The Simple Secret

He makes a beeline for Hallmark and is soon gazing upon all those racks full of greeting cards. One colorful card quickly catches his eye. He skims the words - they are perfect! He thinks, This card is her - no doubt about it. He grabs it off the shelf, pays the clerk, and hurries home rejoicing - I didn't forget this year!

She is there when he arrives at home, so he sneaks the card into another room, signs it, and quickly writes her name on the envelope. He even adds a couple of tiny hearts over her name as an extra touch. Then he comes out and hands his wife her tenth anniversary card. She beams from ear to ear. She is so happy - finally he has remembered! She tears open the card and begins to read . . . and then her face falls. The eyes that had been bright with loving energy turn cold. Her beam­ing countenance becomes sour and dark.

"What's wrong?" her husband asks. (He's a very sensitive guy, and he can pick up on these things.)

"Nothing."

"There is, too. What's wrong?"

"No, there's nothing wrong."

"But there is - I can see it. What is it?"

"Well, it's not bad . . . for a birthday card."

As you might guess, the conversation is headed downhill from here. "You're kidding!" says the husband, grabbing the card from her hand. "No way . . . unbelievable!"

"No, you're unbelievable! If you took your car in to be detailed and they put a stripe on the side that was even a fraction of an inch off, you would notice that, right? Why? Because you care about it. But you don't care about our anniversary. You don't care about me!"

"Hey, I made an honest mistake, alright? Give me a break. Good grief! The way you're talking I'm glad I got you a birthday card for your anniversary!" And with that brilliant parting shot, he storms out of the room, slamming the door behind him.

Approximately two minutes have passed since he handed her the card. This couple, a husband and wife who truly love each other, have come home expecting to spend a wonderful, romantic evening together. Instead, they end up stomping to opposite ends of the house, staring out the windows into the darkness, wondering how it had ever come to this, and thinking, This is crazy!

The Crazy Cycle

Stories like these are not unusual. Every married couple has versions of their own. Around and around it spins. I call it the Crazy Cycle. So many people are on the Crazy Cycle that five out of ten couples in the church are divorcing, and the craziness seems to be getting worse.

It's like someone coming into a room, flipping the light switch, and discovering the lights won't come on. If someone tries the switch two or three times with no results, you can understand. He will eventually figure it out - a tripped circuit breaker, a burned-out bulb. But if he stands there and flips the switch constantly for half an hour, you begin to wonder, "Is this guy a little crazy?" The point is simple: Craziness happens when we keep doing the same things over and over with the same ill effect.

Marriage seems to be fertile ground for this kind of craziness. Ironically, there are more books be­ing published on marriage today than ever before. But with all our knowledge, the craziness continues. Why? I have concluded that a crucial part of God's Word has been completely ignored or perhaps simply gone unnoticed.

The "Hidden Secret"

In Ephesians 5:33, Paul writes, "Each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband" (NIV). Of course, I had read that verse many times. I had even preached on that verse when conducting marriage ceremonies. But somehow I had never seen the connection between love and respect. Paul is clearly saying that wives need love and husbands need respect.

As I pondered what Ephesians 5:33 is saying, my thought process went something like this: "A husband is to obey the command to love even if his wife does not obey this command to respect, and a wife is to obey the command to respect even if the husband does not obey the command to love." So far, so good.

Then I reasoned further: "A husband is even called to love a disrespectful wife, and a wife is called to respect an unloving husband. There is no justification for a husband to say, 'I will love my wife after she respects me,' or for a wife to say, 'I will respect my hus­band after he loves me.'"

At this point, I saw why it is so hard to love and respect. When a husband feels disrespected, it is especially hard to love his wife. When a wife feels unloved, it is especially hard to respect her husband. And when a husband feels disrespected, he has a natural tendency to react in ways that feel unloving to his wife. (Perhaps the command to love was given to him precisely for this reason!) When a wife feels unloved, she has a natural tendency to react in ways that feel disrespectful to her husband. (Perhaps the command to respect was given to her precisely for this reason!)

Even more convincing is what Ephesians 5:33 teaches about the woman's primary need for love and the man's primary need for respect: The husband must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband. The Greek word Paul uses for love in this verse is agape, meaning unconditional love. And the wording of the rest of the passage strongly suggests that the husband should receive unconditional respect.

And then came what I call the "aha" moment: this thing triggers itself! Without love, she reacts without respect. Without respect, he reacts without love ad nauseam. Thus was born the Crazy Cycle!

You're Stepping on My Air Hose!

The more I meditated on this passage of Scripture, the more I realized that if a husband is commanded to agape-love his wife, then she truly needs love. In fact, she needs love just as she needs air to breathe. Simply put, when her deepest need is being stepped on, you can expect her to react negatively. "Get off my air hose; I can't breathe." She is crying out, "I feel unloved by you right now. I can't believe how unloving this feels. I can't believe you're doing this to me."

Not only is the husband commanded to love his wife, but the wife 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. As his air hose starts to leak because of all the little cuts her heels 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.

The real issues are always love and respect. Everything else is just filling in the details.

Is Unconditional Respect an Oxymoron?

When I talk to wives, they have no trouble grasping the concept of unconditional love. After all, they are wired that way. But when I mention showing unconditional respect for husbands, it's a much harder sell.

Few seem to have considered 1 Peter 3:1-2. The apostle Peter reveals that husbands who "are disobedient to the word" (meaning they are undeserving of respect) "may be won . . . by . . . respectful behavior." A simple application is that a wife is to display a respectful facial expression and tone when he fails to be the man she wants. She does not have to feel respect in order to show respect. She can give her husband unconditional respect in tone and expression while confronting his unloving behavior and without endorsing his unloving reactions.

For the past forty years, the Ameri­can church has preached unconditional love. I preached it for many years in my own church, as I remained clueless about the importance of unconditional respect. Then I realized that, in stressing uncondi­tional love, I was teaching the truth but only half the truth. Paul's advice in Ephesians 5:25 and 28 is sound: "Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her. . . . Husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself" (NIV). But what was missing was that very short phrase, "the wife must respect her husband" (Ephesians 5:33 NIV).

As I changed my message to include the whole truth - love and respect - I got interesting reactions. In one case I spoke twice to a group of two hundred women on the topic of respecting their husbands. I made myself available for a third talk, but the leadership of the group declined. Instead, they asked a female friend of mine to address the topic: "How to Love Your Husband." My friend had heard me speak, and she dropped me a note: "That was your point! How to love your husband." She could not believe how this group of women had missed it. The way to fully love a husband is to respect him in ways that are meaningful to him. Respect does something to the soul of a man. God made him that way.

All This Should Be Obvious, Right?

Almost every time Sarah and I teach our seminar about the Love and Respect Connection, people tell us, "Why, of course; this is so obvi­ous." And then either the husband or the wife adds, "But why doesn't my spouse get it?" Whether it's a husband or a wife who "doesn't get it," the answer is the same: We often don't see the obvious.

A door-to-door salesman rang the bell and waited. A boy who looked about ten years old answered. He was smoking the biggest cigar the salesman had ever seen. After a few seconds of stunned silence on the salesman's part, he finally asked, "Is your mother home?" The ten-year-old puffed a couple of times, blew smoke in the salesman's face, and said, "What do you think?"

And that's the point. If the salesman had been thinking at all, he would have known that Mother wasn't at home. But for some reason we don't always think, particularly when something is shocking or dis­tracting. When a wife feels unloved, it can be such a shock to her heart that she is oblivious to her disrespectful reactions toward her husband, though any man watching could see it plainly. When a husband feels disrespected, it can provoke him so quickly he doesn't see his unloving reaction, which would be obvious to any woman. Words of wisdom for all husbands and wives are these: We easily see what is done to us before we see what we are doing to our mate.

Today, married couples are at a crossroads. Will she appreciate her husband's need for respect and discover that the best way to love a husband is by respecting him in ways that are meaningful to him? Will he discover that the best way to love a wife is to look beyond her criticisms and complaints to see why she isn't feeling loved? Increasing numbers of couples who are at the crossroads are taking the right fork - the one labeled "Love and Respect."

Condensed from Love and Respect by Emerson Eggerichs, © 2004 by Emerson Eggerichs, published by Integrity Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.