There is an old joke about how a married couple goes to Hawaii for their honeymoon. In their room the husband takes off his pants and says “get in those pants.” The wife looks at her husband and says “honey, they’re too big.” “That’s right,” says the man, “now you know who wears the pants in this family.” The wife than takes her pants off and says to the husband “get in these pants.” The husband replies “babe, these are way too small; I can’t get in your pants.” The wife than says “that’s right, and if you keep up that attitude than you never will.” Does this sound like your situation? Perhaps yours is a real dominant wife that constantly disrespects you, maybe even in front of your friends. Does she hit you or slap you in the face? Has she done it in front of your friends? Our wives agreed to become one with us, to support us, and to build us up in sickness and in health right? How does that build up a family when the woman morally destroys her man? If you feel like you may have issues in this area of your marriage than read on.

You may have heard this before “A woman needs love as much as a man needs respect.” This is in fact a true statement. It is more important for a man to be respected, than to be loved. However now, in our society in face of equal rights, many men have forgotten what it means to be a man and many women have forgotten how to treat their men. Your wife could be striving for your attention and found a negative channel to get that attention; she could be jealous of your success and regrets that she must stay at home with the kids while you get to “escape” for 8 hours; maybe her self-esteem is so low that she destroys you to build herself up; or another very common reason is she starts to care only about herself.

There are several studies that prove that the level of fulfillment or success a man can achieve both financially and in the family is directly connected to the support of his wife; and respect is at the heart of the problem. Humans are built with requirements for emotional support systems. We’ve all heard of the horrific Hitler experiments where they would ignore certain babies… just do the basic feeding and diaper changes but were not shown any love, no kisses or hugs, not even talked to. These babies were all dead within 6 months without any real reason except for the lack of love in their lives. Men need that support channel too or they may quickly lose focus on the task at hand or prioritize incorrectly. A man with a supporting wife can achieve ten times more than he could ever do on his own. However a man with a morally destructive wife will achieve ten times less than even if he was on his own. If you’re one of those with a dominant wife, think about your job performance, when was the last time you had a successful idea or for that matter gotten a promotion? Are you close to your kids? Do your kids even love you? What about her? These are all symptoms of a festering destroyer of a family.

Now let me set this straight, there are men who take this issue too far and demand that respect in improper ways. If your girl is like the one in that joke than you have a decent relationship and this article is not really for you. However there are women who cross the line and truly dominate the family to such an extent that that house and family becomes a nightmare for all involved. So how do you fix this? The first very difficult step is to get her to stop doing the things that disrespect you most; like having her slap you in the face. You will need to prepare for this. Get a gym membership right away. If your wife has the finances on lock down than borrow a co-worker’s card. You will need to limit to about 20 minutes of jogging and pumping iron plus another 10 minutes to shower and change back to your work clothes. Use the money that she gives you for snack food at work for your public clothes washer and dryer. This starts to rebuild your self-confidence; although, if you can figure out a way to keep $50 per month than you can join a karate gym and build up that self confidence even faster. To tell her to stop those things you will need a lot of that self-confidence that she so-effectively destroyed years ago. You may also need to have the physical strength to restrain her from hitting you or in a worst case scenario, you will actually need that karate that you learned to defend yourself from her. The first step is now to get her to stop and realize that you are no longer going to put up with a certain behavior that bothers you. You must learn to find ways to let her know when certain things that she does cause you to feel disrespected and you must do so in a way that causes her to notice. One of my favorite ways is in this joke. A wife was making a breakfast of fried eggs for her husband. Suddenly, her husband burst into the kitchen. “Careful,” he said, “CAREFUL! Put in some more butter! You’re cooking too many at once. TOO MANY! Turn them! TURN THEM NOW! We need more butter. WHERE are we going to get MORE BUTTER? They’re going to STICK! Careful. CAREFUL! I said be CAREFUL! You NEVER listen to me when you’re cooking! Never! Turn them! Hurry up! Don’t forget to salt them. You know you always forget to salt them. Use the salt. USE THE SALT! THE SALT!” The wife stared at him. “What in the world is wrong with you? You think I don’t know how to fry a couple of eggs?” The husband calmly replied, “I just wanted to show you what it feels like when I’m driving.”

Although taking it this far is likely to lead to a fight, this wife clearly saw that her husband was very annoyed about her disrespectful behavior in the car. You must become like this. Not an ass, but a person who has a backbone and can disagree on things with his wife and most importantly make the final decision in that situation. I would advice that you spend three to six months in the gym, (depending on how much self confidence you need) before you tell her to stop her disrespectful behavior.

Step two is taking responsibility and start making decisions that positively affect the family. Learn about things that you have no desire of learning like finding the best quality car for your budget and buy that one regardless of what she says. In a healthy relationship you normally want to have both people agree about a car so tell her beforehand a few times that you are thinking that this car will be best for the family. Now make sure you buy that car (she can pick out the colors if you have that option.) Research indicates that even though women will push their limits with their men, a man must have limits that cannot be crossed, where a man will stand unwavering and say this is what our family is doing. If a man does not have that line a woman can never really respect him, even if she really wants to. A man must be in charge but that man must also realize that being in charge doesn’t mean delegating all of the work to your wife and yourself doing nothing or in the other extreme do all of the work yourself an involve her in nothing. It is best when you involve the wife in the family finances, help you prioritize the budget, but, I repeat but, you must make the final decisions in all of those areas no matter how much whining or fussing she puts up. No she cannot go out with her girlfriends if you have $50 left for gas and food for the whole week. As nice as that shirt looks on her, she must figure it into the budget before she buys it. There are many more examples that I’m sure you already have in your mind.

Third is to find the right social group. Yes, that means your friends must change. If in your social group it is acceptable that your wife slaps you, or there is no one that has the balls to stand up to your wife and tell her that her behavior is wrong, than your “friends” don’t deserve that title, acquaintance is better suited. This doesn’t mean that your friends do all of the work for you, no, you still HAVE to follow steps 1 and 2 above. However, when you are with your friends, they must speak up when the face slapping or other disrespect is displayed by your wife. Your wife must be ashamed of her behavior in a social setting. If you have the confidence and backbone to deal with the fight later, a very good thing to do is to be social with the other females in your social group. Not social to the point of being offensive, but enough to trigger the jealousy button in your wife. This automatically creates an atmosphere where your wife has concern of losing you and thereby becomes more protective and caring of you. In this case, it is important to remember that when the fight happens (and it is very likely that it will, especially after the third or fourth time that she notices this new behavior from you) you never, ever, ever tell her why you are being so social with the other females. If you do, it will backfire and send the whole process back to the beginning or even worse.

This is a process that can take months, even years to complete, but you now have the steps necessary to turn your horrible situation into one that can bring true fulfillment, true love, and true success. Your home can now be a place where you long to go, instead of a place that you dread. Today is the day to do this. Don’t delay anymore. Go find that co-worker that has a gym pass right now. Remember we were created to enjoy and love our lives not to hate it or just barely get by.