In Process: Trying to Understand The "Love vs. Respect" Approach To Relationships

There's this popular teaching concerning marriage called Love And Respect: The Love She Needs. The Respect He Deserves. I can barely type the title because something about it sticks in my craw.

Being that life has endeavored to place me in the "damaged non-perishable items bin" more than a few times, I freely submit that my irritation could be due entirely to something gone horribly wrong in my psyche. I am not quite ready to repent, however, until I've investigated it a little more.


In addition, I haven't read the entire book, so my theory on the teaching admittedly could be very wrong, and this entire blog entry nulled and voided. I have done the "Barnes & Noble Skim" a couple of times, watched the online videos, subscribed to the page, and read some of the related articles. The premise seems to be that men require the respect of their wives, and women need the love of their husbands. Valid, upon first perusal. What I have noticed in the videos, however, is a lot of instruction directed towards women respecting men. Not a whole lot of direction geared toward the men. That kind of bugged me.  I know we have some big attitude issues within womankind, but according to this series, the female seems to be the only gender needing serious course correction.


Maybe I have an overabundance of testosterone in my body, but when it comes to Love for the Female vs. Respect for the Male, my question has always been, "What's the bless-ed difference?" It's a semantic bump in the carpeting we've been tripping over for decades. This is just me, but I don't see Love and Respect as separate entities, and to say that they are is to not understand the all-encompassing nature of Covenant Love. I know that the sexes do process and interpret events within life and relatonships differently, but I guess my beef is with the language being used.  I am, after all, a daughter of  the Aretha Franklin "R-E-S-P-E-C-T" funky war cry generation.  So telling me here in the 21st century that respect in marriage is not a priority for a woman feels myopic. I think, no matter what the century, respect has always mattered to us, and we women have gone to some incredible and often questionable lengths to gain it.


Don't mistake me: I can be a girly-girl. I love to be romanced. I don't like finding out my favorite lip liner is sold out. I am searching for new ways to dispatch unwanted facial hair.  I watch the wedding shows and cry along when the "yes" is said for the dress, and the personally written vows are read. Despite all the archetypical behaviors, I am also a moderately intelligent woman, and proud of it.  Googly doves' eyes are all well and good, but I also find a man who likes to actually talk with me an extreme turn-on. Maybe some of this stems from me not ever feeling like the sought-after beauty that a lot of men seemed to want (painful disclosure).  So when a man might not only find me outwardly attractive, but genuinely regards my viewpoint as important, or laughs at my jokes, or says "You do have a point there," I feel respected and therefore loved.  When I feel like I matter in that way...LOOK OUT, BABY!  I've got your back for life!  In fact, most of the fantastic women I know do have more substantial things on their minds than just kitchen cleansers and the holiday sale at Sephora. We can and do intellectually multi-task.

Here's the thing. I've noticed, beyond my limited experience of this teaching, that there are certain men who expect for women to do all the heavy lifting with regards to respect. Problem is, a lot of these men are either wrongly taught, or somewhere down the line had something negatively affect their perspective on ALL WOMEN (it may not have even involved a woman). They may desire to marry (or perhaps they seek it because of societal/cultural expectations), but at the core they really don't like women. Now let me be clear: I'm not talking about sexual orientation issues here. I'm talking about damaged heterosexual men who see women at best as noncompliant, and at worst as the enemy...and firmly hold this mindset while seeking companionship, and even marrying. They show it in the way they interact with women. Public humilation is a cast-iron guarantee. Private shaming is a sure thing. Subservience, not godly submission, is the superobjective. Keep the scales tipped in favor of safeguarding the exposure of their fragile self-concept. Then I promise you: that same man will come around later and ask the woman they subjugated for sex.


If you are a man having tremendous issues with trusting females, do yourself and us women a favor: stay away from us. Get healing. Get clarity. Don't make your dysfunction some unsuspecting woman's problem, and then when she recoils or protests, vigorously complain that all women are disrespectful. We are not. Don't generalize. Every woman you meet is not a carbon copy of the women who messed you up in the past. Don't spiritually justify your distain. Nothing in the rightly divided Word supports abuse. Don't procreate. Grow large plants. Buy a prize-winning schnauzer. God's got this "be fruitful and multiply" thing covered with healthier folk who are not going to perpetuate the nonsense.


I have to believe that there are still women out there who would go out of their way to honor a man who is healthy and free from negative mindsets-or at least one who is walking in that direction-with no need for application of excessive force. I believe because, despite the intense work I still need to do on myself, I hope to be one. These are the women not easily plied with wine, gifts, and pillow talk if, at the end of the day, you don't see them as useful for much more than eye candy and/or bodily warmth. When a man disregards a healthy woman's need to be respected, and therefore loved, he should be prepared to never see his desire for true respect, and therefore love, realized in this lifetime.

Like I said...I am still working on it.