FW 7.3 Arousing Worship, Adoration, and Love
Hello, Beautiful Homemakers!
Chapter XV of the original 1922 Fascinating Womanhood pamphlets, number 7 of 8 total, is entitled Arousing Worship, Adoration, and Love.
The opening paragraph talks about one of the most powerful influences that draws people together being the fascination of secrets shared.
Of course, we are talking about confidences regarding aspirations and the like, not "bad" or unwholesome secrets, but ideas, joys, sorrows, encouragements, and discouragements that have fallen upon your life and his life, and how you have discussed these together.
If you have met his confidences with comfort, appreciation, sympathy, and applause, then he will continue to want to confide in you.
I discuss the old movie "Dad" with Ted Danson, and a Twilight Zone episode from Season 1, episode 36, entitled A World of His Own.
The majority of movies today move too fast to adoration and love, and skip the other necessary steps that need to be made in real life.
Trust, admiration, secret aspirations, amiability, easy to live with, respect. If you don't respect your husband, your marriage will be a failure.
Why People Wonder What He Sees in You is the next subsection of this chapter. In life he will meet with people who rebuff and correct and criticize him. How will his good sense of self be restored to him when he is low? He will turn to you for assurance.
This is not the time to agree with the criticism. That can come later, when he's looking for ways to improve himself ("Your boss probably saw that as ____ when I know in your heart you meant it to be _______.") Instead, you will build him up in some other area. No need to lie and tell him the boss or whomever was wrong; just build him up in another area.
If you can do this when he is down, then to whom will he turn when he is upbeat, hopeful, and encouraged? When his ideas were received favorably? To the one who can share his joy and happiness with complete understanding. "As this feeling intensifies, he finds it more and more difficult to live without you, more and more necessary to have yo with him as the lifelong sharer of his joys and sorrows."
When he met you he was filled with apathy - it was his sharing of his secrets with you that created a bond. In his eyes, the difference between you and all other women begins to assume prodigious proportions [an impressively great gulf of understanding between you and other women he meets on a day to day basis begins to grow]. In fact, other people begin to wonder just what he sees in you! They only see the surface level of you - he knows the real you inside!
Oftentimes women have no desire to build their men up, because they are too tired from working. They also have had no good role models of how to do this. Instead, they look to their DH to build them up after a hard day. Women say they want tender men - until they see it - then they want him stoic.
I tell the story of the young woman yelling at her boyfriend in the parking lot. Why would he marry someone who speaks to him like that? We have to learn to control our tongues.
When You Become "The One Girl in All the World." You also begin to see a difference between him and other men, for you have also given confidences as well as received them. He knows your aspirations, ideals, and difficulties. He is able to understand, appreciate, and reverence you, unlike men you meet on a day to day basis who do not know the real inside you.
Now "when you meet, your eyes flash an understanding and a sympathy; when others are absorbed in other matters, you encourage one another by word and look" even when unable to talk to each other across a room.
"You have secrets between you that other do not and cannot share. Should it be any wonder, then, if he should begin to think you are the one girl in all the world, and if you should begin to think there is not another man among men as he is?"
To Cherish as Wife and Partner. "Thus gradually, without conscious effort on your part, the man's interest grows into a desire to enjoy your society constantly, a desire to take care of you and protect and cherish you forever as his wife and partner; the protective adoration called 'love.'
"You can consciously win a man's attention, you can consciously behave in such a manner as to increase that attention into interest; but there is little that you can consciously do to increase that interest into desire.
"Trick, stratagem, device, and method are of little avail at this point; you can only continue to be the cuddlesome little creature that inspires the desire to protect, and the kind, gentle, pure and angelic woman that arouses the man's adoration.
"You must depend here upon what you are, not upon what you do. There is but one rule to follow now - to live up to the best, the kindest, the gentlest, and the tenderest that is in you, and to let the man glimpse the true beauty of your inward character."
[And if you are just joining us, we discussed your inward character in Pamphlet 1 videos. Are you worthy of him? It's a two-way street!]
If you are both marriage-minded, you should discuss what marriage will look like: chores, work, children, working after children, finances, cars, where will you live, whose job would you follow, inlaws.
You shouldn't ever live with him. It never works out. There is no support, and no one expects this to work out. It's too easy for one of you to walk away. Oxytocin levels are different for people who are cohabitating versus being married. Listen to FW 5.2 Why Won't He Marry You?
You are more likely to get divorced if you lived together first, research shows. Don't do it! God's ways are best!
I then tell the very sad story of a woman who had the chance to get remarried but didn't because she didn't understand the importance of marrying. Marriage matters.
Now, don't fret if you think you have married the wrong person! Everyone feels this way at some time or other; often around year two. I discuss how to persevere and how to recapture feelings of adoration and love. We must take thoughts captive and give them to the Lord and ask Him to renew your mind. No "WHY does he..." See the good in your husband, the blessing of him and the good things he does. Focus on the good. Take captive the bad thoughts. What are you grateful about him?
Other things we discuss have to do with how you respond when talking to him in person or by text. How do you greet him at the end of the day?
Decorate with early photos of you two in your bedroom. Bring up good memories. "Do you remember when we....?"
I am reading the original eight pamphlets from 1922.
Cynthia Berenger has typed up the reprints from 1935 here.
The Fascinating Girl is Helen Andelin's book for unmarried women (the original book is for married women). Cynthia Berenger wrote A Fascinating Companion and it has many wonderful exercises. The book is pricey, but worth it IF you DO the exercises! It must be used in conjunction with Helen's book (any version, but the green and white one is the better fit).
At the very end I discuss how we may need to ask for help, but the help might not necessarily come from your husband. Maybe you need the children to help, maybe you need to hire a teenager to help you, maybe you need a robot vacuum (ask for one for Christmas! You'll love it!), maybe you need a morning or evening routine that encompasses doing something really nice and relaxing for yourself.
Just remember that, in most cases, men don't care about the house as much as you do, and you can't expect them to fulfill your vision for your house. They don't see items on the floor as a problem. They don't care about perfectly wiping down a kitchen every night. Etc. If you want things a particular way, don't expect him to jump right on board with your wishes. Men just don't care about it the same way you do. It doesn't bother them (usually).
Instead, you must learn to lovingly and sweetly state what you NEED. "I need the kitchen to be closed down at 8:00 pm. I need the dishwasher run every night before bed so that I can wake up to a clean kitchen."
Give him a visual. Paint him a picture with your words. Messy kitchen, grumpy wife. Clean kitchen, loving wife. No whining or nagging. Just state your desire. With patience and kindness, it will eventually become reality!
May God bless you as you learn to to give comfort, appreciation, sympathy, and applause.
Janine
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