The Love & Respect Experience (Audiobook)

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.

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

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.

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

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

Self-interest should never come ahead of your spouse’s interests.

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

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!

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

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 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!

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

God is good and wants what is best for us.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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?

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

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

Be a part of the solution, not part of the problem.

Good intentions do not always produce good words or outcomes.

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

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.

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

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

We can communicate the truth in the best of manners, but the person may be so insecure he or she can only react and attack like a wounded bear.

We send each other messages in “code” based on gender, even though we don’t intend to. What I say is not what you hear, and what you think you heard is not what I meant at all.

Our trustworthiness rests on our truthfulness.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

Marriage is a tool and a test to deepen and demonstrate your love and your reverence for Jesus Christ.

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

The difference between successful couples and unsuccessful couples is that successful ones keep getting up and dealing with the issues.

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.

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.

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

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

We easily see what is done to us before we see what we are doing to our mate.

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)

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.

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

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

Always see your mate as an ally. Feedback is of little use if you see your spouse as an enemy. Giving and receiving constructive feedback is based on feelings of goodwill in both partners. Both of you need to remember that, even if you don’t always agree and even if you become irritated or angry, you are friends, and neither of you means to hurt the other.

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.

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.

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

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

We have discovered that as women motivate their man God’s way, men are energized to love them better. It doesn’t matter if your marriage is good or seems like there is no hope. We have seen God move in powerful ways even when things looked hopeless.

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.

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

[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?”

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.

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

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!)

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.

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

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)

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

[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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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!

We are equal but we are not the same.

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

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.

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

The moment we cry to Him for help, He is already pleased. He gives us strength to love our children.

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

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

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.

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.

We all need love and respect equally. But, during conflict our felt needs are as different as pink is from blue.

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

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

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

Being a person who communicates what is true frequently demands tact, and at times it can feel like sidestepping land mines. It takes work to be both truthful and tactful.