I am a little more awake now, I hope.

As you can guess I've listened to hundreds of hours of Marriage Builders radio since we talked last. What I've learned is that the case where the husband is on board with Marriage Builders and the wife is not is kind of a special case. Dr. Harley does talk about it on the radio from time to time.

When a wife has been presented with Marriage Builders and doesn't want to do it, she usually has beliefs that conflict. The belief is usually "I don't believe this can work." Sometimes it's "I don't believe marriage really needs to be like that" or "I don't believe it should take this much work" or "I believe it should come naturally, if it doesn't, maybe we're not right for each other."

But according to Dr. Harley, our beliefs actually tend to line up to match our feelings.

And her feelings are under her husband's direct influence.

It turns out that when someone's account in our Love Bank is above the romantic love threshold, our instincts start prompting us to want to meet their emotional needs. Husbands suddenly start to want to be affectionate and have conversation. Wives suddenly start to want to make love and be together for recreation. Dr. Harley says it is sudden, not gradual, and it comes without warning. And for awhile it can be rocky, as the feeling comes and goes suddenly while we bob over and under the surface of the romantic love threshold.

Dr. Harley says he's had men testify that it's like their wives suddenly took hormones or something.

I can testify that my marriage has been like this. Prisca's sex drive, as well as interest in meeting my emotional needs, and even her interest in having her own emotional needs met, has been NEGATIVE, and has been STRATOSPHERIC.

What it takes is a long LONG, patient deferment of gratification, making tons of love bank deposits, avoiding love busters like the plague, changing lots of habits PERMANENTLY in order to rise above the threshold and get way beyond it. Then suddenly there is a sudden change, and 80-90% of the marital problems seem to go away.

I have found that I have to follow this plan. It condenses a lot of what I've heard from Dr. Harley, and it works:
* If I am unsatisfied with something in my marriage,
* Ask myself: is my wife in love with me?
* If the answer is no, then, ask myself what her complaints are. Then ask myself what I can do to address them.
* If the answer is yes, then make a thoughtful request or respectfully complain. But in general if I am in this frame of mind, my wife is not in love with me.

I usually find that the complaints she has are things she's told me about and been waiting on awhile.

Sometimes I can turn into a disrespectful jerk in my thinking and think how long I've waited for some of my complaints to be addressed. But, if she's not in love with me, then she's not willing to address them, period, and there's only one way to change it. And if she is in love with me, usually I don't have any complaints! Almost all disrespect on her part disappears when she is in love with me, along with reluctance to be with me and other things that I have complained about in the past.

Another important thing in there is to ask her if she has any complaints. But usually I don't have to do this if we are that point. Usually, I already know, if I am honest with myself, and drop any kind of disrespectful rationalization about why she shouldn't feel that way, or shouldn't complain about that, or whatever.

The solution is single-minded devotion to getting real answers to her complaints, making the changes permanent, NEVER LOVE BUSTING FOR AN INSTANT because she has already been through far more and far worse than she deserves and can't take any more, and making the biggest love bank deposits she is willing for me to make.