The Crazy Cycle In Marriage - Study Guide (Download)

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

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

[Husbands] the most powerful weapons you have are your ears. Just listen to your wife, and she is much more likely to feel understood.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

Our trustworthiness rests on our truthfulness.

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

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

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.

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.

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 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.

Do you seek to understand or only to be understood?

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).

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

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

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

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.

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

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!

As you pray together, you will truly learn to love and respect together.

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

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

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

Self-interest should never come ahead of your spouse’s interests.

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

Love and Respect is a faith venture, not a formula.

It is hard to be negative while being thankful.

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.

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.

[Women], your self-love cannot be derived from your husband’s love. It can affect it, but it does not determine it.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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)

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

Words of Love or Respect must uplift your spouse, edifying- never manipulating him or her.

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.

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

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.

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.

[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?”

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.

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

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

We are equal but we are not the same.

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

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

You have two ears and one mouth; use them proportionately.

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

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.

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

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).

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

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.

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

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

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)

Unconditional respect is as powerful to him as unconditional love is to her.

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.

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

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

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

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 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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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

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

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

Good intentions do not always produce good words or outcomes.

“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.“

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

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

We are worth Jesus to the Father.

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

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.

Women give a report to build rapport. Men bond through shoulder-to-shoulder activities without talking.

God is good and wants what is best for us.

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

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.

Most marriages will succeed when obeying the command to Love and Respect.

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

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

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

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

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!

Negative actions rarely produce positive results.

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

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