Respect is not just for men.
All I ever heard in my relationship and marriage was how he needed my respect and how that respect must be unconditional. How I would get his love when I finally stopped "wearing the pants" and showed him I trusted him to lead us. Nevermind the fact that he was doing nothing to lead the family. As I like to say, he was naked so someone had to wear some PANTS! Not working consistently. Not helping around the house. Not encouraging his wife in any capacity. He took and took and took and still it was not enough for him. In his mind, I consistently fell short of showing him the respect he needed (deserved?) for simply being a man.
He hit me over the head (literally) with the concepts of a well-known Christian book, but missed the whole point about what we were wired to need as men and women. It is not a mutually exclusive idea--women might focus more on receiving love than in receiving respect, but that doesn't mean they only get to have one of those elements. Men might think respect is the bee's knees and love is just the extra push, but they still desire to be loved.
Also, just because men might value respect more than women, it does not mean that women don't need to be respected. We are called to love others all throughout scripture. How much more should that be shown to our spouse?
We teach our kids nowadays that everyone deserves their respect. That is not always the case. We must act respectfully in order to receive that. If someone is treating you poorly, breaking the law, bullying others, etc. do they deserve to be respected? Or is that endorsing the bad behavior?
Would you reward a child who was acting out by giving them whatever they asked for just to appease them and try to get them to behave better? No. That is why I had such an issue with my ex-husband. He continually made the wrong choices in his life and then wanted my undying support, no matter what he chose to do. Towards the end he would have even taken my dying support...
Now you see through a glass darkly...
Yes, I did. In looking back, I see so clearly how warped our life together was. I am strong now. I am not that defeated girl who would do anything to try to make her marriage function at a level that was tolerable. And you know what? I want to thrive, not just scrape by with the dial at "just above miserable" every day. Life is way too short to go to sleep bawling all the time, scared of your partner. To spend hours cooped up in a closet, not allowed to leave while your significant others yells and screams at you.
Respect matters. For men. For women. For children. For animals. For nature. For so many things! It is not just for men. We must strive to teach our daughters that they deserve respect, that anyone worthy of their love will know that and will show that. We must teach our sons what it means to respect their wives as a way of loving them. It goes both ways and has the potential to change everything in a relationship.
R-E-S-P-E-C-T
All I ever heard in my relationship and marriage was how he needed my respect and how that respect must be unconditional. How I would get his love when I finally stopped "wearing the pants" and showed him I trusted him to lead us. Nevermind the fact that he was doing nothing to lead the family. As I like to say, he was naked so someone had to wear some PANTS! Not working consistently. Not helping around the house. Not encouraging his wife in any capacity. He took and took and took and still it was not enough for him. In his mind, I consistently fell short of showing him the respect he needed (deserved?) for simply being a man.
He hit me over the head (literally) with the concepts of a well-known Christian book, but missed the whole point about what we were wired to need as men and women. It is not a mutually exclusive idea--women might focus more on receiving love than in receiving respect, but that doesn't mean they only get to have one of those elements. Men might think respect is the bee's knees and love is just the extra push, but they still desire to be loved.
Also, just because men might value respect more than women, it does not mean that women don't need to be respected. We are called to love others all throughout scripture. How much more should that be shown to our spouse?
We teach our kids nowadays that everyone deserves their respect. That is not always the case. We must act respectfully in order to receive that. If someone is treating you poorly, breaking the law, bullying others, etc. do they deserve to be respected? Or is that endorsing the bad behavior?
Would you reward a child who was acting out by giving them whatever they asked for just to appease them and try to get them to behave better? No. That is why I had such an issue with my ex-husband. He continually made the wrong choices in his life and then wanted my undying support, no matter what he chose to do. Towards the end he would have even taken my dying support...
Now you see through a glass darkly...
Yes, I did. In looking back, I see so clearly how warped our life together was. I am strong now. I am not that defeated girl who would do anything to try to make her marriage function at a level that was tolerable. And you know what? I want to thrive, not just scrape by with the dial at "just above miserable" every day. Life is way too short to go to sleep bawling all the time, scared of your partner. To spend hours cooped up in a closet, not allowed to leave while your significant others yells and screams at you.
Respect matters. For men. For women. For children. For animals. For nature. For so many things! It is not just for men. We must strive to teach our daughters that they deserve respect, that anyone worthy of their love will know that and will show that. We must teach our sons what it means to respect their wives as a way of loving them. It goes both ways and has the potential to change everything in a relationship.
R-E-S-P-E-C-T