Before You Hit Send

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.

One thing to remember in this culture is if we say something complimentary towards one gender, we aren’t saying something against the other.

Each of you must focus on what God is calling you to do toward your spouse. Do not focus on what you think God is calling your spouse to do toward you.

The key to motivating another person is meeting their deepest need, especially during conflict.

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

Your words reveal your heart.

“With eyes of faith, envision Jesus standing just beyond the shoulder of your spouse and listening to every word you speak in every conversation, pleasant or tense. When you speak lovingly or respectfully to your spouse, you are speaking to Christ. Your spouse just happens to be there too.” This truth has sanctified the lips of many. Instead of giving their spouse a verbal whipping or choking on the idea of saying anything positive, now some spouses are motivated to speak words of unconditional love or respect.

You both forgive for one simple but profound reason: because you know Christ has forgiven you!

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.

When you love or respect unconditionally regardless of the outcome, you are following God and His will for you.

In the ultimate sense, your marriage has nothing to do with your spouse. It has everything to do with your relationship to Jesus Christ.

The difference between successful couples and unsuccessful couples is that successful ones keep getting up and dealing with the issues.

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.

If husbands and wives are to understand the Love and Respect Connection, they must realize that they communicate in code. And the problem is, they don’t know how to decipher the messages they send to one another.

We can all have moments of anger, but this does not mean we have to lose control and sin.

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

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

Research and experience prove that men and women see and hear differently. Recognizing these differences and adjusting to them is absolutely necessary for reaching mutual understanding and better communication.

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

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

God’s commands are not burdensome, but are given to us to spare us from more pain. Why would God command you to do something that doesn’t work?

A most significant point of this book is this: If what we think is true, kind, necessary, and clear, we need to have the courage to hit send. This isn’t about refraining from speaking; this is about speaking.

[Husbands] do you realize the power of just holding your wife’s hand?

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

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

The moment we cry to Him for help, He is already pleased. He gives us strength to love our children.

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

Do you give yourself grace and your spouse judgment?

Unconditional respect, like unconditional love, is all about how one sounds (tone of voice and word choice) and appears (facial expressions and physical actions).

Mutual submission is the only way to live fairly together with mutual authority.

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.

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

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

Knowing my spouse will not be able to love or respect me perfectly, I commit to having a forgiving spirit so that I may never speak hatefully or contemptuously.

When we speak before we think, we widen the chances the other person(s) will be notably hurt, frustrated, confused, angry, fearful, or offended by something we’ve communicated.

When a wife asks, “Do you love me?” She is not trying to put her husband on the spot. She is simply looking for reassurance.

A man has a natural, inborn desire to go out and “conquer” the challenges of his world – to work and achieve.

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.

Your wife feels you are open with her when you discuss financial concerns, possible job changes or ideas for your future.

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.

When sorting out how to slow down the Crazy Cycle, it helps to remember that men are commanded to love because they don’t love naturally, and on the other side, women are commanded to respect because they don’t respect naturally.

When a wife insists that her husband earn her respect, she puts him in a lose-lose situation.

[Women], as you enter quiet dignity, not preaching at your husband or scolding him as though you were his mother, something happens in his soul as a male.

We are equal but we are not the same.

Our trustworthiness rests on our truthfulness.

Often the apparent issue isn’t the real issue; the real issue is always a matter of love or respect.

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

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

So I encourage every husband and wife to commit to the Jesus Way of Talking. Instead of allowing the stress of the situation to control you, you can say to yourself, “Because I love the Lord and I know that He rewards every good word, I am going to be truthful even if my spouse is not. I will also be uplifting, forgiving, thankful and scriptural in my speech because my ultimate goal is to please the Lord. Whatever my spouse’s weaknesses or bad habits might be, I will not let them cause me to sin with my lips.”

With a better understanding of God’s promises, you will be on your way to a renewed mind and a changed life.

“You can be right, but wrong at the top of your voice.”

We might say that every negative action in the family has an equal and opposite negative reaction.

You can be right but wrong at the top of your voice.

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

Your spouse has a need that you don’t have. Are you going to say there is something seriously wrong with them or will you say “Viva la Difference”?

Your spouse has a need only you can fill.

How we react to a situation reveals more about us than about the other person.

A wife has one driving need--to feel loved. When that need is met she is happy. A husband has one driving need--to feel respected. When that need is met he is happy. When either of these needs isn’t met, things get crazy. Love and Respect reveals why spouses react negatively to each other, and how they can deal with such conflict quickly, easily and biblically.

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.

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

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

I often stress that one of the greatest rewards any persevering spouse can have is being a good example and influence on the children in the family.

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.

Be friendly. Be friendly. Be friendly. Watch what happens.

Truth will carry its own weight if delivered respectfully and lovingly.

As mature men, we need to take leadership and put this out on the table. We must acknowledge our feelings- we need to feel respected. However, as we do this we must acknowledge our wife’s feelings- she needs to feel loved!

If we subscribe to the belief that because we are equal we are the same, then we’re going to expect our spouse to respond the way we do.

Marriage is a tool and a test to allow God’s will to be revealed in our lives.

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.

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

Ladies, be careful. “A nagging wife goes on and on like the drip, drip, drip of the rain” (Proverbs 19:13).

Through Jesus and Peter, God set forth His standard for living in the unconditional dimension: choose to be loving even when the other person is not; do what is right regardless of the treatment you receive. I believe this standard applies directly to marriage. A husband who speaks lovingly to his disrespectful wife will be rewarded; and a wife who speaks respectfully to her unloving, not-worthy-of-respect husband will be rewarded. Whether you are husband or wife, the reward is what can keep you going in the midst of the craziness: knowing that God commends you, knowing that you have found his favor for your words and actions.

Do you seek to understand or only to be understood?

It is so easy to draw wrong conclusions about a spouse’s character and motives due to an occasional flare-up or silly comment.

No matter what your struggle- criticism, constant conflict, sex, money, parenting, harsh words- learning to communicate the Love and Respect way can help you make crucial changes and build the kind of relationship that God blesses.

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.

God is not trying to trick you or mess with you. Trust that He wants to reveal Himself to you just as much as He wants to reveal Himself to the world.

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

Thank God for joining you together and for allowing you to trust Him to help you, whatever the issue. God is there for you and expects you to look to Him to keep you together as a team, so ask Him for His help in the smallest of concerns. “So they are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate.” (Matthew 19:6)

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

As a wife, if you can start to understand how important your husband’s work is to him, you will take a giant step toward communicating respect and honor, two things that he values even more than your love.

If you want your wife to express appreciation for your attempts to be loving, you must use thankful words when she tries to speak or act respectfully.

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

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

Always try to look at your spouse the way Jesus does.

Stay the course regardless of the child’s respect and obedience. This is the Family Rewarded Cycle: a parents love unto Christ regardless of the child.

Wives, to energize your husband do an activity with him, shoulder-to-shoulder, without talking.

Though the end can be worthy (to be loved and respected), when each uses unholy means (unloving and disrespectful words and actions), it will not achieve those ends. We must treat others as we expect them to treat us. To deny this makes us arrogant or fools, or both.

We have discovered that as women motivate their man God’s way, men are energized to love them better. It doesn’t matter if your marriage is good or seems like there is no hope. We have seen God move in powerful ways even when things looked hopeless.

God is good and wants what is best for us.

Assume goodwill about the person you are in conflict with.

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.

When you’re truly Christ-centered, instead of child-centered, you will be a more effective parent in the long run.

Money squabbles don’t undermine love and respect; they simply reveal unloving and disrespectful attitudes, which are the real reason why a marriage can start to wobble on the Crazy Cycle.

Thank God for His forgiveness of your mistakes. In trying to be a loving man or a respectful woman, we blow it. Owning up to mistakes is never easy, but it is always the way to move forward. Take good care not to accuse your spouse of mistakes as you pray. Also, pray about any forgiving to be done in the family, any forgiveness that needs to be asked. Children may need forgiveness (and what about Mom and Dad?). “There is no one on earth who does what is right all the time and never makes a mistake.” (Ecclesiastes 7:20)

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

I had often asked God to compensate for my mistakes, but in return had I thought He would give me perfect children?

Let the Lord change you, but don’t try to change each other.

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

We get on the Crazy Cycle because without love a wife reacts without respect, and without respect a husband reacts without love.