Love and Respect Husband + Logo Mug

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

Your position in Christ is what counts, not your less-than-perfect performance.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

When a wife asks, “Do you love me?” She is not trying to put her husband on the spot. She is simply looking for reassurance.

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.

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

Your marriage is a test of your devotion to Christ.

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

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.

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

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

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.

I often stress that one of the greatest rewards any persevering spouse can have is being a good example and influence on the children in the family.

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

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

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

Negative actions rarely produce positive results.

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

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

Do not live by the standards of Hollywood; trust what God says in His Holy Word.

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

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

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.

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

If we subscribe to the belief that because we are equal we are the same, then we’re going to expect our spouse to respond the way we do.

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

Husbands, to energize your wife give her face-to-face time, allowing her to talk and share her feelings.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

When evil comes at you, you’re the one who makes the choice of whether or not it is going to go into you.

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.

Do you give yourself grace and your spouse judgment?

“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.

Good intentions do not always produce good words or outcomes.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

Assume goodwill about the person you are in conflict with.

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

When others do not respond to our communication, we need to look first at our communication style. Is the other person incapable of hearing what we have to say? Or are we abrupt, brusque, and curt?

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

We are equal but we are not the same.

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.

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.

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

When you play the blame game your marriage never wins.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

To build a lasting legacy, use proven wisdom that you glean from the Lord.

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.

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.

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.

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

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)

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

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

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

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

Our trustworthiness rests on our truthfulness.

Life is too short to fuss and fret over trivial irritations.

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

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

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

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.

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

If you are seeking positive change in your marriage, you will need to make a positive change in your attitude and actions.

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

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.

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.

When your wife comes to talk to you, listen to her. Realize she is coming to you because you matter more to her than anyone else. She has certain emotional needs and only you can meet them. Sometimes she may say things that don’t make sense to you and she is apt to misspeak and exaggerate when she is upset, but don’t put her down. Instead, listen to her heart. Give her a chance to express her concerns and, as she does so, don’t try to fix her. Don’t give her your solutions unless she asks for them.