Hi. My Name Is Rachel...

It's true what they say about men and women.  Maybe men aren't from Mars, and women aren't from Venus (although it makes for a close shave), but the two counterparts of humanity are so different they may as well be on different sides of the universe!

For instance, something Morrel says to me, or something I say to him may be the same word or phrase, but we understand it completely opposite.  I'm not one to steal, so I won't.  I do very much like a book called Love & Respect, though, so I will just paraphrase a great example.  
He says: " I have nothing to wear!" (jerking a hanger off the closet rod).  What he's really saying: "You never do any laundry!"

I say: "I have nothing to wear!" (throwing clothes into the floor from the dresser).  What I really mean:  "I'm so fat nothing fits!"

Bottom line is we speak a different language, women and men.  Something to do with the chromosomes that make us who we are also makes us understand things in a certain way.  This is an area I have had to grow in lately.  I'd say in the last 2 years God has opened my eyes to my failures as a wife, and strengthened me enough to implement change.  It is important to make a change when you realize you can do better.  

"Hi.  My name is Rachel, and I disrespect my husband."  There, I said it.  The first step to fixing a problem is admitting you have one.  Notice I didn't say "I do not respect my husband".  The fact is that I do respect him--very much.  That doesn't change the fact that I very often disrespect him.  By the words I say, the way I say them, the gestures I make, and the general things I do I can paint a shade of harmony in my marriage, or I can paint the red of anger.  And when Papa ain't happy, ain't nobody happy (yea, that works both ways as well).

It is something that men feel but rarely say:   I NEED RESPECT!  
It's something women feel, but rarely say:  I RESPECT YOU!  

I decided that it was time to tell my husband that I respect him.  It's funny that when I started thinking about respect and how I respect him I was perplexed, because I knew I did respect him, but I didn't rightly know for what.  So I used a white board we have on our refrigerator and started writing him notes everyday or every other day--reasons why I respect him.  It was something he did that day, or maybe around that time, or something big that just blew me away.  It's funny, the more I thought about it, the more reasons I came up with to respect my husband.  Over time I realized that there was very little reason to disrespect him, and that even the slightest disrespect was unloving.  

Unloving.

Now there's a term a woman can understand.  I am genetically made up to nurture and love everyone, but by showing this disrespect for my husband, I was failing to show him love.  That is a big pill to swallow for a wife.  You never want to realize that you aren't loving toward your husband.  Because we know how it feels to be treated "unloving", and it hurts.  The fact of the matter is, men need to feel respected and women need to feel loved.  

Paul knew this fact almost 2000 years ago when he wrote in a letter to the Ephesians:  "Nevertheless let each one of you in particular so love his own wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband" (5:33).  
I pray every marriage can be strengthened by this realization, that wives' eyes will be opened to this revelation that has been available to us all for centuries in scripture that we have failed to read.  Just think about how much you need to feel loved.  That is how much your husband needs to feel respected.