Reviews
Love and Respect: The Love She Most Desires; The Respect He Desperately Needs by Emerson Eggerichs
glitterbomb47's review
3.0
3.5 stars. I skimmed the repetitive first half and skipped the chapters on being a good husband. The chapters on how to show unconditional respect to one's husband were very interesting and useful.
lingfish7's review
medium-paced
1.0
⭐️
📖🎧Imagine a book where a boomer, white, male, conservative Christian counselor and pastor mansplains why every problem in marriage starts with the wife “disrespecting her husband.” Which is of course sexist code for “disobey and neglect to cater to the fragile male ego.” This is that book. This book is 100% mojo-dojo-casa-house patriarchy Ken.
What Emerson really means when he says “unconditional respect”:
- Unquestioning obedience
- Toxic positivity
- Boosting the male ego
- Conditional love
- Transactional love
- Submission to the husband
- The patriarchy
What Emerson really means when he says “contempt”:
- negative/constructive feedback
- initiating a conflict
- any negative emotion
- criticizing
- the wife voicing her frustrations
- the wife’s “emotional reaction” to the husband’s lack of love
- anger in any form (healthy or unhealthy)
- anything that isn’t explicitly catering to the male ego
His language and word choice consistently puts down women but excuses men’s behavior:
- Women are “contemptuous” towards their husbands, but husbands merely have “unloving tendencies”
- The husband always has good-will towards their wives but the Emerson never assumes the wife has good-will towards the husband
- Wives speak “venomous words” to their husbands but husbands are just “forgetful” and misunderstood
- Wives “perceive” husbands to be unloving, but they’re not actually unloving
- Husbands must learn to manage women who are “sensitive creatures.” Women’s sensitivity is beneficial when it’s used to wait on her husband hand and foot while he is sick but it’s a “weakness” when “it causes her to believe” that her husband is closed off to her emotionally.
- Men can sometimes be “harsh” when they speak but when women speak in anger it’s suddenly “contempt”
Toxic advice for abusive situations:
- He encourages women whose husbands are having an affair to “win them back” by showing them respect.
- He claims that this method of showing respect always works, and neglects to mention if it works when husbands are beating their wives or consumed by alcoholism, etc.
- The men in more than half of his examples are emotionally abusive to their wives and yet he cuts all of these men so much slack by saying it’s just how men were designed by God. You know, to stonewall every argument and withhold affection and love from their wives. “God didn’t make us naturally loving.”
He apologizes to his wife without accepting responsibility for being unloving, instead he says “I’m sorry you perceived me as unloving” and “I’m sorry for coming across so unlovingly.”
He excuses stonewalling as something that men just “do.” But contempt from the wives are something women need to stop. But John Gottman says that both are equally damaging to relationships.
His acronym of six key important advice for wives to understand how to respect their husbands just gives away his blatant misogyny:
- Conquest
- Hierarchy
- Authority
- Insight
- Relationship
- Sexuality
This kind of hierarchical, oppression-oriented thinking has real, negative effects on society. It trains women to bow to abusive men and willingly submit to their “headship” regardless if it hurts them in the process. It trains men to view sex and submission from women as something they deserve and worthy of punishment if they don’t get. The emphasis in this book continually orders women to unconditionally serve their husbands and embrace toxic behavior. It also teaches them that if they don’t bow to their husbands then they won’t receive love from them. Below are quotes and summaries of choice passages that are especially shocking and harmful.
Ridiculous things:
- He literally says if a man steps foot in a kitchen and talks to his wife it’s not unmanly but if he sips on cappuccinos in coffee shops sitting across from his wife he’s become a woman?!
- He thinks that all men are fearful of their wives trying to control them. And that if a women is asking their husband to be emotionally close to her that husbands assume it’s to control him.
- He says marriages “need conflict to keep the passion there.”
- He interprets Genesis in such a sexist way that he claims Adam wasn’t “deceived” and that Adam “disobeyed” because he listened to his wife. He uses this sexist logic to essentially say that women are more easily deceived and that’s why men should be the decision makers in the household.
- He randomly fat shames women by saying that wives should listen to their husbands advice when they comment on their wives weight and needing to lose it. Just another way we see women be objectified by this author. This thinking implies that women need to have a certain body type and weight to receive love from their husbands. He also makes an off base comment that the husbands are “usually thinner” than the wives.
- Men see the world through “blue sunglasses” and hear their wives with “blue hearing aids” while wives see their world through “pink sunglasses” and hear their husbands with “pink hearing aids.” He uses this terribly trite and cringy metaphor in every chapter.
Sexuality
- He starts out the sex chapter with a woman whose husband doesn’t meet her emotional needs and the “mature” thing for her to do is “minister to her husband sexually” even though she doesn’t feel emotionally loved. This is not healthy; this is obligation sex.
- He always refers to sex as a man’s “need” instead of desire, and equates the husband’s “sexual need” to the woman’s “emotional need.” And that men are “grateful when their wife takes care of that need.”
- “Sex is symbolic of his deeper need for respect.”
- “The wife has a need for emotional release… The husband has a need for physical release.”
- He says that if a wife refuses his request, it signals to him that she doesn’t care about his sexual need. What a fragile male ego!
- “Husbands, particularly, come under satanic attack when deprived of sexual release.”
- One example was a woman who hadn’t had sex with her husbands in 7 days and her mother responded, “Why would you deprive him of something that takes such a short amount of time and makes him so happy?”
- “Men are often lured into affairs because they are sexually deprived at home. A man who strays is usually given total blame for his affair, but in many cases he is the victim of temptation that his wife helped bring upon him.”
- “A dose of respect beats a dose of viagra any day.”
- In reference to a wife whose husband cheated on her: “I’m not blaming her, but she’s not blameless.”
- “Your husband has a need in this area that you don’t have. When you shame him, punish him, deprive him, he feels dishonored for who he is.”
- He diminishes and disregards the trauma of women who have been sexually abused by telling them explicitly that they should have obligation sex with their husbands “unto Jesus Christ.” I’m sorry, Jesus does not condone this abuse, lack of compassion and consent.
“Men are commanded to love because they don’t love naturally. On the other side, women are commanded to respect because they don’t respect naturally. If the love and respect connection is to make sense and work in a marriage, the wife in particular, must conquer any feelings about her husband needing to earn her respect.” (chapter 4)
“That always works if she keeps her mouth shut” (the context doesn’t make this sentence any better, it’s just sexist)
“A man has much more ability to control his reactions… he may be deeply pained but he shoves it into a compartment in his mind.”
“There is another way to get his love, and the Bible tells you what it is. Your quiet and respectful behavior will win him. This is the key to empowerment: you get what you want by giving him what he wants.”
“It was Eve, not Adam who was deceived.”
“Thank you for helping me see how fragile the male ego can be.” (A woman whose husband had an affair)
“Your spouse is an irritant.”
alicia_joy's review
Negative stars. Just to be clear, I read this awful book for research purposes only.
a_wienke's review
fast-paced
This is the worst book that I have ever read. The author (despite his claims to the contrary and to just be following the Bible) comes across as a mega-misogynist. Despite trying to look balanced, the majority of the advise is directed at women, telling them to unconditionally respect (oxymoron if I ever heard one - Eggerich's paragraphs about how it is not an oxymoron are not at all compelling) their husbands (men are told to unconditionally love their wives). Also telling women not to deny their husbands sexual intimacy; even if they are tired or not in the mood.
The book is full of reductivism - women want love, men want respect; both have their ways of encoding things (through blue and pink goggles and hearing aids) and communication is difficult if not impossible. It is even more infuriating to see the snippets of letters from people who have had the misfortune of attending one of his seminars. Often they are women, and came to the realization that they have been selfish, unloving, disrespectful, etc. and have been transformed by becoming respectful submissive wives (who know their place). It astounded me how many of these letters alluded to a lengthy marriage and they only started talking about issues now.
I could go on and on. I will wrap this up by saying normally I donate or sell books I don't want to hold onto. The messages contained in this book are so damaging, I can't in good conscience do this. Instead, I will recycle it - hopefully it will be turned into something that will be of greater benefit to humanity, like toilet paper.
The book is full of reductivism - women want love, men want respect; both have their ways of encoding things (through blue and pink goggles and hearing aids) and communication is difficult if not impossible. It is even more infuriating to see the snippets of letters from people who have had the misfortune of attending one of his seminars. Often they are women, and came to the realization that they have been selfish, unloving, disrespectful, etc. and have been transformed by becoming respectful submissive wives (who know their place). It astounded me how many of these letters alluded to a lengthy marriage and they only started talking about issues now.
I could go on and on. I will wrap this up by saying normally I donate or sell books I don't want to hold onto. The messages contained in this book are so damaging, I can't in good conscience do this. Instead, I will recycle it - hopefully it will be turned into something that will be of greater benefit to humanity, like toilet paper.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Sexual content, Religious bigotry, Sexism, Misogyny, and Toxic relationship
jesssika's review
2.0
Men need to learn how to better show their love and affection for their wives. Women need to show better respect for their husbands and the role they have in the marraige relationship. This is the premise for the book. I was highly excited to get a book that was supposed to teach me more about respect and my husband more about love. And yet, it became mostly a method and perspective of how a woman mostly whines and nags. The descriptions used to illustrate a woman in this book are in some cases highly offensive. And when it says that some instances of the mans behavior is a woman's fault, I said, ok..now repeat that for the man. But it never did. There were no derogatory descriptions of a mans behavior but plenty for women. It seems highly one-sided. The premise is great, the scripture is good, but the execution and delivery is terrible.
I've read tons of reviews on this book before choosing to get it anyway. And for those who've used another's review to question their beliefs and ability to even give an opinion on the book is appalling. I don't believe they are even trying to give the respect that this book taught. This book needed to have less derogatory descriptions of women and more depth on actual causes to these actions by BOTH men and women as opposed to being so fully lopsided. It needs more options of to do's for people to apply rather than scenarios of things gone wrong. It boasted to tell of the love women need and the respect men deserve and it failed to deliver this.
I've read tons of reviews on this book before choosing to get it anyway. And for those who've used another's review to question their beliefs and ability to even give an opinion on the book is appalling. I don't believe they are even trying to give the respect that this book taught. This book needed to have less derogatory descriptions of women and more depth on actual causes to these actions by BOTH men and women as opposed to being so fully lopsided. It needs more options of to do's for people to apply rather than scenarios of things gone wrong. It boasted to tell of the love women need and the respect men deserve and it failed to deliver this.