Book Review: Love and Respect by Emerson Eggerichs

Ok, I don’t think this one-book-review-a-month goal is going to work out. This one took weeks of reading, writing, processing, and taking notes. But I finally condensed them all into my personal take on Love & Respect!

I have heard of Love & Respect a few times here and there growing up, but I didn’t know much about it until I read The Great Sex Rescue. After reading and reviewing The Great Sex Rescue, I now want to read all the books that were critiqued to see for myself just how bad or good they might be. And I’m starting with Love and Respect. You will (eventually) see all of them reviewed by yours truly in the following months. According to The Great Sex Rescue, Love & Respect was by far the worst and most harmful book they critiqued. So this book has gotten a pretty bad rap. And I think it deserves some of it.

So clearly I’ve already read about some not-so-good things about this book, and I realize that may have already colored my perceptions of it. Nevertheless, I’m still going to give this book its day in court by reading it from cover to cover, and I will present as balanced a view as I possibly can. So without further ado, here’s the basic premise of the book.

Summary

Love and Respect‘s entire thesis is based on Ephesians 5:33:

“However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.” (Ephesians 5:33)

This book is about how couples can get off the “Crazy Cycle” where a husband doesn’t show love because he feels disrespected, and the wife doesn’t show respect because she doesn’t feel loved. The solution to this Crazy Cycle is the husband showing unconditional love to the wife, and the wife showing unconditional respect for her husband. The book also explicitly states what the book is about: how the wife should show unconditional respect to her husband, as stated in the intro: 

“This book is about how the wife can fulfill her need to be loved by giving her husband what he needs—respect.” (pg 1) 

The first half of the book addresses some concerns that both spouses might have about the Love & Respect connection. The second half of the book goes through two clever acronyms:

• C-O-U-P-L-E, which stands for Closeness, Openness, Understanding, Peacemaking, Loyalty, and Esteem. This acronym spells out the ways a husband can show unconditional love to his wife.
• C-H-A-I-R-S, which stands for Conquest, Hierarchy, Authority, Insight, Relationship, and Sexuality. This acronym spells out the ways a wife can show unconditional respect to her husband.

The Positive Things

1. It has helped a lot of couples improve their marriages.

There’s oodles of testimonies from people who have applied the Love and Respect principles to their marriages, and they’ve said their marriages have really improved. One testimony said it worked for a couple dealing with infidelity in their marriage:

“It worked. I did win him back. When you told me I could, I really wondered if that was possible [but] God has changed my husband more than I have ever expected and I hope it continues. I have changed, too. I am finally seeing in me the wife I always wanted to be.” (pg 105)

One man’s testimony says Love and Respect helped him understand and empathize with his wife:

It was freeing to reflect on the fact that my wife was well-intentioned and good-hearted toward me, as she acknowledged. Sadly, I could misunderstand her heart. There were lots of things I didn’t know about her heart. For example, it turns out she had been going through postpartum depression. Understanding some things like that softened my heart a lot. I started to think more about how she might not be sensing my love for her, even though I was well-intentioned and good-hearted toward her. (pg 21)

And there’s many more. Good for these people! If Love and Respect really did work for them, more power to them! I’m actually glad for these husbands and wives.

2. It stresses the importance of good communication in marriage.

The book does a good job of showing how important it is for husbands and wives to each see the other’s point of view. Eggerichs tells us to take off our “pink” or “blue” glasses and hearing aids and put on the glasses and hearing aids of our partners The ability to empathize and truly understand your partner can really clear up a lot of misunderstandings in marriages, which a lot of couples in this book really struggled with. I also think most of them struggle with emotional immaturity. Like, they need emotional maturity even more than they need love and respect. But I digress.

3. It encourages husbands to validate and hold their wives’ feelings.

I appreciate that Eggerichs encourages husbands to hold their wives’ pain in chapter 6:

“In his extensive research on marriages, Dr. John Gottman concluded that it was very effective when a husband could embrace his wife’s anger. He advised men not to avoid conflict if they want to make their marriages work.” (pg 96)

“My suggestion to fellow husbands is: instead of running from your wife, will you move toward her or let her move toward you, firing her venomous little darts as she comes? If you’re ready to take the hit, you can stop the craziness.” (pg 96)

Giving each other the space to have difficult emotions, such as anger, is so important. I remember on Broken iPad Day (read all about that here), my husband allowed me to have that pure, unbridled anger, in front of him nonetheless. He never once said I was disrespecting him, even though I had some pretty choice words for him. In fact, he didn’t say much of anything. His actions spoke louder than any words he could have said. He held my anger and pain in his hands, and at the same time allowed me to have it. It was the one thing I did respect about him that night.

(However—and a BIG However—holding your spouse’s difficult emotions should not be done at the expense of your own safety. If your spouse’s anger is putting you in danger, you can and should give them the space to have those emotions by separating yourself from them instead.)

A Few Neutral Things

1. This book was published over two decades ago.

This isn’t positive or negative per se, but I still think it’s worth noting: This book was published in 2004. That was over 20 years ago. Some things in it are still very relevant, but there’s also a few things in it that are just. . .a bit dated. 

For example, I’ve heard some other critics point out that this book doesn’t mention pornography and its devastating effects on marriage. I fully agree with that critique. It really doesn’t mention porn at all. But I couldn’t help but wonder why that is. I noticed that this book was published in the same decade when high-speed internet was in its infancy. So maybe porn wasn’t really mentioned simply because internet porn just wasn’t a huge thing back then like it is in 2025. Porn was probably just beginning to exist on the internet, if it wasn’t already by 2004. I’m too young to really remember any of that, so take that with a grain of salt. But I fully believe porn existed in other mediums before the internet, and that was definitely worth mentioning. But it wasn’t. So that was either an honest oversight, beyond the scope of the book, or Eggerichs for some reason didn’t consider it important enough to mention.

2. The author’s rigid views of gender roles in marriage.

Another outdated thing I noticed was Eggerich’s very rigid, traditional views on gender roles in marriage. The kind of traditional where dad is the breadwinner, and mom stays home and raises the kids. And there’s nothing wrong or outdated about traditional if that’s what really works for some couples! What is wrong and outdated is this idea that these roles are never allowed to switch. Eggerichs recognizes that they do, especially in this day and age and culture. But in his mind, that’s not the way it’s supposed to be. These are some of the quotes that led me to believe that this is how he thinks:

“Most men feel that work is not an option. Comedian Tim Allen has observed that women have all kinds of choices. Men have one: ‘Work or go to jail.’ Yes, it is true that in some homes the woman works and the man takes care of the kids. Generally speaking, however, our sons will feel like they have to work in some field, but our daughters will want the freedom to choose between pregnancies and promotions.” (pg 199)

 “A father with an infant does not compare to a mother with an infant. I don’t think any social engineering will make Daddy a ‘natural mother.’ Typically, the woman leans toward having the baby and caring for the baby; the man leans toward working in the field for her and the baby. Yes, I know there are exceptions in today’s culture, but for the typical woman, her first desire is not for a career; it is for the home and family.” (pg 200)

This is the line of thinking I disagree with. There’s many couples, myself included, that have taken the less traditional route, and that works just as well for them. Yes, these roles are absolutely allowed to switch. And some couples are better for it.

The Negative Things

1. The book’s entire chapter on sex is so incredibly wrong.

I am morbidly fascinated by how horribly wrong chapter 21 is. I felt that this was so important to push back on, especially on a blog written by a betrayed spouse, for betrayed spouses. And I also felt that this should be mentioned first on my list of grievances about this book. It explicitly says:

“Husbands particularly, can come under satanic attack when deprived of sexual release.” (pg 252)

“…the cold, hard truth is that men are often lured into affairs because they’re sexually deprived at home. A man who strays is usually given total blame for the affair, but in many cases he is the victim of temptation his wife helped bring upon him.” (pg 253)

Dear betrayed spouses, these messages are demonstrably false. No amount of sex, respect, or love would have kept your spouse from being unfaithful. Unfaithful spouses will cheat if they want to cheat, and that’s COMPLETELY on them, not you. Yes, unfaithful spouses are usually given total blame for their affairs, and they should! Do not think for a moment that you’re responsible for ensuring your spouse’s faithfulness! You’re not! You did not fail in this area. Your unfaithful spouse did.

The chapter also has a very one-sided view of sex. It frames sex as exclusively a male need and not at all a female need. This is also wrong.

“If your husband is typical, he has a need you don’t have.” ( pg 257)

Eggerichs also says this about a woman who supposedly “got” the message that she needed to meet her husband’s sexual needs:

“She didn’t have that need for sex. It wasn’t within her, but she realized that this was her husband’s need, and the Lord had spoken to her about meeting his need first.” (pg 249)

This woman still doesn’t get it, and neither does Eggerichs. Sex is not exclusively a male need. Both men and women have sexual and emotional needs. Sex is supposed to be intimate, emotional, and pleasurable for BOTH partners! But you won’t see that mentioned anywhere in the book. The one chapter dedicated solely to sex is a chapter written only for the women, when there should have been a sex chapter written for the men too. And unfortunately, there isn’t. That’s what makes this book’s views on sex so one-sided!

2. The black-and-white thinking

I disagree with the black-and white thinking that permeates most of this book: Men need respect, women need love. Men wear blue glasses, women wear pink glasses. “Women are expressive, men are more poker-faced.” (pg 137). Men compartmentalize, women are connected. Men need “sexual release”, women need “emotional release”. Men are X, women are Y. That kind of back-and-white thinking (or in this case, pink-and-blue) is what I have a problem with. The world isn’t that black-and-white, and neither are most human beings. The Love & Respect model doesn’t have space for that much nuance. Both men and women need both respect and love, and this “pink-and-blue” thinking is the wrong way of looking at things. Both men and women need respect in the sense that we are both made in the image of God. That fact alone calls for respect for both genders. In addition to that, the Bible says both husbands and wives are to show respect and love to each other:

“Wives, submit to your husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her, that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that He might present the church to Himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, because we are members of His body. ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.’ This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.” (Ephesians 5:22-33)

“Likewise, husbands, live with your wives in an understanding way, showing honor to the woman as the weaker vessel, since they are heirs with you of the grace of life, so that your prayers may not be hindered.” (1 Peter 3:7)

“Husbands, love your wives, and do not be harsh with them.” (Colossians 3:19)

The Bible gives so much more nuance than “men need respect, women need love”, more nuance than I can possibly quote here. My husband needs both love and respect. I need both love and respect. I’m not just “pink”, nor is my husband just “blue”. We’re both kind of “purple”. And a thorough reading of scripture, not just the passages I presented here, shows us how to actually love and respect each other.

3. It makes the Love & Respect model sound like the “silver bullet” that will fix any marriage problem.

This book makes it sound like that husbands showing unconditional love and wives showing unconditional respect is the “silver bullet” that will cure any and all marriage problems. He recounts one story of how a woman wrote to Eggerichs and asked him what she should do with her adulterous husband. This was Eggerichs’ reply:

“I replied to the woman’s heart-wrenching situation by pointing out that using Love and Respect principles can and does work with a husband who has done what hers did. ‘He is in sin, ‘ I said, ‘He is offending both God and you. There is no question about this, but wives are winning their husbands in exactly this situation. . .It can happen, and it does happen, and it’s worth it.’” (pg 104)

Really? Just Love and Respect? That’s it? No telling her to demand an end to the affair? No setting boundaries? No seeking healing for herself? No seeking a divorce if he refuses to end the affair? Not even calling out the husband’s adulterous behavior as not just sin, but both UNLOVING and DISRESPECTFUL to the wife? Oh, silly me, doing all those things is far more unloving and disrespectful than the adultery itself. Love and Respect will single-handedly solve all our marriage problems, right? I’m being very facetious here, but hopefully you get the idea. It takes an entirely different approach to repair a marriage damaged by infidelity, but Eggerichs doesn’t mention any of those things. Just the Love and Respect.

This is the same woman that gave the testimony I quoted in point 1 in the positives section earlier. By her own admission, she says that they went through counseling, and she said that there’s so much more they need to do to fix the marriage. Evidently, it takes a whole lot more than Love & Respect for a marriage to bounce back from infidelity. And many don’t bounce back at all.

RECENT EDIT: Four days after I posted this review, I found a quote that better shows how Love & Respect is framed as the Silver Bullet for all marriage problems. It’s explicitly said here, in the introduction chapter:

“This book is for anyone: people in marital crisis . . . spouses headed for divorce . . . husbands and wives in a second marriage . . . people wanting to stay happily married . . . spouses married to unbelievers . . . divorcees trying to heal . . . lonely wives . . . browbeaten husbands . . . spouses in affairs . . . victims of affairs . . . engaged couples . . . pastors or counselors looking for material that can save marriages.” (pg 2)

 I am very wary of such claims that say this is the One Thing that can fix any marriage problem, especially a problem as severe as infidelity. It makes Eggerichs sound like a snake oil salesman. In real life, marriages are beautiful and messy at the same time. Couples deal with all kinds of problems that may require a vastly different approach than love and respect. They may require professional counseling. They may even require each of them to take responsibility for their own crap!

I’ve sort of wondered something about all of these husbands and wives who gave positive testimonies in this book. Did their marriages really improve after applying just Love and Respect principles alone, without any other interventions? Or is it only because the wives just gave up their agency and their voice in the marriage, all in the name of respect? Hmm.

4. The author’s condescending attitude toward women.

Throughout his writing, Eggerichs sounds like he just has this condescending disdain for women, and it really shows in the demeaning jokes he tells in chapter 13 (The “L” in C-O-U-P-L-E-S):

“Wanting reassurance about his love, she asks, ‘Will you love me when I’m old and gray? If I’m an invalid? What if I get Alzheimer’s?’ There are two ways a husband can go with this question. The wrong way leads straight back to the Crazy Cycle, and it involves having a little fun at your wife’s expense. ‘What’s the matter? Afraid I’ll trade you in for a new model? Don’t be silly, I plan to keep you around…at least for a while.” (pg 165)

I think I’d be better off traded in for the new model, and then let him be the new model’s problem. Here’s another:

“A group of men were golfing one day and four of them were on the eighteenth tee, ready to tee off. Just then, a funeral procession went by, and one of the men stood up straight, took off his hat, and out it over his heart. His golf buddies were stunned. Someone said, ‘We’ve never seen anybody ready to tee off and then stop to put his hat over his heart to honor a funeral procession. That’s amazing.’ The man answered, ‘Yeah, she was a great woman. We were married forty-three years.’” (pg 171)

The condescension is just gross. After telling both these jokes, he then tells men not to tell these jokes to their wives. (Or at least, not in front of their wives.) So why does he proceed to tell jokes that even he says not to tell? He could have used that valuable real estate on those pages for something more substantive.

A particularly heartbreaking story was in chapter 18 (the A in C-H-A-I-R-S) about a young wife who asked a question at a Love & Respect conference, where the topic was the husband’s authority in the home:

“An eager young wife asked, ‘I want him to be the head; I want him to be the leader. I just want him to make sure that he makes decisions in keeping with what I want.’ The room broke into laughter一men as well as women. . .The gal turned beet red. . .I had to chuckle a little myself.” (pg 215)

This poor young wife. She became the laughingstock of the whole conference for wanting her opinions heard. For wanting to be treated like an equal partner in her marriage. If a husband truly loved his wife according to what Paul said in Ephesians 5:22-33, wouldn’t a loving, godly husband care about what his wife wants? I hope this young wife does have a husband who didn’t laugh at that, and loves her enough to consider her an equal decision-maker and partner in their marriage.

The last letter of the C-O-U-P-L-E acronym is Esteemed. Exactly what it sounds like, it’s about how you should make your wife feel esteemed. Reading these preceding chapters did not make me feel esteemed at all. These chapters feel very condescending to me. It tells me a lot about how Eggerichs views not just his own wife, but women in general.

5. It has dangerous advice for abusive marriages.

The book also makes it out to be that if a wife just shows unconditional respect to her husband, he will be “rolling out the red carpet for her” (pg 80) and practically be worshipping the ground she walks on. This is dangerous advice for women in abusive relationships. A wife can show her abusive husband all the unconditional respect he wants, but that is not going to change an abusive partner’s behavior. An abuser, unsurprisingly, will abuse that unconditional respect and use it to control, manipulate, and gaslight her. And this is not a healthy dynamic. Unconditional respect is not going to work here.

And asking men to show love anyway, even when the wife is disrespectfully spewing vitriol at her husband, just seems so messed up too. That behavior from women should be called out too. A husband cannot always “love” his wife into respecting him, nor can a wife always “respect” her husband into loving her. Unloving behavior needs to be called out, and disrespectful behavior needs to be called out too. And the offending spouses in this regard should take responsibility for their own mistreatment.

“Will the concept of biblical hierarchy lead to abuse? Will a man take advantage of being head of the family by putting down and even abusing his wife and children? Yes, this is possible, but because it’s possible does not mean a woman should refuse to allow her husband to be the head. If a husband is evil-willed, the abuse will happen anyway, no matter what the family structure is. Any hierarchical role given to him has nothing to do with abuse. The evil-willed man always treats those around him abusively.” (pg 207)

The paragraph this was quoted from forgot to mention one very important thing to wives married to these “evil-willed” husbands: to separate from those kinds of husbands for their own and their family’s safety. There is absolutely nothing “disrespectful” or “unsubmissive” about separating from an evil-willed husband. That’s the protecting and providing that the wife now needs to do, because the evil-willed husbands refuse to. Eggerichs should cut those demeaning jokes he told in the earlier chapters to men and use that precious real estate on those pages to tell those evil-willed husbands not to abuse their wives!

To his credit, Eggerichs finally says he condemns abuse on page 278, in one of the last chapters of the book. But he buries it in all this drivel about how wives should submit to and still respect even an unloving, abusive husband, because her reward in heaven is great, and that she’ll get all the “cha-chings!” from the angels!

Eggerichs has a poor understanding of how abuse works, and it really shows in this book.

6. It takes scripture out of context.

I found several places where the book takes scripture out of context and twists it to support his own claims:

First off, I mentioned earlier that the entire thesis of the book is based on Ephesians 5:33. (I already quoted that earlier in this post, context included, so feel free to scroll back up and read it again)

Eggerichs interprets this verse to mean that husbands are commanded to show unconditional love, and that the wife is commanded to show unconditional respect to their husbands. He explicitly says this in the footnotes, too. And he’s not wrong about the former. The passage really does tell husbands to love their wives. But one thing I notice about this passage is that the apostle Paul wrote so much more here about husbands loving wives, and only at the very end of this chapter does he finally mention the wife’s respect. Why did Paul write an entire paragraph about how husbands should love their wives, but only one verse about the wife showing respect at the end?

I don’t think Paul intended Ephesians 5:33 to be a command. Paul didn’t need to command wives to respect their husbands. They were already expected to do that in his time. What Paul said in this passage was actually quite revolutionary for its time, as it was telling husbands not only to have authority over their wives, which husbands already had, but also to love them. He’s calling husbands to love and respect their wives, the same way they love and respect their own bodies. This verse does not say that the wife should show unconditional respect even if the husband is not showing Christ’s love to his wife. (Do you see some of the nuance in scripture I mentioned earlier?) I think Paul is trying to show here that a wife’s respect will be a natural result of the husband’s Christlike, sacrificial love for his wife.

Eggerichs also twists the meaning of Proverbs 5:19, which says:

“A lovely deer, a graceful doe. Let her breasts fill you at all times with delight, be intoxicated always in her love.”

Eggerichs uses this verse to support his claim that men are “visually oriented”, as in, men are easily aroused by visual stimulation. However, when I read this verse in the context of all of Proverbs 5, this is a chapter that warns men against committing adultery. And verse 19 says to enjoy your wife, and only your wife. For if you do so, you won’t feel any need to seek such enjoyment from anyone else. This verse doesn’t say that men are visually oriented. It says that men should enjoy their wives and not commit adultery!

These are just two examples of scripture taken out of context in this book, and there are many more. If you decide to read this book for yourself, I suggest looking a little more closely at the way these scriptures are used, and see for yourself.

Conclusion

I can’t help but go back to the fact that this book is a bit dated. It’s a book that was written for its time. It seems to me that it’s a book that was not written for my generation, but for the generation before me. Which makes me wonder: Is it fair to cast this book (and similar books) in a negative light despite it being written a long time ago? Maybe it is. But to my knowledge, there are no updated or revised editions of this book. Just this one from 2004. There could have been some revisions made so that it can more effectively speak to the younger generation of husbands and wives, but there isn’t. The 2004 edition is all I have to go by, and that’s what I have critiqued.

After reading this in its entirety, I really did try to strike some kind of balance between the positive and the negative things. But I struggled to find enough good things about the book to balance out the not-so-good. The positive things I did find were ways to improve communication between spouses, it encourages each spouse to see the other’s point of view, and to always assume good will of the other. But all the negatives, like the twisting of scriptures, the book’s potential to encourage abuse, and just the sex chapter alone, so far outweighed the positives. For that reason, I cannot in good conscience recommend this book to anyone, especially my own generation.

What book should I review next? Tell me about it in the comments!