I am incredibly blessed to have an amazing husband who first and foremost loves God and loves me so that takes care of a lot of problems but in a society where 50% of marriages end in divorce I'm not willing to take any chances so we are seeking to divorce proof our marriage by attending a series through our church called "Love and Respect" by Dr. Emerson Eggerichs. I know what you're thinking...It seems silly to attend a marriage seminar if your marriage isn't in trouble but I think quite oppositely because I truly believe Satan (I hate him) is out to destroy families (especially Christian families that love God) and I do not have a perfect, problem free marriage. I have my days and he has his where we don't feel particularly lovey dovey, if you catch my drift? So last night we're sitting in a room packed with our new church friends and I hear about this Crazy Cycle (see picture above) which simply explained goes like this: 1.) Love is her deepest need and respect is his deepest need. Based on the Bible. Ephesians 5:33 "Nevertheless let each individual among you also love his own wife even as himself; and let the wife see to it that she respect her husband." Consequently...2.) Without love she reacts without respect, and without respect he reacts without love...crazy cycle. There is a love and respect connection. It was a real eye-opener for both of us. Their basic philosophy, drawn from the Bible, is simple but insightful: Men are not motivated by the same things as women. Just as a woman is motivated by unconditional love from her husband, a husband is motivated by unconditional respect from his wife. If either spouse is denied this basic need, a cycle can spin towards divorce. Suppose a husband fails to show love to his wife. She will react by treating him disrespectfully. Then as she fails to show him respect, he will react by treating her unlovingly. Breaking the cycle is hard work because often women don't feel their husbands are worthy of respect, and often husbands don't feel their wives are worthy of their affection. So the greatest examples were given during the class a story was told about a late night city bus ride where a father and his 3 unconrollable children sat in the back of the bus and the children were jumping, screaming and running up and down the isle disrespecting other passengers, acting like wild houligans so finally one of the extremely disturbed passengers gets up and angrily goes over to the father and says, "would you mind controlling your children, they are disturbing everyone on this bus, I have children and my kids would NEVER act like this". The father looks up at him sad and shaking and says, "I am SO sorry, I just don't know what to say to them, we just came from the hospital where their mother died". Suddenly mortified the passenger just stares at him....O. In one instant everything changed, but nothing changed. This is marriage. You say your spouse changed, you say it's beyond fixing, yadayadayada. Then they put this analogy on the board....GODISNOWHERE....you can read it to say, God is no where or God is now here. Neither is right or wrong but things can be easily misinterpreted. Can't they?
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