The Love Bank

Dr. Willard F. Harley, Jr., author of the classic marriage book His Needs, Her Needs, talks about a concept he created called the Love Bank--to help couples understand how people fall in and out of love. His now-famous concept is that each of us has a Love Bank that keeps track of the way each person treats us. He goes on to say that everyone we know has an "account" and the things they do either deposit or withdraw love units from their accounts.

When you associate a person 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 feeling of love is triggered. Dr. Harley says that 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.

What if you are currently not fond of the person in your marriage? Well, then it's not long before you'll want to do everything you can to get out of that relationship--and in our culture, what is an easier solution for that than divorce? But Dr. Harley's rationale is that to help someone fall in love again, you simply stop making Love Bank "withdrawals" and start making Love Bank "deposits". For more detailed suggestions on how to do that, go to his website at www.marriagebuilders.com

This is not rocket science. The old cliche "if you want to have friends, you've got to be a friend" carries a lot of weight in marriage. After all, marriage is designed to be, in many ways, the ultimate friendship, the ultimate personal connection. If you're turning away from your spouse for extended periods of time, the odds are pretty certain that that relationship is going to deteriorate. But it doesn't have to be that way. With prayer, you can do a lot from your end to reverse that trend. I encourage you to make deposits and investments in your most important relationship. You literally won't believe the dividends that will be paid out later.