Two speakers explain how disrespect triggers resentment in marriages, especially for men. They trace the cycle of contempt and defensiveness, then show how respectful language restores confidence and connection. Awareness of your own speech patterns is the first step to breaking the pattern.
One of the biggest triggers for a man is feeling disrespected. And inside of a marriage that's failing or struggling, typically the guy feels devalued, disrespected, and he doesn't feel admired by his wife. This is why so many guys are just resentful and ready to throw in the towel on their marriage. I don't wanna say this. A lot of times this is because the guy personalizes all of it. He can't see how his wife externalizes, right? Her own pain that she isn't fully able to express to him. Why? Because of cycles of neglect, cycles of invalidation, cycles of defensiveness, where basically both of them don't listen to one another. They try to share how they feel, and then the other person says, well, that's not true, or you shouldn't feel like that. And that creates these cycles where instead of talking about the behaviors that we want to change, we're talking about the person. So we're attacking someone's character rather than attacking the behavioral patterns and the toxic cycles that are destroying the marriage. This is why, right, we won't have a healthy marriage until we learn how to show one another respect. Respect is the key for a man, right? The true way to love a man is to honor him and respect him. And when guys don't feel respected, they don't feel loved. And I know my wife has a great perspective on this. So babe, I'd love you, love for you to share on this.
Yeah, I always talk about how a man needs to be respected and a woman needs to be loved, and that is like a huge foundational thing in a marriage. Um, but I think a lot of women are so quick to speak negatively and just get into like nasty talk with their husband. And even I do this, and you know, sometimes you— it's like a habit and you don't even realize you're doing it. And maybe, um, you know, your parents did it when you were kids, and it's just so easy to just kind of get into that nasty, like, you know, talk. And I think a lot of, a lot of women do it. And, um, you know, the tongue has so much power. You know, God spoke everything in existence into existence with a word.
Oof, tell them, babe.
So our words are so powerful and how we say things. And I think like what, you know, how to overcome this is really to just have awareness because a lot of times I think it's just such habitual and we don't even notice that we're doing it sometimes. So I think to have awareness around it and to put yourself, put yourself as if you're a fly on the wall or another person in the room And to have that awareness of how you're coming off and how you're sounding is like the first step to kind of overcoming that and improving your relationship because, you know, a man needs to be respected and we need to watch our words.
And a man can't be disrespected into becoming respectful, right? Respectable. You can't disrespect a man into becoming respectable. And also, how many people that speak this way or are contemptuous in general, which means they're disrespectful or have disdain or contempt towards their partner, they do this because they feel like it's the only way that they could be heard. Check it out. People can hear you without you being disrespectful. You don't have to be disrespectful to get your point across. In fact, it's 10 times more powerful when you communicate with confidence and composure and love, right? Love always wins. Communicating in love, right? Learning how to do that and not to not always— sometimes we feel like that's the only way people are gonna listen, right? And a lot of times that's because how we— that's how we grew up. We grew up in environments where if we didn't get frustrated or we didn't get angry or if we didn't create that energy, then nobody would pay attention or wouldn't take what we said seriously.
And watch how much your husband grows and who he becomes and what he achieves when you speak life over him, when you believe in him, when you let him know like who you believe him to be, that is who he will become.
Wow, that's powerful. Wow. Yeah, I can tell you, you know, wives don't realize that they have the power more than any other person in that— in their husband's life to build his self-confidence, to build his self-worth, build his self-esteem, or to completely tear it down.
