Respect. We all want it, and we don’t want any exceptions - but we all know how easy we can turn it off and get our ugly on when things aren’t going our way!

Respect is on the decline, generally, in our culture, but one of the most important places we can show respect is in our marriages – both as husbands and wives. It’s not something that is talked about very often; so today we will look at the specific dangers of contempt (lack of respect) and how you can move your marriage towards greater respect.

A book that was helpful to us early on in our marriage was Love & Respect by the Eggerichs'. This book taught us how to safely say, “I’m feeling disrespected right now.” It gave us a healthy way to express our feelings and helped us realize when we were being inconsiderate of our spouse.

Sadly, respect isn’t a consistent presence in every marriage, and contempt abounds. There are actually a lot of words that we thought of that could mean the opposite of respect, but they basically all fall under the umbrella of contempt, so that’s the word we’ll be using today.

The Problem of Contempt

Contempt is a problem because it is destructive in marital conflict and is also an early predictor of divorce. It is more than criticism. It adds this mean element where the intent is to insult and psychologically abuse your spouse. Contempt can look like insults, name-calling, hostile humour, mockery, and sneering.[i]

You may ask the question, as Gottman did if all negative emotions are equally corrosive in marriage? We all have moments as a spouse that we’re not proud of, and we don’t like ourselves when we act that way but are these moments of anger (excluding all abusive behaviour) as bad as contempt?

Gottman and his fellow researchers found that contempt, belligerence, and defensiveness were prime suspects in causing marital instability. Anger wasn’t nearly as damaging to the marriage as these three things. In other words, as it relates to our topic today, contempt in the middle of marital conflict is a very strong pointer leading towards divorce.[ii]

There is a positive side to this research though; there are ways to show the respect that can neutralize those moments when our spouse does something unattractive. In the study, the couples that handled conflict well behaved in a way that was gentle and soothing and worked towards de-escalating (calming down negativity). The real challenge here is being strong enough to decide that you’re not going along with your spouse’s negativity and not getting on board with their contempt.

What Does Respect Look Like?

It can be challenging to define respect. It is not an emotion. It’s not just a behaviour. It’s hard to define, but we certainly know when we are getting it or when we are not. Really, respect is an attitude accompanied by emotions, thoughts and behaviour.[iii] It has a sense of equality (people who see themselves as equals show respect to each other), and as part of that, there is also mutuality (give and take: both are into it). Caring and supportiveness are also involved.

This alludes to one of the reasons why respect is so important in a marriage – and in all of our important relationships; it has to be going both ways in order to feel right. If you’re more powerful than someone else and they show you respect, that’s really just servitude. They feel like a servant. Marriage is more than that though – we don’t just want respect; we want to be able to respect our spouse. It has to be mutual.

The best way to do a quick check on the level of respect in your marriage is by the following six questions that are used in a tool called MIDSS (Measurement Instrument Database for Social Sciences, developed by Hendreick and Hendrick)[iv] and also used in the bonus worksheet we’ve put together for you.

How many of these six statements can you agree with?

I respect my partner

I am interested in my partner as a person