If you're not loving your spouse, who is????

So, on a scale of 1-10 (1 being in the pits and 10 being off the charts great) how well are you loving your spouse? I think I would give myself an 8.

Love, Affection and Appreciation

Can't believe it is February already. The month of the Super Bowl, the Daytona 500 and of course Valentine's Day. For the next couple of weeks we are going to be inundated with ads for spa treatments, romantic dinners, chocolate, flowers and more. This is a good thing, but I wish it weren't just in the month of February. Romance, affection and appreciation are a good thing all year round.

When's the last time you wrote a love letter to your spouse or a note of appreciation to your parents or a friend?

When's the last time you took your spouse out on a date or took the time to sit down with a good friend over a cup of hot tea or coffee?

Whether you are married.... or not, young or old, Valentine's Day could be a great time to kick-off a year of intentional love, affection and appreciation.

At a loss for what to do? Here are a few ideas:

• Hand write a love letter - you can actually get a Love Letter kit from www.thinkmarriage.org
• Schedule time each day to actually talk with your spouse
• Take time to meet a friend for lunch
• Tell the people you love "I love you"
• Plan a creative date for your spouse - even if you can't afford a babysitter, plan an in-home date
• Recreate your favorite date from the past
• Purchase a bouquet or a romantic gift basket from Flower Fest and support the work of First Things First
• 

• Take time to play with your children
• Give your spouse the day off and don't hold it over their head later
• Schedule a couple's massage
• Take a walk holding hands - research actually shows that a woman's blood pressure goes down when she is holding the hand of her spouse
• Do that thing that your spouse has been asking you to do for months
• Watch the Super Bowl with your spouse even if you don't like Football, you don't have to say a word, he'll enjoy just sitting should to should with you.

Lets help each other be creative. What would you add to the list???? Lets keep the list PG13 please. :-)

Love and Respect in Relationships

Well, I don't think folks liked my previous blog post very much.

That question was actually posed to a random sample of 400 men. Eighty-two percent of those surveyed said they would rather be alone and unloved in the world than disrespected. I thought that was really interesting.

Dr. Emerson Eggerichs, author of Love and Respect and Cracking the Communication Code has spent a lot of time looking at the issue of love and respect in men and women.

Bottomline - women want to be loved and men want to be treated with respect. You may be saying....and..... your point? Well, because men and women see things so differently, when conflict enters into a relationship things can get really tricky.

Generally speaking, when a woman feels unloved she responds with disrespect and when a guy feels disrespected he usually acts in ways that are unloving. The conversation goes something like... (Guy)"I'll love you when you treat me with respect." (Girl) "I'll treat you with respect when you love me."

Based on lots of experience with couples across the country, Eggerichs knows that this back and forth between spouses often leads to what he refers to as "the crazy cycle."

For example: A woman tells her husband she feels fat and needs to go on a diet. He happens to be at a bookstore picking up a newspaper when he sees a best-selling diet book. He buys it thinking he is helping his wife to accomplish her goal to lose weight. When he gives the book to her, she goes ballistic accusing him of being insensitive and they jump on the crazy cycle.

Truth be told, if her best girlfriend had purchased that book for her and suggested that they work the plan together, the response would have been completely different.

Dr. Eggerichs and his wife Sarah are coming to Chattanooga on October 9 and 10th to present the Love and Respect conference.

They will talk about why two good-willed people negatively react to each other; how two people can positively motivate each other by doing one simple thing and the rewards of a Godly marriage and what a person can do if personal expectations are unmet by a spouse.

For more information about the conference click here.

I am curious to know what you think about the whole love and respect concept.

Love or Respect?

Would you rather be left alone and unloved in the world or viewed as inadequate and disrespected by everyone?

Valentine's Day

So I did a little research on Valentine's Day. More than 1 billion Valentine's Day cards will be sent and it is estimated that people will spend more than 650 million on food, candy, flowers and other Valentine's Day gifts.

Women will purchase 85 percent of the Valentine cards while men buy most of the candy and bouquets. Thought it was interesting that 64 percent of the men say they do not make plans in advance for a romantic Valentine's Day. Hummmmmmmmm

It does seem kind of funny to me that people spend an incredible amount of money in one day to say, "I love you!" Wonder what they do with the other 364 opportunities they have to say or do something to let their loved ones know how much they mean to them????

I personally think Valentine's Day is kinda fun, but not if that is the only day of the year you go out of your way to say "I love you." I know when Jay and I were dating I was constantly trying to think of creative ways to show him how much I loved him. After a few years of marriage it seems like I stopped being so creative. I'm back in the game when it comes to this because I really do think it matters in a marriage relationship.

So, here are a few of my ideas:

Write down 10 things you appreciate about your spouse and leave it on his/her dresser.
Put a love note in your spouse's wallet.
Bring home a flower every day.
Cook his/her favorite meal just because.
Leave Hugs and Kisses in unexpected places throughout the house.

So, what are your creative ideas??????