Love and Respect (3 page)

That early episode in our marriage planted more seeds of what I would later be able to describe and articulate. I knew Sarah loved me and her outburst was caused by her desire to help me. She wanted me to appreciate her concern and understand that she was only doing it out of love, but the bottom line was I felt disrespected, attacked, and defensive. Over the years, we continued to grapple with this same problem. She would voice her concern about something I was not focusing on as I should. (“Did you return so-and-so’s phone call? Did you jot a note to so-and-so?”) I would do my best to improve, but occasionally I would slip back, making her feel that I did not value her input.

AND THEN I FORGOT HER BIRTHDAY

A few more years went by, and Sarah’s birthday was coming up. She was thinking about how I would respond—would I even remember? She always remembered birthdays, but birthdays weren’t big on my radar screen. She knew she would
never
forget my birthday, because she loved me dearly. She wondered, however, if I would celebrate her birthday. She was thinking,
Does he hold me in his heart the way I hold him in mine?

So what she did was not done in a mean spirit. She was simply trying to discover things about me and men in general. She knew that forgetfulness was a common problem, and she was just being curious. As an experiment, she hid all the birthday cards that had arrived before her birthday. No hints of her birthday existed anywhere, and I was going along in my usual fog, studying and thinking. On her birthday I had lunch with a friend. That evening as Sarah and I had dinner, she softly asked, “So, did you and Ray celebrate my birthday today?”

I can’t describe exactly what goes on inside the human body at a moment like that. But it felt as if my blood went out of my heart, down to my feet, and then shot full force into my face. How would I ever explain this one?

I hemmed and I hawed, but I couldn’t explain forgetting Sarah’s birthday. My forgetfulness had been unloving, and I could see that she was hurt. But at the same time, I had these strange feelings. Yes, I had been wrong to forget, but I hadn’t ignored her birthday intentionally. I felt judged, put down—and rightly so. At the time, I couldn’t describe my feelings with a word like
disrespected.
During those years, when the feminists were going full blast, men didn’t talk about being disrespected by women. That would have been arrogant, and in church circles it would have been considered a terrible lack of humility.

LOVING TIMES AND SPATS OF UGLINESS

The years rolled by—a blur of preaching, pastoring, and counseling more married couples. Sarah and I continued to grow in our marriage as we learned more and more about one another, and we had a lot of great times. But along with the loving times were spots (should I say spats?) of ugliness. Nothing was long term; we would almost always pray together afterward, asking forgiveness from one another as well as from the Lord. But what did it all mean? Where was our marriage going? After all, I was a pastor who was paid to be “good.” How could I justify all my little slip-ups that were “good for nothing”?

As someone has said, the problem with life is that it’s so daily. And Sarah and I irritated each other almost daily with bad habits we couldn’t shake. One of mine was leaving wet towels on the bed. At least once a month Sarah would be angry about my wet towel. And every three months or so, I would start drifting back into being preoccupied with other things, neglecting certain duties, and forgetting certain requests. When she would critique me, tension would arise and I would come across as blaming her or making excuses.

Every couple learns about daily conflicts, which Solomon calls “the little foxes that ruin the vineyards” (Song of Solomon 2:15 NIV).

Sarah periodically coughs and clears her throat, and early on in our marriage when we would be praying, I would get irritated by her coughing. How childish could I be? We were praying to the Lord of heaven, and I was bothered by something she couldn’t help. Other times, she wanted me to praise the Lord when I was frustrated. Frankly, I didn’t always want to praise the Lord, so did that make me less spiritual? When she was frustrated, I didn’t tell her to praise the Lord! Didn’t that make me less judgmental and more spiritual?

Tension has a way of tearing down your self-image. On the heels of confrontation, I felt I could never be good enough. And on the heels of family conflict, Sarah felt she was a failure as a mother and wife. As with all couples, the specifics that prompted these tensions weighed heavily on us as a couple. Indeed, life can be “so daily.”

It is not Sarah’s first choice to travel, study, and teach because that is not her gifting, though she is willing to go for the sake of our ministry. I can’t stand fixing things that break in the home since that’s not my talent. So I usually complain when trying to fix something which doesn’t get fixed anyway (and that’s why I didn’t want to do it in the first place!).

As God revealed the Love and Respect message, I experienced Psalm 119:130: “The unfolding of Your words gives light; it gives understanding” (NIV).

I share all these little “secrets” about my wife and me to let you know that we do not deliver our message on marriage from any pedestal of perfection. We have struggled on many fronts and will continue to do so, but now we struggle knowing we can win! Over the years, ever so slowly, we have discovered the “secret” that has made all the difference for us (and for many other couples).

THE “SECRET” HIDDEN IN EPHESIANS 5:33

For more than twenty years I had the privilege of studying the Bible thirty hours a week for my pulpit ministry. I also earned a PhD in family studies, plus a master’s in communication. I had a lot of formal training, but when this illumination from Scripture exploded in my heart and mind one day in 1998, it simply blew me away. I literally exclaimed, “Glory to God!” The insight that I finally recognized in Scripture, and which I later confirmed from reading scientific research, explained why Sarah and I would get into our arguments. I finally saw very clearly why Sarah could be crushed by my words and actions, just as my mom had been crushed by my dad. And Sarah could say things that would send me through the roof, just as my mom had said things that would send my dad through the roof.

What was the secret? Actually, it was not a secret at all. This passage of Scripture has been there for some two thousand years for all of us to see. 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” (NIV).

Of course, I had read that verse many times. I had even preached on that verse when conducting marriage ceremonies. But somehow I had never seen the connection between love and respect. Paul is clearly saying that wives need love and husbands need respect. As I started sharing my secret in messages and later in seminars and conferences, I would often run into people who would say something like, “This Love and Respect Connection sounds good, Emerson, but isn’t it a little theoretical? We have real problems—money problems, sex problems, how to raise the kids . . .”

As I will show throughout this book, the Love and Respect Connection is the key to any problem in a marriage. This is not just a nice little theory to which I added a few Bible verses.
¹
How the need for love and the need for respect play off of one another in a marriage has
everything
to do with the kind of marriage you will have.

HOW GOD REVEALED THE LOVE AND RESPECT CONNECTION

In the beginning, when I was struggling to find help for other marriages as well as for my own, I was not searching for any “Love and Respect Connection.” But that connection surfaced as I pondered what Ephesians 5:33 is saying. My thought process went something like this: “A husband is to obey the command to love even if his wife does not obey this command to respect, and a wife is to obey the command to respect even if the husband does not obey the command to love.”

So far, so good. Then I reasoned further: “A husband is even called to love a disrespectful wife, and a wife is called to respect an unloving husband. There is no justification for a husband to say, ‘I will love my wife
after
she respects me’ nor for a wife to say, ‘I will respect my husband
after
he loves me.’”

At this point I still hadn’t seen the Love and Respect Connection. My theory surfaced as God guided me in recognizing the strong link between love and respect in a marriage. I saw why it is so hard to love and respect. When a husband feels disrespected, it is especially hard to love his wife. When a wife feels unloved, it is especially hard to respect her husband.

At that point came the illumination that made sense to me, and it has made sense to a lot of people ever since. When a husband feels disrespected, he has a natural tendency to react in ways that feel unloving to his wife. (Perhaps the command to love was given to him precisely for this reason!) When a wife feels unloved, she has a natural tendency to react in ways that feel disrespectful to her husband. (Perhaps the command to respect was given to her precisely for this reason!)

The Crazy Cycle is, indeed, “the evil of folly and the foolishness of madness”

(Ecclesiastes 7:25).

The Love and Respect Connection is clearly within Scripture, but so is the constant threat that the connection can be strained or even broken. And then came what I call the “aha” moment: this thing triggers itself. Without love, she reacts without respect. Without respect, he reacts without love—ad nauseam. Thus was born the Crazy Cycle! (See page 5 for a visual of it.)

Everywhere I share my theory, husbands and wives immediately understand. They see that if they don’t learn how to control the Crazy Cycle, it will just go round and round and where it stops nobody knows. To put this book in brief outline form, I want to help couples:

• Control the Craziness (The Crazy Cycle)

• Energize Each Other with Love and Respect (The Energizing Cycle)

• Enjoy the Rewards of a Godly Marriage (The Rewarded Cycle)

WHY LOVE AND RESPECT ARE PRIMARY NEEDS

Getting on the Crazy Cycle is all too easy. Recognizing that you’re on the Crazy Cycle and learning how to keep it from spinning out of control
is
possible if husband and wife can learn how to meet each other’s basic needs for love and respect. I have often been asked, “How can you be so sure the wife primarily needs to feel love and the husband primarily needs to feel respect?” My answer comes in two parts.

First of all, my experience as a counselor and as a husband confirms this truth. The wife is the one who asks, “Does my husband love me as much as I love him?” She
knows
she loves him, but she wonders at times if he loves her nearly as much. So when he comes across as unloving, she typically reacts in a negative way. In her opinion, he needs to change into a more sensitive and caring man. Unfortunately, a wife’s usual approach is to complain and criticize in order to motivate her husband to become more loving. This usually proves about as successful as trying to sell brass knuckles to Mother Teresa.

On the other hand, a husband does not commonly ask, “Does my wife love me as much as I love her?” Why not? Because he is assured of her love. I often ask husbands, “Does your wife love you?” They reply, “Yes, of course.” But then I ask, “Does she like you?” And the answer usually comes back, “Nope.”

In many cases, the wife’s dislike is interpreted by the husband as disrespect and even contempt. In his opinion, she has changed from being the admiring, ever-approving woman she was when they courted. Now she doesn’t approve, and she’s letting him know it. So the husband decides he will motivate his wife to become more respectful by acting in unloving ways. This usually proves about as successful as trying to sell a pickup to an Amish farmer.

Even more convincing is what Ephesians 5:33 teaches about the woman’s primary need for love and the man’s primary need for respect: The husband
must
love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife
must
respect her husband. Could it be any clearer than that? Paul isn’t making suggestions; he is issuing commands from God Himself. In addition, the Greek word Paul uses for love in this verse is
agape
, meaning unconditional love. And the wording of the rest of the passage strongly suggests that the husband should receive unconditional respect. Christian spouses should not read this verse to say, “Husbands, love your wives unconditionally, and wives, respect your husbands only if they have earned and deserve it.” As the old saying goes, what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. In this verse, respect for the husband is just as important as love for the wife.

Another writer of Scripture chimes in with Paul on this matter of respect for husbands. The apostle Peter wrote to wives that if any husbands were disobedient to God’s Word, “they may be won without a word by the behavior of their wives, as they observe your chaste and
respectful
behavior” (1 Peter 3:1–2; italics mine). Peter is definitely talking about unconditional respect. The husbands he mentions are either carnal Christians or unbelievers who are disobedient to the Word—that is, to Jesus Christ. God is not pleased with a man like this, and such a man does not “deserve” his wife’s respect. But Peter is not calling on wives to feel respect; he is commanding them to show respectful behavior. This is not about the husband deserving respect; it is about the wife being willing to treat her husband respectfully
without conditions
.

To say the least, doing something when you don’t really feel you want to do it is counterintuitive. Therefore, this passage must be acted on in faith. God has ordained that wives respect their husbands as a method to win husbands to Himself. As a husband opens his spirit to God, he reopens his spirit to his wife. No husband feels affection toward a wife who appears to have contempt for who he is as a human being. The key to creating fond feelings of love in a husband toward his wife is through showing him unconditional respect.

RESPECT—UNIQUE FEATURE OF THIS BOOK