Men Want Respect
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When I first proposed “respect” as the topic of our podcast, I didn’t know I was opening Pandora’s Box. We joked and laughed as we remembered the first time we read Shaunti Feldhahn’s For Men Only and For Women Only. Then my husband suddenly became prickly and quiet as we reread the first chapter on respect. As I asked him questions and prodded out answers (as gently as I could) I realized what a sensitive topic respect was to him. After surveying thousands of men, Shaunti concludes that respect is the most important issue for men when we speak about relationships.
Your Love is Not Enough
In a chapter titled “Your Love is Not Enough”, Shaunti sheds light on a very important distinction between what a husband and wife expect from each other. In her surveys, she found that three out of four men would prefer to feel alone and unloved rather than feel inadequate and disrespected. Gerhard and I discuss this question in our podcast titled Unconditional Respect. Gerhard finds that there is little difference for him sometimes between feeling loved and feeling respected, that in some cases they are the same . He finds, however, it is more meaningful to be told “I am proud of you” than “I love you.” Since many men feel the same way, Shaunti argues that it is not enough for a wife to simply love her husband, she must respect him first.
Not Convinced? Conduct Your Own Respect Test
If you are wondering if respect is as important to men as Shaunti makes it sound, conduct a respect test.
This respect test was devised by Dr. Emerson Eggerichs, founder of Love and Respect Ministries. In his book Love and Respect, he challenges wives to think of a few tangible things for which they respect their husbands, ie, his hard work, his dependability in bringing the kids to sports, his dedication to the family, his values, his hard-earned vacations, etc.
Then, find a quiet moment to tell your husband that there are many things you respect about him, and without waiting for a response, find an excuse to walk away. If he asks (then or later) be ready with an answer. (187)
Eggerichs then supplies a few (very positive) anecdotes of how the husband reacted to the wife’s comment, including a proposal to take the whole family out for dinner.
The Anti-Respect Test
If you’re more of a devil’s advocate, you can try a second kind of test. Disrespect your husband and wait for his response. If he gets angry, then you know that respect matters to him. Eggerichs writes: “In a relationship conflict, crying is often a woman’s response to feeling unloved, and anger is often a man’s response to feeling disrespected.”
In a survey to men, Shaunti asks whether in the middle of a conflict a man is more likely to feel more:
My wife/significant other doesn’t respect me right now
My wife/significant other doesn’t love me right now
A whopping 81% of men answered that a conflict is more likely to spell disrespect for them. This answer was a lightbulb moment for me and explained why my husband was more likely to get angry than I would over a disagreement. And how do men show anger? There are plenty of different ways: storming off, shouting back, retreating into silence, or simply scowling. You can learn more about the signs of anger here.
How do I show Respect?
Drew Hays @drew_hays via Unsplash.
A man might laugh at that question, but because a woman’s radar is often on the love question, she may feel a bit inept at knowing how to show respect. So men, please forgive us. But our job is even harder when our current culture is often finding reasons to put men down rather than to build them up. Let’s be our men’s champions and figure out how to give them the respect they crave.
Shaunti outlines five ways that we can show respect to our husband/significant other:
1. Respect his judgment
“ Maria: Let me tell you something Toula; the man is the head, but the woman is the neck and she can turn the head any way she wants.”
Let him lead. If it matters to him that he can be called the head of the family, we can’t just let him be a puppet and pull all the strings ourselves. Of course, we have a moral obligation to say something if he wants to draw us to do something implicitly wrong, but a lot of our day to day choices are a matter of opinion.
One thing that we find works well is that Gerhard is in charge of everything outside the home and I am in charge of everything within the home. He defers to me about how we should discipline the kids and where we should send the kids to school. I defer to him about managing long term finances and whether we should move cities to get a better job. We often end up having a discussion about our options before ultimately coming to a decision that we’re both at peace with. I think this dynamic of trust (going both ways) starts first of all with making time to have these conversations.
When Gerhard and I discussed this point of respecting a man’s judgment, we spoke a lot about allowing the other to have creative space. This means allowing the other to make decisions that might be mistakes (that we even know is a mistake). I have noticed, for myself, that it is tempting to control all aspects of our family life so that we can all be happy and that nothing will go wrong. In reality, this type of attitude is stifling. Of course things will go wrong, and in actual fact I don’t want to be responsible for the happiness of the whole family. Everyone needs to have the room to make their own choices and take responsibility for their own actions, even our kids. And I think both parents should have the opportunity to take responsibility for the family, especially the father who craves that kind of respect. It’s not controversial. When our spouse knows that we are not demanding that their every choice be perfect, that it is okay to make mistakes, it’s like a breath of fresh air into the relationship. Both can relax. If our husband knows that he has a place in the home to be himself without being micro-managed by his wife, that he is allowed some (or even most) of the responsibility—he will crave to be at home, where he has a place and a purpose.
2. Respect his Abilities
“A husband and wife get into the car and after driving for some time she asks him, “Do you know how to get to where we’re going?” And he answers, “Not really.” ”
Time and again we are in the car together and my husband has no idea where he’s going. So I pull out the phone and pull up some directions. According to one ABC article, “More than one out of four men -- 26 percent -- wait at least half an hour before asking for directions, with a stubborn 12 percent refusing to ask a stranger for help at all.” Another article in Reader’s Digest cites that an increase in testosterone makes men more impulsive.
So I let him get lost. And after getting lost enough times, Gerhard now asks me to pull up the directions. And I think this leads us back to the respect question and our first point. Men need that creative space to make mistakes and be a little messy. Some like the thrill of getting lost and finding their way again. According to Linda Sapadin, PhD, men prefer to learn by doing, not by being told what to do.
Or as Shaunti writes, our well-meaning advice can quickly sound like instructions. Our annoyance may sound like contempt. Our prying may look less like care and concern and more like an irritating attempt to manipulate and control. Men are sensitive, more sensitive than our common culture thinks. If he’s making a mistake, respect him enough to let him make the mistake and learn from it. Let him figure it out.
When Gerhard went on paternity leave, I had the opportunity to let him figure things out for himself and run the day-to-day routine the way that he liked. A balance that worked was that I gave him the rundown of how things normally ran, and then let him either follow through or change things up. He appreciated that I meal-planned, but I let him do the cooking. He got frustrated sometimes about how to manage the boys, but I quietly closed the bedroom door and let him figure it out. Sometimes I would intervene if he seemed at the end of his rope, but after about four months he was much more relaxed and at ease with being the primary caregiver. I let him do it his way and it paid off: in the end I had an equal partner, not a puppet that I had to point in the right direction.
3. Respect his priorities
“A wife tells her husband, “Honey, there’s a leak in the kitchen.” The husband answers, “I’ll get to it.” A week passes, a month passes, and there is still a leak in the kitchen.”
Just like men’s impulsiveness and their need to figure things out for themselves, there is that other irritating habit of their not doing things when we ask them to. As Shaunti writes, even this situation, as annoying as it might be, is about trust. After being reminded of the kitchen wall problem again by their wives, more than one-third of the husbands took that reminder as “nagging or as an accusation of laziness or mistrust.” Of course, none of us wants to be the nagging wife, but how do we avoid it when there is something important that he just keeps ignoring?
In her interviews, Shaunti discovered that in some cases men feel that what they are being asked to do is less important than some other things are their to-do list. The matter of trust is that they want to do it, but they want to decide what comes first.
I know that in our case, Gerhard often forgets these “very important” house tasks. I know that in his case, he often just forgets about them. So I’ve done what I’ve seen both my mother-in-law and mother do: write out a “Honey-do” list on the fridge, so that the piece of paper can serve as a reminder rather than ourselves.
Sometimes Gerhard and I set aside time together on a Saturday to do “extra chores.” I list out a number of things that have to be done and let him choose which ones he wants to do. Then we set out to accomplish our own tasks at the same time. Rather than our chores feeling like a chore, it becomes a bonding moment as we fix up our place together.
4. respect him in public
“ “My wife says things about me in public that she considers teasing. I consider them torture.” ”
Men are really sensitive, but not always in the same ways that we are. Women like to joke about mistakes they have made to each other. We like to discuss how we feel. And we don’t hear men talking about their feelings, not because they are insensitive, but because of their fragile male egos.
Male pride is not the machismo that you may think it is. Male pride simply masks feelings of inadequacy as a man. If he looks like he’s boasting, you don’t need to take him down a level to give him that reality check. He’s actually looking for some encouragement because likely he is grappling with insecurity and self-doubt.
The reason men’s egos are fragile is that they have an inherent desire to win. They are constantly in competition with themselves and with each other. Women are also in competition, but then again, we believe in “frenemies.” We can like and dislike someone at the same time. Men tend to be a little more black and white. People either like them or dislike them. They either like or dislike someone. They see themselves as either better or worse than the people around them.
Shaunti quotes her father on this issue of public respect: “Guys are always in competition with each other. Your wife is the person who knows you better than anyone, and if she doesn’t respect you, how can you expect another man to?” Her father goes on to say, “If you belittle your husband in front of another man, you can even ruin his career. I’m not kidding. Because any man he works with will now see him as weak.”
We were sitting with a group of families and Gerhard boasted, “I get up at 5am every morning to pray and exercise before work.” In my head I thought, okay, he did that for a few weeks, that’s it. But I just smiled and said nothing. Everyone was really impressed but I didn’t want to make him look like a liar. To my surprise, come September, Gerhard regularly started getting up at 5am to work out and pray and be ready for the boys when they came down. I was shocked. I realized that his comment had not been a reflection of what he was doing at that moment, but of how he wanted to live his life in the best possible scenario. I accepted his perceptions of himself without belittling them, and he actually lived them out.
I have heard other stories of women who showed men respect and that encouragement alone allowed them to accomplish their dreams of becoming the successful man they both hoped he could be.
5. respect him in our assumptions
“He’s late for the date. You start to imagine all the reasons why he could be late and you begin to take it personally. By the time he arrives, you’re so upset with him that you break into an argument.”
A similar scenario as the anecdote written above could happen with a friend, mother, or a colleague. But sometimes it seems more tempting to be more upset with our significant other than the other people in our life. We have high expectations for them. Mind you, they are often exceeding our expectations, so when they let us down--they really let us down.
Respecting our spouse in our assumptions (or anyone for that matter) requires some maturity that does not come with age but with practice. It’s true that we’re not always on time. Perhaps they have a good reason. They know it’s important to us. We should trust that we are still important to them, even if they were late. We have to assume the best. Or give the benefit of the doubt. But yes, it’s uncomfortable when there’s an incoming conflict at hand. That’s why it’s good to have some tools in hand to be ready to travel smoothly through any impending storm.
Ask for the Full Story
Even if you feel he was completely out of line, always give him the benefit of the doubt by asking for the full story. On the one hand, he can see for himself where he went wrong, on the other, you can see that he was innocent.
In my case, Gerhard came home late today for my writing appointment. As I glanced at the door, I could feel my disappointment rising, then my irritation. When he came in I tried my best to smile, say hello and then ask, “What held you up?” No, he didn’t get caught up with his phone, or chatting with a friend, or plain forget. He had a legitimate excuse, “Class went late.” And now I can only be upset with the class. He looks for a way to make it up to me, but I can tell he is tired. We find a compromise.
Win-Win, Win-Lose, Lose-Lose
One helpful idea that I gained from Stephen R. Covey’s 7 Habits was the idea that in any conflict, there are either two winners, two losers, or a winner and a loser. The best scenario is to walk out of any conflict with both as winners. I think when we are upset with our husbands for something he has possibly done (or is obvious that he is doing) we are setting up a win-lose situation: we want to prove that we are right and he is wrong. I think this is exactly where the problem of respect comes in. It is hurtful and irritating if a colleague at work is out to prove we keep missing some important memo. It feels like they are out to get us. That’s why with our husbands, we have to stop looking at our arguments as one-sided--we are on the same team after all. How can we both win?
Creative Reminders
Turn the argument from a me-you argument to an “us.” Talking with our husbands and asking them straight out how they would like to be reminded of things they have forgotten helps us both learn how to work better as a team. Change your thoughts from “How can I show him how to do this better?” to “How can we do better?” It’s not that we are always implicitly guilty in any wrong thing he does, but when he is one down, so are we. That’s what it means to be a team. Approaching a problem as “How can we fix this?” takes us out of attack mode and makes the approach to the problem much more gentle--and much more respectful.
It’s for Us
In the end, the purpose of respect is not only to make our significant other feel happier in the relationship, it’s for both of us. What’s good for him is good for me is good for us.
If it helps, here are some synonyms that describe disrespect:
-micromanagement
-manipulation
-control
Let’s give our men what we crave for ourselves--a loving, creative space to be me.
I took some creative liberties in this summary of Shaunti Feldhahn’s work, For Women Only. I highly recommend you read the book, listen to the audio, or watch her DVD series. You can see more of her work at Shaunti.com.