Weekend Kindness
Reaching Others Through Kindness

Thank you for visiting Weekend Kindness-- the blog that helps you build positive relationships! If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed so that you don't miss a single post from one of our great authors!

We all do it. We all react when our needs aren’t being met, but what are we reacting to? Being a woman who found love later in life, I’ve gone through many cycles of friends getting married or having significant relationships. I’ve listened to many friends who’ve gone through the “crazy cycle” time and time again. For the past several months, I’ve been musing through Dr. Emerson Eggerichs, Love and Respect. It’s an amazing book and I would recommend it to any new couple, engaged couple or husband and wife teams.

This book hit the nail on the head when it comes to continual conflict in your most precious, sacred relationships. I don’t want to give away the whole book but in case you don’t have time to pick it up to read it I’d like to review a few of the many points, giving credit to the doctor himself.

What is The Crazy Cycle?
“Craziness is when we keep doing the same thing — again and again — with the same ill effect. Marital craziness is when we do the same thing — over and over — with the same negative results. I call it the Crazy Cycle. When hurt and frustrated, we continue reacting in negative ways to motivate our spouse to be positive.” (taken from http://www.family.org/marriage/A000001383.cfm)

How do we stop the crazy cycle?
Dr. Eggerichs states, “based on Ephesians 5:33, I discovered why a husband and wife react the way they do. We read, “each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband” (NIV).

He continues saying that “because a wife needs love, a husband would be wise to assume his wife’s negative reaction is rooted in her feeling unloved. On the other hand, because a husband needs respect, a wife would be prudent to assume her husband’s negative reaction is rooted in his feeling disrespected”
(taken from http://www.family.org/marriage/A000001384.cfm).

It was almost like a bell went off as I’ve been reading through Dr. Eggerichs’s book. SR and I have an amazing relationship and rarely get into “the crazy cycle”. However, I know we’re young in our life-long, God-given relationship and I am so glad to have read this book so early on.

Some take-aways, your pride needs to take a back seat to your relationship and to the person you’ve committed your life to AND you need to be the change you desire. If you’re more concerned with being right or getting the last word you’ll continually stay in the crazy cycle; this may mean a softer tongue. I know it takes “two to tango” but in order to thwart the crazy cycle you might need to first remove the log from your own eye.

It’s a great book; pick it up, check-it out but make sure to read it!

Tags

Related Posts

• 7 Reasons You Need a Date Without Kids
• Ladies, Your Husband is Not the Enemy
• Getting a Special Gift for a New Baby
• Sacrificial Love
• Panamanians Show Kindness