Love and Respect: The Love She Most Desires; The Respect He Desperately Needs by Emerson Eggerichs is an extremely helpful Christian book on marriage. It was first published in 2004, and has sold over one million copies. My wife Mary and I listened to it together and we agreed he correctly understands the emotional needs of husbands and wives.

Eggerichs makes a great contribution to understanding marriage by his insight into the importance of taking Ephesians 5:33 literally: “Let each of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.” The author points out that the greatest emotional need of the wife is for love, and the greatest emotional need of the husband is respect.

He gives specific ways that men can show love to their wives, and wives show respect to their husbands, to avoid the “crazy cycle,” as he calls it, of each spouse withholding what the other needs because of not getting what they themselves need. He speaks of the “energizing cycle” when spouses meet the need of the other. He concludes by emphasizing that the motivation of a Christian to meet the need of his or her spouse should be obedience to Christ, which he calls the “reward cycle.”