HUSBANDS WHO “GO SOFT.”

Cromwell Argus, Volume LXIII, Issue 3249, 6 February 1933, Page 2

HUSBANDS WHO “GO SOFT.”

By a Woman Writer. It Bounds Impossible, but It la unfortunately true. It happens In a great many marriages, and the effect Is too often disastrous—the far-reaching, devastating effect of “husbands who go soft." Men change with marriage more than women do. The reason is that women are born with a persistence in their natures which men have not got. * A women goes on fighting for her own way, even though for years she has got no nearer to her end. She marries a masterful, strong, silent man, and she believes that he is the exact type she needs to give her perpetual and exquisite happiness. “I want a master,” says she, and she promises to love, honour and obey him, and to allow him to reign as the supreme master in her life. She loves him because he has authority over her. During the engaged days she delights in being "made to do things,” her will constantly becoming subservient to his. And, although she does not realise it, the moment she Is married she starts the long and persistent fight to change all that. Her one idea then is to change the very attitude in him that first made her love him. She starts attempting to make him “go soft.”

Men are extremely good in trying to adapt themselves to their wives’ way of thinking. Men are never so persistently antagonistic as women, and they will give in rather than have the perpetual scene. After a few months he says, “Oh, I may as well give in at once rather than go on fighting. She will nag, nag, nag until she talks me down.” Ultimately he goes soft.

Strangely enough, this is the very goal at which the wife has been aiming, yet when she arrives at It she is queerly dissatisfied. The man she married was her master; he was a big strong he-man, and now suddenly she finds that he has become docile and tractable. He does what she tells him, and In all save the very big issues lets her decide for him. This Is not what she meant. She has been chasing a mirage. She has deceived herself, and it is too late to undo the harm that has been done. When life Is deprived of the necessity to fight, it becomes dull and stagnant. Marriage is monotonous, and —this seems to be a cruel statement to make, seeing that the attitude is brought about only by a loving husband’s anxiety to please—nothing is so utterly boring and dull as the man who has gone soft. By giving way to her he has spoilt everything, both for her and for himself. The greatest stumbling stone to successful and happy marriage is monotony. Marriage is far too intimate an affair. People see each other day In, day out, and all the little weaknesses are discovered. Unfortunately, in this close and constant intimacy, many of the previous strengths become weaknesses. There are too many little city men, who catch the 8.30 in the morning, and come back on the 6.10. They settle into the home-rut, and they hand over their weekly salary to their wives, and let them order their lives for them. They would no more think of going against them in anything that they said or did than they would think of missing the 8.30, and arriving lazily at the office at the same time as the manager. They have grown used to letting all their ambitions, all their emotions, all their habits go soft and pulpy, because they believed this was what their wives wanted from them. And they are wrung. The men who have made a huge success of life, and of marriage, and whom you look up to and admire and respect, are those who have not allowed themselves to be worn down by the constant argument of women. They are the husbands who have resolutely refused to “go soft.”