But his wife was doing all in her power to fan his
irritability into flame and to increase his brutality. She was
attitudinizing in her own mind as a martyr. She was demanding
kindness and attention and sympathy from her husband, and because
she demanded it she never got it.
A woman can demand without demanding imperiously. There is more
selfish demanding in a woman's emotional suffering because her
husband does not do this or that or the other for her sake than
there is in a tornado of man's irritability or anger. You see, a
woman's demanding spirit is covered with the mush of her emotions. A
man's demanding spirit stands out in all its naked ugliness. One is
just as bad as the other. One is just as repulsive as the other.
It is a radical, practical impossibility to bring loving-kindness
out of any one by demanding it. Loving-kindness, thoughtfulness, and
consideration have got to be born spontaneously in a man's own mind
to be anything at all, and no amount of demanding on the part of his
wife can force it.
When this little lady of whom I have been writing found that she had
been demanding from her husband what he really ought to have given
her as a matter of course, and that she had used up all her strength
in suffering because he did not give it, and had used none of her
strength in the effort to be patient and quiet in waiting for him to
come to his senses, she went home and began a new life.
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