How to Love After You Have Already Lost Respect
In 2018, there was no respect in my marriage. I lost respect for my husband after 9 years of one failed expectation after the other. I lost my husband’s respect after my “big reveal,” a years long emotional affair that I disclosed more than 4 years after it already ended.
As the young folk say, “we were cooked.”
My husband, a devout Christian and Bible scholar, doubled down on his commitment to do the right thing according to his religious beliefs. I, however, wanted nothing to do with religion. I was tired of checklists. I was nauseated by routines and predictable emptiness.
I was even willing to go through a divorce if that meant I could finally live free from faking.
We were faking our marriage. From outside looking in, we were together, and TIME was the evidence that somehow marriage was working.
But it wasn’t.
We were faking intimacy. I showed up out of a religious duty, and veiled warnings from the teachings of Apostle Paul about all the bad things that happen when wives withhold sex from their husbands.
We were faking family. We spent more time alone in our respective corners of the house. He secretly resented me. And I openly despised him. There was a standing agreement to avoid discussing things that were deeper than current events. Our son was growing old enough to understand something was truly wrong with mommy and daddy.
In 2018, I decided to “go for broke.” My mom recently passed away. She was my primary sounding board who helped me keep things in perspective whenever my emotions and hormones were raging. Later that year, my baby brother, Aaron, died suddenly and without advance opportunity to prepare.
Life simply hurt too much to continue holding on to our dead marriage. I was literally in a crisis of faith. I was suddenly totally alone. And I turned to the only source of sanity I had left—the Bible.
I spoke to my Heavenly Father and told Him that if this Bible did not start making sense of all of my pain, then I was ready to just let it go. I was ready to totally walk away from faith. I told Him that if I could not be honest with Him, then life was only a recurring nightmare that I’d rather stop participating in.
And then it happened—
I made a connection. Something felt REAL. And I picked up the details of a small, but clear instruction: HONOR.
At the time I did not fully understand the implications. I just heard the word, “honor.” I began to meditate on the word. I began to question my choices against the word. Am I being honorable? Am I honoring the promises I made when I became a mother? A wife?
Honor became my focal point because I had nothing else to anchor my choices to. My emotions had already failed me. In fact, my newfound relationship with honor led me to the conscious awareness that I actually hated my husband.
Yikes.
But I stayed on the path. Every single day, I chose honor. I chose to be respectful, even when I did not like my husband’s behavior. I chose to remain honorable, even though my needs were not met in my marriage. I chose to honor myself by taking care of my own needs that were solely or primarily my responsibility. I took a closer and tougher look at my own foolishness and found a thousand different ways that I was thinking, feeling, and behaving contrary to honor.
And what I did not know at the time was that I was growing an “honor garden.” I did not know that this one decision would lead to an overwhelming abundance of connection, laughter, and friendship that we never had on the cracked foundation of our relationship.
You see, honor is a two-sided coin. It is a seed of respect that you sew into the heart of your relationships. You sew this seed regardless of what the other person says or does. You keep placing a seed of respect, one day at a time. You sew it when your heart is broken. You sew it when you are lonely and afraid. You chose honor each and every day when it seems like all of the conditions are actually against you.
Because the other side of honor is a harvest. It is a bounty that is bigger than you could ever imagine. And the reason the bounty is so enormous is because it is Heaven’s reward for the courage, self-discipline, and humility it cost you to sew respect during your famine. Our Heavenly Father knows the pain of our heartbreak. He knows how we distract or numb ourselves from what frightens us or makes us feel guilty or ashamed.
So when we choose respect over revenge…
When we choose kindness over malice…
When we choose peace over conflict…
The Most High rewards us abundantly as long as we do not faint, that we continue doing well…that we refuse to quit. Heaven’s reward comes back to us as an investment boom bigger than we could ever accomplish by taking matters into our own hands.
One day, I looked up, and did not recognize my husband. His pride was not as prominent as it had been. He was becoming more intentional towards me—more aware. He began seeking out my thoughts and opinions, and was more careful how he responded, no longer dismissive or condescending.
Who was this man????
I had become so busy focusing on my little honor seeds, I had not taken the time to look behind me. Seeds that I began sewing years ago had sprouted into large, beautiful plants, heavy with fruit. And the craziest part about this new awareness was that I wanted to be surprised but really could not be.
Because honor is a law. In our modern culture, honor is not a topic of conversation the way it was in the old days. Instead, everyone demands respect. And then we exercise our options when we feel disrespected. But honor is counterculture. It is what you give even when you have not already received it. And when the harvest comes in, it is a bumper crop that is so large, you have to literally start giving it away because its more than you can enjoy by yourself.
That is how I loved my husband after he lost my respect. After I lost his. And this is the exact reason why today, even our child can FEEL the love and acceptance in our home between his parents. This is why I give 100% credit to legal insights and legal training for accomplishing what no couple’s counseling ever could in our marriage.
I always encourage couples to get a therapist. But the families who find me have already tried that path and failed miserably. The wives who find me complain that their husbands are unwilling to even try. The husbands who find me are willing to do whatever it takes to see their wives smile again. And I’m here to tell you that if you are my kind of people, then The Law of Honor is where I placed all my bets. And I’m willing to believe it will deliver for you, too.
Check out this video where I shared my very first legal training on this topic that has helped me and other marriages reverse cycles of conflict and find friendship.
To your future,
Char
