Welcome to
Marriage in God's Hands.
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I'm Mike Tucker.
This is Gayle Tucker.
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We are from Faith
For Today Television.
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We're the co-host
of Lifestyle Magazine
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and Mad About Marriage,
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the flagship
programs for Faith For Today.
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And we've been
talking about mottos
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that were shared with
us by people on Facebook
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who have successful marriages.
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We took our Facebook friends,
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we said, "Please
give us some ideas
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about what makes
marriage work for you.
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Do you have a motto?
Do you have a saying?
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Do you have a
principal that you repeat?"
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A maxim.
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Yes, that you
repeat over and over.
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Something that reminds you,
"Hey, this helps us stay close.
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This works for us."
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And we got lots
of responses. We did.
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People who found
out that things work
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and as we said earlier
on one of the other shows,
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sometimes it's by
trial and the error.
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Sometimes it's
because they've researched it
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or they found
that in God's word.
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Right.
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Or maybe you learned
it from your parents,
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your home of origin.
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And you may have
picked up something there.
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And we also found that
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they come in three
different particular areas.
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First is the choose.
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And then connect.
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And communicate
are the three C's
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that we put
together in this area.
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And we are still on
the area of choosing.
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And one of the mottos
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that came to us was interesting.
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It said,
"Sometimes I don't like you
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but I always love you."
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Sometimes I don't
like you all that much
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but I always love you.
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But always love you.
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I think this is
the one that reminds us
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that there is a difference
between love as a feeling
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and love as a principle.
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We can be reminded
here that love is a choice,
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that's why it fits in
our big category of choice.
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We make a choice
for our marriage.
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Which is also why in
scripture, we can be commanded
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to love one another
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because you choose to love.
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Basically, it means
that love is a verb.
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It's an action word.
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We demonstrate our love
not through feeling although,
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you know, feelings may arrive
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but through behaviors.
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Things that we're gonna do,
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I'm going to behave in a
loving fashion toward you
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and that is the definition
of love for scripture.
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It is a verb, it
is an action word.
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It is.
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You know, when you talk
about sometimes I don't like you
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but I always love you.
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It makes me think
of a friend of mine.
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I went to school with him
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and we went to school together
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back in the
academy college years.
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And then several years later
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when is family was coming along,
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I was talking to him
after his third child was born.
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And he said, you know,
I said, "How is he doing?
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Is he doing well
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or how is it going
with your new one?"
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And he was probably
about three months old by them.
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And he says, "You know,
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we went straight to
like with this one."
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He said, "With child number two
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we had to stay
love for a long time."
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We chose to love.
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"We know we love him, we
don't like him a whole lot."
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But he says, "This third
one, he is so easy going,
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he is happy all the time.
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We went straight to like."
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Straight to like.
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And there is a
difference sometimes
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between like and love, you know.
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And that's why you're
talking about what the Bible...
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It says, love one another.
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We can love one
another and the Bible says,
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I command you to
love one another.
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Yeah.
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Anyone who's raised kids,
you don't always like them.
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They go through
that middle school age,
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the 12, 13-year-old and
you swear that aliens came in
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and abducted the
child you love so much
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or replaced them
with an evil monster
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that's about ready
to destroy the plant
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and you are with it, you know?
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And you don't
really like this kid
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but you chosen to love.
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I mean, eventually
the good kid comes back,
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you know, this nice person
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that you fell in
love with earlier.
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But that's why
love is a principle.
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Love, we choose to love
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and that gets us
through the rough times
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and we don't
always like each other.
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Yeah.
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And in marriage, we
will find those times.
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You know, when your
spouse does something
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or there just a
distance for some reason
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and you kind of like, I'm not...
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The irritation
factor is high at times.
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"I'm not
enjoying this, you know.
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I'm not but I
still love my spouse."
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Yeah.
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I have a friend whose wife
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had to take some
anabolic steroids
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for a condition she had.
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And, you know, it
helped the condition
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and after a while she was
able to get off the steroids,
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but during the time
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while she was
taking the steroids,
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she kind of had
roid rage, you know?
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The steroid rage.
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Yeah, she was not a
nice person to be around
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and he said,
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"I don't like her very
much but I still love her."
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And the love saw him
through the difficult time
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when until she
got off the steroids
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and the nice person he
had fallen in love with
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all along came back.
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And so he liked her again then.
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But love is a choice.
It's a decision we make.
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And we have to be reminded that
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this like
everything else in our marriage
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is going to be up and down.
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There are gonna be cycles.
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We have times when we
feel a tremendous closeness
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and other times
when we don't feel close
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and yet that decision
to love is always there.
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You listen to the popular songs
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and you think
that love is nothing
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more than an emotion.
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You watch
television or the movies
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and you think that love
is nothing more an emotion.
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You listen to people talk,
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"Well, I just
don't feel it anymore."
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I've had couples
come to me and say,
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"Well, we don't
feel love anymore."
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As though now my...I should
pronounce them not married.
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"All right, you
don't feel anymore.
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The feeling is, you've
lost that lovin' feeling,
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as the song says.
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All right, well, obviously
you can't get that back
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you must be done.
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So just color it
gone and move on."
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But that's not
what I'm gonna say
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because love is not a
feeling, it's a choice.
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And the neat thing is that
that feeling usually comes back
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as you persist in
loving actions and Agape love.
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You know, most Christians
are familiar with the fact
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that the Bible talks
about different types of love.
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Yes, Phileo and Eros and Agape.
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Yeah, the Phileo
love is the brotherly love
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and the Eros is
the passionate love.
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And we always
thinking we need that Eros,
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we need that passion.
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Yeah. And Eros is nice.
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It is nice but
what really sustains us
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is the Agape love.
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And Agape love
says it's unconditional.
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It says, I will do or say
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what is in the best
interest of the other person.
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Yeah.
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That is a good
definition for Agape love.
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I may not always like
you but I've chosen to do
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or say that which is
in your best interest.
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I'm going to behave
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in a loving fashion
toward you, that's Agape.
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I chose to treat you with love.
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And I think of the times
when Eros is in short supply.
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Yes, that's right.
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You know, sometimes people get
married on the basis of Eros.
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But Eros love, the
passionate love comes and goes.
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You would refer to
them as romantic lovers.
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Yeah, the romance. Yeah.
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And romance is great.
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But actually if romance
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is the basis of the relationship
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in order to move
on and to survive.
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Romance is the basis so
the relationship has to die.
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It must die.
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So you are now
saying that romance dies
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but the...but as a basis.
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Basis.
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And then you move to what
we would call a friendship love
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or Agape love which
is love is principle,
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love is friendship.
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That's when you
become a mature lover.
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Mature lovers
know how to use Eros.
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They know how to use romance.
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They are able to
turn it on when needed
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but they don't live
with a study diet of it.
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A study diet of
Eros will kill you,
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especially at my age, you know?
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But Agape love is something
I can deal with day in, day out
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and then as mature lovers,
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you learn how to
use Eros when needed.
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You learn how to have
those romantic interludes.
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And actually the
best Eros lovers,
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the best romantic
lovers are those who have Agape
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as the foundational
principle of the relationship.
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Absolutely. Friendship love.
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If Eros is the foundation,
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if that's all its based on then,
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you know, as bodies change
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or you know, as
hair thins or whatever.
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Waistlines expand. Yeah.
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Then you're in trouble
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because you are
judging the other person
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while you don't
measure up anymore,
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not usually realizing
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that you probably
don't measure up either.
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That's right.
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And of course it's not
just the body that changes
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and the look,
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but marriage like
life has ups and downs.
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There are gonna be
hotspots along the road.
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And when you hit those hotspots,
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you don't always feel in love.
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There are times when
you wake up in the morning
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and you don't feel it
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because of the difficult
times you've been going through
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but you can choose it.
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And when you
choose it and behave it,
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then you still have love as
the basis of the relationship
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and that sees you through.
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It's good stuff.
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And its very good
stuff. Good stuff.
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So how do you get there?
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What did you do?
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How do you get there?
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I think that first
of all love is a gift.
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It comes from God.
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God is love.
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He says He is the
source of all love.
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He is the fountain of it.
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And so we go to
Him, first of all.
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I think we say, "Lord,
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I'm not particularly
feeling loving at the moment."
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I lost that lovin' feeling.
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Yeah, but I know
that you can help me
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with the principle of love.
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You can help me to
have love for this other,
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for this person, for my spouse.
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You help me to
act in loving ways
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because as you said earlier,
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love is a verb,
love is an action.
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And, you know, the
interesting that happens
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is that as we begin
to act in loving ways,
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our feelings follow our actions.
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Yes, they do.
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You know, our actions
tend to follow our feelings.
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"I don't feel like doing this."
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I feel it some
ways so I do something.
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But the reverse is also true.
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As we persist in doing right,
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as we persist in loving actions,
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then our feelings
tend to follow that.
00:10:06.97\00:10:08.90
And we will find that,
you know, as we said earlier,
00:10:08.94\00:10:11.21
beings to cycle around.
00:10:11.24\00:10:12.77
And pretty soon you are
able to step back and say,
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"You know, the thing
that I love about them
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is still there."
00:10:16.61\00:10:17.95
Yeah. I haven't lost that.
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That is wonderfully good
news for anyone who struggles.
00:10:19.35\00:10:21.92
Now we've got another motto
that we would like to share
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and that is that, "Expectations
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are premeditated
disappointments."
00:10:27.96\00:10:30.13
Now someone shared this
with you at a seminar, right?
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You know, we do
that marriage seminars
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and when we do
marriage seminars,
00:10:34.76\00:10:36.67
we have all kinds of
principles that we teach.
00:10:36.70\00:10:38.87
One day a woman
came up to me, she says,
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"You know, I just listened
00:10:42.10\00:10:44.11
to your
presentation on expectations."
00:10:44.14\00:10:46.04
And we about an
hours worth of it.
00:10:46.07\00:10:47.98
So we talk for an
hour about our needs
00:10:48.01\00:10:50.38
and our emotional expectations
00:10:50.41\00:10:52.61
and she walked up and she said,
00:10:52.65\00:10:54.32
"You know, don't
you, that expectations
00:10:54.35\00:10:56.08
are premeditated
disappointments?"
00:10:56.12\00:10:58.62
And I said, "Oh, is that right!"
00:10:58.65\00:11:01.49
And then she
began to explain why.
00:11:01.52\00:11:03.73
She said that she had a friend
00:11:03.76\00:11:05.43
and her
friend's name is Mary Jo.
00:11:05.46\00:11:06.96
She wanted us to be
sure and use that name.
00:11:07.00\00:11:08.56
We give Mary Jo
credit for this one.
00:11:08.60\00:11:09.93
That's right.
00:11:09.96\00:11:11.30
She said, "My friend
00:11:11.33\00:11:12.67
began to discover
this in her marriage."
00:11:12.70\00:11:14.87
She said, "You
know, if I sit back
00:11:14.90\00:11:17.01
and I'm expecting
my husband to do this.
00:11:17.04\00:11:19.64
I'm expecting my
husband to make me happy.
00:11:19.67\00:11:21.94
I'm expecting my husband to
do the things I want him to do
00:11:21.98\00:11:25.38
without, you know,
just to know, you know.
00:11:25.41\00:11:28.08
If I'm expecting
00:11:28.12\00:11:29.62
that he will provide
for me in a certain way.
00:11:29.65\00:11:32.02
I'm expecting that
he will do A, B, and C
00:11:32.05\00:11:34.69
the way I want him to do it,
00:11:34.72\00:11:36.32
I'm just simply premeditating
my own disappointments.
00:11:36.36\00:11:39.63
I'm sitting there saying,
00:11:39.66\00:11:41.00
"Oh, I want this to happen
00:11:41.03\00:11:42.56
but he may or may
not even be aware.
00:11:42.60\00:11:45.60
And even if he is aware,
00:11:45.63\00:11:47.17
he may not know
exactly how to do it
00:11:47.20\00:11:49.77
or may not want to.
00:11:49.80\00:11:51.14
May not want to.
00:11:51.17\00:11:52.51
Yeah, so instead of
expecting something,
00:11:52.54\00:11:56.98
maybe we need to
learn more communication.
00:11:57.01\00:11:59.85
But, you know, Mary Jo,
00:11:59.88\00:12:02.42
she discovered that she
save herself a lot of anguish
00:12:02.45\00:12:05.95
when she stopped expecting
00:12:05.99\00:12:07.72
the things that
aren't going to happened.
00:12:07.76\00:12:09.09
Yeah.
00:12:09.12\00:12:10.46
I think that it's
fine to have needs
00:12:10.49\00:12:12.36
and to recognize
that we have needs
00:12:12.39\00:12:14.16
and desires and wishes.
00:12:14.20\00:12:16.00
And then to communicate
those wishes and those desires.
00:12:16.03\00:12:18.80
I have had people sit
in the counseling office
00:12:18.83\00:12:22.00
and they will say, "Well,
he never does this for me."
00:12:22.04\00:12:24.24
Well, did you ever
tell him you wanted that?
00:12:24.27\00:12:26.94
"He should just know."
00:12:26.98\00:12:28.88
What do you mean
he should just know?
00:12:28.91\00:12:31.31
How is he supposed to know this?
00:12:31.35\00:12:33.05
He is a guy, he didn't know.
00:12:33.08\00:12:35.05
This is the difference between
estrogen and testosterone,
00:12:35.08\00:12:38.09
he doesn't know.
00:12:38.12\00:12:40.52
And usually he
is quite clueless.
00:12:40.56\00:12:42.42
Testosterone seems to be the,
00:12:42.46\00:12:45.79
a block for...
00:12:45.83\00:12:47.16
The inhibitor.
00:12:47.20\00:12:48.53
It inhibits his intuition
00:12:48.56\00:12:50.93
regarding your
expectations and your needs.
00:12:50.97\00:12:54.07
So communicate that with him.
00:12:54.10\00:12:56.57
Once you tell him
this is what I expect,
00:12:56.60\00:12:58.61
this is what I need,
this would be very nice,
00:12:58.64\00:13:01.34
then he has a different
level of responsibility
00:13:01.38\00:13:03.78
and then expectations
can be something other
00:13:03.81\00:13:05.81
than a
premeditated disappointment.
00:13:05.85\00:13:09.42
We're gonna pause on that now.
00:13:09.45\00:13:10.89
All right. All right.
00:13:10.92\00:13:12.29
We will be right
back with more after this.
00:13:12.32\00:13:15.22