People tend to criticize their spouse most loudly in the area where they themselves have the deepest emotional need.
Love is something you do for someone else, not something you do for yourself.
Love doesn't erase the past, but it makes the future different.
I wish I'd known that apologizing is a sign of strength. I had the impression that if you apologize, it's a sign of weakness. I kind of picked up the message from my father, 'Real men don't apologize. You just do your best, and if you happen to hurt some people, that's their fault. You just go on. Don't apologize. That's a sign of weakness.'
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.
For a long time, I have been wanting to write a book for singles that would help them in the dating process and in getting ready for marriage. Most of my writing, I've written to couples who are already married, because I've been doing marriage counseling for 35 years.
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.
It was God's idea to make us male and female. And God's the one that instituted marriage.
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.
