Love & Respect: Book Review

However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.

This verse (Ephesians 5:33, NIV) is the basis for Love & Respect: The Love She Most Desires, The Respect He Desperately Needs(Dr. Emerson Eggerichs). As women need to be loved, men need to be respected. When we don't receive what we need, we're not happy. I think that most of us, even those in great marriages, occasionally need to hear the message that this book delivers.

The first section of Love & Respect, entitled The Crazy Cycle, tells of an unending cycle of unloving/disrespectful behavior: a husband does something that his wife perceives as unloving, and she responds with what he perceives as disrespect. He, in turn, reacts in an unloving way, and so on. Clearly, this can lead to major problems in a marriage. The second section of the book, The Energizing Cycle, includes numerous practical ways that both husbands and wives can apply the principles of love and respect in our everyday lives.

I highly recommend Love & Respect. The principles are rooted in Biblical truth, and the applications are extremely doable. I believe that applying the principles in this book can have the effect of improving good marriages and possibly saving marriages in trouble.

Learn more about Love & Respect at the Thomas Nelson product page, or find it at Amazon.com or other book retailers.