The greatest challenge to respect and love in marriage

In our analysis of enjoying great marriage, we have discussed respect and love as the basic needs of husbands and wives respectively. This conclusion of relationship experts however has a poser to it. This is about what to do in situations where the wife is disrespectful or the husband is unloving. How would the spouse of a disrespectful wife, and an unloving husband be able to satisfy the basic needs of love and respect respectively? Is it not asking for too much from such spouses?

This poser, to my mind is like saying that a disrespectful wife does not deserve love from her husband, while an unloving husband does not deserve respect from his wife. This is like using the law of sowing and reaping, or using the computer language of “garbage in, garbage out “, meaning what you put in, is what you will get. Should it be so in marriage? Absolutely No! The principle guiding the concept of respect and love in marriage is that one should do the right thing, irrespective of what the other spouse does. This can be likened to the biblical injunction that one must not overcome evil with evil. Rather, one should overcome evil with good. Consequently, it means that a husband should love his wife even if his wife is disrespectful, and a wife should respect her husband, even if he is unloving. Anything contrary will make the marriage a time bomb that is bound to explode with time. This is the reason why marriages of many years are crashing, or ending in divorce. This is due to the fact that if a couple operates by the principle of “tit for tat”, or ‘ do me, I do you “, the outcome will be “fire on the mountain”.

A great marriage will need partners who are ready to do the right thing always. If this principle is adhered to, there will be peace in the marriage. You will have husband loving the wife, and wife respecting the husband. But, how realistic is it for one to love a disrespectful wife, or to respect an unloving husband? That is why I call this the greatest challenge to the concept of respect and love in marriage.  It is absolutely a difficult thing to do, but it is practicable. As a matter of fact, many married persons are into it, and we have positive results of changed spouses. That is, spouses changing due to the fact that their partners choose to do the right thing, loving and respecting them. It is a case of love won, or respect won.  In such cases, the issue of “opposite attracts” may be fingered as the magic wand. That is, the disrespectful attracted the loving, and vice versa.

Another factor that may be at play is the religious inclination of partners, which allows for tolerance and patience to prevail in such instances. This is a factor that has helped many people to weather the storms in the marriage setting, dousing the tension at the home front. When it is absent, law of “an eye for an eye”, reigns, and fire keeps burning, till divorce “do them part”. However, this issue of religious intervention must not be stretched too far, otherwise it becomes difficult for it to sustain the marriage. Married persons should not take their spouses for granted. If one does, the consequences may be grave. If the religious does not walk away from the marriage. The God of the religious will definitely fight for his own. Or if you are not the religious type, then expect nemesis to catch up with you, sooner or later.

The admonition here to married couples is to operate on loving and respecting each other. As a matter of fact, the two needs are interwoven, with a thin line serving as the divider. You are bound to love the one you respect and vice versa. So, don’t make things difficult for your spouse by being disrespectful or unloving. It does no good to the marriage at the end of the day. At least, you definitely won’t get a great marriage out of a scenario of lack of respect or love. All you will get is, “a hen that lands on a rope, both the hen and the rope suffer the instability.  So, let us stop being difficult to each other in marriage. It will not bring about the great marriage which should be the desire of all married couples.

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