The Vince Lombardi Approach to Marriage: Mastering the Fundamentals

At the beginning of every new football season, Vince Lombardi would lift up the focal object of their game and exclaim, “Gentlemen, this is a football.”

The point he was making to his team was simple: start with the basics. If they are to find success on the field, then the fundamentals of their game must be mastered and maintained. 

He once said, “Some people try to find things in this game that don’t exist, but football is only two things—blocking and tackling.”

For Lombardi, the basics are constant over time. As a result, he called his players, even the most experienced, to relentlessly focus on the fundamentals. 

He expected everyone to remain humble and teachable about those fundamentals since they could not succeed by presuming there were other ways of winning without these. 

No matter the complex challenges, Lombardi believed success awaited those who habitually persevered by applying the fundamentals. Once ingrained in his players, he could build upon these mastered fundamentals.

Love and Respect: The Fundamentals of Marriage

Dare I say the same applies to marriage? In the first earthly relationship God ever created, there are constants and proven principles. These are the best practices that work and should be applied over and over. 

Is this why the apostle Paul summarized the greatest treatise on marriage in the New Testament (Ephesians 5:22-33) with love and respect (v. 33)?

Are love and respect analogous to blocking and tackling? 

Interestingly, the best research confirms love and respect as the key ingredients for a successful marriage. In the book Why Marriages Succeed or Fail, we read Professor John Gottman’s words: “... most couples I’ve worked with over the years, really wanted just two things from their marriage—love and respect” (p. 18). He said elsewhere, “In our study of long-term marriages we recruited couples from a wide range of backgrounds who had been married twenty to forty years to the same partner. Despite the wide differences in occupations, lifestyles, and the details of their day-to-day lives, I sense a remarkable similarity in the tone of their conversations. No matter what style of marriage they have adopted, their discussions, for the most part, are carried along by a strong undercurrent of two basic ingredients: love and respect” (p. 61).

When we lock onto the truth that love and respect are the foundational principles proven to work, we will win in marriage. When we keep doing the best practices of love and respect over and over, we best defeat those factors against our marriage.

Without Love and Respect, the Crazy Cycle Emerges

Let’s consider this another way: when problems arise and, instead of responding with love and respect, we react with hostility and contempt, this is almost certain to trigger a cycle of negativity. 

This cycle emerges when we feel defensive and do not intend to be unloving or disrespectful. How so? When a husband feels disrespected, and he withdraws and stonewalls out of hurt and frustration, he will appear to his wife as negative and unloving toward her, which triggers her negative reaction, thus what I call the Crazy Cycle. 

Or, when a wife feels unloved, and she criticizes and complains in hurt and frustration, she will appear to her husband as negative and disrespectful toward him, which triggers his negative reaction, thus the Crazy Cycle. 

Foolishly, when we react negatively, we think the other will finally “get it” and become apologetic and positive. We do not weigh the force of our negative, defensive reactions as feeling unloving and disrespectful, nor as the primary culprit to experiencing a meaningful marriage.

Gottman’s research at the University of Washington revealed a significant finding. “If problem-solving isn’t the main goal of my recommendations, then what is?” Gottman asked. “The major goal is to break the cycle of negativity” (Why Marriages Succeed or Fail).

Our Unloving and Disrespectful Manner Is Not Communicating What We Think It Is

Yes, we must resolve issues like money problems, childrearing problems, work-family problems, and in-law problems. But we can be right in what we propose yet wrong when appearing unloving and disrespectful to make our point. We rationalize being truthful but unkind since we feel justified and hold our spouse responsible for our negative reaction. However, the prudent spouse recognizes that truth and wisdom carry their own weight, and when we add volume that sounds unloving and disrespectful, we plug the ears of our spouse. We sabotage problem-solving when delivering solutions on the red-hot plates of hostility and contempt. 

Said another way, these particular problems need to be solved, but when we appear judgmental, dismissive, and disdainful when communicating our remedy, it is next to impossible for a spouse to focus on resolving the issue since we have degraded and demeaned them. Humble disagreement on the issue is one thing. It is quite another when we angrily disapprove of who our spouse is as a human being—or appear to be labeling them as flawed and foolish by our “look.”

When we look at our spouse with that look of negativity, we put them on the defensive. They feel our disagreement isn’t about the issue, but about them. They think the problem serves us as an opportunity to disapprove of who they are as a human being. They hear, “This is another example that proves you are stupid, which is why loving and respecting you is impossible.”

Name-calling, character assassination, mocking, eye-rolling, and shouting make the cycle of negativity all the more guaranteed. Withdrawing, stonewalling, avoidance, and silent treatment also inevitably drive the negativity cycle.

When we feel the other has a measure of hostility and contempt toward us, we keep spinning on the Crazy Cycle. We are violating the basics. Sadly, when we recognize that we have acted unloving and disrespectfully, we claim the other person is responsible for our response, and should not take it personally.

Instead of prioritizing our misapplication of love and respect, we look elsewhere for why we have problems in the relationship. Frankly, we look elsewhere for “insights” on why our spouse is the problem. “Our problems are complex. Love and respect is too simple,” we claim.

This tendency of many reminds me of what Jesus said about the Pharisees in Matthew 23:34: “Blind guides! You strain your water so you won’t accidentally swallow a gnat, but you swallow a camel!” (NLT).

Some set aside these proven truths on love and respect in favor of some trend and fad to explain why we have problems (or rather what we truly believe—why our spouse is the problem).

But does it work? Or are they swallowing camels in their efforts to not accidentally swallow a gnat?

Getting Back to the Basics of Love and Respect

We need to get back to the metaphor of blocking and tackling, as Lombardi coached. Love and respect are these basics. 

We must ensure our tone of voice, facial expression, word choice, gestures, and specific actions do not convey, “I do not love or respect you.”

This does not mean when we apply love and respect correctly that we guarantee the other person will receive what we have to say and respond lovingly and respectfully to us. Our spouse is a free moral agent who must make that decision. We cannot control the outcome in our spouse, only our actions and reactions to our spouse. However, if I were a betting man, I am willing to go on record and say, “I can guarantee that when you react in ways that appear hostile and contemptuous, your spouse will close off to you and react in similar ways, and you will not decode this as the fundamental reason the marriage struggles, but will start recording when they react, not when you fed the craziness.”

What I am saying is this: the best practice with the greatest proof of working is me approaching our marital challenges with a loving and respectful demeanor no matter the problem. Given there is goodwill and an honest misunderstanding in a gray area, this approach will work almost always in resolving the concern.

Given the other person has done evil, it will still allow one to confront the person with the truth and establish a course of action moving forward without escalating the negativity with hostility and contempt. In other words, love and respect are the fundamentals upon which we wisely confront, find solutions, create boundaries (i.e., we need to separate physically), and then work on rebuilding trust and healing the relationship. 

Will this restore a wayward spouse? That’s up to the spouse. As with Lombardi’s teams, excelling at blocking and tackling did not guarantee winning, but when they did their part excellently, it increased the probability of winning.

For a critic to claim love and respect are too simplistic in light of greater and more complex problems is like saying because a patient has cancer, it is too simplistic to say they need food and water to stay healthy. Granted, water and food won’t cure cancer. Cancer is a unique issue that may need radiation or chemotherapy. However, the patient will be dead within days if deprived of hydration and nourishment. The basics of water and food must always be present in every health crisis. So, too, love and respect must be present no matter the crisis, even in adultery and abandonment.

Yes, serious issues such as adultery and betrayal have to be navigated. Can anything be more painful, challenging, and complex? We ask ourselves, “Should I divorce or reconcile? If we reconcile, how do I move forward as a loving and respectful person while confronting the lack of love and respect toward me? How do I refrain from a hateful and disdainful attitude toward my spouse in front of the kids, which will only hurt them?” Many such questions arise. The issues are less complex and more burdensome. Though acting in a Christlike manner is not difficult to understand, it is certainly difficult to do.

Love and respect is easy to grasp but not easy to apply since when hurt and angry, we lose the incentive. But, the opposite is not a workable or viable option. Hostility and contempt do not heal a relationship. 

There is no guarantee that love and respect will win the heart of a spouse chasing another lover. But one need not be a world-renowned psychologist to know that malice and mockery, rancor and ridicule, and belligerence and belittling cannot achieve reconciliation.

Even if one finds a short-term solution—let’s say, deciding to separate for a month—nothing good will emerge when, during those four weeks, each keeps shouting, “No one could ever love and respect you.” 

A successful marriage is the result of routinely applying love and respect. Yes, it may require that we face serious challenges apart from things like betrayal, but more along the line of hardship. For example, we lose a child to cancer. Divorces occur not because of the child’s death but because of the chronic negativity shown toward the other, intentionally or not, and over time two people stop meeting each other’s need for love and respect, whatever the “reason.” But those who survived that loss with a healthy marriage, predictably, loved and honored each other during their tragic loss.

When we consciously prioritize love and respect during difficult times, we will improve our communication, mutual empathy, conflict resolution, decision-making, and teamwork.

For a husband and wife with no such loss and no adultery, who both have goodwill, and their only struggle is with clashing preferences (i.e., where to spend the inheritance money), all the more to value love and respect as the foundation of the marriage. They can jump ahead exponentially, given they continually ask themselves, “Is that which I am about to say or do going to sound and appear to my spouse as loving and respectful or unloving and disrespectful?” 

Love and respect are blocking and tackling. The basics to winning in marriage.