Love, not enough for a good marriage !?

I am excited about what I am about to write because I see it as a light at the end of the tunnel for many agonizing hearts in marriage, as well as for many hearts fearful of getting involved in anything called marriage.

This write-up could save many hearts suffering from pain as a result of either broken or separated marriages. Please don’t joke with what you are about to read, it’s most likely the answer you‘ve been looking for either for yourself or someone you care about.

In his book, Love And Respect, Dr. Emerson Eggerichs wrote, “you may remember the Beatles’ ‘All you need is love’. I absolutely disagree with that conclusion. Five out of ten marriages today are ending in divorce because love alone is not enough. Yes, love is vital, especially for the wife, but what we miss is the husband’s need for respect. This book is about how the wife can fulfil her need to be loved by giving her husband what he needs — respect.”

I cannot agree less with Dr. Emerson’s conclusion that love alone is not enough when a good marriage is involved. To love in a marriage setting, you must add respect, which is the other side of the coin as far as the husband is concerned. These two basic needs of the husband and wife will be our focus in this write up for they are the basics for a good and successful marriage.

Do you want some peace? Do you want to feel close to your spouse? Then, try these basics- Love and Respect. Spouses headed for divorce, husbands and wives in a second marriage, people wanting to stay happily married, couples who want to enjoy honeymoon forever, lonely wives, browbeaten husbands, cheating spouses, even couples in courtship as well as marriage counsellors have been helped through a good understanding of the love and respect message. Yours will definitely not be an exception.

Love is the greatest need of a woman, and she craves for it from her husband. If she does not get it from him, she becomes emotionally disturbed and traumatised, making her an easy prey to any man who understands this love language of hers, and this may lead her to an illicit love affair. Now, I have an idea why more women are having secret affairs outside their homes today; it’s not unconnected with love denied at home, but given outside. Though this is wrong, but it is on the increase and that is why husbands and wives must learn how to handle such situations or avoid them completely.

However, for a man, his innermost desire is respect. This is what drives him crazy, either negatively or positively, towards his wife. If he does not get it from her, he goes after it outside the home. This, I also believe, may be responsible for quite some extra marital affairs of husbands.

To sustain a marriage therefore, love for the wife, respect for the husband is highly essential. Love alone is not enough; respect must be added to it. This is the simple secret of a successful marriage.

What love means to a wife
For a wife, to love her means to regularly and passionately express your emotional feelings towards her and these can be done in so many ways, some of which are stated below:

*Verbalise how much you love her to her and others in her presence. Telling her how passionate you are about her will drive your wife crazy and motivate her to do positively crazy things for you.

* Remember important dates of her life, such as birthday and wedding anniversary dates. One thing you can be sure of is that most wives, if not all, will never forget such dates in their husbands’ life except when in crisis. Even then, it is not that they forget, rather they choose not to be bothered to express their feelings on those occasions. Forgetting such important dates in her life makes her wonder, “does he hold me in his heart the way I hold him in mine?”

* Tell her how much you are ravished by her beauty. Cultivate the habit of verbally appreciating her looks and hair do, especially when she comes back from the salon. It tells her that you care. After all, what is love without caring?

*Appreciate her gifts to you by thanking her for them and also using those gifts regularly. Comment positively about the gifts and tell her how much you appreciate her sense of judgment concerning the gifts. I recently bought a gift for my husband, and when he did not put it on after two days, I didn’t like it, and confronted him. That is a wife for you. For Sarah, her husband thanking her for a Christmas gift without a corresponding enthusiasm and passionate expression of his joy and appreciation was all she needed to conclude that he didn’t like the ‘whao’ Christmas gift she bought him.

What respect means to a husband
To respect your husband means to believe in him completely - his person, his judgment, his ability and capability to protect and provide for his family. That is, you have accepted his person and who he is and what he does. No husband feels affection towards a wife who appears to have contempt for who he is as a human being. It means to believe in his visions and dreams. Oh, what a blessed wife you are when you buy into the vision of your spouse. It buys you love and makes him feel good about himself as well as about you. It is an image booster for him.

*To respect him means not shouting at the top of your voice at him when expressing your disapproval of any way or acts of his. To loudly correct him, especially openly, sends a wrong signal of disrespect. Never shout at him. According to Dr. Emersons, “You can be right, but wrong at the top of your voice.” Though your top of the voice outburst was caused by your desire to help your husband, it may cause him feeling disrespected, attacked and defensive.

*Don’t make him feel stupid and dumb with your comments about his acts and mannerism. Comments like, “you never do anything right in your life” or “what a stupid mistake you’ve just made” are demeaning to a man, especially your husband. Most wives have learnt to respect men, but not their husbands.

*Boost his self image; it matters to him a lot. All your complaints about him not being good in bed, not visiting your parents, not paying attention to you, and a whole lot of others is about disrespect and not appreciating the person of your husband. That is how it comes across to him. And because he is a man, it could not have been otherwise.

Conclusion: Husbands and wives must learn and understand the power of love and respect in marriage. Learn how to motivate each other by meeting each other’s needs for love and respect. You cannot motivate your husband to become more loving through constant complaint and criticisms. “The key to creating fond feelings of love in a husband toward his wife is through showing him unconditional respect. The best way to love a husband is to show him respect in ways that are meaningful to him. Such respect lets him feel his wife’s love for him and ignites in him the feelings of love for his wife,” writes Dr. Emersons. 

What then should we do? Make a life-changing decision to believe the best about each other; having in mind that we mean well towards and for each other, though we hurt each other sometimes. The husband will have to believe that his wife does not intend to be disrespectful. Of course, she can get nasty and act rashly, but it’s not a deliberate thing flowing from her heart. He will have to believe she respects him deep inside her heart.

The wife will also have to believe that the husband does not intend to be unloving and uncaring, though he sometimes acts like it and hurts her with his comments and attitudes. She will have to know in her heart that he loves her deeply, and does not intend to hurt her deliberately. This is faith in each other and it is what makes the marriage to function happily, despite the pains and aches we cause each other.

Why wives feel unloved and husbands feel disrespected
Why husbands and wives feel the way they feel about each other, with reference to love and respect, is due to making assumptions about the message they send to each other as they communicate. That is, the silent and unspoken words being decoded by each other, the assumption of the intended message being passed across to each other and the reading of meanings to what is said or being communicate to each other. So, if husbands and wives will fully understand and operate on the frequency of love and respect as I have canvassed here, they will have to deal with this issue of communication gap occasioned by reading meanings to what they say or do to each other.

I also read the true life story of a couple as written by Dr. Emersons in his book as follows, “The husband is gone for a week on a business trip. As his plane lands, he starts envisioning a romantic sexual evening with his wife, so he hurries home as quickly as he can. As he walks in the door, his wife’s first words are, “what are you doing home so early? Well, since you are here, I need to pick up the kids from school. And don’t forget, we have a parent-teacher meeting this evening. Oh, yes, I want to talk to you about Billy. The teacher called today and said he’s been showing off and distracting his friends in class. And on the way to the school, can you pick up my clothes at the cleaners?  Oh, I almost forgot. Dinner will be late because my sister is dropping over for coffee.” On his way out the back door, he calls sarcastically over his shoulder, “Great to see you after a week.”

His wife is bothered by his sarcastic tone, but the phone rings and she doesn’t have time to follow him outside to ask him what he meant. Later during the parent-teacher meetings, she senses he is still angry, but says nothing.  She is exhausted from all the week’s activities and she is upset because he has never asked her about all she has had to deal with. She wonders what right he has to be upset with her when he is the one being unreasonable.

As they retire to bed that night, the husband decides that he will ‘make up’ with his wife in the most obvious and natural ways. As he reaches to rub her back, which is usually a good way to get started, she groans, “Don’t.  I’m too tired.” Angrily, he rolls away from her without saying a word. Wounded by his anger, she says, “You’re so insensitive.”

In disbelief, he replies, “I can’t believe you said that. I’ve been gone for a week. I come home and instead of any kind of greeting, you just go on about the kids and your sister. When I try to get close, you tell me you’re tired. And then you call me insensitive! Am I just a meal ticket to you?”
By now the wife is very hurt, and she retorts, “You never asked once how I was doing. The only time you get interested in me it’s for sex.”

“I was gone for a week. When we were first married and I had to travel, you couldn’t wait to see me get home. You’d greet me with a smile and a kiss. Now you simply look up and say, ‘Why are you home so home early?’ Thanks. That made my day,” her husband replied.

Stories like these are not unusual. Every married couple has versions of their own. But we will have to learn how to manage such imaginations and assumptions if love and respect will be maintained for a happy marriage.