Love & Respect: How To Win At Romance

Love -noun

strong affection for another arising out of kinship or personal ties

attraction based on sexual desire: affection and tenderness felt by lovers

warm attachment, enthusiasm, or devotion

Respect- noun

an act of giving particular attention

high or special regard

the quality or state of being esteemed

One of the main reasons I have started doing this blog is that I have been deeply thinking for a while about the current society we live in. Being in North America, I am profoundly impacted by what surrounds me. The manners and customs of my society of today make for the future. And as I mentioned at the beginning of this series, #RelationshipGoals is a trending topic on and outside the internet. We cannot go too long in our discussions or scrolling online without stumbling on this very matter. Everyone has their own two cents to input about it, and so do I.

But why do I care? Well, because tomorrow’s society is the next generation’s society; it is my children’s society. My two cents is highly driven by my desire for the up-and-coming generation to not be as confused as mine growing up. Therefore, I am here to share what I believe to be the secret to unlocking true success in your union.

Without further a due, here is: it is the love and respect dynamic. Nothing more, nothing less.

In this article, we will explore what exactly this is, and where it comes from. We will also touch on why it is relevant in our general conversation; what society perceives of it (if anything at all) and why I am convinced applying it will catapult your relationship into a whole new stratosphere!

I have first come across it as I was planning my wedding. My then-boyfriend and I were looking to find Bible verses that we could read during the ceremony. We both placed great importance on selecting just the right one, as not only are we both believers, but we are both pretty intense on living our lives with intention. The verse that we would choose would not only be a cute little lecture on the day of the wedding but also the principle we would live by in our marriage. So, we did our research, studied, asked for guidance, and found Ephesians chapter five. The whole chapter is worth a read, but for today’s purpose we will focus on verse 33: ‘However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband’.

As usual, I must stress that even if you are not a Christian or not spiritual at all, stick with me, it’s worth a read. My guess is if you have read this far, you are nonetheless interested in the topic.

As we were studying this verse, one thing that came to our minds was that, in fact, after years of relationship, we had not realized that I bloomed off of love and he thrived on respect. We just had not conceptualized it until then! But what did it mean to love the woman and respect the man?

Well, the Bible gave us clear directions on that. It commanded the man to love his wife as himself and to dwell in the same spirit of sacrifice that Christ did as he gave himself up for the Church. To take care of her, to present her without any wrinkle and blemish. I mean, read that again please, that is no small task!

As for the woman, the Bible commanded her to submit herself to her man as she does to the Lord because he is the head of the house.

Wait, what?

So, husbands had to literally give themselves up and care for their wives as their own flesh and present her to the world as a beautiful flower and women had to…just submit? That seemed a bit odd to us. But hey, we were up to the challenge. So, we dug a little deeper.

As we were doing our research, we came across an eye-opening book by Dr. Emerson Eggerichs, called Love & Respect: The Love She Most Desires; The Respect He Desperately Needs. This book came out in 2004 and was written about this Ephesians chapter. Dr. Eggerichs and his wife have been married since 1973. That is a long time to be married, folks.

In this book, he also references a study done by the University of Washington by an American psychological researcher named John Gottman where the researchers followed a good number of couples over 20 years. That is a long time to follow a couple, folks.

After analysis, they discovered that independently of other factors, the two key ingredients to the success of the relationship were, you guessed it, love and respect. They also noted that love was specifically desired in women, and respect was specifically required in men for the relationship to go forward blissfully. So much so that in most arguments, the problem was not the issue, but how the problem was handled could be.

In fact, without the manifestation of love from her mate, the woman withdrew. And without the display of respect from the woman, the man withdrew. The way we are wired is inherently different, therefore we need different things to function in the relationship.

And that is specifically why men were commanded to love and women to respect. Because that is what their significant other needs. Dr. Eggerichs suggests that the orders made sense, as it is frequently more natural for women to show love, but harder to show respect. It is also easy for men to understand why respect is fundamental, but more of a challenge to show the sacrificial love their lady needs.

The more I reflected on it, the more I was sold. It was easier for me in fact to demonstrate love to my man, as it came naturally, but he had to earn my respect in a sense. Therefore, it was difficult for me to submit. It was sort of easy for my man to step into the relationship showing me respect, but somehow, he could not understand that I needed a specific type of love. So, there we had it. The rest was up to us, we had to sit and talk and practice, see how all that goes.

If your read nothing else from this long essay, read this: it works wonders.

After a couple of months, we were not arguing less, but we were arguing better. And then, after a year or two, the arguments were considerably reduced. It became second nature for us to think about Ephesians in our daily lives and strive to apply it to the best of our ability. It is not easy every day, sometimes we have inglorious moments, but after 10 years, I can honestly say this has revolutionized our rapport at the core. I feel loved, he feels respected, we feel understood. He no longer disengages with me, I no longer resent him.

So, after finding this in the Bible and reading Dr. Eggerichs’ book, I was also curious to see what our current society thinks of this dynamic. Being someone who consumes pop culture every now and then, half out of curiosity and half out of writing duty, I went on a quest to see what kind of advice is given by everyday people to other everyday people.

One thing I found that saddened me a bit is how often romantic partners are screaming out that the other sex does not understand them! Whether you go on Facebook, Instagram, Youtube, different forums, and even reality shows on television, it is apparent that women often feel unloved by their partner, and men often feel put down and criticized by their women; which translates as disrespect to them. The interesting this is the sexes do not always put these exact words on their feelings, but once you have understood it, it is impossible to not see it.

What could have gotten us here?

Well, for starters, without proper knowledge it is complicated to work things out efficiently. We are highly uneducated when it comes to the differences between the male and female experience; therefore, we come to believe that we function similarly. There seems to be confusion about the male and female’s nature. Indeed, feminism pushed equality, which is wonderful, but just because we are equal does not mean we are the same.

Men and women are equal in value to society, but we do have different primary emotional needs, we are simply built differently. Therefore, we are mistaking when we ask the same out of both sexes and fail to realize that the male and female dynamic works a certain way for all to be happy. We fail to recognize that women crave love, and men are desperate for respect. When a woman wishes to be loved, we call her needy. When a man wants to be respected, we call out his ego and point that out as toxic masculinity.

My take is we should understand and embrace our differences. To form healthy romantic relationships, let us start applying this knowledge in our interactions. We should show some respect to our men, and we should approach our women with love. There are numerous meanings to this, it all depends on who we are dealing with. Therefore, this is the perfect moment to sit down with your lover and ask important questions.

Final thoughts:

Whenever I find something that seems to be tried, tested, and true, I like to share it with you. I highly encourage you to try this for yourself and come back here to share your experience. The good news is you have got nothing to lose! Discuss this with your significant other, your family, your friends. Share this post with them and let me know what they think. I cannot wait to hear from you!

Photo Cred: Gemma Chua-Tran on Unsplash