It sounds like you are doing great, Hill. YES, she will become more receptive to love bank deposits! Something you were doing that annoyed her last year, turned out deposit two love units last week, and deposits ten love units this week, and next month may deposit fifty love units! The trick is to realize that as she comes out of withdrawal, she becomes willing to let you meet her needs, which finally makes significant love bank deposits possible.

Until you poke the snail! :P (Ask me how I know. )

The other trick is to not get discouraged when something that should deposit fifty love bank units only deposits one. I know that was my mistake for at least the first six years of our marriage. I took that as a sign I must be doing something wrong, and stopped. Meaning no deposits. Instead you have to build habits now that will sustain for life and will be massive love bank deposits when she is ready, and automatic for you because they are habits.


Yes. Something that amazes me is to watch marriages on TV shows I watched as a boy. All problems are resolved by disrespect! You show your spouse what a louse they are being, they feel guilty, they repent and straighten out, and you live happily ever after until next week's thirty minute segment.

In real life if you try that with your wife you make her life a living hell, and the guilt doesn't motivate her to change anything other than to not want to talk with you again.

The Huxtables taught me that romantic love could be sustained throughout life, but unfortunately they also taught me the lie that sometimes you should straighten out or mock your mate.

Dr. Harley says there are essentially two cultures coexisting side by side in America. One has generationally intact and happy marriages, one does not. Both cultures find the other culture weird and incomprehensible. He's from the good marriage culture, and early in his counseling career he couldn't help people, because he talked to them in ways that made sense to him, but not to them in their Renter/Freeloader culture. He, a Buyer, had to learn to think like a Renter and like a Freeloader.

We get people here posting all the time about how unrealistic Marriage Builders is. They are from the Renter/Freeloader culture, and sometimes they are extremely disrespectful to Buyers. (I'm talking really nasty, some of these people! Hateful! Why would anybody be mad at other people for trying to have a happy marriage?) But 20% of marriages out there are doing this stuff, whether they are aware of Marriage Builders or not. Some people, those people, are just part of a Buyer culture.

Some of us aren't lucky enough to know a lot of Buyers in person. I'm sad to say, most churches I've been a part of have taught Renter ideas, and plenty of people I know are convinced these ideas are Biblical truth.

But people freely move across cultures every day. Generations transform. Buyers become Renters/Freeloaders, and Renters/Freeloaders become Buyers.

Besides a happy marriage, the Buyer culture tends to be transmitted to children, and subsequent generations tend to be happier, healthier, and even wealthier. Hence the huge wealth gap in America.

The Marriage Builders mission is one of advancing the Buyer culture. But Dr. Harley's strategy is to get people to fall in love first, then adopt the Buyer's agreement/culture that will sustain it for life.