted
against one another, arguing, fighting, threatening. In all of these marriages the wife
has taken the role of a critic and she has determined that it is her responsibility to tell
her husband when he errs, and to correct and condemn him when she disapproves.

In a ball game the cheerleader is on the same side as her team and she is rooting and
pulling for her team. The players want to prevail that they might be worthy of those
who are rooting for them. This should be the relationship between the wife and her
husband. But when she chooses to criticize she crosses the field and becomes an
adversary. The house becomes divided and a battle ensues. No longer does the man
find an inner desire to excel that he might not disappoint the one who adores him,
for there seems to be little adoration.