Love And Respect by Emerson Eggerichs Part Eight

Installment #8 Love & Respect

Eggerichs talks about "She Worries about being a Hypocrite; He Complains, "I get no respect." (pg 150 LP) He begins this talking about a woman whose husband was supposedly a Christian but eventually "got into an affair and became an alcoholic, ruining his health" and that "many wives find themselves in similar situations...I'm not asking their wives to be hypocrites...this isn't about feelings." He talks about it being ok that the wife says he is unloving and needing to change but that she still needs to respect him. Ok, so I have to ask about this definition of respect. What is Eggerichs exactly talking about when he says "respect." If it's as Norwood explains in Women Who Love Too Much, I can get on board, but if this is some nebulous command for her to ensmallinate herself-no. Absolutely not. And I lean to thinking that Eggerichs means to ensmallinate because of his previous definitions and examples. He says "so showing him respect seems phony." (pg 153) Ensmallination is phony. Real respect as outlined by Norwood in Women Who Love Too Much is not.

Eggerichs says "Obeying God's Word does not make a wife a powerless hypocrite." (pg 154) Indeed. But it is the definition of respect that is an issue here. Ensmallinating yourself makes you a powerless hypocrite. True respect such as refusing to lie for someone and act like his mother, thereby respecting his manhood, does not.

Ensmallinating is basically a form of co-dependency. (I tend to steer away from that word a bit because it has been used as a weapon sometimes, accusing women who are in abusive relationships as co-dependent when they may or may not be.) If the end result of the "respect" that is practiced makes a woman smaller, makes her cow-tow, second class and less than, that is ensmallination. If the end result of the "respect" that is practiced is empowering and creates accountability, that is, in my opinion, what is godly respect.

I keep seeing examples of ensmallination in Love and Respect. Aside from the many I have already listed, on page 155 a woman tells her "testimony" of how her "respecting" her husband got him to give her things and do things for her. This can be a form of manipulation.

Eggerichs begins (at last) to talk about how men can love their wives. On page 159 he says "I did not say -Sarah, you are a disrespectful black widow spider using your venom to devour me.- Personal attacks never, ever work with anybody." He then goes on to use these words to describe women's actions "You are receiving....verbal deathblows." (pg 156) "You be the mature one", "You take the verbal deathblows. It will be hard and even humiliating." "Firing her venomous little darts." (pg 165) It's hard to look past the disparaging words he uses about women's actions because I sense a level of contempt for women in them.

Here he says something that seems fitting "Sometimes I needed to grow up and not personalize things Sarah did or said as "disrespect." (pg 159) So, he actually admits that this is a possibility. Giving the temperature to his own relationship, he says "Sarah and I can get nasty with each other...get stubborn and pout....raise our voices...give an evil glare...stomp out of the room...sometimes with gusto!" (pg 161) Not "used to do this before we discovered Love and Respect." Currently. When he was writing the book.

This writing is the copyright of Lynne Johnson-Yohnk and was posted with her permission. It was originally posted on her Paradigm Shift Page. Additional articles may be viewed here.

Page added December 25, 2025

Shop at our Amazon store! This website is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com.