Love and Respect

Emerson Eggerichs wrote Love and Respect and several books that build from Ephesians 5:33, "However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband."  He has observed that when a woman feels unloved she may respond in ways that feel disrespectful and when a man feels disrespected he may respond in ways that feel unloving.  When this pattern gains momentum with a couple, Eggerichs calls it the "Crazy Cycle."  What he recommends instead is for the man to offer unconditional love and for the woman to offer unconditional respect.

But Eggerichs urges us not to overreact when our marriages have crazy moments.  1 Corinthians 7:28 says, "But those who marry will face many troubles in this life."  He believes that we will all have a few turns on the crazy cycle, but we need to learn how to end it in a healthy way.

One of the most heated disagreements Shirley and I ever had was early in our marriage.  We were headed home from a Sunday night church service.  I had to get up the next morning to work in an auto factory at a job I pretty much hated.  My mission was to get home and get to bed as quickly as possible so I could at least feel refreshed when I got up in the morning to face my commute to work.  Shirley had sung in the church choir, was thirsty, and said, "Pull over so I can get something to drink." (This was a few years before McDonald's or Burger King opened their first drive-through windows.)  I said, "No," kept driving home, and went straight to bed.  Shirley was unwilling to let this end there and started flipping the bedroom light switch on and off until I got up to explain myself.  I don't remember what happened next but we stayed married without violence or separation.  

This is a funny memory to us now because there is so much more love and respect in our marriage that every step in the story would be different.  I would be less stressed knowing that a few minutes of sleep wouldn't make a big difference. She would understand how I was feeling.  I would understand how she was feeling.  She would ask nicer.  I would not ignore her thirst.  There would be a drive-through open. We would have ice and root beer at home and wouldn't need to stop anyway.  Churches don't have Sunday night services much anymore. But if this was our grandparents' story from early in their marriage, they wouldn't have had a light switch to flip on and off.