Respect is the foundation of the Jewish home. It's the most basic of all qualities that must be cultivated in a marriage. It's not enough to have love. One must also have respect.

Kavod means feeling connection. Love says, "I'm incomplete without you." Kavod says, "I need you. I respect who you are and what you can give me." It's feeling connected to whatever virtue the person you're giving kavod to has. Let's say you have a medical condition. You visit a professor, treat him with respect, and pay him well. You show him you value what he is. This is the most basic aspect of a healthy marriage. The more you realize how incomplete you are, the more room there is for you to value what someone else has. Respect in a marriage means seeing yourself as a half person where both you and your spouse are mutually dependent. Today, the word dependency is loaded. People are afraid of having a dependency relationship. The only way a person can say they are not dependent is if they think they have everything and are everything. Nobody can say that.

Codependency is when you're feeling of wholeness is dependent on the other person needing you. Your agenda isn't to respect what they have but to enjoy their not having. This is the opposite of kavod. The expression in Hebrew for the covenant of marriage is l'krot brit- to cut a covenant. That means cutting off that feeling of independence and becoming one. Kavod is eternal while love is temporal. There are couples who never marry for romantic reasons yet they are strongly dependent on each other to the point that the bond between them is unbreakable. Their loyalty comes from seeing the other person as themselves. Because of this, there's also a certain amount of fear that kavod generates. You know you need the other person. The Rambam teaches that a woman should feel respect and awe for her husband even more than his actual status would warrant. It doesn't mean forceful domination which is a very superficial picture of what marriage is. There is a difference between pachad (fear) and morah (awe). Pachad is negative fear. Morah means viewing someone as having superior aspects than you. Kavod by its nature includes morah. Kavod and morah combine to make a solid marriage.

Love is an emotion that doesn't necessarily affect how you run the home or the small things that make the other person feel valued. Quite the opposite. If you expect the other person to love you, you'll think he could look way from certain things that he really shouldn't. I was once counseling a nice, but very misguided women. Her husband works. She's a stay at home mom. She finds keeping the house organized difficult which is a common problem. When he comes home, she doesn't see any reason to warm up his food and sit down with him. His role from her perspective is not to care. They love each other so what does he care if he has to take the food out of the fridge and get it ready. Could be he doesn't care, but she's not being respectful towards him. She isn't saying, "I see something in you that I don't have and I need to get it from you. I want to be with you. I want to show you that I see you as an important person in my life." She doesn't even feel it necessary to clear the table for him so he can sit down and eat his meal in a decent manner. She's lacking kavod for not seeing any aspect of him that's worthy of respect. She's also missing something in the relationship even if he loves her enough not to care.

Love is an inner connection that is expressed at moments of height and grace. But it doesn't mean there's respect and the desire for it to be good for the other person. A wife should be imparting one message to her husband- "I value you. I see you as an important and I'll treat you accordingly." Obviously in different cultures this may mean different things. Whatever expresses, "I see you as important," in the framework of your culture should be expressed.

Kavod as opposed to love carries with it the obligation to speak and act in a harmonious way. We can see the way harmony and beauty is applied in the Torah. The kohanim were meant to be respected by the people. The clothing they wore were called bigdei kavod v'tiferet. The harmony and beauty of the garments were meant to lend them kavod. A wife must do what she can to create that feeling of harmony and beauty in the home by appreciating and valuing her husband. This is why the father will sit at the head of the table and make kiddush and hamotzi. When a question comes up at the table, Ima should refer it to Abba and not answer it herself.
All this says, "I value who you are."

This concept has practical applications. We can see this in relation to giving respect to one's parents. It doesn't just mean to feel kavod for them. It's standing up when they enter the room and not sitting in their chair. It's treating them as important. So too, giving kavod to a shul means refraining from speaking idle words, entering for personal reasons, or using it as a shortcut.