Sooner or later you discover that it is better to help someone plant a garden than to wait for someone to bring you flowers. -- Matthew Kelly

Sooner or later you discover that it is better to help someone plant a garden than to wait for someone to bring you flowers. Let it be sooner for you. 

-- Matthew Kelly, taken from the Rhythm of Life

I learned the very very hard way that if I am constantly worried about what I get out of the relationship, I will be sorely disappointed, and the relationship will be a mess.

In another great book called Love and Respect by Emerson Eggerichs, Dr Eggerichs discusses a concept called the crazy cycle. If you are married, you have likely seen this play out. Both men and women desire love and respect, not just from their husband or wife, but from everyone. But in the marriage specifically, a man most desires respect from his wife. And the wife most desires love. The crazy cycle begins when one thinks, "As soon as he loves me the way I should be loved, I will respect him." Or, "As soon as she respects me the way I deserve to be respected, I will show her the love she wants."

The result is the opposite of what both are hoping for. He doesn't show her love, and she responds by holding back the respect he needs. And as she does not show him respect, he does not love her the way she needs to be loved.

Again, this is called a crazy cycle. And it is a perpetual motion machine. This will not stop until something changes.

What to do then?

Well, thank God (literally) that there is an energizing cycle, too. It begins when one or both chooses to obey God's instructions with respect to how this whole relationship thing works.

God says in His Word that a man should love his wife as Christ loved the church: sacrificially serving her ... filling her with what she needs. In this case, that is love. Unconditional love.

Equally, God says in His Word that a wife should submit to her husband as to Christ: by respecting his leadership, trusting him, looking at him as though you can do anything. She should respect him unconditionally.

Remember, this unconditional love and unconditional respect was what drew the couple together during courtship. The crazy cycle began when one stopped unconditionally loving or respecting the other.

The beautiful thing about this energizing cycle is that once just one trusts in God's promises on this topic, the cycle begins. As he begins loving her without condition, simply because God said to love her unconditionally, and even though he may not believe she is lovable at that moment, something magical happens. As she begins to respect him unconditionally, submitting to him as God commanded, something magical happens.

As the man receives the respect he so desires, he automatically, naturally begins to give her the love that she so desires. 

And as the woman begins to receive the love that she so desires, she naturally begins to give him the respect he so desperately needs.

This is God's beautiful design.

So instead of waiting to receive flowers, is Matthew Kelly prescribes, put effort into helping the other to plant the garden from where those flowers will come.