We have in our hands the unending quest of couples for love and respect again today. Just like sex, it’s one of the core issues in marriage. Wives cry for love, while husbands yearn for respect. This cry gets louder and louder as the day goes by, especially by many new entrants into the marriage mall. We can’t pretend that the last has been heard about the issue of respect and love in marriage.
I have a couple’s case in view today as our starting point on this issue of love and respect. The wife is ever craving for attention, love, and care. She loves going out with her husband to visit friends, relatives, and places of recreation. But the husband doesn’t have her time. All day is for work, and spending time with his friends. I’m not sure it’s a clubbing affair for him. This has been causing issues between the couple.
The husband, on the other hand, cries foul over respect from his wife. It’s a matter of concern for him that his wife doesn’t have respect for him.
To this husband, what comes across to him as disrespect includes the wife asking for a helping hand in the house: serving her snacks while working on other things; complaining about the husband not properly responding to, or outrightly ignoring, her request for assistance at home. It doesn’t end there. It also includes not calling him as an elderly person, while the wife calls a close relative younger to him, aunty. The husband also wants her to dance to his tune always, without questioning his stand.
Two issues to be addressed here are those of love and respect. The wife feels unloved, while the husband feels disrespected.
As I have stated severally on this platform, the wife ought to know that the greatest need of her husband is respect. Likewise, the husband must come to terms with the fact that his wife’s greatest need is love. If your husband feels respected, and your wife feels loved, the marriage will work better. Once the issue of love and respect is taken care of in marriage, harmony will prevail.
So, no couple should joke with the issue of love and respect in the marriage, or ignore any complaint about its slack, or take it for granted. Doing any of the above is to court trouble.
Husband and wife must take time to study and understand what respect and love entail, and what each means to them uniquely. That is, love and respect do not mean the same thing to each couple. Every couple is unique, just like each partner. So, to be able to address it adequately, a husband must know what comes across to his wife as love, while the wife must also understand what respect means to her husband. It’s by doing so that each will be better positioned to handle the other on this issue of love and respect.
This is better understood in line with Gary’s popularised five love languages in marriage. Understanding these love languages of each spouse will help to arrive at what respect and love mean to each spouse.
From the example of the couple under reference, what love means to the wife is acts of service and quality time; while, for the husband, respect means words of affirmation.
Let us consider some of the issues raised in the example of this couple for the purpose of others who may be going through similar things.
• Helping Out in The House
There’s nothing wrong with a husband assisting his wife in the house, especially in the kitchen. The era of the husband crossing his legs on the table, and watching television or reading newspapers while the wife is slaving herself out in the kitchen, is over. Anyone, especially the husband, who doesn’t believe in this has no business being in a marriage. Even if your wife agrees to this ancient attitude, it will amount to slavery at the end of the day. Your wife is not a house help but a help meet. That’s one of the things that wears out many wives, making them look haggard, thus making them unattractive to their husbands.
• Outings By Couples
This is a great necessity for a couple to bond with each other. A weekend getaway, a visit to a recreation centre, an eating out night, etc., all help to increase the intimacy of a couple. It gives the impression of having great admiration for your spouse and being ready to show him or her to others. Why marry someone whom you cannot be proud of being with outside, or keeping him or her company? That’s why husbands and wives must maintain each other very well so as to be presentable to outsiders, any day, any time. When people admire me outside, I always tell them that it’s due to the fact that my husband is taking good care of me and helping me relief stress. Your spouse shouldn’t be made a factory-reject —that is, not fit for public presentation.
• There’s No Seniority Between Married Partners
If you don’t want your spouse in marriage to come into familiarity (which breeds contempt), then don’t marry him or her. Once you start courting a person, or start flirting with him or her, you have lost your elderly respect. Even if you are as old as Methuselah, you become equal with your spouse. Don’t expect your spouse to call you “senior brother” or “senior sister”. Marriage is a leveller. Once you become husband and wife, your have lost your right to elderly salutations or appellations.
This is different from being disrespectful to each other. I know a couple with the wife being older (with years) than the husband. Yet, both of them are having a great marriage.
Respect doesn’t mean calling him “senior brother”. Spouses can respect each other without this seniority stuff. I call my husband “honey”, and it doesn’t reduce my respect for him. Neither does he flaunt it as a reference point for respect from me.
Paying attention to the above, among other things, will help a couple have a great marriage. This will be better addressed if emotional intelligence is deployed by the partners in the marriage. You can avail yourself of my previous articles on respect and love in this column. It will broaden your knowledge about it.
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