This is a huge thing if you are going to have a positive impact on your spouse. You have to not only realize this, but you have to practice this.

We can look at the pain in our lives. We can look at the way we have been mistreated, and we can have an attitude of, I will never amount to anything. I have been wrong about people all my life. I am going to pay somebody back for this.

People tend to criticize their spouse most loudly in the area where they themselves have the deepest emotional need.

..there is hope. That's the marvelous thing about being human. We can change our future. We need not be enslaved by the experiences of the past. We can learn to love even when we have not received love.

Over the long haul, many of those people [in a difficult marriage] will begin to reciprocate, because you are meeting a basic need in their life, the need for love, and they know they don't deserve love many times.

I would encourage you to make your own investigation of the one whom, as He died, prayed for those who killed Him: 'Father forgive them for they know not what they do.' That is love's ultimate expression.

Physically abusive and verbally abuse marriages are very, very difficult situations. I fully understand people in those kinds of marriages who think there is no hope. I also know that the advice that is given by most people is simply... get out of there as fast as you can.