Your husband doesn’t have to earn your respect

I can’t tell you where I was or who was there or when it happened. I don’t want to add to this guy’s humiliation, so I am keeping this vague and generic. I can simply tell you that, some time ago, I found myself in the same vicinity as another married couple.

I certainly can’t read their minds, and I don’t know what goes on behind the scenes, all I know is that the husband couldn’t seem to utter a single phrase that wouldn’t provoke exaggerated eye-rolling from his wife.

She brought up a “funny” story that made him out to be incompetent and foolish. He laughed, but he was embarrassed.

She was gutting him right in front of us. Emasculating him. Neutering him. Damaging him.

I’ve discussed at length how men should treat women. I’ve written about the lessons I plan to teach my son; lessons about how he should love, honor, respect, serve, and protect the women in his life. Indeed, men need to respect women, and we, as men, are far from perfect in that regard.

Those posts — the ones where I call on us men to improve the way we treat women — tend to be very popular. They’re popular when I write them or when anyone writes them. Proclaim that women, mothers, and wives should be respected, and a chorus will shout ‘amen.’ Every day on Facebook brings us another viral post excoriating men and supporting women. I’ve written a few of them myself.

But I’ve noticed that the corollary – a message about the respect women must give men, a message challenging wives and encouraging husbands – isn’t quite so palatable for many people. Disrespect for men has become standard practice. That scene I witnessed was sad but unremarkable; we’ve all watched that kind of thing play out a thousand times over.

Men are disrespected by their wives – they’re disrespected publicly, they’re disrespected privately, they’re disrespected and then told that they have no right to be upset about it because they aren’t worthy of respect in the first place.

Disrespect for men is a joke to us now. A little while ago I stopped on the way home from work to buy my wife some flowers. As she rang me up, the cashier quipped: “Uh-oh, what’d you do?” I wasn’t particularly amused, but I chuckled. She continued. “I don’t know if this’ll be enough to get you off the couch tonight!”

Ah, yes, the old “husband is punished by his wife and sent to the couch” meme. I’m not sure if this actually happens in real life, or if it’s an invention of 90′s “all men are fat, witless, oafs” sitcoms, but the popularity of the stereotype is telling. Is this how we see husbands now? A man gets “in trouble” with his wife, she scolds him and puts him in time-out on the couch. Now he has to placate his alpha-bride by showering her with flowers and jewelry.

Men are painted like children or dogs. They can be shooed off of their own beds by their wives and sent to cower in the living room until she permits him to return. This is only slightly less offensive than the cliché of the sadistic wife who punitively withholds sex from her husband. “You didn’t clean the garage like I told you. No sex for you, mister! Next time, follow my instructions!”

A worthless, grunting, Neanderthal of a husband instantly “evolves” when his wife plugs a contraption into his back. The ad caused a slight dust up when they released it, but nothing — NOTHING — like it would have if the husband and wife had switched roles in this charming piece of viral marketing.

But with men on the receiving end, a few people complained, some angry Youtube comments were posted, Samsung sales were unscathed, and everyone quickly moved on with their lives.

These cultural messages aren’t harmful because they hurt my manly feelings; they’re harmful because of what they do to young girls. Society tells our daughters that men are boorish dolts who need to be herded like goats and lectured like school boys. Then they grow up and enter into marriage wholly unprepared and unwilling to accept the Biblical notion that “wives should submit to their husbands” because “the husband is the head of the wife.” [Ephesians 5]

It is a fatal problem, because the one thing that is consistently withheld from men and husbands — respect — is the one thing we need the most.

Yes, need. We need respect, and that need is so deeply ingrained that a marriage cannot possibly survive if the man is deprived of it.

Often, people will say that a husband should only be respected if he “earns” it. This attitude is precisely the problem. A wife ought to respect her husband because he is her husband, just as he ought to love and honor her because she is his wife. Your husband might “deserve” it when you mock him, berate him, belittle him, and nag him, but you don’t marry someone in order to give them what they deserve. In marriage, you give them what you’ve promised them, even when they aren’t holding up their end of the bargain.

This doesn’t mean that a man has a license to be lazy, or abusive, or uncaring. He is challenged to live up to the respect his wife affords him. If his wife parcels out her respect on some sort of reward system basis, the husband has nothing for which to strive. As the respect diminishes, so too does his motivation to behave respectably. Respect is wielded like a ransom against him, and he grows more isolated and distant all the while.

They both swirl in circles around the drain. He fails, so she gives him no respect, and then he continues to fail because he feels disrespected, and she continues to give him no respect because he continues to fail. And so on, and so on, and so on, all the way to the divorce attorney.

The same thing happens with love. If love is unconditional, then the light of love always shines in your marriage, even in its darkest times. But if your love is given in direct proportion to your spouse’s ability to “earn” it, then it will inevitably diminish and fade over time.

Love in a marriage is, as people often point out, a choice. But it’s also a duty. So is respect. I love my wife because I choose to love her. I choose to love her because that is the vow I made; it is my charge, my warrant. Luckily, it’s usually pretty easy to love my wife because she’s kind, warmhearted, and beautiful. But if she becomes less kind, and I withdraw my love because of it, then my love was never love to begin with. It was just a pleasant feeling; a natural response to her nicer tendencies.

This is not to say that women should tolerate a man who fails in his duties, but that her intolerance for his failures can only be constructive if it is rooted in respect. Sadly, many women will approach their husbands and say: “You need to stop doing such and such or start doing such and such, because you’re a failure and I don’t respect you.”

She might not explicitly state this, but it is the message she implicitly sends. There is zero chance that this message will help to heal the damage; it only plunges another dagger into the already gaping wound.

A few months ago I wrote a post about pornography. I stand by every word I typed, but I feel like I could add another couple thousand sentences to the end of it. Ever since I published that piece, I have heard from hundreds and hundreds of men and women on both sides of the porn problem.

Men emailed to tell me that they developed a porn habit and it did great damage to their marriage. But they told me that they resorted to porn after years of being disrespected, shunned and belittled by their wives. They weren’t making an excuse — only offering some perspective and context.

And hundreds of women told me that their husbands developed a porn habit and it caused them to lose all respect for them. This inability to respect their husbands nearly, or in some cases completely, wrecked their marriage.

A vicious cycle. The men didn’t want to fight for a marriage if they weren’t respected, and the women didn’t want to respect men who wouldn’t fight for their marriage. He withholds his love, she withholds her respect. They’ve both set fire to the thing that needs to be fixed.

Respect is our language. If it isn’t said with respect, we can’t hear it. This is why nagging is ineffective and self defeating. This is why statements made in sarcastic tones, or with rolling eyes, will never be received well. We have a filter in our brains, and a statement made in disrespect will be filtered out like the poison it is.

Men are notoriously reluctant to share feelings or display vulnerability. Many times, we keep those inner thoughts locked away — our feelings guarded and hidden — because we know we are not respected. A man will never be vulnerable to someone who doesn’t respect him. Never.

A man isn’t satisfied or content if he isn’t respected. If he can’t find respect where he is, he will seek it somewhere else. This can have disastrous implications for a relationship, but it applies in other areas of life as well. A man is much more likely to stay in a low paying job, a physically demanding job, a dangerous job, or a tedious job, than a job where he isn’t respected.

I’m only emphasizing this because I think it might actually be news to some people. Society does not permit men to be vocal about their need for respect, so the need is often ignored.

I could sit here all day adding “yes, but husbands also need to…” disclaimers. I won’t, because I’ve probably written a dozen or more times on that subject. Every once in a while, I think we should talk about what wives need to do. And here it is. This, above all else. Respect your husbands. Even when he doesn’t deserve it.

The Lord commands husbands to "love their wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself for her". This they need to do in daily prayer asking for their daily bread to do so.

Similarly "the wife must respect her husband" is the command to wives.

My advice to women like this is for them so show respect for the office of husband even if they can't find respect in her heart. And to go to the Lord in prayer and ask for the respect he needs, just as the husband needs to ask for the love she needs.

This is a great posting. Very seldom have I seen love and respect mentioned with regards to husbands and wives. It is badly needed and Thank You!

I agree with most of this.

Men also need respect in the workplace. If bosses want productive employees, they need to respect them.

well done.....I was at a large dinner party....maybe 6 couples....it was a talkative lot, the general tone of the conversation was energetic....when out of left-field, came a comment by a women, regarding their marriage...”the only reason XYZ, doesn't divorce me is because he can't afford to” No respect for her husband, or for the rest of us at the table...

I agree.. popular culture carries the narrative that men — especially husbands — are bumbling, useless clods with no manners, skills or worth.

And many young women wonder why men in their age group aren’t interested in marriage...

Ironic when you consider which gender is more likely to be herded and lectured by the sewer pipe of popular culture.

Proverbs 25:24 “It’s better to live in a corner on the roof than in a house with a contentious woman”. Funnily enough I was mentioning to my wife the other day how many comments women either make or put up on facebook that, if done by a man, would be considered sexist. Not that I care because what they have to say doesn’t bother me but dare bring it up and see what you get!

Amen. As someone who just went through “a wall” with her own husband, I can attest that what you are saying couldn’t be more true.

"I agree with most of this.

Men also need respect in the workplace. If bosses want productive employees, they need to respect them."

You're right about that.

I know a couple like this. The wife is constantly telling everyone what is wrong with her husband. At dinner, she will start saying things like “what is wrong with you? why are you being so moody?” when to other people at the dinner, the husband isn't doing anything wrong. Its as if she has to believe that something is wrong with him so that she feels good about herself. They really should not be together. The irony is that for all her talk about all her husband's “problems,” everyone sees that she's the one with the problem. She wants people to think of her as some martyr for having to “put up with” her husband, but people really see what a total b__tch she is. Its a sick relationship when a wife is constantly picking at her husband in the same way its a sick relationship when a husband is constantly picking on and psychologically abusing his wife.

There’s a lot of truth in that article. I enjoyed reading it.

It certainly doesn’t help that we’ve raised a generation of timid, emasculated men who wouldn’t even think of standing up to the clipped-haired, mean-faced feminists who walk all over them.

Women dont respect a non-whiny one either.

When you have the entire court and governmental structure set up to be a replacement husband, with all of the power to render a man destitute at her whim, and you have 200 years of stupid dudes, playing the roll of the “white knight” that have treated women as victims and “little darlings” so they can feel like some manly protector, then what do people expect from today’s culture?

And let’s not even get into how feminism, gay culture, and now the omnipresent danger of women lodging fake rape charges have made an environment where lots of men are rightfully afraid.

That old song, “All You Need is Love” is hogwash.

When it comes to songs from the '60s, I notice that for any song, you can take the word 'love' and replace it with the word 'drugs', and it will still make sense.

When we married 38 years ago, we agreed not to “point and laugh.”

Respect, and a healthy sense of humor, work wonders.

He also promised to love me through all my “changes.” He had no idea what he was in for!

What a gift he is.

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