Love & Respect

I've been thinking a lot about marriage lately. I'm in a Sacred Marriage blogging Bible study, and was just reading Ephesians about marriage. And I started thinking back to when our couple's group read For Men Only and For Women Only, books that give you insight into your spouse's mind.

One chapter, I believe the first one, talked about men's need for respect. It likened it to women's need to feel loved. And a lot of the women in our group struggled with that. I mean, we got it, but it seemed hard. Doesn't respect need to be earned? The book talked about how we expect our husbands to love us even though we aren't always loveable, so we need to respect our husbands even when they aren't acting respectable.

I'm just now starting to wrap my head around this. Here's what I figured out. The words love and respect are both verbs. But they are also both feelings. Our husbands are to always treat us with love (and vice versa), even when we aren't being loveable, because that's what Jesus would do.

And we are always to treat our husbands with respect, even when they aren't being respectable, because that's what Jesus would do. And that's how they need to be treated.

But that's all the verb meanings of the word. Like the way you might show love to a colleague who isn't treating you fairly. Or the way you might show respect to a terrible boss because you value your job security (or are just a good, respectful person). It doesn't mean you actually feel love toward that colleague or respect for that boss.

I don't think wives need to earn love, nor do husbands need to earn respect, when we're talking about the verbs. But the emotion, you do need to earn. Not in every moment, but big picture. For Dan to feel love toward me, I need to act loveably most of the time. If that's the case, he'll make exceptions for those unloveable moments, because he knows that at my core I am a woman he feels love for. Conversely, for me to feel respect toward Dan, he needs to act respectably most of the time. Again, if he is a generally respectable person but falters here and there, that won't impact my feeling, because I respect him as the person I know he is.

So...what do you think? Agree or disagree with my conclusion?