Love Busters: Overcoming Habits That Destroy Romantic Love

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Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live; it is asking others to live as one wishes to live. Oscar Wilde 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. 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. Marriage is that relation between man and woman in which the independence is equal, the dependence mutual, and the obligation reciprocal. Louis K Anspacher

Anybody can become angry – that is easy, but to be angry with the right person and to the right degree and at the right time and for the proper purpose, and in the right way – that is not within everybody’s power and is not easy. Aristotle 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 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.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.

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. The first three of these Love Busters are instinctive, yet thoughtless, ways to try to get what you want from each other. When a request doesn't work, a spouse will often revert to a demand ("I don't care how you feel — do it or else!"). If that doesn't get the job done, a spouse will try disrespectful judgments ("If you had any sense, and were not so lazy and selfish, you would do it"). And then, when all of that fails, an angry outburst often represents the last ditch effort ("I'll see to it that you regret not having done it"). 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 At the end of the questionnaire, you are asked to rate the Love Busters according to the unhappiness they create. While all Love Busters should be eliminated, it makes sense to work on the most painful Love Busters first. 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.The one part that I found really strong and actually useful is on the topic of angry outbursts, which the author correctly calls out for being abusive and incredibly damaging. The suggestions on how to work through it seems solid, but I was disappointed that there wasn't any real discussion on what to do if your partner is the one with the angry outbursts. 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. Unless you protect each other from your destructive instincts and habits, you will hurt each other so much that eventually your Love Bank accounts will be deep into the red — you will hate each other. We cannot love someone effectively until we know them well. That takes time and it also takes some focused attention and conscious effort. It’s more than just knowing what their favourite food is, or where they went to school. We need to know what their Love Needs and Love Busters are. Love Needs… Acts of anger include ridicule, sarcasm, punishment, threatening or physical violence. There is nothing to gain from rage. Solution

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. 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. 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. 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. 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.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'm so concerned about the risk of you hurting each other, that before I introduce you to ways you can make each other happy, I want you to understand something. If you don't protect each other from yourselves, you may not have the opportunity to care for each other. The two go hand-in-hand and without protection, care is impossible. 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 best way to overcome independent behaviours is to take them off your schedule. It would help if you switched such habits with something you can do with your spouse. Whatever you decide to do, be sure you and your spouse agree. As a result, both of you are happy, making decisions with each other’s interests and feelings in mind. 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.

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 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.Knowledge is learning something new every day. Wisdom is letting go of some bad habits every day. Farshad Asl But when you indulge in these three Love Busters, you do more than fail to get what you need — you also destroy the love your spouse has for you. All of these instincts, and the habits they help create, cause your spouse to be unhappy, and that causes Love Bank withdrawals. There is a description of a rather horrifying marital rape scene in one of the firsts chapters which, while deemed abusive, should've been handled much much better. 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).