Love and Respect by Emerson Eggerichs Read Free Book Online Page A

is commanded to respect her husband. You see, the husband needs respect just as he needs air to breathe. He also has an air hose that runs over to a big tank labeled “respect,” and as long as the “air” is coming through, he is just fine.
    To keep the deer analogy going, suppose the wife, a lovely doe, starts tromping on his air hose with her sharp little hoofs. As we have seen ina story like the tenth anniversary birthday card, the wife may have had good reason to prance all over her husband’s air hose, but what’s going to happen? As his air hose starts to leak because of all the little cuts her hoofs have made in it, the husband is also going to react because his deepest need (respect) is not being met. And the battle is on.
    As I worked out what Ephesians 5:33 is saying, I started doodling with a diagram like the face of a clock. At 12:00 I wrote, “Without love.” At 3:00 I wrote, “She reacts.” (If she needs love like she needs air to breathe, and she’s being suffocated, she will react.) Then at 6:00 I wrote, “Without respect,” and at 9:00, “He reacts.” (If he needs unconditional respect like he needs air to breathe, and he’s hearing criticism or being attacked in some way, he will react.)
    And there you have it—the Crazy Cycle (see page 5). Husbands and wives keep spinning on the Crazy Cycle because they don’t understand that what seems to be the issue isn’t the issue at all. The real issues are always love and respect. Everything else is just filling in the details.
    MEN HEAR CRITICISM AS CONTEMPT; WOMEN FEEL SILENCE AS HOSTILITY
    Let me emphasize to wives that when men hear negative criticism, it doesn’t take them long to start interpreting that as contempt for who they are as men. Remember, the man is wearing blue hearing aids. When his wife sends out those pink but very pointed messages and his air hose starts to leak, he soon says to himself, I don’t deserve this kind of talk. Everybody respects me except you. You’re just picking a fight. I wish you would just be quiet.
    When a husband can take it no longer, he gets up and walks out without a word, and that is the coup de grâce. He might as well have screamed at the top of his lungs, “I don’t love you!” The wife is dazed. First, she has been treated unlovingly. Second, she has tried to move toward her husband by doing the loving thing. And now he has shown her he is the most hostile, unloving human being on the planet by just walking away and leaving her there! That does it! She is not far from thinking she has all kinds of grounds for divorce. (But if she does stop to think, she will realize that she started the whole thing with her criticism.)
    Often both spouses have goodwill but are not deciphering each other’s code. She criticizes out of love, but he “hears” only disrespect. He distances himself to prevent things from escalating, which is the honorable thing to do, but she “sees” only his failure to be loving!
    Right about now the women reading this are saying, “Well, if husbands just weren’t so immature . . . if my husband could just be man enough to talk things out, then we could get somewhere.” You can think that kind of thing, and I understand why you would. Unfortunately, it’s not going to change men at all. This attitude of men goes a lot deeper than the fact that they might be immature or proud. Men have an honor code. When a wife comes at a husband who has basic goodwill, he doesn’t want to fight verbally or physically. As his wife rails at him or criticizes, he sits there quietly, which makes her angrier than ever. Because her frontal attack isn’t working, she soon sees him as cold and uncaring. Meanwhile, he’s thinking, I can’t believe this. My wife is treating me with disrespect—in fact, it’s really contempt. All she can say is that I am unloving.
    The Crazy Cycle continues to spin. As she gets louder, he gets quieter. Soon she may be screaming at him with venomous words