Some months ago I was watching a movie on television taken from a real life incident in the US some years previously. The story line was simple enough. Mum and dad with three children, all happy families. Things were very tight financially, mum had always been a 'looker' and still was. Mum was enticed by the additional money for the family's needs to become an upmarket call-girl.
I hardly need go on. She began "servicing" not only the rich and famous, the local police, but also her friend's husbands along with a local preacher. She made so much money that she found herself not wanting to 'give-it-up' as she enjoyed the riches and buying goodies for her family including a motor bike for hubby.
Then a want-to-be-politician squealed in an election term. A police raid followed with television crews - mum was sprung to a totally unbelieving husband who was watching the newscast at the bar with his mates. It turned out that a goodly number of the city's most important citizens, including a circuit judge and all happen-stance happy customers and in the final wash-up, the five girls were given a slap on the wrist with 30 day sentence in the county jail.
But all that was not the point of the story, ie: the moral lessons about covetness, sin, family destruction, and punishment. Indeed not. The lesson of the story was that after mum returned home (while she and her husband and children taking baby steps to reconcile) she had seven visitors. And you would not guess who they were? They were the wives of whose husbands she had serviced 'weekly'.
They had not come to ridicule. They had not come to punish. They had not come cast the first stone. They had not come to exile her out of their community. No, nothing of a sort. They had come to be attend an instructional class.
Their question was a simple one: What was it that she did that drew their husbands into her hands like putty and could she teach them in like manner. This class became very popular and no one was ever late.
Susan Patton
Then along comes Susan Patton the New York mum with two Ivy League sons at university who advised the young women at the university that statistically this was their best chance to score a husband. There was an outcry by the feminists like you would never ... I wrote of this some months back.
Now Susan Patton is back in the limelight and toured Australia along with many other western countries and her message was again a simple one. Look after your husbands.
Susan Patton, a Jewish mother, and clearly well versed in the Old Testament and with top rating academic and professional qualifications herself, claims that the pendulum has swung so far towards women's needs that the husbands (partners) have been left to drift and such a man will respond to some 'purring' pointed in his direction.
The point was clear. The emphasis on women's needs are everywhere – advertising, merchandise, cosmetics, cars, clothing or lack of it, fulfillment, career, education, sexual appetite, holidays, sun tans, well-being, psychology, political correctness, best seats, right of way (supermarkets, lining up, banking, anything really).
Susan Patton says that it's time the pendulum was stopped and given a nudge in the other direction. She has some very practical suggestions: Welcome your husband home with a smile asking him not to fix something, but to genuinely express your appreciation (that he comes home at all – as it were).
The advice covers a wide range of practical expressions where a wife does little things to illustrate not only that he is loved and care for, but truly appreciated as the male of the home. This is not a silly dismissal of the feminist cause, rather Patton says, the wife should be looking good for her husband, this shows him respect and that he is the one who provides all her needs.
You can only imagine the do-gooders, who again have come out of the woodwork to slam such 'common sense' and 'wisdom' (Proverbs 31) that have helped to bond loving marriage relationships over centuries where a husband loves his wife and his wide in turns responds to such love and commitment.
Well said Susan Patton.
Dr Mark Tronson is a Baptist minister (retired) who served as the Australian cricket team chaplain for 17 years (2000 ret) and established Life After Cricket in 2001. He was recognised by the Olympic Ministry Medal in 2009 presented by Carl Lewis Olympian of the Century. He mentors young writers and has written 24 books, and enjoys writing. He is married to Delma, with four adult children and grand-children.
Mark Tronson's archive of articles can be viewed at http://www.pressserviceinternational.org/mark-tronson.html