Quotes about Relationships

Emasculation happens in marriage as well. Women are often attracted to the wilder side of a man, but once having caught him they settle down to the task of domesticating him. Ironically, if he gives in he'll resent her for it, and she in turn will wonder where the passion has gone.

Made in the image of a perfect relationship, we are relational to the core of our beings and filled with a desire for transcendent purpose. We long to be an irreplaceable part of a shared adventure.

You cannot force people to walk with God. You cannot force them to repent. All you can do is live with integrity and invite them to do so as well. Take things a step at a time. Give them consequences when they refuse to deal with serious issues, and pray. Pray like the dickens. Pray every step of the way.

It is not love to ignore your spouse's sin, or brokenness, or immaturity.

Mary had Joseph. Esther had Mordecai. Ruth had Boaz. We will not become the women God intends us to be without the guidance, counsel, wisdom, strength, and love of good men in our lives.

You learn a great deal about the true nature of a person in the way they love, why they love, and, in what they love.

The great divide lies between men as lovers and men as consumers. Does he seek her out, long for her, because really he yearns for her to meet some need in his life—a need for validation (she makes him feel like a man), or mercy, or simply sexual gratification? That man is a Consumer, as my friend Craig calls him. The lover, on the other hand, wants to fight for her—he wants to protect her, make her life better, wants to fill her heart in every way he can.

The vast desire and capacity a woman has for intimate relationships tells us of God's vast desire and capacity for intimate relationships.

Most of our addictions [shopping, food, bad relationships] as women flare up when we feel that we are not loved or sought after.

Sartre felt that Hell is other people, but precisely the opposite is true. Hell is being left alone forever with no other reality than your own consciousness of yourself. It is being locked in a casket of your own internal chaos with no hope of a window, or door leading in light from outside to give you a moment's respite from yourself. Hell is the refusal of the gift of the other.

The authors challenge that the marriage in which one cannot express disappointment has become an idol — The Thing that Cannot Be Questioned.

This is why the apply some principles approach to marriage improvement doesn't work. So long as we choose to turn a blind eye to how we are fallen as men or women, and to the unique style of relating that we have forged out of our sin and brokenness, we will continue to do damage to our marriages.