Learning how to love our husbands through gratitude and respect isn’t always easy. But for us to have a healthy relationship, showing our husbands gratitude and respect is necessary. 

 

One reason it isn’t always easy is because we are uniquely wired to think and view life from a completely different perspective based on the fact that men are male and women are female. There is so much more to that than outward appearance and our unique design and roles in the reproductive process. That difference gets stronger the deeper inward we look. 

 

Learning How to Love Our Husband Through Gratitude and Respect

 

1)    Understand that God Created Our Husbands To Be Different 

 

It took me a long time to understand and settle down with the understanding that my husband is VERY different than me, and that is exactly how God wired him. God did not want him to think like me and act like me. There is already one “me” in the relationship and that’s not my husband. 

 

However, as much as God uniquely created each of us, our marriage united us together on a journey of becoming one. Becoming one doesn’t mean we get married and are immediately an inseparable unit. Marriage is only the beginning of a lifetime process of becoming one. In the process of time, work, and each one changing within, a husband and wife more and more, become one. 

 

The sooner we come to grips with our husband’s God-given, God-designed uniqueness, the easier it is for us to see the value of the man we chose to spend our life with. 

 

2)    Understand that God Created Our Husband To Need Our Encouragement

 

God created us to be our husband’s helper. (See Genesis 2:20-23) This isn’t a downgrade in the quality of person that we are as women. We are equally as valuable as our husbands. In fact, we complete them. 

 

However, women are not always known for encouraging and building their husbands up, but that is exactly what a biblical wife is called to do. Our husbands need our admiration and affirmation. One way we support them is by speaking words that build them up rather than tear them down. 

 

Proverbs 14:1 says, The wise woman builds her house, But the foolish pulls it down with her hands. 

 

We have the power to affect our husbands and families positively or negatively. The reality is that we do affect our husbands and families one-way or the other. How do we make sure we build up those we love, specifically our husbands? We decide to.

 

Encouraging our husbands begins with a decision to follow the Proverbs 31 woman’s precedent set for us in Proverbs 31:26. 

 

She opens her mouth with wisdom,

and on her tongue is the law of kindness.

Proverbs 31:26

 

Loving through encouragement comes from our words being ruled by the law of kindness. When we speak as encouragers, our words make all the difference in building happy healthy husbands and homes. Isn’t that what we all want?

 

3)    Understand That Our Greatest Hindrance Is A Focus Problem.

 

If you struggle with loving your husband through gratitude and respect, it often points to the presence of a real spiritual enemy at work to sidetrack you and your marriage. As I wrote in last week’s blog post, Biblical Marriage, Loving Our husbands, And Lessons I Learned Along The Way, our husband is not our enemy. But we do have an enemy and he attacks our marriages the same way he attacked our relationship with God in the beginning. 

 

Remember Genesis 3 and how the serpent got Adam and Eve focused on the one thing in the garden that God told them not to eat. God set man in the midst of a perfect and beautiful garden of provision. He spread His holy arms wide and said, 

 

“Of every tree of the garden, you may freely eat, 

but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, 

for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die."

Genesis 2:16-17

 

Then one day the serpent takes them on a stroll and stops them right in front of the one thing they could not have. The enemy’s methodology is to take us to the one thing, the one issue, the one problem, and get us focused on that. When we focus our attention on the one thing in our marriage or in our spouse that seems to be a problem, the enemy succeeded in getting our eyes off God’s blessing. 

 

Getting our eyes off God’s blessing and on a problem sets us up for a fall. The serpent knew if he got them unhappy and unsatisfied, he accomplished his plan to steal, kill, and destroy. That happened in the FALL and that same thing happens in our marriages. 

 

When Loving Our Husbands Through Gratitude And Respect Is Hard 

 

I realize that each marriage has its own set of issues and obstacles to overcome. And I know sometimes a problem has been there for so long that our perspective is, at best, clouded. However, changing our focus is key to changing our relationship.

 

My oldest daughter is a counselor and licensed Marriage and Family Therapist. She says there is a systems theory that says when one person in a relationship changes, the other person cannot remain the same. In other words, when I make changes in myself and my behavior, it inevitably and eventually causes my husband to make changes as well. 

 

I believe the key to changing a problem in a relationship is changing our focus to an area of gratitude or respect. 

 

Practical Steps To Help You Focus On Gratitude And Respect For Your Husband

1)    Keep a Husband Gratitude & Respect Journal. 

2)    Daily take 2-3 minutes to make note of reasons for gratitude and respect for your husband in the journal.

3)    Ask yourself these questions: 

a.    What am I grateful for about my husband or loved one? 

b.    What about him do I admire and respect? 

c.     Even if you need to go back to happier times in your relationship, there is always some quality or trait worthy of gratitude and respect. 

4)    Choose one thing out of your journal every day to tell your husband how you are thankful for him or how you admire him. If you haven’t been very verbal about this in the past, you might feel a bit awkward and he might be a bit skeptical at first. However, I assure you that this practiced daily will make a positive impact. 

 

Try this for one month and see if it doesn’t make a difference in you, your husband, and your marriage. And, I would love to hear from you about how these practical steps practiced worked. Send me an email and let me know.