Leslie Vernick > Quotes

“When you give another person the power to define you, then you also give them the power to control you.”
― Leslie Vernick, The Emotionally Destructive Relationship: Seeing It, Stopping It, Surviving It

“Don't get me wrong. A good marriage, adequate financial resources, even a clean home and well-behaved children do bring some measure of happiness. However, temporal blessings, as wonderful as they may be, are only a taste of the real thing. They cannot sustain inner happiness any more than eating a scrumptious meal keeps tomorrow's hunger at bay. ”
― Leslie Vernick, Lord, I Just Want to Be Happy

“Holiness leads to wholeness and wholeness leads to happiness.”
― Leslie Vernick, Lord, I Just Want to Be Happy

“Your core value does not rest on the words of your husband or your mother or your father or your children or even your best friend. It rests on God’s words because he’s the only one who will always tell you the truth all the time. People change. They fail. They lie. Their knowledge is limited, their thinking distorted, and their hearts are not always pure or good. Therefore it’s dangerous to allow them to determine your worth.”
― Leslie Vernick, The Emotionally Destructive Marriage: How to Find Your Voice and Reclaim Your Hope

“Jesus commands us to love God first, with everything we have, not only because God deserves our love and is worthy of it, but because he knows how crucial it is to our long-term well-being. God knows that whatever we love the most will rule our lives. That’s why the Bible counsels us to let the love of Christ control us (see 2 Corinthians 5:14), not the love of lesser things.”
― Leslie Vernick, The Emotionally Destructive Marriage: How to Find Your Voice and Reclaim Your Hope

“An emotionally destructive marriage is one where one’s personhood, dignity, and freedom of choice is regularly denied, criticized, or crushed. This can be done through words, behaviors, economics, attitudes, and misusing the Scriptures.”
― Leslie Vernick, The Emotionally Destructive Marriage: How to Find Your Voice and Reclaim Your Hope

“He needs a wife who will love him enough to tell him the truth and to respectfully challenge his selfishness, his self-absorption, and his self-deception.”
― Leslie Vernick, The Emotionally Destructive Marriage: How to Find Your Voice and Reclaim Your Hope

“When you put your foot down and say, “I will not allow myself or the kids to be treated this way anymore. It’s destructive to me, to them, and to our marriage,” you are not going against God by speaking the truth in love. You are standing for goodness, for truth, and for the healing and restoration of your marriage.”
― Leslie Vernick, The Emotionally Destructive Marriage: How to Find Your Voice and Reclaim Your Hope

“From Christ’s perspective, success isn’t measured by how much we do, how much we earn, or how much we have, but by how well we love and what kind of person we’re becoming in the midst of life’s activities.”
― Leslie Vernick

“Marriage does not give someone a “get out of jail free” card that entitles a husband to lie, mistreat, ignore, be cruel, or crush his wife’s God-given dignity. To believe otherwise is not to know the heart of God.”
― Leslie Vernick, The Emotionally Destructive Marriage: How to Find Your Voice and Reclaim Your Hope

“In some marriages, trying harder does not engender a reciprocal response. It has the opposite effect. It feeds the fantasy that the sole purpose of your life is to serve your husband, make him happy, and meet his every need. It feeds his belief of entitlement and his selfishness, and it solidifies his self-deception that it is indeed all about him.”
― Leslie Vernick, The Emotionally Destructive Marriage: How to Find Your Voice and Reclaim Your Hope

“Even the best truth tellers (like Jesus) are hated and abused by those who prefer darkness to light.”
― Leslie Vernick, The Emotionally Destructive Marriage: How to Find Your Voice and Reclaim Your Hope

“Our emotions always serve a purpose, like the warning lights on a car dashboard. Ignoring them doesn’t make them go away, and often ignoring our feelings only makes the problem worse.”
― Leslie Vernick, The Emotionally Destructive Marriage: How to Find Your Voice and Reclaim Your Hope

“There are times you must risk unraveling the life you have in order to create the life God wants for you.”
― Leslie Vernick, The Emotionally Destructive Marriage: How to Find Your Voice and Reclaim Your Hope

“God is gracious and compassionate to the saint and unrepentant sinner alike, but he does not have a close relationship with both. He says our sins separate us from him”
― Leslie Vernick, The Emotionally Destructive Marriage: How to Find Your Voice and Reclaim Your Hope

“When you are the only one in your marriage caring, repenting, being respectful and honest, sacrificing, and working toward being a better spouse, you are a godly wife, but you don’t have a healthy or biblical marriage.”
― Leslie Vernick, The Emotionally Destructive Marriage: How to Find Your Voice and Reclaim Your Hope

“Marriage and family are important to God, but just as important to him are the individuals within those marriages and families.”
― Leslie Vernick, The Emotionally Destructive Marriage: How to Find Your Voice and Reclaim Your Hope

“Who we are and who we are becoming is formed as much, if not more, by our unique way of responding.”
― Leslie Vernick

“When deceit and attack become a regular part of marital interactions, there is no clear communication, no resolution to the problem, and no healing. It’s impossible to have a close, loving relationship with someone you can’t trust, can’t talk with, or who won’t take a look at himself when he hurts you.”
― Leslie Vernick, The Emotionally Destructive Marriage: How to Find Your Voice and Reclaim Your Hope

“Maybe you think that God is more interested in preserving your marriage than the well-being of you and your children, but that is not true.”
― Leslie Vernick, The Emotionally Destructive Marriage: How to Find Your Voice and Reclaim Your Hope

“It is not your husband’s lies that will do the most damage to you. It’s the lies you tell yourself.”
― Leslie Vernick, The Emotionally Destructive Marriage: How to Find Your Voice and Reclaim Your Hope

“Pretending or keeping up appearances for the sake of staying married won’t bring healing to serious marital wounds any more than a Band-Aid can stop arterial bleeding.”
― Leslie Vernick, The Emotionally Destructive Marriage: How to Find Your Voice and Reclaim Your Hope

“It can be extremely difficult to discern evil hearts because their intention is to look good, not be good.”
― Leslie Vernick, The Emotionally Destructive Relationship: Seeing It, Stopping It, Surviving It

“When you give another person the power to define you, then you also give them the power to control you. Here’s”
― Leslie Vernick, The Emotionally Destructive Relationship: Seeing It, Stopping It, Surviving It

“God calls us to be biblical peacemakers, not peacekeepers or peace fakers.”
― Leslie Vernick, The Emotionally Destructive Marriage: How to Find Your Voice and Reclaim Your Hope

“Many of us, like Sandra, are under the impression “that if we don’t feel something there can be no authenticity in doing it. But the wisdom of God says something different, namely, that we can act ourselves into a new way of feeling much quicker than we can feel ourselves into a new way of acting.”5 Choosing to act right when you don’t feel like it isn’t hypocrisy; it’s obedience.”
― Leslie Vernick, How to Act Right When Your Spouse Acts Wrong

“Indifference says you are not a person to love, but an object to use.”
― Leslie Vernick, The Emotionally Destructive Marriage: How to Find Your Voice and Reclaim Your Hope

“Biblically loving your husband doesn’t require you to prop him up in order to enable him to continue to hurt you. It involves something far more redemptive.”
― Leslie Vernick, The Emotionally Destructive Marriage: How to Find Your Voice and Reclaim Your Hope

“In addition, staying together regardless of the costs continues to enable the husband to grossly sin against them with no consequences, which is not biblical.”
― Leslie Vernick, The Emotionally Destructive Marriage: How to Find Your Voice and Reclaim Your Hope

“Is biblical headship synonymous with taking control over someone else and forcing her to comply when she resists? And, does biblical submission require a wife to always do what her husband says? Does it mean she has no choices of her own or can’t ever say no without being labeled as rebellious or ungodly?”
― Leslie Vernick, The Emotionally Destructive Marriage: How to Find Your Voice and Reclaim Your Hope