The Beatles sang, “All you need is love.” Unfortunately, five out of ten marriages end in divorce, which suggests that love alone is not enough. During decades of counseling troubled marriages, Dr. Eggerichs frequently observed a destructive pattern: When a woman doesn’t feel loved by her husband, she responds by withholding respect—and when a man doesn’t feel respected by his wife, he responds by withholding love. The result is a self-perpetuating cycle of marital craziness. Eggerichs believes that breaking this cycle is the key to solving most of the problems in the marriage relationship.

In Ephesians 5:33 the Bible sets forth an important association between love and respect. It says, “Each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.” Here, clearly, we are told that wives need love and that husbands need respect. 

When a husband feels disrespected, he naturally responds in ways that make his wife feel unloved. And when a wife feels unloved, she naturally responds in ways that make her husband feel disrespected. Perhaps the commands to love and respect in this passage were given in light of these natural responses.

And because love and respect are expressed as separate responsibilities, a husband is to love his wife, even if she does not make him feel respected, and the wife is to show respect for her husband, even if he does not make her feel loved. In other words, there is no justification for a husband to insist, “I will love my wife, but only after she respects me,” or for a wife to insist, “I will respect my husband, but only after he loves me.” Of course, in the midst of a marital spat, this is counterintuitive. It will require the husband and wife to heed God’s instructions over their own natural impulses. It will require faith. 

Do you ever find yourself in an argument with your spouse and you don’t understand why? You see your spouse shrink back or react angrily, and you wonder, “What happened?” The breakdown of communication between husbands and wives is the subject of countless books and articles. Why is this problem so difficult to overcome? It goes back to the fact that the sexes send messages to one another in code. What he says is not what she hears, and what she says is not what he hears.

Just because we feel unloved or disrespected at a given moment does not mean our spouse meant to make us feel that way. In most cases, the wife is really communicating her need to feel loved, and the husband is communicating his need to be respected. 

When men and women fail to take into account the core motivation of their spouse, more often than not, they misinterpret what is being communicated. Every couple must learn to unscramble these messages. A wife who complains or cries is sending an encoded message: “I need to know you love me.” And a husband who speaks harshly or goes silent is sending an encoded message: “I need to know you respect me.”

There is a decision that will help to reduce the frequency of this from happening. For him, that decision is to believe that when she gets upset, she does not intend to be disrespectful. For her, that decision is to believe that when he is hurtful, he does not intend to be unloving. This frees both to interpret each other’s responses in a much more positive light.

Wives tend to be very receptive to the idea of unconditional love. But most are resistant to the idea of showing unconditional respect for their husbands. Nevertheless, in 1 Peter 3:1-2, the apostle Peter writes that even husbands who are undeserving of respect can be persuaded by the respectful behavior of their Christian wives. 

This suggests that a wife should strive to be respectful, even when her husband fails to be the man she would like him to be. A simple application of this principle would be for her to be respectful in her facial expressions and tone of voice when he has been insensitive or unloving. This is not to suggest that she shouldn’t confront him for his unloving behavior, but that she should always maintain a respectful attitude toward him. In such situations, he may deserve contempt, but that won’t persuade him any more than a harsh or angry approach would persuade her.

The wife who demands that her husband must earn her respect puts him in a lose-lose situation. He is now responsible for both her need to feel loved and his own need to feel respected.  

To only way to avoid perpetuating this negative cycle is for the wife to decide to offer her husband unconditional respect. It is this decision alone that will appeal to his core need and trigger him to respond with unconditional love. Instead of forcing him into a lose-lose situation, this decision places the husband in a win-win situation.

Men need to be loved, but their need for respect is even greater. A good analogy is food and water. While both are needed for survival, we can live longer without food than without water. For men, love is food but respect is water. When he receives her respect, it motivates him, not because he is arrogant, but because that’s how God made him.

In the late 1960s, Aretha Franklin had a hit record entitled “R-E-S-P-E-C-T,” which suggested that what all women really want is a little respect. This became a theme song for the feminist movement of that time. But what most don’t realize is that the song was actually written by a man, Otis Redding, as a message to his wife. What this song was originally meant to communicate was the deepest desire of a man’s soul to have the respect of his wife.

Greeting cards offer a better reflection of what women really want. The multi-million dollar business is driven by women, the primary buyers of greeting cards. The companies who produce these cards are not out to change the public’s opinion—they just want to sell as many cards as possible, so they produce what sells. That being so, try to find a card from a husband to his wife that says, “Baby, I really respect you!” You won’t find one. They don’t exist because that’s not really what a woman longs to hear.

There is something in a woman that thirsts to be valued and placed first among a man’s priorities. When she receives his love, it motivates her—not because she is self-centered, but because that’s how God made her. 

According to the extensive research of John Gottman, 85 percent of husbands eventually resort to stonewalling during marital conflict. Although the wife interprets this response as rejection, the husband believes he is actually being respectful by exercising such restraint. Meanwhile, she finds it hard to believe that he would want to withdraw when all she’s doing is expressing a minor criticism or two. Gottman warns that this situation can produce an intense cycle that, if allowed to go on unbroken, will likely lead to the demise of the marriage.

When wives take this approach in dealing with marital conflict, they are doing what they have grown accustomed to with their best girlfriend. Women tend to resolve conflict with one another by expressing their feelings. As they do this, one of them will speak up and say something like, “That was wrong of me.” This prompts the other one to respond with something like, “No, I was wrong too. Will you forgive me?” Then they hug, shed a few tears, and things are back to normal.

Unfortunately, women expect that this approach should work just as well with their husbands. When a problem arises, the wife instinctively goes to her husband to share her feelings. It’s a high priority for her to resolve relational conflicts, especially in her marriage. Her hope is that apologies will be exchanged and the whole thing will end with an embrace.

What she fails to recognize is that there is a big difference between her best friend and her husband. First, she will naturally have much higher expectations for her husband. As his helpmate, one of her goals is to “help” him change into a better, more loving husband. She believes that helping him to understand her perspective in this regard will result in change. 

Second, she doesn’t take into account the fact that her self-image is tied to what her husband thinks of her. While she values her friend’s opinion, her husband’s is vital. 

Finally, the health of her marriage is an ongoing point of discussion between her and other women. Women want to be able to give a good report about the state of their marriage. This can cause a wife to become even more negative toward her husband when he stonewalls her attempts to get him to change.  

It is a part of a woman’s maternal instincts to offer correction. Unfortunately, the wife must resist the inclination to mother her husband. To repeatedly reprimand and even “scold” him is to reduce him to a child. When a husband feels that his wife is looking down on him in this way, he feels disrespected and the negative cycle begins.

The wife fears that showing unconditional respect to her husband will lead to her being treated like a doormat. She is sure that it means checking her brain at the door, never exerting her leadership abilities, or never being able to disagree with anything he says. Perhaps most significantly, she fears that responding respectfully during marital conflict will render her powerless. She does not believe that her husband will change unless he is stimulated to action. So she grumbles and corrects because she feels empowered by it. Besides, being pleasant doesn’t seem to get through to him.

Her disrespect certainly gets his attention, and it may help her to win many of these skirmishes, but her negativity doesn’t really motivate him to be more loving. And if she continues on this course, something in their relationship slowly dies. Although she may win many of the battles, deep down inside she senses that she’s losing the war.

While most wives want to be respectful of their husbands, they don’t want to be hypocritical by pretending to feel something that’s not there. But this shouldn’t be about feelings. More important than the emotions involved is the goal of breaking the negative cycle of marital discord. Again, it’s the choice between winning the individual battles or winning the war. 

This is where faith can play a significant role. When a wife doesn’t feel any love coming from her husband, showing respect for him can feel pretentious. However, what remains real is the opportunity to move forward positively as an act of faith in God’s instruction to respect her husband. A Christian woman is not called to change her husband but she is called to obey God. When she chooses to do so, she does not become a powerless hypocrite but a woman who reveres God. 

Rather than continue to send a coded message, men need to speak more directly to their wives when they don’t feel respected. Instead of getting angry or withdrawing from the conflict, he should respond with something like, “Honey, that felt disrespectful. Did I just come across as unloving?”  

Such a response avoids personal attacks, which only make things worse. It also avoids any suggestion that the wife intends to disrespect him. It only describes how the husband feels. This response also allows the husband to express his feelings without accusing his wife of being wrong or asserting that he is right.

The icing on the cake comes when he asks, “Did I just come across as unloving?” Often the wife is made to feel that she is always to blame and that the husband never does anything wrong. Hearing these words from her husband is like a breath of fresh air. Such an admission may leave the husband feeling vulnerable, but it promises to invite an honest discussion and lead to a positive resolution much more quickly. 

To forgive means to give up the right to hold a grudge. This means the wife must give up the right to respond with disrespect and the husband must give up the right to respond by being unloving. Jesus said, “He who is without sin among you, let him be the first to throw a stone …” (John 8:7). The faith response is for her to see her disrespect as equal to his lack of love and for him to see his angry response as equal to her lack of respect. 

Judging is the opposite of forgiving. Unfortunately, nothing is easier than judging or harder than forgiving. But Jesus once asked a question that puts it all in perspective: “Why do you look at the speck in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye?” (Matthew 7:1-3). How can either spouse refuse to forgive an offense when they have both offended? 

When the husband and wife come together at the end of a workday, the first few moments of reconnecting set the tone for the rest of the evening. If all he wants to do it is zone out in front of the TV, he’s missing out on an important opportunity to make his wife feel loved.

She wants to connect. To meet this need, he might help prepare dinner or just sit and talk with her about her day. For the wife, face-to-face time is important. A woman feels close to her husband when he holds her hand, or hugs her, or is affectionate without sexual intentions, or sets aside time just to be with her.

We do not motivate our spouse to give us what we need by withholding what they need. To paraphrase the Golden Rule: “Just as you want your spouse to treat you, treat your spouse in the same way.”