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| Isaac isn't mad, he just doesn't smile for photos... sort of on principle. So annoying :) |
I have read a lot of books about marriage, and after a while they all start to sound the same. One book that has stuck out of the pack for me is a little book that is an easy read...
For Women Only: What You Need to Know About the Inner Lives of Men
by Shaunti Feldhahn
Honestly I don't remember the whole book, but it's an easy read. The chapter that was so helpful to me was about respect. Each chapter is built around a survey that she took of a number of men. The survey indicated that three out of four men would choose to be unloved over being disrespected. See what Feldhahn says about this:
When I got the survey’s back, a note was attached: “A lot of the guys fussed over Question 3. They did not feel the choices were different.” Finally the light bulb came on: if a man feels disrespected, he is going to feel unloved. And what that translates to is this: if you want to love your man in the way he needs to be loved, then you need to ensure that he feels your respect most of all.Now, I get this. I tend to to carry some typically male characteristics, and the desire for respect is one of them. What I didn't get, though, was what comes across as disrespectful to a man and how he reacts to that. I loved this quote:
One married man put it very starkly: “The male ego the most fragile thing on the planet. Women have this though that He’s got such a huge ego that I need to take him down a peg. No way. The male ego is incredibly fragile. “You know that saying ‘Behind every good man is a great woman?” Well that is so true. If a man’s wife is supportive and believes in him, he can conquer the world – or at least his little corner of it. He will do better at work, at home, everywhere. By contrast, very few men can do well at work or at home if their wives make them feel inadequate.”So I get that respect is so important... and I do experience that in my own marriage. When praise Isaac, he beams. When I tell him his paper or presentation is great, he moves forward confidently. When I tell him honestly that I'm amazed by his intelligence, you can practically see him stick out his chest proudly. Respect really is suuuch a powerful thing.
I still get tripped up what what men perceive as disrespectful, though. To be blunt, often what is perceived as disrespectful is NOT mean as disrespectful from the woman's perspective. Still, it's really helpful to understand how guys perceive things so I can form my speech accordingly!
Isaac and I still go back and forth all the time with me trying to figure out what exactly is a reminder and what is nagging. Most of the time I'm better off setting expectations beforehand and just letting him do things in his own timing, not MINE.A sizable minority of men read something negative into a simple female reminder. I asked men what would go through their minds if their wife or significant other reminded them that the kitchen wall was damaged and it still had to be fixed. More than one-third of those men took that reminder as nagging or as an accusation of laziness or mistrust.
(a local pastor's response to a wife's reminder about a household duty) Pastor: “I’m irritated because I have to be reminded. I hate being reminded.” Calvin: “Why is that a problem? Look at your Day Planner there – you set up systems to remind yourself of things all the time.” Pastor: “Inherent in her reminder is a statement of disappointment. For me as a man, that is saying that I failed. I hate to fail. It’s not a statement that bothers me; it’s the implications of the statement.”
Another interesting thing is how a man reacts to feeling disrespected. Dr. Emerson Eggerichs, founder of Love and Respect ministries, says that “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.”
That's helpful to me because anger the most difficult of all emotions for me to deal with. To understand that men tend to get angry when they feel disrespected helps me to know what to do when men start to show anger. Affirm. Show respect. That covers a multitude of wrongs!
Something that the girls in my small group struggle with is how to encourage your man when we ourselves are nearly all strong, independent women who are opinionated and maybe tend towards being controlling... maybe? ;) I tend to want to stand up for myself, fight for my opinion and make sure I'm not walked on. However, as Feldhahn says,
A man deeply needs the woman in his life to respect his knowledge, opinions, and decisions – what I would call his judgement. No one wanted a silent wallflower, but many men wished their mate wouldn’t question their knowledge or argue with their decisions all the time. It’s a touchy thing in these liberated days, but what it really comes down to is their need for us to defer to them sometimes.
Several men confessed that they felt like their opinions and decisions were actively valued in every area of their lives except at home. Some men felt that their comrades at work trusted their judgement more than their own wives did. Also, while a man’s partners or colleagues will rarely tell him what to do (they ask him or a collaborate on a decision instead), more than one wife has made the mistake of ordering her husband around like one of the kids.
For me, all of this has been very powerful and helpful in how I interact with Isaac. It's what I most understand about the way the Bible talks about the role of the "helper" in a marriage. I am his biggest fan. That is incredibly empowering.
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