Love & Respect in the Family

“Living happily ever after” means knowing how to deal with the imperfect parts of life.

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

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.

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

Assume goodwill about the person you are in conflict with.

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.

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

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.

Do you bow to the influence of Hollywood or God’s Holy Word?

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

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.

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

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

We are equal but we are not the same.

We fool ourselves into thinking the other person causes us to be the way we are. They really don’t! But if we lock into that idea, we become helpless, hopeless victims.

To get offended is easy, but to forgive is within your power as you walk in His steps.

Your marriage is really a tool and a test to deepen and demonstrate your love and reverence for your Lord.

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

Do you seek to understand or only to be understood?

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.”

Positive changes flood a relationship immediately when both husband and wife cancel the blame game!

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.

“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.“

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

Accidental sparks (unwise remarks) ignite and fuel a fire, and vroom goes the Crazy Cycle.

There is a plan to parent God’s way, even when our children may seek to go their own way at time. The secret is to follow this plan regardless. When you do, I believe you succeed in His eyes.

“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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

When you come home after you have been apart, the first few moments of reconnecting will set the tone for the rest of the evening.

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

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

She’s not wrong for not being male. He is not wrong for not being female. When you put pink and blue together, you get purple, the color of royalty; the color of God. Together, a husband and wife reflect God’s image.

Before hitting send, ask yourself, "Have I listened carefully and understand the exact issue on the table?"

Do you give yourself grace and your spouse judgment?

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.

Holding back your love or respect will just keep the Crazy Cycle spinning away, but being mature and making the first move could slow it down.

No matter how difficult your spouse may be at the moment, your spouse does not have control over your reaction; you do. You may be experiencing disappointment, frustration or anger, but you always have a choice. A wife can choose to be disrespectful or respectful. A husband can choose to be unloving or loving.

[Husbands] as the church places her burdens on Christ, so a woman needs to place her burdens on her husband. When she shares with you, don’t assume she is asking you to solve the problem. Ask your wife, “Do you want a solution or a listening ear?”

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

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.

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

Trusting and obeying God’s Word because we love and reverence God never, ever makes us a hypocrite! When the alarm goes off in the morning, we get up, even when we don’t feel like it getting up. Because we do what we don’t feel like doing, does that make us hypocrites? No, it’s a sign we are responsible people. Showing respectful behavior when we don’t “feel respectful” is evidence of maturity.

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

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.

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

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

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

His love motivates her respect. Her respect motivates his love.

When you relinquish an offense, you need to send that offense somewhere. So follow Jesus’ example and release it to your heavenly Father.

Fight like a loving man and a respectful woman. Fight fair.

We must bring our identity in Christ to our parenting—we must not derive our identity from our children.

Negative actions rarely produce positive results.

If you want your husband to express appreciation for your attempts to be respectful, you must speak thankfully when he tries to be loving.

Mistakes can’t be undone, but they can be forgiven.

When there is confusion, I try to refrain from attacking another for not listening carefully (which may not be the case). Instead, I take a run at communicating again, but more clearly.

God’s commands are there to help us, not to hinder us or hold us back as male and female.

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

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

Focus on the positive in the midst of the negative, and the Energizing Cycle will keep right on humming.

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

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

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!

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.

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

To stay the course in speaking words of Love and Respect, keep your heart in Scripture, trusting in and talking about His promises to help you.

Always remember that Pink and Blue have different wiring, different preferences. Assume your spouse has goodwill toward you, no matter what. Both of you can be right, while being different.

When you play the blame game your marriage never wins.

Your words reveal your heart.

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.

When a husband feels disrespected, it is especially hard to love his wife. When a wife feels unloved, it is especially hard to respect her husband.

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 feels unloved, it can be such a shock to her heart that she is oblivious to her disrespectful reactions toward her husband, though any man watching could see it plainly.

Feeling unloved, a wife gets defensive and acts offensively without respect. Feeling disrespected, a husband gets defensive and acts offensively without love.

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.

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

As a husband, if you can grasp that you don’t always have to solve your wife’s problems, you will take a giant step toward showing her empathy and understanding.

Being friendly to her man is one of the most effective things a woman can do to strengthen her marriage.

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

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.

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.

It’s hard to realize that we would never act around our business associates the way we act around our spouse.

If a husband chooses to be a peacemaker--taking the needs and concerns of his wife totally into account during any kind of argument or conflict--his wife will be motivated in turn to respond to his authority during stalemates.

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.

You can experience hurt, but it is your choice to hate.

Above all trust God when the “whys” of life threaten to overwhelm you.

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.

Research shows that 70% of the couples who were extremely unhappy in their marriage, but hung in there and worked through the tough time, identified themselves as being very happy five years later.

You cannot use unholy means to achieve a worthy end.

Be a part of the solution, not part of the problem.

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

We are worth Jesus to the Father.

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

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

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

Good intentions do not always produce good words or outcomes.