The Crazy Cycle In Marriage - Study Guide (Download)

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

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 label each other as bad because you differ on how you solve your troubles.

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

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 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.

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

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

Often the apparent issue isn’t the real issue; the real issue is always a matter of love or respect.

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

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

Avoid like the plague trying to punish each other as a means of “motivation.” Christ-followers instinctively know that this destroys any opportunity to act out of reverence for Christ. In all marital issues, love and reverence for Christ must be our primary motivation.

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

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

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

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

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.

Good intentions do not always produce good words or outcomes.

When Jesus said “turn the other cheek,” He wasn’t saying to be passive wimps. He was teaching that physically people can control you but if you turn and give the other cheek, suddenly you’re in control and you’re making the choices.

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?

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.

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

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.

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.

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)

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)

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

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

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.

The woman absolutely needs love, and the man absolutely needs respect. It’s as simple- and as difficult- as that.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Negative actions rarely produce positive results.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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!

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.

The mature one in the marriage seldom moves second.

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

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

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

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

Research and experience prove that men and women see and hear differently. Recognizing these differences and adjusting to them is absolutely necessary for reaching mutual understanding and better communication.

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

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

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

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.

[Women], as you enter quiet dignity, not preaching at your husband or scolding him as though you were his mother, something happens in his soul as a male.

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

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

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

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

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

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!)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 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.

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

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

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

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

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).

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

I have concluded that those of us in the church who believe we have the Truth are not using the whole truth. A crucial part of God’s Word has been completely ignored, or perhaps simply gone unnoticed, when it has been there right under our noses the whole time! Many Christian spouses know Ephesians 5:33 and can at least paraphrase it. The Apostle Paul tells husbands to love their wives as much as they love themselves, and wives are to respect their husbands. But is anyone really listening? Perhaps the first step to better communication between husband and wife is to hear what God’s Word clearly says. --Emerson

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

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

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.

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

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

He will feel appreciated when you recognize his problem-solving approach as his male brand of empathy.

You cannot use unholy means to achieve a worthy end.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

We are worth Jesus to the Father.

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