From the blog of the woman leading the charge with this exercise:
"God's command to wives is to respect our husbands - unconditionally. Our men are not boy scouts trying to earn badges of honor. God does not say - respect the husband who is "worthy" of respect. It is simply their position of husband that we are to respect.
Dr. Emerson Eggerich says in his book "Love and Respect" that if you asked women if they'd rather their friends love or respect them - the majority would say love. But if you asked men if they'd rather their friends love or respect them - the men would answer respect. We are hard wired this way - God created men with the need to feel respected and adequate.
Sometimes we women "mock" the male "ego" - but it truly is tender. Deep down - there's insecurity and they need to know that indeed they are adequate, they are enough, they are worthy of our respect"
I've read and studied about this before, about the male ego. In our feminist world we've been raised, thanks to media and shows portraying the 'dumb male' who usually can't even find his own socks, that males should be 'put in their place' because otherwise they'll just ruin everything. So not true. Every husband needs the respect of his wife. It's as (or more) important to him as her love.
She goes on: "It has taken time for me to learn what it is that makes him feel disrespected. But I can tell you a few things that all men disdain.
1. The wife rolling her eyes at him.
2. The wife criticizing him.
3. The wife complaining to her mother or girlfriends about his flaws.
4. The wife not respecting his knowledge, opinions or decisions.
5. The wife nagging him or assuming the worst in his actions.
6. The wife using sarcasm to communicate bitterness.
7. The wife disrespecting his work, protection, provision or leadership. 8. The wife disrespecting his need for physical intimacy or his "manhood"
This week - take some time to assess your husband's respect-o-meter. Ask him what sort of things you do that make him feel disrespected and respected. Work on weeding out disrespectful thoughts and attitudes and exchanging them for respectful ones."
She goes on to remind us all that we should base our respect for our husband on the fact that God commands that we respect our husband, and not make him earn it.
And now my thoughts: We view our husbands actions through sinful eyes and they are sinful creatures, so earning respect is not always easy. So that's not what it should be based on. It should come from an obedient heart toward God. Ephesians 5:33 says "Each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself and the wife must respect her husband."
I am not the husband in this relationship, so it's not my job to worry about whether the first half is getting obeyed, it's between him and God. It's not for me to say, well, he's not holding up his end of the bargain, so I'm not respecting him. The verse does not say we can wait to respect him until he's got the loving his wife as he loves himself down pat. It just says respect him. So that's what I'll be working on this week. I plan to talk to him about any areas where he feels I am disrespecting him, as suggested. I hope to post about it but we'll see. It may be a bit personal, but I'm going for transparency here so we'll see.
Again, I love the potential here for me to find out how better to love him. As I said I read about the whole respect thing in a wonderful book called For Women Only. I highly recommend it to anyone who asks me about good marriage books. It's made a difference for us. Anyway, we've been through conversations before about how I could better respect him, and it's always a good idea to go over these things occasionally. I'm looking forward to it!
No comments:
Post a Comment