You get married because you’re in love and plan to continue loving one another all your life. Marriage is the most intimate and most important relationship of your life. As you enter into it, you’re wildly in love. Your expectation is that you will always feel just as you do right now: you cannot get enough of each other, you want to be as close to each other as you can, you want to spend every moment together. You love everything about your spouse-to-be, every cell and atom of his/her being, every little idiosyncrasy. You adore the way s/he walks, talks, plays ball, pets the dog, kisses, caresses, etc. His/Her battles are your battles, his/her irritations and annoyances, yours. Your love is a veritable god -- or goddess. This is the first phase of love.
   As a couple lives together and are with each other day after day, they may start begin to get irritated at one another. They snap at each other and act as if they don’t even like each other -- some of the time, at least. You think it can’t happen to you, it won’t happen to you. 
   The reality of it is that, over time, you will be irritated or annoyed at things s/he does or doesn’t do; you may be less entranced with the way s/he walks, talks, plays ball, pets the dog; you may even be less enchanted with the lovemaking; you may care less about his/her battles, etc.
   Every couple has this settling-in period, during which you are getting used to being together, you are beginning to see each other as honest-to-goodness human beings, with all-too-human qualities,
rather than a god or goddess, too perfect for this world. That doesn’t mean the love goes away. It simply means that you’re into love’s second phase in which it can actually deepen and strengthen.
   Unfortunately, for some couples, it sometimes marks the beginning of the end of love. They wonder where the love went; they blame their mate for being less than perfect, never realizing that they, too, are less than perfect. They begin to pick at each other and put each other down. (Or maybe one of them picks at the other.) Illusion has turned into disillusion.
   The first phase of love, with its intensity, in which you believed you were the only two people on the planet, was necessary to get you two together. In the beginning, you do everything you can to blend together, to become one. The honeymoon, away from your family and friends, is mostly for the purpose of helping this process along.
   Picture your marriage as a house -- a building. This love -- this oneness -- is the foundation on which your marriage is built.
   The second phase of love is more subtle. It’s where you reconnect with yourselves as individuals, and with the world, both as a couple and as individuals. Within the oneness of marriage, you both begin to reclaim your selfhood, your individuality.
   The building blocks in your House of Marriage are the two individuals who make up your marriage.
You are the framing and the joists. You stand separate, yet joined. your uniquenesses, your char-acters, your personalities, your interests and passions, your intelligence, your wisdom, your playfulness, your seriousness, your potentials, your talents, your humor -- all the things you are.
   The stresses (the hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes) that will test the structure are your life experiences: the crises, the fun times, the touching times, the sad times: the difficult times and the wonderful times -- all the experiences that make up the lives of two people who care about each other -- the times that can tear you apart or bond you together.
   Respect is the glue. It is that which allows the structure to weather the storms, to withstand the life’s stresses. It’s your assurance that it will remain standing, no matter what may strike it. Respect is your “home owner’s insurance.” Without it, the structure may fall down around you.
   Some people do continue living in a severely damaged house. It may even seem solid to the out-side world. In a marriage, when we treat one another with disrespect we chip away at the very foundation on which the marriage is built. And without a foundation, a structure will not stand for long . . . or if it does continue to stand, it will be crooked or damaged, making us feel very unsafe and uncomfortable.
   Love is a very fragile thing. If we were truly the gods and goddesses our lover once believed us to be, there would be no problem. We would be certain that we are loved and deserving of love. However, we are human, and as such, we are much less sure. When someone doesn’t pay us as much attention as she used to, picks at us, puts us down, or is otherwise abusive, we feel unloved, and begin to doubt our worthiness of love. When we feel unloved we feel less loving.
   It becomes a vicious circle. “You’d rather surf the net than talk to me!” (making me wonder if you still love me), so I pick on you (making you feel that I don’t love you if only for that moment), then you, feeling unloved, feel less loving toward me, snap at me, very defensive and abrasive. Thus, the process of deterioration begins. Each time one of us says or does something disrespectful (unloving) toward the other, it chips away at our love for each other -- and our love is the foundation of our marriage.
   When we treat one another with respect (in a loving way), we strengthen the foundation while reinforcing the entire structure, making it a secure, comfortable, pleasant place in which to live.
   Perhaps we need to look at what respect and disrespect look like.
   Respect is (my definition): recognition of the worthiness of a person; acknowledgment of a person’s rights and privileges as a human being. Respect is courtesy, consideration, acceptance -- how we treat someone we honor and esteem.
   Disrespect is, of course, the exact opposite -- how we treat someone we dishonor and see as un-worthy. There are many forms of disrespect, which I will outline briefly.

• Discount: To act as if the other person had not spoken or has nothing important to say, as if the other person does not exist. To answer for the other person; to interrupt the other person when talking, to take over or “fix” his/her tasks; to ignore, ridicule, mock, disregard.

• Disparage: To make the other person feel unimportant; to minimize, belittle, ridicule.

• Intimidate: To cause another to fear you; to threaten, terrorize, bully, browbeat.

• Criticize: To find fault with another; censure, blame, disapprove; to freely dispense “shoulds” and “should nots.”

• Control: To deny the other person the right to make (and act on) his/her own decisions and to live his/ her own life; to overpower, command/demand, sway, manipulate; to answer for the other person; to take over his/her tasks.

• Judge: To determine the rightness or wrongness of another’s actions. Censure, blame, disapprove, severely criticize, shame; to freely dispense “shoulds” and should nots.”

• Denigrate: To slander or defame another; to dishonor another’s name or reputation; to belittle.

• Deceive: To lie, mislead, dupe or trick another person.

• Betray: To prove faithless to another; to seduce and desert; to dupe or “con;” to defraud.

• Insult: To treat another with insolence or contempt; to disparage, abuse, offend, affront.

• Abuse: To verbally, emotionally or physically attack another; to damage another’s sense of safety and sense of self. Yelling, hitting, belittling, denigrating, swearing at a person.