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.”

$ 11.00 
$ 22.99 
No items found.
Left Arrow
No items found.
Right Arrow

Where To Buy

No items found.
Play Button

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"
Close
Close Button

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

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

Building Blocks

We are worth Jesus to the Father.

The Illumination Project (Journal)

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.

Love & Respect for a Lifetime

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

Before You Hit Send

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

Love & Respect

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

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

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

Love & Respect

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

Respectfully Yours

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

The Illumination Project (Journal)

Since it is easy to focus on the negative, focus on your mate’s good qualities and express thanks with positive words of Love or Respect.

Love & Respect for a Lifetime

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

Love & Respect in the Family

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.

The Language of Love & Respect Book

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

Love & Respect in the Family

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

The Love and Respect Experience

Assume goodwill about the person you are in conflict with.

The Illumination Project (Journal)

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

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

The Love and Respect Experience

To not forgive is to shoot yourself in the foot and put extra gas in the Crazy Cycle.

The Love and Respect Experience

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

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.

Love & Respect for a Lifetime

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)

The Love and Respect Experience - Prayers

Thank the Lord that in the very beginning He created them male and female – Blue and Pink. Ask Him for patience and ever-growing understanding of how men and women see and hear differently. “He created them male and female, and He blessed them.” (Genesis 5:2)

The Love and Respect Experience - Prayers

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

The Love and Respect Experience

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

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

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

Love & Respect Podcast

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

The Love and Respect Experience

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

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!

Love & Respect

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

Love & Respect

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.

Love & Respect for a Lifetime

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

Building Blocks

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

Love & Respect

When you possess a forgiving spirit, words of Love and Respect will flow authentically from your lips- and realize that the Lord Himself is listening to you at moments like these. He knows you are not powerless, but actually full of power that He has granted you.

Love & Respect for a Lifetime

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

The Language of Love & Respect

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

Love & Respect for a Lifetime

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

Love & Respect

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

The Love and Respect Experience

Husbands primarily want to hear ‘respect” talk during conflict. Wives primarily want to hear “love” talk during conflict.

Building Blocks

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

The Language of Love & Respect

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

Love & Respect for a Lifetime

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

Building Blocks

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

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

The Love and Respect Experience

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

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

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

Love & Respect for a Lifetime

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

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

You’re the only person in the world who can meet your spouse’s deepest need for love and respect. After all, you alone are married to your spouse.

Love & Respect for a Lifetime

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

The Love and Respect Experience

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

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

Building Blocks

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

Love & Respect

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

Love & Respect

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

Building Blocks

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

Love & Respect

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 with conflict.

Love & Respect for a Lifetime

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.

Love & Respect for a Lifetime

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.

Love & Respect

Do you give yourself grace and your spouse judgment?

The Language of Love & Respect Book

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)

The Love and Respect Experience - Prayers

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

We are equal but we are not the same.

Building Blocks

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

The Love and Respect Experience

We all need love and respect equally. But, during conflict our felt needs are as different as pink is from blue.

Building Blocks

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.

Love & Respect

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.

Love & Respect

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.

Building Blocks

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.

Love & Respect for a Lifetime

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

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

Love & Respect

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.

Respectfully Yours

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

The Illumination Project (Journal)

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

Love & Respect

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

The Love and Respect Experience

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

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

Love & Respect in the Family

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

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

Love & Respect

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.

Before You Hit Send

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

The Love and Respect Experience

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.

Before You Hit Send

Good intentions do not always produce good words or outcomes.

Before You Hit Send

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

A woman needs love like she needs air to breathe. A man needs respect like he needs air to breathe.

Building Blocks

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 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

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

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

The Love and Respect Experience

Share what God is saying to your heart, not what you think He needs to say to your mate.

The Love and Respect Experience

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

Love & Respect Boook

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

You speak lovingly or respectfully no matter how your spouse may speak to you in return. Your spouse is not the reason--good or bad--why you speak unconditional words of love or respect. God is the reason, and as you depend on Him, you will become increasingly able to speak lovingly and respectfully to your spouse.

The Language of Love & Respect Book

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

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

Your spouse has a need only you can fill.

The Love and Respect Experience

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
Left ArrowRight Arrow