Your goal should be to become a gentle, loving, and tender husband who does not lecture. Lectures during stressful times only create more stress. This was a new concept to me because I wasn’t fortunate enough to have a father who knew how to be tender to his wife. I wasn’t aware of my wife’s needs for tenderness until a few years ago. No one had ever told me that one of a woman’s greatest needs is tenderness and a husband who will listen instead of lecture, and even if someone had, I don’t think I would have understood. (I should have been able to figure it out, though, because when I am down, I like people to be gentle and comforting to me.)
I’ll never forget what one woman told me: “If my husband would only put his arms around me and hold me, without lecturing me, when I am feeling blue!” But lecture #734 would begin as he told her she would feel better if she took an aspirin…if she were more organized…if she wouldn’t wear her self down so much…if she would discipline the children better….
“Have you ever told him what you need?” I asked.
“Are you kidding? I’d be embarrassed,” she laughed. “Come on, you’re kidding.”
“No. He probably doesn’t know what to do. He doesn’t know you need to be held instead of lectured. Why don’t you tell him during a calm conversation some day?”
“That does kind of make sense to me. A lot of times when I am down and crying and all upset, he’ll ask, ‘What do you want me to do?’ I just flare up and say, ‘If I have to tell you what to do, it would wreck the whole idea.'”
As a husband, I recommend that you ask your wife when and how you need to hold her when she needs to be comforted. Ask her what circumstances prompt her to seek your gentle caring arms and touch. You can’t dream them up on your own. We just can’t perceive the deep feelings of other people. We’ve got to draw them out and then practice, practice, practice the skills of meeting our wives’ needs.
