Amor y Respeto (Spanish Love & Respect Book)

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.

Both Judas and Peter denied Jesus Christ, but there is a huge difference between a Judas and a Peter.

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.

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

Don’t pressure yourself with perfection. We are going to fail. A righteous man falls 7 times but gets back up.

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.

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

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

A major step toward a happy marriage is accepting differences and working them out with love and respect.

Your marriage is a tool and a test to deepen and demonstrate your love and reverence for Jesus Christ. God is using your spouse to bring you an eternal reward.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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?”

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

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

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

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.

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

The mature one in the marriage seldom moves second.

Men are solution oriented, they love to solve problems. They want to be helpful.

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

We are equal but we are not the same.

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

Your marriage is a test of your devotion to Christ.

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.

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.

He will feel appreciated when you disagree with him only in private and honor his authority in front of the kids.

You can be right in the argument, but wrong in your approach.

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.

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.

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

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)

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

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

Your husband knows you value his friendship when you tell him you like him and you show it (he knows you love him, but he often wonders if you really like him).

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!)

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

As strong and powerful as marriage bonds can become, our deepest dependency must be on the Lord, not another human being.

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

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

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.

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.

Although the Crazy Cycle is not what God intends for any marriage, all couples get on it at times from one degree to another.

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.

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

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

Do you give yourself grace and your spouse judgment?

Our trustworthiness rests on our truthfulness.

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.

Your spouse can have a need that you don’t have and that’s okay.

In your marriage be the first to “seek peace and pursue it” (1 Peter 3:11)

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.

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.

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.

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.

Do you understand that God feels compassion for you, no matter what you have done or what your circumstances may be?

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

We easily see what is done to us before we see what we are doing to our mate.

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.

Marriage is a test of how you unconditionally love and respect your spouse as you obey, honor, and please the Lord.

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

“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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Troubles over sex and money do not cause a marriage to go under. The lack of love and respect during conflict cause the marriage to go under.

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

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”?

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

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

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.

When confronting your spouse, attack the behavior, not the person.

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

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

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

We can communicate the truth in the best of manners, but the person may be so insecure he or she can only react and attack like a wounded bear.

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

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