Stay the Course: The Miraculous Power of Love and Respect

At times, for a multitude of reasons, a newborn baby simply will not latch on and take his mother’s milk. Though the baby’s life is dependent on receiving the vital nutrition she has to offer, the mother/baby connection does not happen as naturally and easily as mom had dreamed it would.

So does mom simply give up? Does she refuse to make a second, third, or fourth attempt to get her baby to latch on? Does she tell her seven-pound infant, “Fine! Figure out for yourself how you’re going to survive without my milk”? 

Of course not! Such a reaction would be selfish beyond imagination and just downright evil! Instead, she tries again a couple of hours later. Then a couple hours after that. Perhaps a nurse or consultant assists her by giving her some tips. And if many frustrating days and failed attempts go by, perhaps the decision is made to bottle-feed. But no matter what, the mom, nurses, consultants, and doctors are not giving up and refusing to give the infant the life-giving milk he desperately needs to survive.

In my book Love & Respect, I spend three hundred pages talking about what husbands and wives also desperately need. In fact, the full title is Love & Respect: The Love She Most Desires, The Respect He Desperately Needs. 

“The Respect He Desperately Needs.” Like the mother’s milk a baby desperately needs. And please do not misunderstand my wording here. The wife “desperately needs” her husband’s love as well. In fact, open up the pages of the book and you will see that I make clear: both the husband and wife need love and respect equally. 

But in moments of conflict, when “trouble” comes as 1 Corinthians 7:28 assures us will happen in all marriages, study after study after study have shown that what the wife most desperately needs to be assured of is that her husband still loves and cherishes her unconditionally. And what the husband needs to be confident of beyond a shadow of a doubt is that his wife still respects who he is as a man. She desperately needs to feel loved, and he desperately needs to feel respected.

“But Emerson,” I hear often from frustrated wives, “it’s not working. I wrote him a respect note like you said I should.” Or, “I have been making a point to acknowledge how hard I know he works for us.” Or, “I have been trying to spend shoulder-to-shoulder time with him. Last week, I spent five hours on a fishing boat with him!”

“But nothing is working!” they try telling me.

To these wives I say two things: 

1) How wonderful to hear about what you’re doing! I’m thrilled to learn about the ways you’re trying to speak your husband’s language of respect and touch him at the core of who he is as a man. You are in rare but blessed company! But also: 

2) Stay the course! Don’t give up just because it doesn’t appear to be “working.” 

First of all, can we all agree that most men don’t express themselves the way women so often do? If a wife were to receive a love letter from her husband, she’s going to make a HUGE DEAL!!! about it later, likely with tears. Or if he spends five hours out on the balcony talking heart to heart with her, she is likely to show her appreciation and love for him later that night in the bedroom. She’s also going to tell her friends about it, her mom, maybe even brag about him in front of the children. Somehow, some way, word will get back to him just how much his gesture meant to his wife.

But men don’t respond in the same way, do they? It’s just not in our DNA to gush and to glow and to tell everyone we know. That’s not how most men were designed. So maybe a wife shouldn’t be so quick to conclude that showing respect “isn’t working.” Perhaps he’s just not expressing his gratefulness the way she thinks he should.

Secondly, though, if we can agree that a husband desperately needs to feel his wife’s respect, just as she desperately needs to feel loved and cherished by him, and just as a newborn desperately needs his mother’s milk, then we must not give up when at first it does not make the impact we were looking for. After all, he desperately needs it! Should he be deprived of what he desperately needs simply because the first attempts “didn’t work”? 

Read the following testimony about two wives who are so thankful they did not give up when at first being more intentional about respecting their husbands “didn’t work.”

Our marriage got so crazy that, from a human perspective, there was literally no reason why we should have stayed married. It is only by God’s grace that I didn’t pursue a divorce, as I can count the number of times on one hand that I wasn’t thinking about pursuing a divorce during this period. We were seeing a Christian counselor during this time to try and work things out, and he had us reading various books, but none of them seemed to be helping. It was during this time I came across my packed-away copy of your Love and Respect book and started reading it.

This time the material literally jumped off the pages at me. At that time my husband was a workaholic (one of the many things we were seeking counseling for), we traditionally saw things opposite of the stereotypical couple (he tends to see things in “pink,” me in “blue”) and I had been seriously doubting his good will. But despite my doubts, I started trying to treat him with respect anyway, even though I didn’t feel like it. I have to admit my motivation for doing so was so he would, in turn, be loving toward me and finally fill my very empty love tank. Of course, he saw right through this motivation and didn’t respond lovingly toward my respectful attempts. But I kept right on trying to be respectful anyway, and about a year later, things finally changed for us, and we “got it.” In the end he thanked me for my respectful behavior.

Fast-forward to this year, two children later, and we are on a team with other married couples, leading the same marriage class where we were first introduced to your Love and Respect material. This year we are once again doing the Love and Respect video, but now we can lead with the firsthand experience of knowing your material does work!

We’ve been kind of in crisis mode leadership-wise this year: the main leadership couple, the ones who started the ministry many decades ago, long before my husband and I were even a thought, have had a very difficult marital year. Long story short, the husband filed for divorce from the wife. He has been a lifelong marriage counselor. He knows all the material in all the marriage books, from things like Gary Chapman’s “Love Languages” to your Love and Respect material. But, sadly, none of that knowledge transferred from his head to his heart, and he was left feeling disrespected by his wife and wanting a divorce. His wife was, obviously, quite devastated by his decision to file for a divorce (as was the remainder of our leadership team and church leaders), but she faithfully continued to show him respect. In the end her respect toward her husband paid off: his very hard heart finally softened again toward her, and he has since called off his divorce and is finally transferring decades of head knowledge down to his heart. They still have a long road ahead of them to rebuild their marriage, but they are back on the right track because of the wife’s respect.

For me, witnessing what this leadership couple has gone through, as well as my own experience early on in my marriage with my own husband, has really helped emphasize just how powerful your material is.

Where many other understandably frustrated wives have given up and left their husbands, these two wives stayed the course. They continued to show their respect for who he is as a man—the respect he desperately needs—and their marriages were eventually blessed! Praise the Lord!

Can I encourage you today to stay the course? I’m not talking about staying in an abusive marriage. If you or the children are in danger, then you absolutely must get out of harm’s way, just as my mom did when I was only a small child. I’m speaking to the overwhelming majority who are married to goodwilled people but find themselves having the kinds of trouble Paul talks about in 1 Corinthians 7. Stay the course! Love your wife unconditionally. Show unconditional respect toward the spirit of who your husband is as a man, even when he’s “not acting very respectable.” This is what they desperately need! As with the newborn and his mother’s milk, it’s what your marriage desperately needs to survive.