The Language of Love & Respect Workbook

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!

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.

“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.“

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

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.

Our trustworthiness rests on our truthfulness.

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

God is not pink. God is not blue. God is purple. When two become one, they have the potential of displaying God’s attributes and character.

Your spouse has a need only you can fill.

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.

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

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.”

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

There is a plan to parent God’s way, even when our children may seek to go their own way at time. The secret is to follow this plan regardless. When you do, I believe you succeed in His eyes.

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

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

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.

One thing to remember in this culture is if we say something complimentary towards one gender, we aren’t saying something against the other.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

Do you give yourself grace and your spouse judgment?

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

You’re the only person in the world who can meet your spouse’s deepest need for love and respect. After all, you alone are married to your spouse.

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.

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.

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 a wife insists that her husband earn her respect, she puts him in a lose-lose situation.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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?

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

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

You may believe that the careless, unloving or disrespectful words you speak are because your spouse is causing you to speak this way, but Jesus says that it is coming out of your heart.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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. Love and Respect reveals why spouses react negatively to each other, and how they can deal with such conflict quickly, easily and biblically.

God is good and wants what is best for us.

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

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

Men are solution oriented, they love to solve problems. They want to be helpful.

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

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

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

It is hard to be negative while being thankful.

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

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

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

Your words reveal your heart.

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

We all need to wrestle with the spiritual truth that God is good. If you don’t believe God is good, you won’t trust His word. If you don’t trust His word, you will find excuses to ignore His commands.

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

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!

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

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

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

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.

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

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

If you want your wife to express appreciation for your attempts to be loving, you must use thankful words when she tries to speak or act respectfully.

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.

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