We Both Need Something
It should not come as a surprise that men and women are wired differently and thus have differing needs. While we all need love and respect, men and women each distinctively need more of one than the other. Women by nature want to know that their husbands love and adore them. Men by nature desire to know that their wives respect and honor them. And while we each need to give and receive both love and respect, expressing love is an essential focus for a husband, and demonstrating respect is a necessary focus for a wife. Failing to understand the importance of these essentials can leave a marriage wanting for more. When both partners even attempt to meet these needs, the marriage has an opportunity to flourish.
There Is Something for Both of Us
Husbands: Active love is your essential
The operative word is “active” love. Love is always active and must be expressed in tangible ways to your wife. Love should not be assumed or merely mentioned but demonstrated actively. It’s something you communicate in variety for your wife.
The apostle Paul describes love most brilliantly in 1 Corinthians 13:5–7. “Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.”
You’ve probably skimmed those verses before, or maybe they are very familiar to you. But before you read on, go back and reread them and ask yourself how well you live out the listed characteristics of love with your wife. Don’t read them with regret or shame; read them and consider the activities of love you could deploy in your marriage. It might be worth taking a few minutes to meditate on them at some point as you think about your marriage.
• Patient | How can I be actively patient and love my wife?
• Kind | How can I be actively kind and love my wife?
• Does not envy | How can I be actively generous and love my wife?
• Does not boast | How can I be actively modest and love my wife?
• Is not arrogant | How can I be actively humble and love my wife?
• Is not rude | How can I be actively polite and love my wife?
• Does not insist your way | How can I actively insist on her way and love my wife?
• Is not irritable | How can I be actively easy-going and love my wife?
• Is not resentful | How can I be actively satisfied and love my wife?
• Does not rejoice in wrongdoing | How can I actively celebrate and love my wife?
• Rejoices in the truth | How can I actively be truthful and love my wife?
If this list says anything, it’s that love is more than a feeling (thanks Boston for getting this right). And it’s not just empty verbiage. Love is active, which means that you have to do something. All these actions say “I love you” in a variety of ways to your wife.
When we become husbands, we must learn how to demonstrate love in new ways, regardless of whether we had great role models or not. Learning to love your wife in a variety of ways is essential. And loving her in a way she wants to be loved is an art. You need to love her differently than any other woman. Over time you must learn her language of love. You must give love in the way she wants to be loved, not merely the way you want to deliver it. You might even have to unlearn the way you have shown love in the past. And contrary to popular opinion, I know my wife has more than five love languages; sorry, Gary Chapman.
The last verse in the above passage from 1 Corinthians is about the enduring nature of active love. “Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” In other words, real love is not temporary or dependent on your present feeling toward your wife. It bears, believes, hopes, and endures beyond present feelings about yourself, your circumstances, or your wife. This is because love goes the distance. And an ongoing demonstration of love gives your wife confidence in your commitment, which again is a demonstration of love. It’s an active love bound by commitment, not a feeling.
Wives: Respect is your essential
Now, men, after you are done reading this, you may want to share this chapter in whole with your wife.
Hands down, more than anything, a man desires respect. It’s his native language. Just as romancing, cherishing, and tenderness are the native love language of a wife, respect is the basic hunger of a husband. Deserved or not, men want it and need it, and yes, this can seem like a foreign language to our wives. Contrary to popular opinion, we don’t need respect to feed our egos. And respect is not to be confused with an occasional compliment. Respect is our way of knowing that trust, confidence, and credibility are being built in our marriages, with our children, and in our leadership. And men, we may not even know how much we need it until we experience a moment that smells of disrespect, and then our need is elevated to contentious fight-or-flight heights. When our wives subtly shame us before others, when they disagree with us before our children, or make a decision independent of us that offends specific values—an alarm goes off inside us.
Mark Gungor, author of Laugh Your Way to a Better Marriage, makes the following observation about the male need for respect:
“So what is it that men want? In a word, men want respect. That means a man wants to be held in esteem and to be shown consideration and appreciation—even when he makes mistakes. He wants to be seen as a hero, especially in the eyes of his bride. He needs someone to believe in him when the odds are stacked against him. If a man doesn’t feel respected, he’s destined to act in a way reminiscent of the obnoxious, ‘I-can’t-get-no-respect,’ Rodney Dangerfield. He becomes insulting, bug-eyed, and generally gross.”
This isn’t sexist, chauvinistic, bigoted, or discriminatory. It’s the way a man flourishes. Men desire respect for who they are, and who they are is usually expressed in what they do. Men seek honor and respect for their hard work, their provision for their families, and their problem-solving prowess. If they don’t feel respected, they feel their identity as a man is diminished or attacked. And this is a bit of a mystery to a woman, but husbands will promptly agree that respect in the home helps them to flourish in their role within the home, in outside relationships, and even in their identity. Even when you fall short as a leader, respect from the woman you love is a powerful force in your life.
What’s interesting is that if a man feels that he must always earn his wife’s respect, without merely possessing it as a husband, he may experience a love and respect standoff. Like women want to be loved for who they are, a man wants to be appreciated for who he is—not for the idealized version his wife might envision. We want our wives to work to catch us doing things right, and not exclusively point out all the wrong things we have done. When we get caught doing something right, we become motivated as a man and a husband.
Just as a man’s love for his wife brings out the best in her, so a woman’s respect for her husband brings out the best in him. In both cases, we make a choice to provide what the other needs—and it is a choice—and the result is an enduring and loving marriage. Men who withhold their active love undermine their marriage. The same is true for women who withhold their respect.
