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Browse through and read hundreds of articles on the topic of marriage
There are certain phrases we have been programmed to understand in a specific way whenever we hear them. For example, if someone says to us, “We need to talk,” we know there is bad news to come and we get in defensive mode.
Is your normally happy-go-lucky husband suddenly more sulky and moody? Has your typically fully engaged and intimate husband for some mysterious reason become more distant and even physically absent?
Do you have a specific sports team that you are outright fanatic about? Suppose you are a passionate Yankees fan whose white bedroom walls have navy blue pinstripes on them and your living room coasters have pictures of Mickey Mantle, Babe Ruth, Derek Jeter, and other Yankees greats on them.
A couple attended the Love and Respect Marriage Conference recently, and several weeks later the wife wrote to me to share some of the reasons why they had attended, along with her frustrations for the lack of changes she had seen in him since the conference.
I have spoken often about the need to understand and appreciate God’s pink and blue design of women and men, respectively, because our differences undoubtedly go well beyond the biological.
Q: “My spouse is not willing to work on our marriage. Doesn’t it take two to fix a marriage?” Dr. E says: Yes, it takes two…but it may not be the two you are thinking of. The common belief is that it takes both spouses to be fully committed to make a marriage work. Technically that may be true. If one partner has determined in their heart that nothing…NOTHING is going to change his/her mind, such a marriage might not be saved.
Have you ever felt that you didn’t need to like or even love your spouse in order to stay married? Jacki shares her thoughts on that and how God changed her heart…and then her marriage. I just had to make the day to day work. For many years my husband and I would get caught up in the crazy cycle. Of course we didn't realize it at all and both just assumed that this was married life. I mean, marriage is hard right? Happily ever after is only a fairy tale. When it comes to marriage we do the best we can, and try to make the best out of the results.
MY MOM AND DAD - When I was 2 ½, I watched my dad attempt to strangle my mom. This was just one of many incidents of chaos in my home growing up, but that scene as a tiny boy stands out vividly. When I was 11, I learned my Dad committed adultery. My parents divorced, remarried one another, and then separated again. The pain from this ongoing instability created such hurt and anger within me that my Mom sent me away to a military school from ages 13 to 18.
In the Bible in Ephesians 5:33 God commands a husband to love his wife and a wife torespect her husband. God’s Command to a Husband Apparently, a husband is under divine command to be a loving person since he reacts too often in ways that feel unloving to his wife. This is less about his wife being lovable and more about him obeying God’s command to clothe himself with a loving attitude.
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