Which Came First? Your Lack of Love or Her Lack of Respect?

Dear Dr. Bill,

I am the husband and father in our family. I take my role very seriously, and I strive to do a good job.
I have found that my wife doesn't respect me. If asked, she would completely deny that, but she acts it out. She constantly questions my disciplinary actions with our children, and she does so in front of them. She allows them to break rules we have set up to keep our house clean, such as keeping food and drink in the kitchen, and the result is a mess everywhere. She'll tell me what to do or how to do something, and then when I tell her to stop telling me what to do, she says she was making a suggestion. She constantly puts down how I feel about things, and tells me I'm wrong for feeling a certain way, and then tears down how I feel debate-style.

I am the main breadwinner, and she works part-time. She doesn't do her share of the housework, given that I work 45-60 hrs/week and she works 20-30.I am tired of being disrespected, and while I'm not interested in divorce, I don't feel like I've got any leverage here. I have tried every way to express how I feel and to communicate the damage it's doing to our family (i.e. how our kids won't listen to me when she's around), but it doesn't seem to change anything. With all the effort I've put in trying to constructively change things, I don't know how to do any more. What do I do? How can I make my wife respect me, given that I've done everything that should cause her to naturally respect me?

Feeling Stuck

Dear Feeling Stuck,

You are stuck in the “Crazy Cycle”. In that cycle, there is a lot of fog. People get stuck there because they can’t clearly see their part. It’s as though a couple is blindfolded standing back to back to one another. One elbow’s the other in the back causing pain and the other reacts by elbowing back. This goes on 100 times and by that point, both people are mad and bruised and asking themselves why the heck does the other keep elbowing them and how can I get them to stop?

You can articulate clearly your wife’s elbow of disrespect painfully hitting your back. Like most of us, it is much harder to understand how our reaction in turn appears to be an unloving elbow in our wife’s back. Our inability to see how our reaction affects our spouse is normal. You obviously feel the sting of disrespect profoundly. As you grapple with your repetitive pain, you grow in resentment and resentment block compassion. The perfect trap. And you are in it. Your pain and resentment ooze out of you and your wife feels it. I promise she does.

Emerson Eggerichs in the book, “Love & Respect ” powerfully argues that Respect is like oxygen to a man, so is love to a woman. That is why in Ephesians it says: “Husbands love your wives, wives respect your husbands.” The “Crazy Cycle” is Husbands deprived of respect won’t love and wives deprived of love, won’t respect.

In your letter you asked me: “How can I make my wife respect me, given that I've done everything that should cause her to naturally respect me?” You can’t “make” her do anything but you can begin to follow the biblical command to love and cherish her and “be patient and kind and not keep records of wrongs” (1Cor 13). In the ideal world you would both simultaneously begin to change your part in the crazy cycle. But one can change the cycle. Read Eggerich’s book and focus only on your part or see a therapist who can encourage both of you to change.

You won’t be stuck anymore.