Mike Tucker: Too Critical?

Published: Fri, 01/18/13

 Hi ,

How healthy is your marriage?

What is the quality of your relationship?

If you graded your relationship, what
would you give it, an A, B, C, D or F?

This is something that I really want you
to think about because it can create a
marriage breakthrough for you.

So I have two questions to help you figure
out how healthy your marriage is.

I'll ask one of them this week and the other
next week.

(Please do yourself a favor and take the
time to carefully consider your answer, and
answer honestly, too.)

By following this process you will gain
a deep insight into the quality of your
marriage.

Question Number One for this week:

How critical are you towards your spouse?
(And how critical is your spouse towards you?)

Do you know what a critical spirit does?

A critical spirit crushes your mate.

Being critical of your spouse is like seeing
a beautiful flower and then deciding to
stomp on it, grinding its petals into the ground.

**Criticism is never helpful for a marriage**

Here are ways people demonstrate criticism:

Critical words
Critical sounds
Critical gestures
Critical facial expressions
Critical silence

Do you do any of those things to your spouse?

We're flawed, human beings. Criticism happens
sometimes - but there's still no excuse for it.

How often are you critical? Enough for it to
be a pattern or trend of your behavior?

Decide today to rid your marriage of
criticism.

Stop being critical.

And start giving encouragement.

Neutralize criticism with encouragement.

Criticism destroys. But marriages flourish
with encouragement.

Here's what you need to do today to make
this stick. Before the day is over, encourage
your spouse in some way.

How will you encourage your spouse today?

Have you thought of something?

Come on. I know you can do it.

Great. Now do it before falling asleep tonight.

You might be interested in knowing that there
are reasons why we are critical of our spouses.
I wrote a blog post today about 8 ways you can
save/grow your marriage.

And as I write this weekly tip for you, I  realize that,
although I didn't talk about criticism in today's post,
it's likely that one or more of those 8 things could be
triggering a critical spirit within your marriage.

If you have the time, here's the link
to today's post:

8 Ways To Save/Grow Your Marriage

That's all for this week. I'll ask you the second
question next week.

Until then, this is Mike and Gayle Tucker and
we're mad about marriage!