Love and Respect Read Online Free PDF Page B

collected many others like it from couples Sarah and I have counseled. Angry exchanges are caused when the husband appears careless, depriving his wife of love, and when the wife reacts with criticism and complaints that are vehement, depriving the husband of respect. And why should she be respectful? The stupid oaf doesn’t deserve her respect!
    “ALL YOU WANT ME FOR IS SEX!”
    Here’s one more example. The husband is gone for a week on a business trip. As his plane lands, he starts envisioning a romantic sexual evening with his wife, so he hurries home as quickly as he can. As he walks in the door, his wife’s first words are, “What are you doing home so early? Well, since you’re here, I need you to pick up the kids from school. And don’t forget, we have parent-teacher meetings this evening. Oh, yes . . . I want to talk to you about Billy. The teacher called today and said he’s been showing off and distracting his friends in class. And on the way to the school, can you pick up my clothes at the cleaners? Oh, I almost forgot. Dinner will be late because my sister is dropping over for coffee.”
    So much for the romantic evening planned by our knight of the business road who has wound up playing second fiddle to the kids, the cleaning, and his wife’s sister. On his way out the back door he calls sarcastically over his shoulder, “Great to see you after a week!”
    His wife is bothered by his sarcastic tone, but just as he walks out the phone rings and she doesn’t have time to follow him outside to ask him what he meant. Later, during the parent-teacher meetings, she senses he is still angry, but on the way home she says nothing. She is exhausted from all the week’s activities, and she is upset because he has never asked her once about all she has had to deal with. She wonders what right he has to be upset with her when he is the one being unreasonable.
    As they retire into bed that night, the husband decides that he will “make up” with his wife in the most obvious and natural way. As he reaches to rub her back, which is usually a good way to get started, she groans, “Don’t. I’m too tired.”
    Angrily, he rolls away from her without saying a word. Wounded by his anger, she says, “You’re so insensitive!”
    In disbelief, he replies, “I can’t believe you said that. I’ve been gone for a week. I come home and instead of any kind of greeting, you just go on about the kids and your sister. When I try to get close, you tell me you’re too tired. And then you call me insensitive! Am I just a meal ticket to you?”
    By now the wife is very hurt, and she retorts, “You never asked once how I was doing. The only time you get interested in me it’s for sex!”
    “I was gone a week! When we were first married and I had to travel, you couldn’t wait to see me get home. You’d greet me at the door with a smile and a kiss. Now you simply look up and say, ‘Why are you home so early?’ Thanks. That makes my day.”
    CRAZINESS—JUST KEEP FLIPPING THE LIGHT SWITCH
    Stories like these are not unusual. Every married couple has versions of their own. Around and around it spins. I call it the Crazy Cycle. So many people are on the Crazy Cycle that five out of ten couples in the church are divorcing, and the craziness seems to be getting worse. It’s like someone coming into a room, flipping the light switch, and discovering the lights won’t come on. If someone tries the switch two or three times with no results, you can understand. He will eventually figure it out—a tripped circuit breaker, a burned-out bulb. But if he stands there and flips the switch constantly for half an hour, you begin to wonder, “Is this guy a little crazy?”
    Runaway divorce statistics reveal that “insanity is in their hearts”(Ecclesiastes 9:3).
    The point is simple: Craziness happens when we keep doing the same things over and over with the same ill effect . Marriage seems to be fertile ground for this kind of