Protecting or Patronizing

There is a fine line between protecting and patronizing. Women feel secure when they feel protected by their husbands/mates. But they feel diminished or controlled if they are patronized. What's the difference?  Patronizing comes from the root pater, Latin for father. It means to relate as a father to a child--as a superior or authority to an inferior or younger, less mature person.  Husbands typically don't want their wives to mother them. And wives don't want their husbands to act as a father toward them. Adults, men and women, typically prefer to be treated as equal partners with mature minds, capable of fending for themselves in difficult situations, or asking for help when they need it.  It seems that some men, in order to feel like real men, need to be in the superior position, protecting the "little woman" from those evils in the world that she is naive about. Some women may feel protected in that scenario, but many of them feel patronized, making it difficult for them to love their husbands properly. Patronizing a woman causes her to feel she has to prove her adequacy--her adulthood.  "I am not a child!" she may think or say.  "Please treat me like an adult!"  If a patronized woman is not very mature and capable of handling the situation properly, she may go into a state of adolescent rebellion against her father-husband.  She may become vulnerable to an affair or improper friendship with a man who respects her as an equal. Paradoxically, this confirms the husband's perception of her as naive and vulnerable, and he might increase his efforts to "protect" [patronize] her, thus completing and reinforcing a vicious cycle of suffering and dysfunction.  Another paradox in this dynamic is that it is the most insecure men who tend to patronize their wives.  It is as if he needs her to think she is inferior and needs him to protect her in order to feel secure himself.  If she is equal, he feels diminished or threatened.  It takes a very secure man to embrace his wife as an equal partner. And it takes a very mature woman to deal compassionately with her husband's insecurity manifested as patronizing behaviors toward her.  Jesus enables us to negotiate successfully through even these troubled waters--He enables us to walk on these waters.