Quotes from Gary Chapman

Love is a choice and cannot be coerced.

your child, like a flower, will benefit from your love. When the water of love is given, your child will bloom and bless the world with beauty. Without that love, she will become a wilted flower, begging for water.

Inside every child is an 'emotional tank' waiting to be filled with love. When a child really feels loved, he will develop normally, but when the love tank is empty, the child will misbehave. Much of the misbehavior of children is motivated by the cravings of an empty 'love tank.

If love is a choice, then they have the capacity to love after the "in-love" obsession has died and they have returned to the real world. That kind of love begins with an attitude—a way of thinking. Love is the attitude that says, "I am married to you, and I choose to look out for your interests.

We must first learn what is important to our spouse.

In fact, love is always freely given. Love cannot be demanded. We can request things of each other, but we must never demand anything. Requests give direction to love, but demands stop the flow of love.

A supportive environment and attitude will help our children learn at home. Children are more emotional than cognitive—that is, they remember feelings more readily than they do facts. This means that your children remember how they felt in a particular situation much more easily than they recall the details of the event. For instance, a child listening to a story will remember exactly how she felt long after she forgets the lesson.

We all need support, in the workplace and beyond it. When we both give and receive, we stand a much better chance of survival.

Negativism in two-year-olds is a normal step of development, one way the child begins to separate psychologically from his mother or father.

Everyone has an invisible sign hanging from their neck saying 'Make Me Feel Important.' Never forget that when working with people." Mary Kay Ash

Something in our nature cries out to be loved by another. Isolation is devastating to the human psyche. That is why solitary confinement is considered the cruelest of punishments. At the heart of humankind's existence is the desire to be intimate and to be loved by another.

God is our example in parenting.

For example, a wife might pressure her husband to look for a more lucrative job. The wife thinks she's encouraging her spouse, but to him it sounds more like condemnation. But if he has the desire and motivation to seek a better position, her words will bolster his resolve. Until he has that desire, her words will come across as judgmental and guilt inducing. They express not love but rejection.

Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you."5

Sometimes our words say one thing, but our tone of voice says another.

I've been wanting to ask someone this for a long time," he said. "What happens to the love after you get married?

He ignores me all day long and then wants to jump in bed with me. I hate it." She is not a wife who hates sex; she is a wife desperately pleading for emotional love.

I am amazed by how many individuals mess up every new day with yesterday. They insist on bringing into today the failures of yesterday, and in so doing, they pollute a potentially wonderful present.

It is a love that unites reason and emotion. It involves an act of the will and requires discipline, and it recognizes the need for personal growth. Our

No matter how hard you try to express love in English, if your spouse understands only Chinese, you will never understand how to love each other.

If we speak only our primary language and encounter someone else who speaks only his or her primary language, which is different from ours, our communication will be limited. We must rely on pointing, grunting, drawing pictures, or acting out our ideas. We can communicate, but it is awkward. Language differences are part and parcel of human culture. If we are to communicate effectively across cultural lines, we must learn the language of those with whom we wish to communicate.

True Christianity does more than feel empathy for those in need. True Christianity meets that need. — James Stuart Bell —

When I have been wronged by my spouse and she has painfully confessed it and requested forgiveness, I have the option of justice or forgiveness.

Each of us must decide daily to love or not to love our spouses. If we choose to love, then expressing it in the way in which our spouse requests will make our love most effective emotionally.