The Love versus Respect in Marriage

So the nice ideal situation that every guy is hoping for is to find and marry a loving wife.  But how does that compare to having a respectful wife?  (Or submissive wife, depending on your translation.)  Given the preference, I would like to find someone who is both.  But if I was forced to choose between one or the other, I would probably select respect, although that is a relatively recent revelation.

While love is important by any measure, respect is more frequently lacking in marriage, at least from a male perspective.  Biblically it is commanded that men love their wives, and wives should respect their husbands.  Wives value love from their husbands, and rarely lack in returning that love, but many now do so without respect, since they undervalue the significance of that aspect.  The book Love & Respect is all about that difference in gender perspectives, primarily the respect part, since the significance of love is already widely accepted.  Although back when the Bible was written, the idea of loving your wife was a new idea too, since wives were generally seen as lead servants who bore children.

Now I am not looking for a respectful servant, I actually want an emotionally intimate relationship with my wife, but after lots of conversations and reading, it seems like respect is usually the better path to that outcome.  Now in my case, I am someone who rarely lacks the respect of others, but frequently doesn't feel their love, so admittedly that general trend may not even apply to me.

I have long wondered if marriage is supposed to be, or at least originate as, a much more utilitarian relationship than we envision it now.  I have been afraid to embrace that idea, since it seems like selling out on the emotional potential, and I am someone with a recognized bias towards undervaluing the significant role emotions can play in many situations.  In previous posts, I talked about my revelation about the necessary magnitude of intimacy required for marriage.  It used to be in the past (and therefore can be): "none."  Marriages used to be arranged.  It is only recently that our culture has added the requirement for this romanticized all-consuming emotional connection.  Interesting coincidence that our divorce rate went up so much after that.

I am not saying that we should go back to having arranged marriages, or that romantic love should be ignored.  I just think that most people's expectations area a bit too high in regards to both finding potential partners and the realities of life after marriage.  If you find a spouse, I guarantee they aren't going to be perfect, and that once your married, you will eventually have conflicts with them, especially after you have kids together.  So the challenge is finding the right balance of expectations and requirements, since some people will be more compatible with each other than others, but none will be truly perfect for each other.  We are all human, but hopefully God uses marriage to bring us closer to him instead of falling farther away.  Love and respect your spouse, but don’t worship them.