As a married woman, you must have thought about what you need most in your marriage. But have you ever considered your man’s highest need in your relationship? The research found that most married women’s highest need is to feel cherished and loved whereas most married men’s highest need is to feel their wives’ trust and respect. That gives you a hint on how to care for your husband’s emotional needs: if you don’t show him enough respect, or if you often criticize him or question his serious decisions, they are prone to feel disrespected, and he can hardly feel the true love for him unless you make him feel fully respected.
If you wonder how to make your husband feel loved and respected, here are 5 tips:
1 Respect your man’s ability:
A man likes to figure things out on his own. As long as he is confident that he can have one thing done, he will strive to do it well to prove to others; the achievement in that thing can make him feel like that he conquered something and is affirmed as a real man. On the other hand, sometimes it is also fun for a man to spend some time figuring out how to accomplish one thing.
Probably you have ever got this type of experience – when you notice he was getting in trouble for something, you kindly offered to help him, but he not only refused your help but also made disgusted faces. In this case, your man doesn’t understand your kindness well; on the contrary, he interprets it as an act of interference with him, and even it may be perceived as a profound doubt as to his ability to handle things. In addition, you have to admit that your attention to him is not always benign, especially when you notice that a serious problem is plaguing him; and sometimes, you indeed give a hand to him just because of the view of distrust – you truly have no confidence in his ability to figure something out all by himself.
Therefore, in the future days, you might allow him more space and time to deal with his things on his own, rather than always feel the urgent need to get involved.
2 Respect your man’s judgment:
In a marriage, a man deeply wants a woman who can fully respect his decisions, opinion, and knowledge; briefly, he wants his woman to respect his judgment.
The majority of married men even wished their spouses wouldn’t question their judgment or argue with their judgment constantly. Surely, such their whishes are hard to carry out because individual liberation is highly advocated in modern society; and what it comes down to is, they expect their women to defer to them as much as possible.
- Don’t order him around like a kid:
A lot of married men complained that their decisions and opinion are not valued more often than not, except at their home. Some of them thought that their workmates respect their judgment more than their wives did. Generally, a man’s colleagues rarely tell him what he must do (at least, they just advise him what to do, or they collaborate with him on a solution). By contrast, in a marital relationship where a man feels he is not a respected partner, his wife is prone to make a mistake – speak to him in an imperative tone of voice and order him around like he is her child.
- Small matters can equal one big matter:
Supposing you are driving to a party but you are differing from each other on the driving route (you are sure that you can attend the party in time by following your route, and you are sure that it will waste a lot of time if you drive according to his planned route, but your man insists that he is right), ask yourself which choice is more important – his feeling trusted or being in time to the event.
Have you realized that a small act of forcing yourself to trust your man in small matters means a lot to him? Probably, in your eyes, it is not a big deal to you, and you simply take for granted that he also thinks so. But probably many trifles in your eyes are significant to him. Your common responses to those little things can indicate how much you trust him; especially if you choose to yield to his opinion and meanwhile act as he wants, this action can be interpreted as a clear sign that you have a high level of trust and respect for him as a man;
If you choose not to trust his judgment on the small stuff constantly, over time, he might think about it like that: if she is unwilling to trust me in such trivial things, will she be willing to trust me in more serious issues? If she isn’t willing to respect me in such a small thing, how can I believe that she can respect me really?
3 Show him respect in communication:
- Are you conscious of disrespectful behavior towards him in communication?
Ask yourself whether you often reject your man’s perceptions, when your views differ from each other. Maybe this rejection is unconscious sometimes. When you are out of sorts, do you find yourself ready to dispute the issues that your man has to talk about, to challenge them, or even to hear them as threats? Beyond question, such an attitude not only greatly interferes with two-way communication, but also is an act of questioning their husbands’ judgment or abilities.
Numerous wives are also quite good at directly pointing out their husbands’ failures and faults and punishing them for not being able to satisfy their needs; and when a conversation turns into an argument or fight, some women even can’t help belittling, nagging, and yelling at their men; no doubt, those actions are harmful to a marital relationship, they only amplify each other’s discontent and increase the distance between spouses. What is worse, men are prone to regard those actions as disrespectful behavior toward them. So check whether you have ever behaved like that.
- Respect him no matter how different your viewpoints are.
Although you can’t agree with his opinion all the time, you need to set up your mind to listen to him when he shares his opinion. Show him that you care about him, in spite of disagreement on something.
Actually, when it comes to daily communication with people, there is a common principle that you should abide by – Regardless of other people’s opinion, they deserve respect (you might make it a rule to not to make subjective assertions and not to be in direct contradiction to others’ sentiments). This applies to everyone, and it is even more so for your husband. Even though he is emotionally expressing his opinion about a critical issue, as long as you are open to accepting the fact – it is difficult for a person to be entirely right about a marital issue, it is still possible to have a safe conversation with your husband.
As a wife, you have the responsibility to make your man feel respected and heard. And keep in mind that every conversation can show how much you respect him.
By the way, even a little extra respect may go a long way toward harmonious communication, thereby increasing the sense of comfort and intimacy in your relationship; among all the 5 tips on how to make your husband feel loved and respected, showing respect in communication should be the most important one.
4 Respect him in public:
There seems to be an epidemic of disrespect towards married men in public, and the biggest culprit behind it is not the movies, television, or other media reports but those women who are supposed to respect their men most.
Numerous men complain that their wives like to put them down in public, criticize them in public, and question their judgment before outsiders; in their women’s eyes, they consider it as an act of teasing; but in those men’s mind, it is more like torture to them. At least, men badly want their women to be always supportive of them in public.
Be respectful to him even if he is absent:
Having understood the importance of showing respect to your man in public, you should also be sensitive to remarks about him, whether he is absent or present. As you harp on about something that puts him on the spot, your disrespect toward him becomes deeply embedded; although he may not be present at the moment, he may still feel the same as long as he is within earshot, or he hears from someone finally.
5 Respect him in your assumptions:
Probably, you have got used to reading too much into what his words and actions from time to time, and that could also cause you to jump into a negative conclusion about him when something unexpected happened in the relationship; but afterward, you were astounded that you wrongly assumed something bad about him. So have you ever realized whether those assumptions rang a bell? Anyway, you have to admit that assumptions about your man are not always true.
Furthermore, have you ever got after your man to do something? From the point of view of you as a devoted wife, repeatedly asking him the same questions like “Have you finished it?” is no big deal, but probably you ignore that there is a subtle message that is inherent in this type of questions – he needs to be prodded; more specifically, you think either that he remembers a task well but needs your prodding to do it or that he is incapable of remembering the task on his own. If you keep this up, he may interpret it as your disrespect and dissatisfaction. In such a situation, you do not have to keep on chivvying him, and you just need to be sure that he has received your reminder, and maybe he has a reason of his own for not doing it right now. After all, men just differ from women in prioritizing the task list, and they may not handle one thing because they’re still busy with other things.
When it comes to how to make your husband feel loved and respected, you should stick to the 3 principles below:
- Respect should be mutual:
Understandably, happy marriage means a couple should love each other. If a person loves someone who doesn’t love him/her back, then the relationship is hard to sustain. For a married couple, the feelings have to be mutual. And the same applies to respect. If only a woman respects her man but he doesn’t respect her back, the relationship is unhealthy because the couple is trapped in a power struggle. Ultimately, power ends up being concentrated in the party who doesn’t give respect to the other one. In a word, respect should go both ways.
- Respect should be habitual:
Generally, couples who newly got married believe that they will still love each other even though their married life faces a rude shock in the future. Unfortunately, the feeling of falling in love is not constant, it can come and go. Solid couples can realize this; gradually they understand that when they get along with each other, their actions should not be based on something ephemeral like the feeling of deeply falling in love. Instead, they know it is still necessary to act lovingly towards their partners even though they do not have the feeling of love at the moment. And the same goes for respect too. The feeling of admiration towards your man comes and goes – sometimes you feel your man is amazing, but sometimes you wonder why you have such a man.
Surely, not all the things that he does are respectable. Anyway, most of the time, you should treat him in a manner that shows your respect. Like love, showing respect should be a habit.
- Respect is not unconditional, but you should aspire to respect him:
In reality, most love relationship is conditional. It is quite difficult for one person to love the other one no matter what. A primary reason for why one person loves someone is that the person conforms to his/her expectations. As we all know, parents are willing to give unconditional love to their children. Even though their children disappoint them from time to time, they don’t stop loving them. And it would also be wonderful if one spouse could get love like that from the other one. However, it is almost impossible. For example, if your man disappoints you by having an extramarital affair, you have the right to stop loving him. Obviously, your love has limits in this long-term relationship. And the same goes for respect.
As explained above, respect is not completely unconditional in a marital relationship. You can choose to stop showing respect to your man if he cheats or lies.
However, most husbands are not cheats or liars, they are good guys who are doing their best for their women although their performance can’t measure up to their women’s expectations all the time. And respect should be viewed as an essential condition of a long term relationship. In other words, you should not use respect as a reward for your man’s good behavior; and meanwhile, you should also not withdraw your respect for him to punish him when he makes small mistakes, or when he fails to live up to your expectation in a certain field. Hence, you might let him know that you will try to respect him as the one you love. Of course, he should also promise to treat you the same way.
The final word:
Feeling respected is one of the major needs of a husband in his marriage. Not expressing this need does not mean he does not want it; on the contrary, your husband secretly and deeply desires for your respect.
No doubt, you need to make constant efforts to make your husband feel loved and respected in your married life. What is more, in order to make him feel loved, you should let him feel respected first.
Furthermore, he never wants you to give him respect just because you have pity on him, and he just wants to earn respect from you. So when you are trying to show him your respect, make sure to let him realize that he deserves to win your respect.
For more tips about how to make your husband feel loved and respected, you might go on to watch the video below to follow the comprehensive mariage-saving guidance that is offered by Brad Browning, a marriage coach with 12+ years of experience:
Maybe, you are also interested in the related posts below:
Is respect important to a man – How to respect your husband.
What a man wants most from a woman – A man needs to feel respected.
10 tips on how to boost your husband’s ego – stroke his ego.
How to deal with your man’s ego – The male ego in marriage.
What every husband needs from his wife – A husband’s basic needs.