Love vs. Respect

Today is my husband's birthday, so I can finally share the birthday gift project. I saw an idea on Pinterst (the artist has a wonderful tutorial) that utilized a deck of cards to say "52 Reasons I love you" and thought I could combine it with the super-helpful insight gained this past summer from the book Love & Respect. I titled my version "52 Things I Respect About You" because according to the book and to my husband, the "respect" word speaks much louder to a man than the "love" word.

For any desiring a mini review of the book, it said that most men care more about being respected than being loved and most women desire to be loved more than they desire to be respected. Further, the author pointed out that when a good-hearted man is rude or unloving to his wife, he is generally reacting to feeling disrespected, and then the wife, feeling unloved, tends to bite back disrespectfully causing something he referred to as "the crazy cycle". This cycle can happen in reverse if a wife feels unloved and acts disrespectfully, causing the husband to be even more unloving.

I followed it pretty well to that point, but was utterly sickened at what men consider to be disrespectful. There are pages of examples. Also noteworthy is the fact that there is a section written to the man defining actions that wife feels are unloving. Honestly, I hadn't previously thought much about it and I was loath to admit that for the past 15 years of marriage, my "I love yous" hadn't been putting a dent in the massive amount of things my husband was reading as disrespect. As an example, she says, "Hi, Honey, how was your day?" He thinks, "She doesn't trust me, she is prying..." All she is trying to do is be in relationship and it pushes him away. It was so shocking to me that I couldn't accept it. I asked my husband about some of the different hypothetical situations and he verified their accuracy! I was blown away...and angry! I hate putting effort into "loving", and having it completely taken as disrespect! But at least now I know! And so do you! So there you have it, a mini synopsis of a book that is on my "Love/Hate" list. The info it contains will undoubtedly save many a marriage.