Every man is a damn fool for at least five minutes every day; wisdom consists in not exceeding the limit. Elbert Hubbard To create and sustain compatibility, you must practise radical honesty. It would be best if you came clean about your personal history, daily activities and plans for the future. Communicating your thoughts, feelings, habits, likes, and dislikes is advisable. You'd think that doing something that causes unhappiness would be the last thing a married couple would ever want to do to each other. And yet, yet it's done instinctively and habitually in every marriage.

Since Love Busters usually make you feel good while your spouse feels bad, the one best able to identify them is your spouse. Similarly, you are in the best position to identify your spouse's Love Busters. Respectful persuasion is the better option. It means making efforts to reason with your partner’s opinions. Even when you disagree with their viewpoint, you should do so with respect. Practise effective communication by listening attentively and sharing ideas with your partner. Don’t jump to the conclusion that your partner’s opinion is wrong. 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. 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. This book was interesting -- when he would introduce a topic, I would think that it seemed too simplistic, but then he would expound and then it made complete sense. For example, one of the "love busters" is annoying habits (like the way someone sits, eats, takes care of themselves, etc.) and it seemed a little silly, but then as he explained it, I could totally understand how something seemingly small could have bigger consequences. Another example was how the idea of a "love bank" seemed silly to me at first, but then it made so much sense and became something I'm going to focus on in my relationship with my husband. I appreciated this book and it has shown me many ways to take my marriage (which is already pretty darn good, if do say so) to an even better level.

Love Needs…

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.

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 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. But how should you change your habits, so they are no longer annoying? It begins with realising that your annoying habits are damaging your relationship. So first, tell each other that eliminating annoying habits is a high priority for both of you. And then ask each other what annoys you the most, write it down, and go to work with a plan to end whatever bad habits you find.Once we know our spouse’s Love Needs and Love Busters it’s pretty simple really – meet the needs and avoid the busters. But it only works if you make a plan and commit to implementing it. Good plans meet three criteria – Achievable (simple to do and reasonably likely to succeed), Specific (not open ended but detailed enough to know when you do or don’t do it) and Positive (that is, the task focusses on what you will do rather than what you will avoid). I call all the ways that spouses are inconsiderate of each other's feelings Love Busters because that what they do — they destroy the love that a husband and wife have for each other. I can't help it: every time I say or read the title of this book, it's always to the tune of Ghostbusters.

Disrespectful judgment occurs whenever we try to impose our beliefs on our spouses—for instance, our political views or conspiracy theories on our mates. Other forms of disrespectful judgment include giving lectures or ridiculing our mates. Also, talking too much or preventing others from speaking up is very rude. 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. Love Busters is heterocentric, and perpetuates old and tired stereotypes of gender essentialism. It advocates complete honesty, that a couple must enthusiastically agree on everything (including the wife asking for help with the dishes), no independent behaviour, and if you have any habits your partner dislikes you must change. Before you complete these questionnaires, you should be familiar with the description of Love Busters. 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.Love busters are habits that cause conflicts and loss of empathy in unions. Also, they are controlling and abusive practices, increasing divorce chances. Love buster 1: Selfish demands Knowledge is learning something new every day. Wisdom is letting go of some bad habits every day. Farshad Asl By 1988 he found himself spending almost all of his time administering his clinics, and very little time doing what he enjoyed most -- improving his marital therapy program. So he began turning his clinics over to the counselors who worked with him, and the ownership of his last clinic was transferred in 1993. Since then, he has written 16 more books and hundreds of articles. 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. A huge part of the book is merely so-so, giving out general advice (your relationship is like a love bank, you need to make more deposits than withdrawals), which has been around for a long time.

One of the most important consequences of our emotional isolation is that we cannot feel the way we affect others. And that creates the temptation to hurt others because in doing so we don't feel the pain we cause. If we were connected emotionally to others as the aliens were, we would be far less tempted to do anything thoughtless, gaining at someone else's expense. That's because in so doing, we would be hurting ourselves as well. When was the last time your spouse did something that annoyed you? Annoying habits don’t seem all that important — but they still drive us crazy! But when our behaviour annoys others, we tend to downplay the whole problem. I've designed the Love Busters Questionnaire to help you identify the Love Busters in your marriage. Two questionnaires should be completed: One for you and one for your spouse.Dishonesty may “numb” some of our pain, but it compounds it later. The truth usually comes out eventually. The time of hiding the truth creates an emotional barrier and destroys trust. Solution