Family Life Today was a very interesting show on men and their egos and their need for affirmation. It is certainly true that men need it. However, the instruction from the author sounded a little on the "stepford-wife" side. It has been my experience that affirmation from a woman to her husband comes like a fountain bubbling up all kinds of kindness and understanding as a response to her husband's leadership and how he is taking care of her. She doesn't have to be told to do it. There was a mention of situations when the men do not and how the women need to affirm any way. I do not agree. I think the situation is much more complex than that. If there is some issue with affirmation with the man, no amount of affirmation from the wife is going to be enough.
In thinking about this from a sort of anthropologic point of view, the origins of this is that we, as a society, have lost the knowledge of how to raise boys to be men. The author mentions the fragility of the male ego. It is not supposed to be. Men are supposed to be the strength of the family. Their relationships with their wives should be on the basis of their strengh, lending their strength to their wife and their family. What happens now-a-days is that men and women marry out of mutual need rather than whatever strengths they each bring to the relationship.
The picture I see that God intended is the man, aligned under God, performs his God-given duties. These are meant to be hard. He shoulders that burden, but not without help. The strength he brings is from God as He has given and from His direction. And something that was not mentioned in the show, because of this, because he has been given the charge over his family by God, he seeks his affirmation from God, and really from God alone.
The wife, taking her charge from the man and God, aligns herself with the man and naturally responds with gratitude of the man taking care of her. Her affirmation is secondary, however, to the affirmation the man recieves from God.
The reason I say we have forgotten how to raise boys to men is that the origins of problems in this area are from a lack of affirmation from mother and father. Boys and girls need it from both parents. Somewhere in the growing up years there is supposed to be a transfer from the affirmation of the parents to God. Not that the parents are supposed to stop affirming, but the idea is there is a transfer where the boy begins to look to please God more than his parents. Problems come when there has been no real affirmation and/or there has been no transfer. In those cases, men marry out of a needfor affirmation (commonly women like their mothers) instead of marrying from their ability and desire to support a wife and family.
The author seems to be well intentioned, but the husbands in those situations, are much better served by being pointed by their wives back to God, to first seek their charge from God and trusting Him to provide it and the strength needed to fulfill it. Let the wives then step back and let God play that part in the husband and reserve themselves to respond to the husband's care.
