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Recent research has indicated that the average individual listens for only seventeen seconds before interrupting and interjecting his own ideas.
If you want to improve a relationship, it's not that you demand your spouse to change. You have to ask, 'Where did I fail in this relationship?'
This is a huge thing if you are going to have a positive impact on your spouse. You have to not only realize this, but you have to practice this.
I cannot change others, but I can influence others... we can't change people, but we can and we do influence people, and we do it every single day.
You cannot force someone to accept an expression of love. You can only offer it. If it is not accepted, you must respect the other person's decision.
I have been doing marriage counseling for about 15 years and I realized that what makes one person feel loved, doesn't make another person feel loved.
We are trained to analyze problems and create solutions. We forget that marriage is a relationship, not a project to be completed or a problem to solve.
At the heart of mankind's existence is the desire to be intimate and to be loved by another. Marriage is designed to meet that need for intimacy and love.
If we are to develop an intimate relationship, we need to know each other's desires. If we wish to love each other, we need to know what the other person wants.
Don't be a victim of the urgent. In the long run, much of what seems so pressing right now won't even matter. What you do with your children will matter forever.
Forgiveness is not a feeling; it is a commitment. It is a choice to show mercy, not to hold the offense up against the offender. Forgiveness is an expression of love.
That is the idea that good Christians don't talk about sex, at least not out loud, and certainly not in the church. I want to say that both of those ideas are fallacious.
Lack of love from parents often motivates their children to go searching for love in other relationships. This search is often misguided and leads to further disappointment.
Another reality about relationships is that they are never static. All of us experience changes in relationships but a few stop to analyse why a relationship gets better or worse.
Something in our nature cries out to be loved by another. Isolation is devastating to the human psyche. That is why solitary confinement is considered the cruelest of punishments.
The getting out part [of advise] may well be true. Because if you have tried the tender love thing... typically the abuser is not going to change until they are pushed in a corner.
In reality, relationships that are successful tend to take the attitude, 'How can I help you?' 'How can I enrich your life?' 'How can I be a better husband to you,' if it's a marriage.
The pattern often has been entrenched since childhood... [abusive people] don't think that there is anything wrong with them because that is the way they were brought up in their family.
We cannot rely on our native tongue if our spouse does not understand it. If we want them to feel the love we are trying to communicate, we must express it in his or her primary love language.
I am amazed by how many individuals mess up every new day with yesterday. They insist on bringing into today the failures of yesterday and in so doing, they pollute a potentially wonderful day.
Love is always freely given. Love cannot be demanded. We can request things of each other, but we must never demand anything. Requests give direction to love, but demands stop the flow of love.
One of the things I say is, 'You cannot control your spouse, but you can influence your spouse.' And one of the ways to influence your spouse is to make sure you are meeting their need for love.
I remember, in the early days of my marriage, I thought I married the wrong person. We held to our own ideas of what the other should be and do, but neither of us lived up to those expectations.
If you grew up in a dysfunctional family, then there is really no hope for you to have a good relationship. That is another myth that we have to throw off, so that we can get into what I call Reality.
The in-love experience does not focus on our own growth or on the growth and development of the other person. Rather, it gives us the sense that we have arrived and that we do not need further growth.
It is universal to give gifts as an expression of love. My academic background is anthropology, the study of cultures. We have never discovered a culture where gift-giving is not an expression of love.
Typically, we get annoyed when our spouses complain. We get defensive. But, really, when your spouse complains, he or she is giving you wonderful information about what would make him or her feel loved.
..there is hope. That's the marvelous thing about being human. We can change our future. We need not be enslaved by the experiences of the past. We can learn to love even when we have not received love.
I think one of the myths is that people don't change. A lot of people believe that. Their spouse has been an alcoholic for the first 10 years of the marriage, and they say they are never going to change.
People do not get married planning to divorce. Divorce is the result of a lack of preparation for marriage and the failure to learn the skills of working together as teammates in an intimate relationship.
I would encourage you to make your own investigation of the one whom, as He died, prayed for those who killed Him: 'Father forgive them for they know not what they do.' That is love's ultimate expression.
We can choose the attitude that says, I have been wronged. People have hurt me, but with the help of God, I am going to learn how to return good for evil, and I am going to make a difference in this world.
I think one of the other myths is that your environment determines your happiness. That if you are living with an alcoholic or living with a depressed spouse for a long time, you are just going to be unhappy.
For love, we will climb mountains, cross seas, traverse desert sands, and endure untold hardships. Without love, mountains become unclimbable, seas uncrossable, deserts unbearable, and hardships our lot in life.
Love is the fundamental building block of all human relationships. It will greatly impact our values and morals. I am also convinced that love is the most important ingredient in the single 's search for meaning.
Over the long haul, many of those people [in a difficult marriage] will begin to reciprocate, because you are meeting a basic need in their life, the need for love, and they know they don't deserve love many times.
We all desperately need love. If a spouse in a difficult marriage will learn the love language of that spouse, and they will, with the help of God, consistently speak their love language no matter how they are treated.
If you are sitting on the couch with the TV off, and you are looking into each other's eyes and talking, that is quality time - so is taking a walk or going out to eat, so long as you are communicating with each other.
Gifts need not be expensive; after all, "it's the thuoght that counts." But I remind you, it is not the thought left in your head that counts; it is the gift that came out of the thought that communicates emotional love.
Real love" - "This kind of love is emotional in nature but not obsessional. It is a love that unites reason and emotion. It involves an act of the will and requires discipline, and it recognizes the need for personal growth.
There were only two things I knew in a Christian framework that I could do. One would be the pastor of a church, the other would be a missionary. I didn't particularly like snakes, so I decided I should probably be a pastor.
On the other hand, if I walk in the house, I don't even bother to find her, I just walk in the den and flip on the TV, get myself something to drink, sit down, start unwinding, I have influenced my wife in a very negative way.
The reality is, if you go to the library and read biographies, thousands of people have changed, radically changed. St. Augustine was one of them. He lived a terrible a life for the first 33 years, and then he radically changed.
We can look at the pain in our lives. We can look at the way we have been mistreated, and we can have an attitude of, I will never amount to anything. I have been wrong about people all my life. I am going to pay somebody back for this.
I hope the reader's sense that I am deeply empathetic with the pain of being in a desperate marriage, but I also believe that the person who is married to the abuser or the alcoholic or whomever has the greatest potential for helping them.
I thought the whole thing was you fall in love with somebody, and it's so wonderful, and it's so euphoric, and it's going to be that way forever. Nobody told me that two years after you fall in love, you're going to come down off the euphoria.
Togetherness has to do with focused attention. It is giving someone your undivided attention. As humans, we have a fundamental desire to connect with others. We may be in the presence of people all day long, but we do not always feel connected.
When you're married, the person you would most like to love you is your spouse. And if you feel loved by your spouse, the world looks bright. But if the love tank is empty, and you don't feel loved by your spouse, the world begins to look dark.
Years and years ago, I said I did not want to write academic books. I want to write books that are in the language of the common person so that Joe, who didn't even go to college, can sit down and read my book and get it and apply it to his life.
When people respond too quickly, they often respond to the wrong issue. Listening helps us focus on the heart of the conflict. When we listen, understand, and respect each other's ideas, we can then find a solution in which both of us are winners.