“Respect a man, he will do the more.”
—JAMES HOWELL, 1659
Respect the man you married by listening to him without criticizing him, insulting him, laughing at him or making fun of him. Even if you disagree with him, do not dismiss his ideas.
If you have said or done something disrespectful, apologize for that specific incident. Acknowledge his response without further comment and be aware of your impulse to criticize or make a negative comment.
In marriage, as in nature, water seeks its own level: we marry men who match us.
That means that respecting your husband is also a form of self-respect: It’s a way of acknowledging that you made a wise and thoughtful choice to marry a man who deserves your love and esteem. If you treat him disrespectfully, you’re saying that you made a poor choice and that you settled for someone beneath you.
For years I secretly believed I had married below myself, but I was wrong. In reality, this delusion was a convenient way for me to blame John for everything that went wrong. Perhaps you do the same thing.
Karen’s husband ran a large corporation and earned a six-figure income. A few days before his birthday, he put a note on the counter with the one thing he most wanted his wife to give him: Respect. The same request is made in a variety of forms in house-holds the world over, because men desperately crave respect from their wives. That makes it one of the greatest gifts we can give our husbands.
If you don’t think your husband deserves your respect, ask yourself what it was you saw in him that made you marry him in the first place. At that time you trusted and admired him. Chances are he’s not all that different now than he was then, and therefore is still worthy of your admiration.
HONOR HIS CHOICE OF SOCKS AND STOCKS
“Men are born to succeed, not to fail.”
—HENRY DAVID THOREAU
So what does it mean to respect your partner? It means that you accept his choices, big and small, even if you don’t agree with them. You honor his choice of socks and stocks, food and friendships, art and attitudes. You listen to him and have regard for his ideas, suggestions, family and work. That doesn’t mean you have to make the same choices—just that you accept his.
When you respect your husband, you treat him like an intelligent adult rather than an irresponsible child. You use a tone becoming of a calm woman, not a frantic shrew.
Respecting your husband means that you don’t tear him down. For example, telling him how to load the dishwasher is insulting. You might as well be saying, “You mean you can’t even do something as easy as that?” Naturally, comments like that stifle intimacy.
Respect means that when he takes the wrong freeway exit you don’t correct him by telling him where to turn. It means that if he keeps going in the wrong direction you will go past the state line and still not correct what he’s doing. In fact, no matter what your husband does, you will not try to teach, improve, or correct him.
That is the essence of a surrendered wife.
RESPECT BREEDS INTIMACY
So what does respect have to do with intimacy?
When your husband feels secure in your opinion of him, he doesn’t have to second-guess or steel himself because he’s expecting you to pounce on him. When he knows you are on his side, he can relax and feel confident in himself.
Most importantly, when he knows you won’t shoot an arrow in his Achilles’ heel, he can let down his guard. Having that sense of safety will make it possible for him to share his innermost thoughts with you, and that’s where you’ll find intimacy. He may speak about the values he hopes to impart to the children, what he’s imagining the two of you will do when you’re old, or tell you about how he lost a dog he loved as a kid. He might talk about what he imagines it would be like to live on a ranch, go to the moon or add a second story to the house. Intimacy is made up of lots of little tender conversations—sometimes silly, sometimes solemn—that he wouldn’t have with anyone else in the world. In fact, the actual details of the conversation are less important than the fact that the conversation is happening and connecting you spiritually.
But how exactly do you find your way to those tender conversations if you haven’t had them in a while? How do you muster the gumption to become respectful when you’re in the habit of nipping at him? Just as I did—by taking small steps until your habits have changed. You’ve already begun to raise your consciousness by reading this book, which is a great start. Later on in this chapter, I’ll describe what disrespect looks like and feels like so you can start to see it in yourself. Just being able to identify disrespect helped me stay focused on the goal of respecting my husband, which went a long way toward helping me find the intimate relationship I always wanted.
PRESERVING YOUR DIGNITY
Disrespecting your husband’s choices on a regular basis is like pricking him repeatedly with little pins. Imagine living with a porcupine and you’ve got the idea of what it’s like for him.
It’s no fun to be the porcupine either. You find that your lover doesn’t want to get close to you because you’re so prickly. Shedding those prickers by treating your life partner with respect is a gift for him, but it also dramatically improves your self-respect because your husband will reach out to you, making you feel loved and wanted. Instead of having the unpleasant feeling of always nagging or arguing, you hear yourself sounding more virtuous and mature. You won’t be haunted by the horror of wondering if you’ve become your mother on her worst day. Since you didn’t much respect her when she ordered everyone around, you don’t much respect yourself when you hear it coming out of your own mouth either.
I remember how unattractive and shameful I felt when I would boss John and complain. In the middle of my tirade, I thought I was saying what had to be said, but my self-respect deteriorated with each harsh word. No matter how justified I felt in yelling or correcting, I inevitably beat myself up afterwards, and of course that only made me feel worse.
Now, I treat my husband respectfully not only to cultivate closeness in our marriage, but also to preserve my dignity. I don’t miss the hostility hangovers.
THE “I WAS JUST TRYING TO HELP” SYNDROME
A lot of us have an unconscious refrain jingling in our heads that goes like this: “I know better than he does … I will help him do it right.” With this background music, we quickly develop an air of superiority. We feel qualified to instruct our husbands on how to vacuum the carpet, talk to the children, and negotiate with his colleagues. All the while we tell ourselves that we are simply helping.
Unfortunately, “helping” in wife language translates into “controlling” in husband language. All those comments about how everything should be done are actually daggers of disrespect. Our generous “help” goes completely unappreciated, which makes us resentful. Somehow, we get so used to correcting our husbands that we don’t even hear the harshness in our own comments, or notice how much we sound like a nag rather than the affectionate lover we set out to be.
THE MOTHER COMPLEX
You see an awful lot of smart guys with dumb women, but you hardly ever see a smart woman with a dumb guy.
—ERICA JONG
If you feel as if you are the only adult in the family, think about this: Your husband manages to communicate, problem-solve, and produce in his job. Clearly he has the skills to do the same at home. So why doesn’t he? Whenever we feel as if we have an extra child instead of a husband, it’s because we’re treating our husbands like little boys instead of capable men.
When I correct, criticize, or tell my husband what to do I automatically become his mother in that moment, which means he doesn’t see me as his lover. There’s no greater turn-off for me than seeing him as a helpless little boy and there’s no bigger intimacy killer for him than feeling like he’s with his mother. Your husband may not say so, but he feels the same way.
Your husband won’t tell you he feels emasculated when you correct his behavior. He won’t say that when you use that tone it gives him the same aggravated feeling he used to get when he was a teenager fantasizing about going someplace where no one would bother him. He certainly won’t tell you when he finds you as sexually unappealing as he finds his mother.
Instead, the cold war begins.
When you let him know you don’t think he’ll make good decisions, he reverts to his boyhood ways and makes a mental note to give up to some degree, because he can never meet your standards. He may even agree with you subconsciously, and retreat from the activity entirely.
Who can blame him?
When men feel disrespected, they withdraw. Before I surrendered, my husband watched a lot of TV. Yours may find playing golf, working longer hours or fixing up old cars in the garage more appealing than being with you. Sure, there’s some satisfaction in letting your husband know what you really think, but the price of that satisfaction is high: You have just isolated yourself from him and created your own bubble of loneliness.
Treating your husband with respect makes him want to be around you more, talk to you more, share more deeply, and make love to you more passionately. It can’t hurt to remind him (and yourself) that you recognize you’ve married a clever, capable man.
THE CURE FOR THE COMMON COLD WAR
If you’re like me, you’ve often wished you could be more respectful of your husband—if only he seemed up to the responsibility. The problem is you’ll never know if he is until you give him the chance.
Perhaps you forget to trust and respect your partner because you are so accustomed to calling the shots at work that it’s second nature to keep doing it when you get home. Maybe it shook your faith when he rear-ended a car on the freeway, and you have felt the need to caution him about driving ever since. You might have been disappointed to learn that he keeps a balance on the credit cards and pays interest that you feel is unnecessary. Whatever your reasons for not accepting the way your husband does things—and some of them are probably valid—you will still pay the high price of lost intimacy for insulting him. What’s more important to you: having your watchful eye on everything or enjoying the warmth of intimacy? Recognize that those are your choices.
Once you’ve made the choice to respect him, you’ve made a powerful turn on the road to transforming your marriage and given yourself new rules for the road ahead. This is comparable to learning to drive a car. You make the decision to follow the rules of the road by stopping at a red light or putting your signal on to turn, because that is what you must do to get along with the other traffic on the road. If you stop at red lights only when you feel like it, ultimately you will crash. The same is true for getting along in your marriage: You’re going to have to yield even when you don’t feel like it to avoid a conflict.
One way to bite your tongue when you feel he’s being immature or stubborn is to remind yourself that you are taking the high road. Sure, it would be easy to jab him, but instead find the grace to be generous. You can do it. Recall an occasion when your husband was thoughtful, courageous or self-sacrificing. Keep that picture in your mind so you resist the temptation to criticize him.
Since I don’t have control over his path—only mine—if I don’t take the high road we are both at our worst, and intimacy is nowhere to be found. If I take the high road, I am at my best. My chances for intimacy are at their greatest.
“EATING WORDS HAS NEVER GIVEN ME INDIGESTION.”
That’s what Winston Churchill said, and I can vouch for it. Just as you may run a red light occasionally, you will also treat your husband less-than-respectfully at times, because no one is perfect. It is important, however, to apologize when you realize you haven’t been so courteous. Therefore, a critical aspect of respecting your husband is catching yourself when you slip and letting him know that you regret it.
In the beginning, you’ll probably find yourself having to apologize a lot: every time you roll your eyes at his idea, make an unsolicited suggestion about what he’s wearing, or tell him what to say on the phone. Apologizing may be frustrating, but it’s essential because it signals to your husband that you respect him. Even if you don’t feel sorry, do your best to apologize when you’re critical, bossy, nagging, or dismissing. This will feel odd—perhaps even dishonest—at first. Still, I suggest that you take this leap and act as if you do respect your husband. This is a powerful practice, because it takes your focus away from what you don’t hold in high regard to the things that you do admire. The next thing you know, you will start to feel genuine respect for him.
When you apologize, be sure to reference the specific situation. For instance, you might say, “I apologize for being disrespectful when I criticized the way you were helping Taylor with her homework.” Next, allow him to respond. The temptation to comment on the original situation in response to what he says will be enormous.
Don’t do it.
You might be tempted to follow up the apology by saying, “It’s just that you need to be a little more patient with six-year-olds.” If you say that, then guess what? You were just disrespectful again. Now you owe him another apology, so you’re no better off than when you first started the conversation. It’s important that you listen to his response after you apologize and acknowledge that you really heard him. Sometimes I repeat what I heard him say. You might wrap up by saying, “Yeah, I’m really sorry about that,” but don’t offer anything more about this topic.
In some cases, not responding may require putting large quantities of duct tape over your mouth. Do whatever it takes.
Emily struggled when I first suggested that she apologize for being disrespectful to her husband, Tim, after she had criticized his efforts to install a new light fixture in the kitchen. She explained, “He was being so illogical, standing on a chair that was about to topple over, and balancing himself with one foot on the new kitchen table that we had just stained with a beautiful new finish. All he needed to do was walk into the garage and get the stepladder and I told him so. Why then do I have to apologize for being disrespectful when he was being lazy and careless of our new table?”
Emily had a point.
But criticizing Tim and using a condescending tone only made their Saturday tense. He resisted getting the stepladder because he didn’t want to be controlled. And once he felt her grip, he certainly didn’t feel affectionate towards her. Needless to say, he wasn’t in the mood for laughter or a long conversation, or quiet snuggling on the couch—the small Saturday afternoon things that foster big feelings of closeness.
I encouraged Emily to apologize just this once. According to her, she mumbled the dreaded word when she delivered her line, “I apologize for being disrespectful when I criticized the way you put in the light fixture.” Emily’s tone didn’t matter. Her husband had a tender smile for her when he said, “I love seeing this side of you.”
Cathy’s husband hung the welcome mat up to dry by putting nails in it. “Now there are holes in my welcome mat,” she complained. “Are you saying I shouldn’t even tell him my opinion about that?” Since there’s no respectful way to tell your husband that he did something you consider stupid, a surrendered wife would simply not say anything. Instead, she would keep in mind, as Cathy did, that this is a man who works hard to support the family, who will bring her a glass of water in bed, who plays with the baby so she can take long bubble baths, and makes her laugh. In the great scheme of things, a couple of holes in the welcome mat are not a big deal.
Collette was in a similar situation when her husband accidentally threw out one of her toddler’s favorite toys. “I’m the one who has to pay for this with my son,” she told me. “My husband will be at work when the temper tantrum starts this afternoon. I’m so angry, I could just spit!”
This husband she was thinking of spitting on also had some redeeming qualities. He had agreed to raise their son in her faith and not his, made a concerted effort to get along well with her family, and worked so that she could stay home with their child. After some contemplation, Collette realized it was not in her best interest to bring up the toy and instead vented to friends about his transgression. As a result, she avoided a night of bickering followed by silence. You know what else she avoided? A baby crying in reaction to hearing his parents fight—and a night of sleeping stiffly on her side of the bed. So, refraining from making a critical comment wasn’t such a big sacrifice after all.
Learning to treat my husband with respect seemed impossible to me at first because I was so convinced that I was superior to him, but the rewards were well worth it and quickly reinforced my new behavior. I found dignity and self-respect, not to mention harmony, better intimacy, and a husband who adores me. The women I know who have decided to make this change, however imperfectly, find the same is true for them. If we can do it, so can you.