What Radical Husbands Do: 12 Steps to Win and Keep Your Wife's Heart by Regi Campbell

Author:Regi Campbell [Campbell, Regi]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Publisher: RM Press
Published: 2014-05-11T16:00:00+00:00

The Curse of Criticism

The enemy of acceptance is rejection — and to your wife, criticism feels like rejection, plain and simple. If you want to become a better husband, you will have to stop criticizing.

Here are some thoughts that may flash through your mind.

I’m just trying to help. I know she wants to do better.

She sure feels free to point things out to me. Why can’t I do the same for her?

I don’t mean to be critical. I’m just telling her what I see. She has a big blind spot!

If she’d just listen to me and deal with what I’m telling her, this would go away. There wouldn’t be any criticism!

Why do I have to be so careful about what I say? Am I going to spend the rest of my life walking on eggshells?

Half the time, I’m not even criticizing her when I say stuff. She’s just hypersensitive. She takes everything personally!

Does any of that sound familiar?

Read on.

It Sucks to Be Criticized

Let me repeat myself. Nobody wants to be criticized. Nobody.

I used to think I wasn’t affected by criticism. I welcomed it.

“I’m so hungry to learn, to be the best I can be, I embrace criticism. I want to find ways to improve, no matter who the criticism comes from or what it’s about,” — or so I thought.

I was full of it.

I figured out that criticism about things I’ve done is pretty easy to take. I do want to do better, to get better in relationships, to be wiser, and to make better decisions.

But when criticism hits on who I am, it’s different. And almost all criticism hits on the “who” and not just the “what.”

What Is Criticism Anyway . . . Really?

Criticism requires a standard of comparison. The critic has to have a picture of what should or could be in his mind. When he sees “reality,” he compares the actual to the standard and sees the differences. When he reveals these differences to the person who is out of line with what he thinks should or could be, that’s criticism.

Sometimes there is an objective standard of comparison, like when your kid is about to board a ride at the amusement park. “You have to be this tall to ride,” the sign says. No one gets his feelings hurt because the standard is clear; you stand beside the little bunny rabbit and if your head doesn’t reach his hand, you don’t ride.

But clear standards are rare. Most of what we compare people to is conjured up in our minds. It’s how my mama did it. It’s how someone looked on TV. It’s what we saw portrayed in a movie. It’s what we heard someone describe in a class we took or a book we read. And sometimes our standards are born of our own wishful thinking. We just make ‘em up. It should be this way because I’d like it this way.

Criticism stems from judgment. When you’re comparing something about your wife to someone else, or to a contrived standard you’ve come up with, you’re judging.

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