Men Just Want A Little Respect

Spending all day with a diverse group of patients can lead to many captivating conversations. I see all walks of life in my office, which makes every day interesting. I have this one patient, who I’ll call Stuart, that I just adore. Stuart and I got along swimmingly right from the start. Our conversations were always highly spirited as we jumped from one subject to another, each of us waiting for our turn to speak. He’s a pastor at a local church, who’s married with three teenage boys. He is what I call a “high quality individual“. On his last appointment, while discussing fabulous books we had read, he gushed over the book, “Love and Respect” by Emerson Eggerich. Apparently, he gives it out to all the married couples he counsels and it always gets rave reviews.

Since my future husband is lost in space somewhere, it seemed the perfect time to read a book about getting along with your spouse. I figured it couldn’t be too hard to respect a man who wasn’t there. After all, the imaginary men are the most fantastic to date, because they’re perfect in every way! What’s not to respect, right?

According to Mr. Eggie, men need respect like women need love. In a study of 400 men around the nation, when forced to choose one of the following scenarios, they were asked which they would prefer to endure?

A) to be left alone and unloved in the world
B) to feel inadequate and disrespected by everyone

Seventy-four percent chose to be alone and unloved rather than feel inadequate or disrespected. Gee! How many times do women make their men feel inadequate? Yeah.

Every page I turn I see the truth in what he speaks. All that women want is to feel genuinely loved. We want to be the center of one man’s universe. As much as that is true, the men we love ( even the ones lost in space that we patiently wait for) desperately want to feel respected. According to Eggie, if a women shows disrespect to her man – and we do it ALLL the time – then that man finds it difficult to show love to the women who does not respect him. When a man does not feel respected for who he is, he withdraws from his woman, and the woman takes that to mean he doesn’t love her enough. This begins the Crazy cycle, as he calls it. This cycle doesn’t have to start with the woman. In fact, it probably starts with the man doing or saying something seriously stupid. Whoa! Did I just say that? Wow! I need to practice my respect speak before my space boy finds me.

If you read this book, Mr. Eggie will convince you that these two elements of Love and Respect are indeed the core issues between a man and a woman. I think this man is a genius and I’m going to start practicing these techniques on my bunny George. There are days when I poke a little fun at him and I realize I may be emasculating him and that’s why he retreats when I try to love on him. Sometimes, he looks at me like I’m about to take his life, as he runs to his little den. I don’t ever want to see that look of fear in the eyes of the man I love. So for practice, George is gonna get nothing but respect from me for awhile and we’ll see if his aloof attitude changes into Looooooooove.