How did people fall for Love & Respect?
Emerson Eggerichs’ 2004 best-selling marriage book is honestly one of the worst books I’ve ever read. It’s badly researched. It messed up stats. It states bizarre opinions as if they are common sense. It gets the Bible wrong.
And it gives terrible advice that can obviously hurt marriages. It even scored 0/48 on our healthy sexuality rubric!
But when we first starting looking at it in 2019, it was still the most-used marriage study in North American churches.
Why?
That’s the question we’re answering in part 2 of our Love & Respect deep dive!
Rebecca, Joanna, and Connor have been so busy behind the scenes for months creating this documentary-style 3 part series delving into Love & Respect–what it says; the claims it makes; how it got big; and the effect it’s had.
Part 1 launched last Thursday, and part 2 is out today for you to watch!
In it, Rebecca’s looking at all the things that Love & Respect is supposedly based on, and showing how none of them hold up to scrutiny:
- That it’s Emerson Eggerichs’ totally unique, never-been-taught-before idea
- That it’s based in research
- That it’s biblical (even though he edits the Bible!)
So why did it get popular? Why were Christians so eager to believe it anyway and overlook the blatant errors? That’s the big question we’re answering in this episode!
And Rebecca brings some pretty clear ideas (and you’ll love my spit-take too).
As I’ve been thinking about both episodes 1 and 2 together, one thing really stands out to me:
Emerson Eggerichs’ idea of marriage gives men the title of leader with none of the responsibility
And I think this is what men liked about it. This is why Focus on the Family and pastors embraced it. And as Rebecca showed in episode 1 with her interview with Dr. Andrew Bauman, this appeals to men who aren’t mature and aren’t willing to deal with their stuff.
Because let’s think this through: in Eggerichs’ conception, men make the final decisions. Men are in authority. Men get to provide. They don’t have to do housework or engage emotionally with their wives; they just have to provide a paycheck. And then she has to pave the way to make life super easy for him.
Any time she makes him feel a feeling he doesn’t like, it means she’s in the wrong and she’s being disrespectful (even if he’s just feeling badly for forgetting her birthday–it’s still her fault).
So we know marriage is good when husbands never ever feel confronted about anything and so never feel badly about anything.
But that’s not leadership.
Leadership is not escaping accountability or never having to be responsible for your actions. Leadership is having the maturity to accept consequences and take responsibility and initiative for the things in front of you.
In Eggerichs’ mind, men get to be “leaders”, by which we mean they can never be questioned and they get to do what they want (ie. make all decisions).
But it’s wives who have to make sure he’s never upset. It’s wives who have to smooth over all problems in the marriage. It’s wives who have to help him emotionally regulate, because he can’t do it on his own.
It’s wives who have to have sex on demand, even when they get nothing out of it, to soothe him.
It’s wives who are parenting their husbands who aren’t able to cope with everyday life on their own.
The complementarian world has turned the idea of leadership on its head.
They stress the status of leader rather than the actions of it.
A leader gets to decide make decisions, and so shouldn’t be questioned.
Complementarians have decided this is what leadership is. In so doing, they ignore the actual components of leadership. To them, leadership means never having to be questioned, and having others in the family adapt to your will and preferences.
But that’s not acting as a leader. That’s receiving the benefits of being a despot.
The one doing the actual leading? The wife, who is keeping track of all the aspects of the family, juggling everything, and making sure that everyone is emotionally regulated. She’s the one who is smoothing everything out for the husband. She’s the one actually keeping the family going and keeping him soothed. She’s keeping track of his moods and trying to make sure he stays okay. She’s the one thinking about the needs of the family. She’s the one sacrificing and taking initiative.
He gets the performative benefits of his higher status; she bears all the responsibility.
Complementarian books tend to take this Love & Respect approach to leadership.
They may not all do it as blatantly as Love & Respect, but this is the hallmark. Men get to decide what they want and escape any negative confrontation; women have to center the husband and do all they can to make his life run smoothly.
That’s a big drug for men who don’t want to deal with their stuff, as we talk about in episode 1. And it caught on to the evangelical zeitgeist because it fed what we already thought about gender relations, and because it spoke into a community that wasn’t used to critical thinking, as we talk about in episode 2, that launches today!
If we want to stop this kind of thinking about marriage, we have to deal with it at the root. And that’s what we’re doing in this docuseries about Love & Respect.
So please–watch the videos (the last one will be out soon too!).
Help us get the word out about our Love & Respect series!
- Like and comment on the video–even if it’s a short comment! It feeds engagement and the algorithm!
- If you see social media posts and reels about the series, like and comment there too!
- Share the video or our posts on your own social media feed.
- Think of THREE friends/relatives who would like it, and send them the link to episode 1 so they can get started!
Again, here are both videos that are out now!
Did you have a favourite moment from either of the first two videos? Let me know in the comments!
Something else that I find odd about this paradigm. If you haven’t actually earned the respect then isn’t it actually just patronizing and keeping people away from developing as a person? How is this considered honorable? It feels like the equivalent to throwing a fight to make somebody feel like they are capable. Where is the honor in that? This does not make me think Q’apla this makes me think you don’t take me seriously.
Exactly! It’s like enabling immaturity.
Exactly and see as someone who understands that everybody has a part of them that genuinely wants to be admired but admired genuinely I hate it because it feels like I am being set up to fail which to me is one of the most cruel things you can do to somebody. You also talk about seeing the conclusion and basing things off of that. See that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. If humans didn’t do that we would have died out a long time ago because when you see oh this person died because he ate this therefore don’t touch this the logic may not necessarily be sound such as how it was actually that tomato was served on lead that was killing people, but it exist for a reason and that reason is I want the people I live with not to die. I also understand that the fear of the outsider also actually has a time and place. You wouldn’t want somebody you know is a crackhead coming into your house and so if you found them in your house you would think how the hell did you get into my house did you break in did you lie to somebody telling them you could be trusted get out of my house.
I always felt like the church was forcing me to submit to an oversized, tantrum-throwing toddler. They taught me to enable him, that I was displeasing God if I didn’t. He didn’t grow, only got worse with age, and I got destroyed little by little over the decades. Now I’m free and flourishing!
Not “felt”, WERE.
Look at the similar dynamic in X_Treme Islam like the Taliban.
And the type of men and women that dynamic produces.
I’m so glad! I remember a bit of your journey. I’m glad it’s better now!
Thanks for saying this so clearly. I lived this horror and was so traumatized that I couldn’t find the words to express the ridiculousness of how everyone was telling us to live. Also, let’s never lose sight of the threats behind this teaching. If you don’t believe and follow this advice, you are disobeying God Himself, and at the very least you’ll miss out on blessings and at the worst you will go to hell. That is such horrific manipulation of women who genuinely love God and are coming to pastors hoping to learn more.
It is a relief to my soul to hear this being talked about out loud in clearly stated and backed points. My brain can calm down and stop trying to find the words – the truth is setting us free!
I ended up having massive panic attacks over this very issue. I was terrified of burning in hell forever if I didn’t obey the monster I married. Worse still, he KNEW how scared of him I was, and he loved it. His eyes would gleam with joy while he was tormenting me. And somehow the church blamed the abuse on me and never held him accountable, because if I was being a godly wife then my husband would treat me better. Nobody should live like that!
Jesus was all about protecting the vulnerable, and that is God’s heart. These church leaders will have some kind of reckoning when they have to account for their actions. How they don’t see that, as followers of God, I have never understood.
“Worse still, he KNEW how scared of him I was, and he loved it. His eyes would gleam with joy while he was tormenting me.”
SADISM in the original meaning of the word.
Your Pain WAS His Pleasure.
I think this whole thing is wrapped up in complementarianism. A lot of men who believe in hierarchy see their wife’s pain as part of the picture and a benefit. Remember Doug Wilson saying sex can’t be egalitarian, and that it has to be a man conquering his wife? That sounds like a pain fetish to me.
Ma’am that sounds like a sadist as in Marquis de Sade not a person who likes the idea of I want people to feel intense sensations. I am glad you are not being abused anymore.
” If you don’t believe and follow this advice, you are disobeying God Himself, and at the very least you’ll miss out on blessings and at the worst you will go to hell.”
Welcome to the world of Weaponized SCRIPTURE(TM).
When you’ve had it used on you, you will never be able to really trust God, the Bible, or anything either of them say.
And some of the damage is permanent.
Yes, I’ve talked to so many people who want to love Jesus but who just can’t handle any Scripture at all because it’s been so weaponized.
I’m so glad! That was our prayer for this series too!
And I think the ridiculousness of the whole thing just needed to be laid out for everyone. It is ridiculous, and if people still hold to it–that says a lot about them.
So Emerson Eggerich stole his idea from a woman and never credited her. Why am I not surprised?
Shh!!! We’re not supposed to actually say out loud that the emperor has no clothes!
I think it’s not only because women (and their ideas, even their published ideas) are there to serve the men — so of course he can just steal her idea and take credit for it — I think it’s also because, in my admittedly limited experience, women are simply invisible to patriarchal men. They do not see us. They do not hear us. So in his mind, this may truly have been his own idea because when a woman speaks, all these men hear is “Mwa, mwa, mwa” and they dismiss it.
I think this is a big part of it indeed.
Remember Deep Throat Driscoll?
Everyone figured he’d go down in some sort of sex scandal, and it turned out to be a combination PLAGIARISM and Book-Juicing scandal.
Exactly!
Any part of the Bible can be manipulated by anyone to justify their behavior. It’s foolish however to blame what the Bible teaches for the misdeeds of man. A law isn’t bad because people fail to obey it and commit crimes. Ephesians 5 says what it says and you can’t use the misdeeds of men to criticize it.
Yes, Ephesians 5 says what it says. But your interpretation isn’t necessarily of God. Please don’t confuse your interpretation of Scripture with Scripture itself.
Do you know what Ephesians 5 says?
Early on in marriage, we went through this book and video study at the church we attended. I remember them saying it was the responsibility of each spouse to get off the crazy cycle if they knew it was happening. I said “Shouldn’t it be the husband’s responsiblilty since he’s the leader”. They told me it was my responsibility if I saw it. I still do not understand that logic. If he’s the noble leader under the criteria they describe, then he should be responsible for reversing it?! Like this article says, they reverse it and put all the actual responsibility on the woman and give the man the crown and worship him.
Yes, exactly. She’s the one who really is responsible for everything.