What Men Need Most From the Woman They Love
While we women enjoy hearing our man tell us “I love you” often to reassure us of his love, men are not affected by hearing us say, “Honey, I respect you” but they do love to hear things like “I’m so proud of you” and “I trust you.” But signaling respect to our man goes far beyond those few words. In my research, I found that there are five demonstrative ways we can express our respect for the man we love such as respect his judgment and respect his abilities.
Our husband may be particularly sensitive to just one or two of these areas or all of them may be significant, especially if he’s either recently or over a lifetime accumulated a low self-esteem. Circumstances can certainly affect his sense of self-respect or value. Has your husband been hit with a physical disability or sickness which has affected his performance or productivity? Is he at that season of life when a man’s career may take a downturn because they are being replaced by younger men or cheaper labor? Has he been laid off because of the economy, or lost a strategic deal or been bypassed for a promotion by another colleague? Our man most likely will become hypersensitive to feeling disrespected during these kinds of circumstances because he’s having a hard time respecting himself. Whatever the difficulty, we have the incredible power to either add to his sense of inadequacy or build him up to feel respected and esteemed regardless of his situation.
In my survey of men for my book, For Women Only three out of four men indicated that if they had to choose between feeling inadequate and disrespected by everyone, or alone and unloved, they would choose feeling alone and unloved. The reality is that if a man feels disrespected, he is going to feel unloved. Translation? If you want to love your man the way he can feel loved, your top priority is to ensure that he feels your respect. Feeling respected by us is as important to a man as feeling loved by him is to us. The challenge, however, is that unlike women who can get that feeling of love by frequently hearing “I love you,” men need to experience more than just “Honey, I respect you.”
And when his disrespect barometer is tripped by something you say or do, it usually catches us off guard because it was unintentional, and if we respond defensively it can spark a downward spiraling conflict which ends up being more about his feeling disrespected and us feeling unloved than the original issue. This need to feel respected at all times is particularly difficult to keep in mind during a conflict when we all tend to engage one another with more volatility and aggression. If we have regularly displayed a respectful attitude towards our husband, he is more likely to presume our good will towards him even when we slip into disrespectful behavior. When we do slip up, and we will because we are human, a sincere apology combined with some verbal affirmation of one of his strengths goes a long way to mend those slighted feelings.
Related blogs: Feeling Disrespected Evokes Anger in Men, Respecting His Abilities
Thanks for helping clarify the respect/love tie-in.
This is great! But… HOW do I show my man I respect him? Conversely, what does disrespect look like? In my experience, men don’t often indicate they’ve felt disrespected (with words or behaviors) until there’s been a big kerfuffle.
My wonderful hubby and I discuss these things, and he’s reluctant to give specifics, saying, “I know your intentions so I know not to take it personally when I feel disrespected.” I suppose that’s the same as me saying, “I know you love me so I try not to take it personally when you occasionally do things that seem unloving.”
Which is great! {My husband is the best!!} But I’d like to be more mindful so that I do fewer disrespectful things in the first place. And more things that are actively respectful.
Sorry for the long comment. Every time I read about the love/respect divide, this is where we always get hung up. What does respect LOOK like and how does it look different than love? Thoughts? 😉
Saw you at She Speaks last year, by the way, and holed myself in my hotel room until the wee hours of the night (and the whole plane ride home) reading your books, by the way. Love you and your work to pieces!
Hello Kendra! Caroline here to give you some suggestions. It IS hard to know how to show respect, since saying “I respect you so much” just doesn’t have the same ring (as I’ve heard Shaunti say before). Here are a few links.
Our resources page has quite a few articles about respect: http://shaunti.com/resources/?facet_topic=78
A great piece on the male equivalent of “I love you”: http://shaunti.com/2014/10/marriage-monday-shaunti-feldhahn-wives-invest-husband-saying-thank/
And for a fun list of practical tips, check out Nina Roesner’s blog post: http://ninaroesner.com/for-wives/101-ways-to-respect-your-husband/
Hope these are helpful to you and thanks for commenting!
– Caroline Niziol, Digital Content Manager for Shaunti
Thanks so much! I’ll definitely take a look! 😉
G R E A T insight and right on the money. But I’d expect nothing less. You can get inside a man’s head better than any other relationship counselor/writer I’ve come across, and I’ve read MANY. Thanks !
After reading thorguh this, I realized that I have some difficulty defining respect (this tells me a lot about the respect in my relationship) I guess to me, respect means common courtesy towards the one you love comes easily. Their happiness is of high priority to you, even when there’s a disagreement. I personally have difficulty respecting my partner when we disagree, and especially when I don’t like the way he is behaving. I can see he struggles with that as well, perhaps moreso than I do. It is very important to me that my partner respects me, and shows it! I am more of a feminist/independant type of woman, and I have found out that in most relationships involving men and women, this doesn’t work well. Men need to feel needed and when the threat of that being absent is presant, men get insecure, which can lead to disrespect (yes, there are many issues plaguing my relationship with my fiance) It was recently suggested to me that perhaps we just aren’t right for each other. Maybe not, I guess I’m trying to figure that out. I show him respect by backing up what he says when dealing with the kids, I do lots of things the way he likes, I help him with pretty much everything he may or may not need help with, I give him his space when he wants it, I help to take care of him, the things I do to show him respect go on and on .and after writing all of this, I’m also thinking about what I DO or DON’T DO that is disrespectful towards him. We definitly have some things to work on in our relationship!Reply
As a man i can say That’s this is very true.
It’s simple. Want to know the WORST thing you can do? Belittle him in public, in front of his friends and family. You may think you are being cute like the idiots on “The View”, but those are instant grounds to dump a woman. Oh, and don’t have sex with him on a regular basis. That’s another one-way ticket to relationship hell.