Respectfully Yours - Participant Study Guide

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

You cannot use unholy means to achieve a worthy end.

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

Unconditional respect means we confront their wrongdoings respectfully. We do not become uncivil because they are. Who they fail to be does not determine who we will be.

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

A man has a natural, inborn desire to go out and “conquer” the challenges of his world – to work and achieve.

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

When one of you makes a mistake, control any anger you may feel and trust God completely, no matter what happens.

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!

Your marriage is a test of your devotion to Christ.

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.

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

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

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).

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.

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

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

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.

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

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 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?

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

Our trustworthiness rests on our truthfulness.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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!

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.

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

So I encourage every husband and wife to commit to the Jesus Way of Talking. Instead of allowing the stress of the situation to control you, you can say to yourself, “Because I love the Lord and I know that He rewards every good word, I am going to be truthful even if my spouse is not. I will also be uplifting, forgiving, thankful and scriptural in my speech because my ultimate goal is to please the Lord. Whatever my spouse’s weaknesses or bad habits might be, I will not let them cause me to sin with my lips.”

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

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

Good intentions do not always produce good words or outcomes.

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.

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

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

We get on the Crazy Cycle because without love a wife reacts without respect, and without respect a husband reacts without love.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

When we feel crippling discouragement by the sinful choices and outcomes of our kids, we must not let this permanently deter us from parenting God’s way.

You must “ask God from the wealth of his glory to give you power through his Spirit to be strong in your inner selves.”

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

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.

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!

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

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

“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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

Here is the secret to marriage that every couple seeks and yet few find: Unconditional respect is as powerful for him as unconditional love is for her. It’s the secret that will help you achieve a brand new level of intimacy.

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

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.

We are equal but we are not the same.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

Your words reveal your heart.

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

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?

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.

Do you seek to understand or only to be understood?