S3E05: Partnership Building: How Rigid Gender Norms Negatively Impacts Appreciation

We are continuing our series on Partnership building by comparing the messaging from a classic relationship book in Evangelical/Mormon/Pentecostal (EMPish) circles, Love and Respect, by Emerson Eggerichs, alongside the work of couples researchers John and Julie Gottman, and their principle of nurturing fondness and admiration.

As we talked about last week, practicing this principle can be challenging when you've grown up learning that admiration and fondness exist along problematic gendered norms of the Love and Respect model.

Julia explains, “Admiration roughly translates to respect, which women show through deference to male authority and obligatory sex based on socially conditioned standards for male pleasure, love roughly translates to affection and emotional intimacy. Which is good, but in manifestation, often coddles women dismissing their intelligence and erasing their sexuality. All under the guise of love.”

We also talk about

• Earning Respect (12:50)

• God Made You This Way (18:00 / 26:00)

• Gendered Lines (28:40)

• Surviving a Gendered World (35:24)

• Power Dynamics (53:00)

For those of you who have read Love and Respect, what are some parts of the book that stood out to you? What are you trying to unlearn.

For those of you who haven’t read Love and Respect, we highly encourage you not to.

Let’s heal together!