Myth: Men Want Respect
Get out heavy projectiles, because you might want to stone me after I get done saying what I’m about to say. Men, you should NOT want your wife to respect you.
I often get couples who come to my office and reference the book “Love and Respect.” I have no doubt the book has helped many, many couples (if you’re one of those couples, congratulations, you’re likely in a good enough place to read this without throwing stones). There is good content in the book. However, the entire book is based on a flawed premise—that men want respect. To be fair, I believe men do want respect…and so do women. But my critique is: Should men only want respect?
Here’s the thing: the author reported research on what men and women want to be happy in their marriages. And his conclusion yielded the title of the book with a reference to some Scripture. Apart from an incomplete exegesis of Scripture, the results of the study needs to be evaluated as well. That is to say, should men even want respect? Should women even want love? Is this the right target for our marriages?
C. S. Lewis’ oft quoted Screwtape Letters talks of the evil one’s schemes, and one of the most effective schemes is to make the Christian content. In so doing, the Christian becomes complacent. What if respect is one of the insidious desires to which our old nature lulls us asleep. What if we settle for respect when we should be going for something far greater?
I think if our end goal is respect, we are satisfied with far too little. Instead, I think we are called to desire love. Paul states it well, “Three remain, faith, hope and love, and the greatest of these is love.” Respect doesn’t even make the list. What is more, to pursue love is to pursue God, “God is love.”
How did we end up settling for respect? Respect seems to be based on performance or position. We feel we deserve respect because of what we do. But we confuse significance with competence. We confuse whether we matter with whether we are able. My friend Jason Martinkus helped me understand what he calls the three I’s—insignificance, incompetence, and impotence. Turns out, we cannot meet significance needs in a competency way. Our hearts cry out: Do I matter? Am I loved? And the answer we tend to give is: Yes, I matter…just look at all the stuff I do. But when we look at the stuff we do; we look at all of the stuff, including our failures, betrayals, and sin. We know we can never do enough right to make up for the wrong we’ve done. At the end of the day, we can never do enough to make us feel like we are enough. We cannot meet a significance need in a competency way.
Additionally, we settle for respect because we believe emotions are bad, and love is an emotion, ergo love is bad. Okay, it’s never this explicit. It’s far more subtle.
First, emotions are not bad. It should come as no surprise, but emotions are not bad. They are not something to be avoided. Christ came that we might have life and life to the fullest, right? Well, a life without emotions is not a full life. A life without emotions is not the life that Jesus came to die for. He wants us to live a full life, and a full life has emotions.
Second, love is not merely an emotion. It is an emotion, don’t get me wrong. But it’s not the Valentine’s Day, love-struck, honeymoon bliss that we’re talking about here. It’s the agape, hesed, biblical love that is an all-in kind of love. We are to love the Lord our God with our mind, soul, heart and strength. We are to love him with everything we are, and we are emotional beings. Part of who God is emotion (God is love, remember?).
So, men, don’t settle for respect. We need to humble ourselves and let our wives know that they got it right this whole time, and we got it wrong. We need to desire love because in love lies respect as well. But just because you respect someone, doesn’t mean you love them. Men want love.
