R-E-S-P-E-C-T

I heard this great K-Love spot while driving around on Sunday where this husband and wife are talking and he pronounces salmon like “sall-mon” and the wife starts ridiculing him, like “sall-mon? Isn’t it supposed to be sa-mon? What, was 3rd grade like the hardest year of your life or something?”

Then a female voiceover comes on explaining how destructive it is when women do this. Men often want respect more than they want love. Women try and give men love the way they want to be loved themselves, but what men really need is respect. Especially in public. So when women belittle or disrespect men it destroys them.

I highly applaud this radio spot. Way to go, K-Love. Clap clap clap. Because it is 100% true. Men absolutely need respect from their wives. I sometimes hear wives say, well, how can I respect my husband if he doesn’t merit it? And there’s some validity to that. I just think that wives shouldn’t *disrespect* their husbands. Like with belittling or mocking. That’s more than just not respecting, it’s actively disrespecting. And it’s destructive.

And it can be subtle how that happens; I don’t think people are always aware of it. I was talking about someone with this lately who brought up something interesting: it’s kind of like race issues. Minority races can make fun of the race in power, but not the reverse. Similarly, there’s kind of this subtle culture where it’s OK for wives to make fun of their husbands in public, saying how e.g. they can’t take care of themselves or just subtly treating them like children. Whereas the reverse is decidedly not OK.

I’m against this. Not because it’s unfair, I could care less about that. It’s just, women need to know the effect this has. One, on their men. It’s totally demoralizing and emasculating. Two, on other people. It sets a *culture* where it’s OK for everyone to belittle men, treat them like children. And that’s a culture in which it’s impossible for men to lead. Impossible.

I don’t want to be super thin-skinned about this. It’s obviously OK to joke around. It’s just, given how much men need respect, everything, including joking, needs to be in a culture of respect. And better to err on joking too little than joking too much. I feel very strongly about this.