Respect is a fundamental principle in marriage.
Love and affection thrive where there is respect in the home.
It goes beyond our words alone; even our actions should show it.
It is that sense of acceptance and value we place on our spouses.
I’d also like to say that respect is earned and not demanded.
Your actions and decisions could make you command respect or lose respect.
A lack of respect could cause conflict between partners.
When couples are starting, it’s natural for both of them to adore and regard each other.
But along the line, they could lose respect for each other.
You’d see a woman who once spoke highly of her husband to everyone who cared to listen and showed it in her actions that she honors and respects him start being disrespectful to the same man.
It makes you wonder what went wrong.
What can make some married women lose respect for their husbands they once held in high esteem?
Let’s take a look at a few reasons that could cause this;
13 Reasons Married Women Lose Respect For Their Husbands
1. Not living up to his responsibilities
Marriage comes with responsibilities.
A man is meant to play the role of a husband to his wife and a father to his children.
He and his wife are also expected to provide the family’s basic needs, including paying rent and other basic needs, taking care of the children, etc.
As a couple, a proper plan is to be implemented to properly meet these needs.
As the head of the home, the husband is meant to take the lead in all of these.
This means that the success of that home lies mainly in him.
He is meant to be proactive in making decisions.
He makes plans with his wife and takes steps to execute them.
He should deliberate about making his family thrive.
He shouldn’t place an unnecessary burden on his wife.
Doing this will make the woman continue to respect her husband.
Now, when a man isn’t living up to his responsibility, his wife could lose respect for him.
2. Disregard for their wives’ feelings
Generally, no one loves to be taken for granted.
No one wants to be taken for a ride.
When a woman sees her husband disregarding her feelings, she could lose her respect for him.
Belittling her opinion, ignoring her, and talking down on her feelings are obvious signs of disrespect, and she, too, might decide to match with the same energy.
A man who wants to continue to command his wife’s respect should always be conscious of his actions toward his wife.
3. Belittling their wives
Some men take pride in making snide comments about their wives.
They could make funny comments about their wife’s stature and complexion in public with family and friends.
Some children don’t even respect their mothers because they’ve seen how their fathers disrespect her in the home.
They think it’s normal.
The home is the first school where a child learns morals.
Children learn and do what they see their parents model.
They fail to realize that when you don’t respect your partner, you can not expect an outsider to respect her.
How a man treats his wife privately and publicly says much about him and his values.
If you want to continue to enjoy the respect of your wife, treat her as royalty whether you’re within or outside the home.
4. Laziness or a lack of ambition
Some men are lazy.
They have no plan or aspiration for themselves or their family.
They lack the motivation to do anything.
They are comfortable with their state.
They’ve never gone out of their way to make sacrifices for the family.
And once their wives can bring everything needed, they are okay.
These kind of men don’t command the respect of their wives.
You’d sometimes see their wives say nasty words to them and treat them with so much disdain.
It can be painful for a woman to go through this experience, and in her bid to express her frustration, she disrespects him.
5. Lack of empathy
Empathy is one of the qualities a woman deserves and desires in her husband.
You know, that compassion and tenderness in listening to everything the woman says.
There are struggles a woman would never want to share with an outsider, no matter how close, but only with her husband because she sees him as her safe place to unburden.
She is assured her husband won’t use whatever she says against her.
When a woman has an empathetic partner as a husband, she holds him in high esteem.
She’s grateful for having him in her corner.
And she would do everything to see that the bond remains strong.
But this may not be so with a man who lacks empathy.
He would always look for ways to invalidate his wife’s feelings.
She might blame herself for confiding in him in the first place.
This kind of man can’t even enjoy respect from his wife.
6. Infidelity
Infidelity could make a wife who has always treated her husband like a king start relating to him as one who holds no worth.
And really, it’s normal.
The moment a man chooses to go ahead and throw away what he and his wife shares by having an affair outside his home, he is indirectly saying he lacks a sense of worth.
Women are largely territorial, and that’s why they tend to be brutal when they get a wind that their husbands are cheating.
The thought that someone else is enjoying what is meant for them alone is enough reason for them to disrespect their husbands.
If a man wants to keep enjoying the honor he’s getting from his wife, he had better zip his trouser, shut his heart against any other woman outside, and stick to his wife in love and joy.
7. Dishonesty
When a man tells his wife lies, his wife might find it difficult to respect her man.
Some men have the orientation that you don’t tell a woman everything; hence, they say a half-truth.
For instance, a man could lie about his earnings and make it seem like he’s earning way below his actual salary or wages.
If the woman eventually learns that she’s being lied to, she might never believe that man again and lose respect and confidence in him.
Many people underrate the importance of honesty in marriage.
This is why it’s important to marry a partner you can tell everything without holding back someone you’re sure won’t have anything against you.
Women whose husbands are honest pride in the fact that their husbands tell them everything, and they also shower respect and appreciation on their husbands in return.
8. Control freak
Providing leadership is quite different from being controlling.
A controlling man always seeks to shove his opinion down his wife’s throat.
He is unbothered whether it’s pleasing to his wife or not.
And his orders must be followed to the letter else; trouble looms.
Such a man can never earn the respect of his wife.
9. Cowardice
A man is expected to protect as well as provide for his family.
Women will generally consider their husbands to be their knights in shining armour.
Any form of cowardly behavior could immediately make her lose respect for him.
An excellent example is when a husband allows his family to harass his wife and refuses to stand up for her.
She will slowly lose respect for him.
10. Inability to meet her sexual needs
You’d be surprised at how powerful the tool called sex is in the context of marriage.
If the husband has a sexual dysfunction or condition that doesn’t allow the woman to enjoy, she might begin to lose respect for her husband.
11. Bad influence
Well, we can’t rule out this point, can we?
If the woman has friends who are hostile and disrespectful to men, she may gradually buy into their ideologies.
Friends do make or mar people because of the kind of influence they wield.
12. Social media ‘wokeness‘
The world is now a global village, with all sorts of theories and ideologies flying around on social media.
If the woman cannot filter the things she is watching and taking in, she might begin to buy into some ideologies that can affect her respect for her husband.
She might gradually start tittering at an extreme of assertiveness, thus acting in ways that jeopardize the foundation of respect in her marriage.
13. She has divided love
If a woman’s love becomes divided and she starts an affair outside her marriage, she might disrespect her husband.
She can lose all restraint and talk down on her husband because she no longer cares about him.
Cheating is already disrespecting the marital union and her husband’s trust, so this is like adding salt to the injury.
Conclusion
What makes women lose respect for their husbands could either be caused by internal or external factors.
However, if the union must progress, the parties must make compromises and try to make it work.
After all, two cannot walk together unless they agree.