Love Busters: Overcoming Habits That Destroy Romantic Love

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Starting with the Love Busters, choose one to eliminate this week. Think about when you are most likely to do a Love Buster and plan how you will replace it with a more positive action. For example, say your spouse’s top Love Buster is breaking promises. Maybe you are most likely to do this because you get caught up at work and then are late home. Maybe you can change that and maybe you can’t. What you can change is the promise. Resolve to only make promises you are absolutely confident you can keep. Plan what you will say when your spouse or child asks, before you leave home, so that you don’t get tempted into making a promise you can’t keep. Dishonesty is the strangest of the five love busters and the hardest to sort out. It strangles compatibility. Independent behaviour is the conduct of one spouse that ignores the other’s feelings. It’s usually scheduled and requires some thought to executing. Examples include sporting events you attend or your exercise program. Solution Love Busters are your habits that cause your spouse to be unhappy. Whenever you engage in one of them, you withdraw love units from your Love Bank account. The results of these questionnaire will help you understand the pain and unhappiness that you and your spouse create in your marriage. When you cause each other emotional pain, you not only withdraw love units, but you encourage each other to build emotional defenses that cause you to withdraw from each other. Those emotional defenses prevent you from depositing love units to make up for the loss.

Marriage is that relation between man and woman in which the independence is equal, the dependence mutual, and the obligation reciprocal. Louis K Anspacher Dr. Harley earned a Ph.D. degree in psychology from the University of California at Santa Barbara in 1967 and has been a Licensed Psychologist in Minnesota since 1975. For the first ten years after earning his degree, he taught psychology at both the graduate and undergraduate levels. During those years, he was also a frustrated part-time marriage counselor with little success in helping couples. The following week, choose a Love Need to focus on. Again, plan the specific way you will implement that Love Need each day during the week. For example, if your spouse’s Love Need is admiration, you might plan to praise him/her each evening over dinner.Knowledge is learning something new every day. Wisdom is letting go of some bad habits every day. Farshad Asl Of course, demands, disrespect and anger don't really get the job done. You generally don't do things for your spouse because of these Love Busters, you do them out of care and consideration. If your spouse is demanding, disrespectful and angry, you tend to be less caring and considerate, leading you to do less for your spouse. Instead of giving your spouse what he or she needs, demands, disrespect and anger cause you to resist. I want you to have what you need in your marriage, but demands, disrespect and anger will not get it for you. They will prevent you from having what you want if you revert to these destructive instincts. There are many reasons for dishonesty. One attempt to protect one’s partner from the harsh reality of the other’s bad behaviour. Other causes include trying to look good, avoiding trouble and compulsive lying. A better option is to make thoughtful requests for something we want. You explain what you would like and ask your spouse how they would feel fulfilling such a request. If your request will be unpleasant to fulfil, discuss other ways your spouse could help you. Making demands is selfish. The partner making demands does not care if it is convenient for their spouse to honour the requests. Our spouse may be reluctant to honour our requests for many legitimate reasons. This reluctance may be due to their needs, comfort level, or sense of what’s wise or fair. Solution

The fourth Love Buster, Dishonesty, causes massive Love Bank withdrawals whenever it's discovered. And spouses usually discover each other's dishonesty because of their emotional closeness to each other. If you or your spouse have a tendency to lie or distort the truth, chase that bad habit out of your marriage before it ruins everything. I've found that the most common Love Busters in marriage fall into six categories: Selfish Demands, Disrespectful Judgments, Angry Outbursts, Dishonesty, Independent Behavior and Annoying Habits.Every man is a damn fool for at least five minutes every day; wisdom consists in not exceeding the limit. Elbert Hubbard The fifth Love Buster is Independent Behavior, the conduct of one spouse that ignores the feelings and interests of the other spouse. If your decisions are made as if your spouse doesn't even exist, you will find yourself running roughshod over your spouse's feelings and your Love Bank account. Since it's usually scheduled and requires some thought to execute, the simplest way to overcome it is to take it off your schedule. And if you follow the Policy of Joint Agreement, Independent Behavior will never find itself on your schedule in the first place. Why do you engage in Love Busters? Why do you cause your spouse to be unhappy? One of the most important reasons is that, while they may make your spouse feel bad, they make you feel good. Most Love Busters gain pleasure for you at your spouse's expense. When your spouse complains about them, you rationalize your behavior and explain away the fact that you are simply thoughtless and selfish. Finally, the sixth Love Buster, Annoying Habits, is behavior that is repeated without much thought that bothers your spouse. Marriage is a partnership of incredibly close quarters, where just about anything you or your spouse does is almost sure to affect the other. If you want to stay in love with each other, your habits, even the innocent ones, should make Love Bank deposits, not withdrawals.