Before You Hit Send

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

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

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.

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

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!)

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

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.

Respect for the husband is just as important as love for the wife.

Words of love from a husband are like good medicine that brings life to the marriage.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

Trust God when the “why’s” of life threaten to overwhelm you.

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

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

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

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

Responding to offensive words or actions with your own offensive words and actions is damaging and unproductive.

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)

Your spouse can affect you, but your spouse does not control you.

Whose voice are you listening to: Hollywood or God’s Holy Word?

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.

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

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

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!

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.

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.

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.

[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?”

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

Just because you may feel unloved or disrespected does not mean your spouse is sending that message.

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

God rewards your obedience to love and respect, even if your spouse does not respond!

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

It is hard to be negative while being thankful.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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).

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!

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.

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

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

A parent needs to feel respected, especially during conflicts...A child need to feel loved, especially during disputes.

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”?

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

Assuming goodwill can be revolutionary in relationships.

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

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

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?”

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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)

Don’t conclude that your spouse is wrong when he/she is seeking to do the right and righteous thing.

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.

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

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

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

Unconditional love or respect is never wasted. Hang onto this promise: “Let us not lose heart in doing good, for in due time we will reap if we do not grow weary” (Galatians 6:9).

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

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.

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.

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

Our trustworthiness rests on our truthfulness.

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

When you play the blame game your marriage never wins.

We have different vulnerabilities. We can pass judgment on one another all day long or we can say God made us different and that’s ok.

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.

We are equal but we are not the same.

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.

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

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

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.