Rocks in a River: You find yourself on the bank of a wide river. It is too wide to jump across, and yet you still need to cross it. What do you do? You start picking up rocks and throwing them into the river. (These rocks are each small affectionate thing you do for your W). For the first 499 rocks, you see the rock hit the water, and then it dissapears. These rocks are sinking and landing on the bottom of the river. Eventually you get to rock #500 and it hits the water and part of it is sticking up above the surface. You now realize you are getting somewhere. You can finally see progress. For the first 499 rocks, you knew they were stacking up, but you had no proof other than common sense telling you that they were building up. We have to approach our relationships now as if every piece of affection is one of those rocks. We will not see any progress until a number of rocks have been thrown. However, just because we are not seeing these first 499 rocks does not mean they are not having an impact. Believe that they are, because they are.
Supposedly this came from Steve Harley to a poster on this board long ago in a phone session. The point of the story is that crossing the romantic love threshold in the Love Bank is not gradual. There is a SUDDEN change in feelings, with no gradual warnings that it is approaching. You toss in the rocks (make Love Bank deposits) and see NOTHING. You might even get discouraged and consider giving up. But if you can keep tossing in the rocks, suddenly one day you have a bridge across the stream.
