Love Bank Pdf

[Mirta Dozar]

Insideall of us is a Love Bank with accounts in the names of everyone we know. When these people are associated with our good feelings, "love units" are deposited into their accounts, and when they are associated with our bad feelings, love units are withdrawn. We are emotionally attracted to people with positive balances and repulsed by those with negative balances. This is the way our emotions encourage us to be with people who seem to treat us well, and avoid those who seem to hurt us.

But our emotions give us more than the feeling of love. When they identify someone who makes us happy, they also motivate us to reciprocate by encouraging us to make that person happy. They do this by making it seem almost effortless to do what makes most of us the happiest. Have you ever noticed that when you are in love, you seem instinctively affectionate, conversant, admiring and willing to make love? That's because your emotions want to keep that person around, so it gives you instincts to help you make that person happy which, if effective, triggers his or her feeling of love for you. The "look of love" not only communicates our feeling of love for someone, but also reflects our instinct to do whatever it takes to make that person happy.

When a man and woman are both in love, their emotions encourage them to make each other happy for life. In fact, the thought of spending life apart is usually frightening. It seems to them that they were made to be together for eternity. In almost every case, a man and woman marry because they are in love, and they are in love because their love bank balances are above the romantic love threshold.

But what goes up can usually come down, and love bank balances are no exception. As most married couples have discovered, the feeling of romantic love is much more fragile than originally thought. And if Love Bank balances drop below the romantic love threshold, a couple not only lose their feeling of passion for each other, but they lose their instinct to make each other happy. What was once effortless now becomes awkward, and even repulsive. Instead of the look of love, couples have the look of apathy. And without love, a husband and wife no longer want to spend their lives together. Instead, they start thinking of divorce, or at least living their lives apart from one another.

It should be obvious to you by now that the Love Bank is an extremely important concept in marriage. If you want your instincts and emotions to support your marriage you must keep your Love Bank accounts over the romantic love threshold. But how can you keep your balances that high? And what can you do if they have already fallen below that threshold?

I've worked long and hard to find answers to those questions, because they hold the key to saving marriages. Without love, spouses are poorly motivated to remain married for life, but with the restoration of love and its accompanying instinct to spend life together, the threat of divorce is overcome. Marriages are saved when love is restored.

All of my remaining basic concepts will help me explain the answer to those questions, but the general principle is simple: If a couple wants to have a happy and fulfilling marriage, they must make as many Love Bank deposits as possible and avoid making withdrawals. To achieve this, behavior must change. A husband and wife must learn how to make each other happy, and how to stop making each other unhappy.

But life can throw roadblocks across your path to marital bliss. The demands of a job or even children can limit your opportunity to meet each other's emotional needs. When that happens, very innocently and without any intent, you stop caring for each other as you had in the past, and you fall out of love.

When you fall out of love, everything that had helped your marriage seems unnatural. Your instincts turn against marital recovery, and toward divorce. What had once seemed effortless, now seems awkward. How can you restore the love you once had for each other when you no longer feel like doing what it took to create that love?

Within each of us is a Love Bank that keeps track of the way each person treats us. Everyone we know has an account and the things they do either deposit or withdraw love units from their accounts. It's your emotions' way of encouraging you to be with those who make you happy. When you associate someone with good feelings, deposits are made into that person's account in your Love Bank. And when the Love Bank reaches a certain level of deposits (the romantic love threshold), the feeling of love is triggered. As long as your Love Bank balance remains above that threshold, you will experience the feeling of love. But when it falls below that threshold, you will lose that feeling. You will like anyone with a balance above zero, but you will only be in love with someone whose balance is above the love threshold.

Couples usually ask for my advice when they are just about ready to throw in the towel. Their Love Banks have been losing love units so long that they are now deeply in the red. And their negative Love Bank accounts make them feel uncomfortable just being in the same room with each other. They cannot imagine surviving marriage for another year, let alone ever being in love again.

Instincts are behavioral patterns that we are born with, and habits are patterns that we learn. Both of them tend to be repeated again and again almost effortlessly. They are important in our discussion of what it takes to be in love because it's our behavior that makes deposits and withdrawals from Love Banks, and our instincts and habits make up most of our behavior.

Unfortunately, many of our instincts and habits, such as angry outbursts, contribute to Love Bank withdrawals. Since they are repeated so often, they play a very important role in the annihilation of Love Bank accounts. If we are to stop Love Bank withdrawals, we must somehow stop destructive instincts and habits in their tracks. Instincts are harder to stop than habits, but they can both be avoided.

It's pointless to talk about creating habits that make Love Bank deposits if habits that make Love Bank withdrawals dominate a relationship. So my first concern when counseling a couple is to be sure that they are protecting each other . . . FROM THEMSELVES.

If you and your spouse are in the habit of being demanding, disrespectful, angry, dishonest independent and/or annoying, your marriage is being ruined by Love Busters. I call them Love Busters because they destroy the feeling of love that spouses have for each other.

You should do whatever it takes to protect each other from these cruel, yet common, habits that cause untold unhappiness in marriage. By eliminating Love Busters, you will not only be protecting your spouse, but you will also be preserving your spouse's love for you.

You and your spouse fell in love with each other because you made each other very happy, and you made each other happy because you met some of each other's important emotional needs. The only way you and your spouse will stay in love is to keep meeting those needs. Even when the feeling of love begins to fade, or when it's gone entirely, it's not necessarily gone for good. It can be recovered whenever you both go back to making large Love Bank deposits.

First, be sure you know what each other's most important emotional needs are (complete the Emotional Needs Questionnaire). Then, learn to meet the needs that are rated the highest in a way that is fulfilling to your spouse, and enjoyable for you, too.

It's likely that you and your spouse do not prioritize your needs in the same order of importance. A highly important need for you may not be as important to your spouse. So you may find yourself trying to meet needs that seem unimportant to you. But your spouse depends on you to meet those needs, and it's the most effective and efficient way for you make large Love Bank deposits.

Unless you and your spouse schedule time each week for undivided attention, it will be impossible to meet each other's most important emotional needs. So to help you and your spouse clear space in your schedule for each other, I have written the Policy of Undivided Attention:

But it goes beyond helping guarantee that you will meet each other's emotional needs. It also unlocks the door to the use of all the other basic concepts. Without time for undivided attention you will not be able to avoid Love Busters and you will not be able to negotiate effectively. Time for undivided attention is the necessary ingredient for everything that's important in marriage.

And yet, as soon as most couples marry, and especially when children arrive, couples usually replace their time together with activities of lesser importance. You probably did the same thing. You tried to meet each other's needs with time "left over," but sadly, there wasn't much time left over. Your lack of private time together may have become a great cause of unhappiness, and yet you felt incapable of preventing it. You may have also found yourself bottling up your honest expression of feelings because there was just no appropriate time to talk.

It is essential for you to (a) spend time away from children and friends whenever you give each other your undivided attention (you need privacy); (b) use the time to meet the emotional needs of affection, conversation, recreational companionship, and sexual fulfillment when you are together (when met, these make the largest Love Bank deposit of all!); and (c) schedule at least fifteen hours together each week (that's how long it usually takes to meet the four needs). When you were dating, you gave each other this kind of attention and you fell in love. When people have affairs, they also give each other this kind of attention to keep their love for each other alive. Why should courtship and affairs be the only times love is created? Why can't it happen in marriage as well? It can, if you set aside time every week to give each other undivided attention.

3a8082e126