Love & Respect

This is one of the many books I am currently reading. I am almost done with it and couldn't wait to give my review of this wonderful book. I first heard of it at our Catholic Homeschool Conference last year, one of the speaking couples recommended it, and I wrote it down and didn't end up ordering it until sometime after Christmas. I skipped over the chapters in the middle that are for the man to read and am now on the chapters for the woman to read, and loving them.


"In any case, each one of you should love his wife as himself, and the wife should respect her husband." Ephesians 5:33


This book is based on this scripture verse. God tells us women to respect our husbands and He tells men to love their wives. He does not tell us women to love our husbands, because we already know how to love them. It comes naturally. Men, on the other hand, do not have this naturally. They must be told to do so. Men do have the respect, because it is what they desire most from us, so we are told to respect them.


In the book Dr Eggerichs talks about "the crazy cycle" that happens in marriages. The woman wants her husband to love her, and the husband wants her to respect him, without either, it keeps going around and around. She doesn't respect him because he doesn't love her the way she wants, and he doesn't love her the way she needs him to because he is not respected by her.


Dr Eggerichs challenges his readers to give the book a 6 week test. Try it for 6 weeks, see the changes. I didn't set out to do anything for any particular amount of time, but I broke my leg and was forced to see all my husband did to help me in addition to what he already was doing. I got into the habit of telling him how much I respected him and appreciated him and all he was doing for me. He did bedtimes, baths, cleaned up what he could, helped me to bed every night, carrying everything I needed, helping me up the stairs. At first it's hard to say "I really appreciate you and all you do for us." It is something we, as women don't necessarily need to hear from them, we don't need that respect, we just do our job and expect to be loved. For example, I don't need him to come home and say "wow, you did a super job with the laundry today honey." But he does need this: "Honey, you worked so hard today, thank you so much, you are the greatest husband and father."


I started praying it outloud with the children, with our prayers, instead of just thanking God for daddy or blessing daddy, we would thank God "for a daddy who loves us so much that he goes to work every day so that I can stay home and take care of them, and even homeschool, he sacrifices so much." Say that outloud a few times and you will feel those blessings and it will come much easier to actually tell him that.


Just the other day I thanked my husband for getting up early every day to go off to work, while I'm still in bed, how hard that must be, for him to leave when he would probably love to stay home and play all day with the kiddos!


In another book I've recently read, "In Praise of Stay at Home Moms" by Dr Laura Schlessinger, she has a chapter explaining the importance of appreciating our husbands, telling how much we appreciate them. She says men still love to be told they have big muscles!! They do! It's so true. And pretty cute, isn't it? Try it, if you must, do it through the kids, "Daddy has the biggest muscles, show us your muscles!" Watch him do it automatically!! It's so very cute!


Once the husband gets that respect, he can give the love and vice versa. I've seen this happen. It's happened in my marriage. It was not bad before, I didn't even plan to do anything, I just broke my leg and really did appreciate him so much more than I had before and still do.


The other day, my husband wrote me a love letter for no reason. (a 2 page one at that) He mentioned things he had fallen in love with when he met me and he was feeling those feelings again. Wow, I have tears as I type this, thinking about that.


Such a simple thing, telling him he's my hero, that I love him and appreciate all he does, every day. Every day. He works so hard for us. It's all for us. I've hesitated to write this, because I don't want him to read this and think it's all been made up or that I do not really appreciate him, because I do and saying it outloud (and breaking my leg did help a ton with that, God knows I'm dense, books aren't enough) has truly made me appreciate him and truly feel like he is my hero, my muscle man. (hey, he carries all the laundry baskets up the stairs for me every time they are full, what did I tell you? Muscle man!)


I can tell he can't wait to come home at night. I can tell he loves just talking with me in the evenings. I can tell he loves to go out on our monthly "dates". He loves going to bed at the same time. I can see him jumping up to help me even when I don't ask. Love, I tell you. It's what us women want.


I could probably say a ton more here, but this post is long enough, go get the book, it's a great book, you won't be sorry.


Blessings on your marriages!