Before You Hit Send

Every day we have the potential of both verbal and written blunders. It makes no difference if we are talking to our spouse, to a stranger over a meat counter, chatting on a cell phone with our mother, or sending an e-mail to a coworker; we can and do miscommunicate and people can and do get the wrong idea. When we don't pause long enough to think before speaking or writing, it commonly yields a misunderstanding and leads to a clash. We end up being the person who said, “You know that sphere of the brain that stops you from saying something that you shouldn't? Well, I don’t have one of those.”

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What You Will Learn

  • Discover the power of thoughtful communication with "Before You Hit Send"
  • Explore the consequences of impulsive communication in the age of social media
  • Learn how to prevent misunderstandings and clashes by asking four key questions before speaking or writing
  • Gain insights into the importance of truth, kindness, necessity, and clarity in your communication
  • Embark on a journey of self-reflection and personal growth to understand your communication tendencies
  • Unlock the tools and strategies to communicate wisely and foster understanding in your relationships
  • Start thinking before you speak and avoid communication disasters with "Before You Hit Send"
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Before You Hit Send

Preventing Headache and Heartache

Mastering Thoughtful Communication

Every day we have the potential of both verbal and written blunders. It makes no difference if we are talking to a stranger over a meat counter, chatting on a cell phone with our mother, or sending an e-mail to a coworker; we can and do miscommunicate and people can and do get the wrong idea. When we don't pause long enough to think before speaking or writing, it commonly yields a misunderstanding and leads to a clash. We end up being the person who said, “You know that sphere of the brain that stops you from saying something that you shouldn't? Well, I don’t have one of those.”

Unlocking Effective Communication

This book is about preventing that misunderstanding and allowing for understanding. Said another way, preempting people from getting the wrong idea and enabling them to get the right idea! We all need work in this area in far more ways than just glancing through a checklist.

From external examples to internal turmoil, Before You Hit Send is about the four things we must think through before communicating. In all things we wish to say or write, we would be wise to ask ourselves,

  • Is it true?
  • Is it kind?
  • Is it necessary?
  • Is it clear?

When we ask and answer these four questions honestly, we will be thinking wisely before we speak. But to explore this fully, we need to find out a whole lot more about ourselves and uncover why we consciously and subconsciously get into these communication disasters to begin with. You may be surprised what you discover about yourself.  Shall we begin?

Get to know...

Emerson and Sarah Eggerichs

Dr. Emerson Eggerichs is an internationally known public speaker on the topic of male-female relationships. Based on over three decades of pastoring, counseling and study of biblical and scientific research, Dr. Eggerichs and his wife Sarah developed the Love and Respect Conference which they present to live audiences around the country.

About Love & Respect
Portrait of Emerson and Sarah Eggerichs

Product Quotes

Your spouse deserves the truth from you. Do your best to tell it with love and respect.

The Love and Respect Experience

A strong woman of dignity puts on respect out of her love and reverence for Jesus Christ. She trusts that His word not only protects and empowers her, but also rewards her with incomprehensible eternal blessings.

Respectfully Yours

This is the Rewarded Cycle: His love blesses regardless of her respect and her respect blesses regardless of his love.

Respectfully Yours

Clarifying is what you do before you step on your mate’s air hose and deflate his or her spirit. For example, you are having a typical conversation, but you can tell there is a misunderstanding. One of you isn’t being clear or isn’t hearing correctly. Then and there you clarify the misunderstanding before your spouse’s spirit deflates. You lovingly or respectfully clarify matters so that your spouse will not feel unloved or disrespected. The reason you take pains to clarify a seemingly small matter is to prevent the situation from becoming a love and respect issue that needs decoding. Clarifying is what you do to stay off the Crazy Cycle and keep positive, energetic feelings flowing between the two of you, to keep yourselves on the Energizing Cycle.

The Language of Love & Respect Book

[Husbands] the most powerful weapons you have are your ears. Just listen to your wife, and she is much more likely to feel understood.

Love & Respect for a Lifetime

Could you be facing a crisis in faith more than a crisis in your marriage?

Respectfully Yours

Marital researchers agree that a huge percentage of communication problems between husband and wife are due not to what is said but to how it is said – the attitude and tone of voice.

Love & Respect for a Lifetime

There is a discrepancy between who we want to be and see ourselves to be and how we actually sound in voice and writing. But with self-reflection and honesty, we can turn the corner and improve our communication. We need only evaluate what we are about to communicate.

Before You Hit Send

There is power and freedom that comes in understanding that no one can cause you to react in a certain way. It is your choice.

Building Blocks

Your marriage is a test of your devotion to Christ.

Love & Respect

Unconditional respect is as powerful to him as unconditional love is to her.

Love & Respect for a Lifetime

A husband may deserve contempt, but that doesn’t win him any more than harshness and anger wins the heart of a woman.

Love & Respect

She’ll feel at peace with you when you let her vent your frustrations and hurts and don’t get angry and close her off.

Love & Respect

Your hunger for God can create an appetite in your children.

The Love and Respect Experience

God is good and wants what is best for us.

Respectfully Yours

Do you believe that there is a God who really loves you and wants to help you?

Respectfully Yours

The woman absolutely needs love, and the man absolutely needs respect. It’s as simple- and as difficult- as that.

Love & Respect

You may believe that the careless, unloving or disrespectful words you speak are because your spouse is causing you to speak this way, but Jesus says that it is coming out of your heart.

Building Blocks

When the wife flatly says her husband will have to earn her respect before she gives him any, she leaves the husband in a lose-lose situation. Now he is responsible for both love and respect in the relationship. He must unconditionally love his wife and earn her respect.

Love & Respect

No one can really practice Love and Respect unless he or she does it as unto Jesus Christ.

Love & Respect for a Lifetime

Always see your mate as an ally. Feedback is of little use if you see your spouse as an enemy. Giving and receiving constructive feedback is based on feelings of goodwill in both partners. Both of you need to remember that, even if you don’t always agree and even if you become irritated or angry, you are friends, and neither of you means to hurt the other.

The Language of Love & Respect Book

The Love and Respect message is not about a husband earning his wife’s respect by being more loving any more than it is about a wife earning her husband’s love by being more respectful. Always love or respect is given unconditionally according to God’s commands.

The Language of Love & Respect Book

When you look to God and His Word as your ultimate source of significance and security, you don’t demand that your spouse take that role in your life. And as you draw strength from the Lord individually, He draws you closer together as a couple.

The Language of Love & Respect Book

When we feel crippling discouragement by the sinful choices and outcomes of our kids, we must not let this permanently deter us from parenting God’s way.

Love & Respect in the Family

When your wife comes to talk to you, listen to her. Realize she is coming to you because you matter more to her than anyone else. She has certain emotional needs and only you can meet them. Sometimes she may say things that don’t make sense to you and she is apt to misspeak and exaggerate when she is upset, but don’t put her down. Instead, listen to her heart. Give her a chance to express her concerns and, as she does so, don’t try to fix her. Don’t give her your solutions unless she asks for them.

The Language of Love & Respect Book

Optimism or pessimism? It is always a choice, no matter what your natural temperament.

The Love and Respect Experience

We have to step back as Christ followers and ask, “Do I have false expectations that my relationship should be romantic 99% of the time?”

Building Blocks

If a husband is commanded to agape- love his wife, then she truly needs love.

Love & Respect

We send each other messages in “code” based on gender, even though we don’t intend to. What I say is not what you hear, and what you think you heard is not what I meant at all.

Love & Respect

A marriage relationship will be energized when couples learn how to motivate each other God’s way.

Building Blocks

When one of you makes a mistake, control any anger you may feel and trust God completely, no matter what happens.

The Love and Respect Experience

Can you begin to trust that God feels love for you even when you don’t feel that love?

Respectfully Yours

The heart of my communication means the other person cannot get my heart to be unkind, unloving, or disrespectful. Instead, I have made a decision about who I will be independent of the other person. I won’t blame my unkindness on someone else.

Before You Hit Send

Never give up. If you want to have a strong marriage, you need to accept temporary setbacks as part of the game.

The Love and Respect Experience

The parent-child relationship is as easy, and as difficult, as love and respect.

Love & Respect in the Family

Often both spouses have goodwill but are not deciphering each other’s code. She criticizes out of love, but he “hears” only disrespect. He distances himself to prevent feelings from escalating, which is the honorable thing to do, but she “sees” only his failure to be loving!

Love & Respect

Every marriage includes trouble some of the time. Do not let the 20% leaven all the rest.

The Love and Respect Experience

Your wife will feel esteemed when you speak highly of her in front of others.

Love & Respect

Recognize your different gifts--how each of you (Pink and Blue) functions according to God’s perfect design.

The Love and Respect Experience

Husbands, to energize your wife give her face-to-face time, allowing her to talk and share her feelings.

Building Blocks

I have concluded that those of us in the church who believe we have the Truth are not using the whole truth. A crucial part of God’s Word has been completely ignored, or perhaps simply gone unnoticed, when it has been there right under our noses the whole time! Many Christian spouses know Ephesians 5:33 and can at least paraphrase it. The Apostle Paul tells husbands to love their wives as much as they love themselves, and wives are to respect their husbands. But is anyone really listening? Perhaps the first step to better communication between husband and wife is to hear what God’s Word clearly says. --Emerson

Love & Respect Book

Words of wisdom for all husbands and wives are these: We easily see what is done to us before we see what we are doing to our mate.

Love & Respect for a Lifetime

The Crazy Cycle is, indeed “the evil of folly and the foolishness of madness” (Ecclesiastes 7:25)

Love & Respect

Your words reveal your heart.

The Love and Respect Experience

His love blesses regardless of her respect; her respect blesses regardless of his love.

Love & Respect

Your spouse may meet many of your needs, but your deepest dependency should be on your Lord.

The Love and Respect Experience

Your position in Christ is what counts, not your less-than-perfect performance.

The Love and Respect Experience

Getting married reveals, usually sooner than later, an incontestable fact: your spouse cannot possibly meet all your needs and desires

The Love and Respect Experience

Clearly, in the marriage, in the family and in the household, when you speak words of blessing, you are speaking to the Lord, and for this you will be rewarded.

The Language of Love & Respect Book

Words of Love or Respect must uplift your spouse, edifying- never manipulating him or her.

Love & Respect for a Lifetime

Love and Respect is a faith venture, not a formula.

Building Blocks

Pink and Blue perceptions not only affect seeing, they affect hearing as well. Women hear with pink hearing aids and men hear with blue hearing aids. Even more important to understand as you and your spouse seek to gain better communication, you can hear the very same words, but each of you will hear different messages.

Love & Respect for a Lifetime

Words of Love and Respect must include thankfulness spoken to or about your spouse; don’t fixate on weaknesses and faults.

Love & Respect for a Lifetime

Your husband knows you appreciate his desire to protect and provide when you praise his commitment to provide for you. You empathize when he reveals his male mindset about position, status, or rank at work.

Love & Respect for a Lifetime

When parents genuinely trust and follow the Lord and His ways, their faith spills over onto the children.

The Love and Respect Experience

Just because you’re offended doesn’t mean the other person is offensive.

Love & Respect Podcast

God designed the woman to love. He’s not going to command her to agape her husband when He created her to do that in the first place. God is not into redundancy.

Love & Respect

God is not pink. God is not blue. God is purple. When two become one, they have the potential of displaying God’s attributes and character.

Love & Respect for a Lifetime

Accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative with lots of love and respect in between.

The Love and Respect Experience

Here is the secret to marriage that every couple seeks and yet few find: Unconditional respect is as powerful for him as unconditional love is for her. It’s the secret that will help you achieve a brand new level of intimacy.

Love & Respect for a Lifetime

Be quick to listen and understand and you have a much better chance of being understood.

The Love and Respect Experience

When a husband feels disrespected, he has a natural tendency to react in ways that feel unloving to his wife. (Perhaps the command to love was given to him precisely for this reason!) When a wife feels unloved, she has a natural tendency to react in ways that feel disrespectful to her husband. (Perhaps the command to respect was given to her precisely for this reason!)

Love & Respect

We are either going to give in the darkness or we are going to give into the darkness.

The Illumination Project (Journal)

You must distinguish between “I can’t” and “I won’t.”

Love & Respect

When a husband chooses to come across lovingly even though he feels disrespected, he can prevent the Crazy Cycle from spinning and possibly getting out of control.

The Language of Love & Respect

Suppressing negative feelings is not loving, respectful or very wise. Speak up tactfully.

The Love and Respect Experience

It’s true that women have intuition and that men should listen to them. It’s also true that women have blind spots and need the insight of their husbands.

Love & Respect for a Lifetime

Do not live by the standards of Hollywood; trust what God says in His Holy Word.

The Love and Respect Experience

You have to become proactive, rather than just trying to stop the reactive.

Love & Respect Podcast

When a husband chooses to do or say something loving, and that includes saying, ‘I’m sorry for coming across in an unloving way,’ he energizes his wife. When a wife decides to express herself respectfully, and that includes apologizing for her disrespectful attitude, she energizes her husband.

Love & Respect for a Lifetime

Our trustworthiness rests on our truthfulness.

Before You Hit Send

Christian maturity involves a lot of things, but surely it includes knowing how to process your anger.

The Love and Respect Experience

Refuse to let evil turn you into a contemptuous and hateful person.

Love & Respect Podcast

Will we decide how we see God based on our circumstances, or will we see our circumstances in light of how we view God?

The Illumination Project (Journal)

Marriage is a tool and a test to deepen and demonstrate your love and your reverence for Jesus Christ.

Respectfully Yours

It’s so easy to dismiss our spouse as childish because we don’t have the same vulnerabilities they do.

Building Blocks

It’s crucial to communicate with the right tone of voice and the right expression on your face.

Love & Respect for a Lifetime

It is crucial for a husband and wife to see that neither one is wrong, but both of them are very different--in body function, outlook and perspective.

Love & Respect for a Lifetime

Our research shows that couples who pray together are more apt to reap all kinds of benefits, including better and more frequent communication, going on “dates” more frequently and having sex more frequently.

The Love and Respect Experience

“Respect is a man’s deepest value. I have had numerous men tell me, ‘I would rather live with a wife who respected me but did not love me than live with a wife who loved me but did not respect me.’ These men are not saying that they are indifferent to love. They know they need love, but they need to feel respected even more than they need to feel loved.“

Love & Respect for a Lifetime

At the very bottom of things, in every case and in every conversation, you can do your marriage a huge favor by assuming she is seeking to feel loved or he is seeking to feel respected and give your spouse some grace!

The Language of Love & Respect Book

If a husband loves his wife as he should, she will feel honored and respected. If a wife respects her husband as she should, he will feel loved and appreciated. It’s a win-win.

The Love and Respect Experience

The Lord made women (Pink) and men (Blue) with differences, and He expects us to recognize and deal with those differences in a loving and respectful way.

Love & Respect for a Lifetime

He will feel appreciated when you recognize his problem-solving approach as his male brand of empathy.

Love & Respect

Most marriages will succeed when obeying the command to Love and Respect.

The Illumination Project (Journal)

We blame people for the bad things we do, but take credit for the good things we do.

Building Blocks

Life is too short to fuss and fret over trivial irritations.

The Language of Love & Respect Book

If you are seeking positive change in your marriage, you will need to make a positive change in your attitude and actions.

Respectfully Yours

The mature one in the marriage seldom moves second.

The Love and Respect Experience

You must “ask God from the wealth of his glory to give you power through his Spirit to be strong in your inner selves.”

The Language of Love & Respect Book

We all need to wrestle with the spiritual truth that God is good. If you don’t believe God is good, you won’t trust His word. If you don’t trust His word, you will find excuses to ignore His commands.

Respectfully Yours

Husbands, even Jesus Himself was asked by a woman, “Do you not care?” (Luke 10:40) When your wife accuses you of not caring, decode her deeper meaning.

The Language of Love & Respect Book

Whether visiting a prison, feeding the hungry, giving the thirsty a drink or speaking a word of love or respect, everything is to be done to and for Christ.

The Language of Love & Respect Book

Mutual understanding, not communication, is the key to a healthy marriage relationship.

Building Blocks

Wives, you never know: The way you handle this [conflict] might bring your husband not only back to you, but to God. Husbands, you never know: The way you handle this [conflict] might bring your wife not only back to you, but to God. (1 Corinthians 7:16)

The Language of Love & Respect Book

Negative actions rarely produce positive results.

Respectfully Yours

When Jesus said “turn the other cheek,” He wasn’t saying to be passive wimps. He was teaching that physically people can control you but if you turn and give the other cheek, suddenly you’re in control and you’re making the choices.

Building Blocks

Don’t label each other as bad because you differ on how you solve your troubles.

Building Blocks

The more we are upset at something, the wiser it is to let twenty-four hours pass before responding.

Before You Hit Send

Being a person who communicates what is true frequently demands tact, and at times it can feel like sidestepping land mines. It takes work to be both truthful and tactful.

Before You Hit Send
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