Love and Respect...Easy Enough?

Ever wonder why you and your wife constantly seem to go round and round on a merry go round when it comes to dealing with simple conflict? Why can’t things just go smoother? Why can’t we understand one another’s needs? How can we make our marriage work?

Then you must read Love and Respect by Dr. Emerson Eggerichs, by Thomas Nelson publishers. It will not only answer all those questions but also improve the quality of your marriage and your relationship!

In Ephesians 5:33, Paul writes, “Each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself and the wife must respect her husband.”

Did you catch the two biggest secrets for making a marriage work? Men must love their wives and wives must respect their husbands. Why? Women already know how to love unconditionally and they know how to show love throughout everything they do in a marriage. God uniquely created her to have this ability to love within her, however to respect her husband is a command from God. It is the one thing women need to do to make their marriages work. Be respectful to their husbands always.

Men on the other hand are naturally gifted in giving respect. After all they do it at work all the time, in the military they are taught to respect authority figures, and even their own fathers teach them to be respectful of others. So for a man to be respectful to their wives comes easily. Acting lovingly to their wives do not, which is why is it commanded for men to love their wives as much as they love themselves

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Husbands have the natural ability to walk away or to provide the silent treatment to their wives when confronted in any given situation, which is the respectful thing to do. However, wives view that as unloving and will usually follow that up with a few verbal assaults on how he can be a better father, better husband, better person all the while completely showing her husband a lack of disrespect. So the cycle continues because the husband tries to solve conflicts within his marriage with respect and the wife tries to fix everything by showing him just how much she loves him. They call this the crazy cycle in the book.

The more he reacts to his wife without love, she in return reacts without respect…and the cycle continues.

I would highly recommend this book to anyone looking not only to improve their current marriage situation but also to make what they currently have better. If both the husbands and wives see their primary duties in the marriage this way, both win. The wife refrains from being disrespectful to her husband and the husband refrains from withholding love from his wife. See how they both win.

This book highlights things you can say and how to handle unique situations that each marriage has. From the back cover of the book sums the whole book up.

“A wife has one driving need – to feel loved. When that need is met, she is happy. A husband has one driving need – to feel respected. When that need is met, he is happy. When either of these needs isn’t met, things get crazy. Love and Respect reveals why spouses react negatively to each other, and how they can deal with such conflict quickly, easily and biblically."