The Crazy Cycle In Marriage - Study Guide (Download)

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.

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.

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

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

We are worth Jesus to the Father.

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

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

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

God is not trying to trick you or mess with you. Trust that He wants to reveal Himself to you just as much as He wants to reveal Himself to the world.

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

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

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

Do you seek to understand or only to be understood?

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

God is good and wants what is best for us.

Parenting is a faith venture. As we parent “unto Christ” we reap God’s reward, “knowing that whatever good anyone does, he will receive the same from the Lord” (Eph. 6:8 NKJV)

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

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

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.

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

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

Always remember that Pink and Blue have different wiring, different preferences. Assume your spouse has goodwill toward you, no matter what. Both of you can be right, while being different.

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.

Your hunger for God can create an appetite in your children.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

Feeling unloved, a wife gets defensive and acts offensively without respect. Feeling disrespected, a husband gets defensive and acts offensively without love.

We are equal but we are not the same.

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

Negative actions rarely produce positive results.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

Thank the Lord for all the trouble-free moments in which you and your spouse enjoy Him, each other, your family, your ministry and life as a whole. Ask Him for the strength to accept your measure of trouble, and the wisdom to deal with the annoyances and irritations by loving and respecting each other with new commitment. (You may also want to pray about troubles at work, at church, with the children…) “But those who marry will have trouble in this life” (1 Corinthians 7:28)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Christian maturity involves a lot of things, but surely it includes knowing how to process your anger.

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 give yourself grace and your spouse judgment?

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

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

Do you believe that there is a God who really loves you and wants to help you?

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

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

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

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.

Your marriage is a test of your devotion to Christ.

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

Your spouse may meet many of your needs, but your deepest dependency should be on your Lord.

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

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

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

Your spouse has a need only you can fill.

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.

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

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

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

Assume goodwill about the person you are in conflict with.

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

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

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

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.

When you relinquish an offense, you need to send that offense somewhere. So follow Jesus’ example and release it to your heavenly Father.

Good intentions do not always produce good words or outcomes.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

Thank the Lord for the goodwill each of you has toward the other. Ask Him for strength to give each other the benefit of the doubt during moments when someone’s goodwill seems to be lacking. “He who seeks good finds goodwill, but evil comes to him who searches for it.” (Proverbs 11:27)

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

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

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

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

Before hitting send, ask yourself, "Have I listened carefully and understand the exact issue on the table?"

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

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

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).

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.

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

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