The Crazy Cycle In The Workplace - Study Guide (Download)

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

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)

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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)

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

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

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

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

Husbands, even Jesus Himself was asked by a woman, “Do you not care?” (Luke 10:40) When your wife accuses you of not caring, decode her deeper meaning.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

Your marriage is a test of your devotion to Christ.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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!

[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?”

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!

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

“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.“

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

Your words reveal your heart.

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

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.

The parent-child relationship is as easy, and as difficult, as love and respect.

Words of wisdom for all husbands and wives are these: We easily see what is done to us before we see what we are doing to our mate.

Good intentions do not always produce good words or outcomes.

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

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.

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

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

Your spouse has a need that you don’t have. Are you going to say there is something seriously wrong with them or will you say “Viva la Difference”?

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

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.

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.

When you come home after you have been apart, the first few moments of reconnecting will set the tone for the rest of the evening.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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 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.

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.

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

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

“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.

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

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

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

Negative actions rarely produce positive results.

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).

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

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

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

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.

We have to step back as Christ followers and ask, “Do I have false expectations that my relationship should be romantic 99% of the time?”

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!)

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

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

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.

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

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

The mature one in the marriage seldom moves second.

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.

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 but wrong at the top of your voice.

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.

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

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.

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 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.

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

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

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

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