After reading the majority of Surviving An Affair, I'm not sure I agree totally w/ Harley's view of love. I understand the model of the Love Bank, but where does personal responsibility come in to play?

Maybe I should start with the definition of love. Is it a feeling? I believe loving someone is choosing to put their needs ahead of yours.

If it's as simple as the Love Bank formula, then we are all slaves to whomever is making the most deposits in the account.

And in addition, I believe that sometimes our perceived "needs" are not healthy. So if someone is making deposits by meet unhealthy needs, does that create love?

Where does commitment, and marriage covenants fit into this plan?

Any takers?

On a tangent, I see a lot on this board about "Exposure" of the affair to people to bring it out of secrecy and remove the romantic forbideness of it. I didn't catch that in the book. Is that on the site here anywhere?

I think you also need to look at the five different 'forms'/'definitions' of love. That should answer these question in and of itself.

The marraige vows / 'love' = that is a choice.

I think love is a choice based on a feeling.

There are different types of love. In the context of what you are talking about, marriage, love is choice. Feelings follow choice. It's a simple "cause and effect" sort of thing.

When "feelings" are used as a definition of love, what you get is infatuation and lust.

Hence oft heard phrase by Wayward Spouses, "I love you but I'm not 'in love' with you."

Harley does not mention exposure much - here on the site or in his books - you are right. But the Harleys DO counsel people to expose and Harley also recommends exposure all the time on his radio program.

Some of the articles on the site here do mention it as well.

Robert Heinlein said that love was when another person's happiness was essential to one's own. That is as good a definition as I have ever seen.

Larry

TJ to Larry for one moment...

I'm reading right now Stranger in a Strange Land. Haven't visited Heinlein in 20 years (my bad) since Death Bird Stories.

TJ over.

LA

Hi, howmuchmore.

Quote:
==========================================
After reading the majority of Surviving An Affair, I'm not sure I agree totally w/ Harley's view of love. I understand the model of the Love Bank, but where does personal responsibility come in to play?

Maybe I should start with the definition of love. Is it a feeling? I believe loving someone is choosing to put their needs ahead of yours.

If it's as simple as the Love Bank formula, then we are all slaves to whomever is making the most deposits in the account.

And in addition, I believe that sometimes our perceived "needs" are not healthy. So if someone is making deposits by meet unhealthy needs, does that create love?

Where does commitment, and marriage covenants fit into this plan?

Any takers?
==========================================

The "love bank" concept is nothing new, even though Harley uses his own version of it.

As you have noticed, it obviously has to be a generality, and its application limited to people that at least have some interest in each other. Look at the repercussions if that were not true, Rosie O'donnell could start talking my love language from "The View" and next thing you know, I am stalking her between her visits to McDonalds. That would just never work.

Commitment and and covenants fit in to the plan by you feeding needs that are right and true and that come from healthy motivations. If someone claims a need to drink excessively, then common sense will tell you that is not a healthy emotional need, regardless of whose plan you are executing.

One shouldn't be feeding any "need" defined as unhealthy. If I "need" a heroin fix, how bout feeding my real need by caring for me enough to put me in a position where I either get rehab, or get gone. Don't feed that need by enabling my behavior. You can't help me that way, in fact you only do harm.

Depending on your circumstance, meeting your wayward wife's needs, may very well mean that you distance yourself from her.

All the best,
Gimble

HMM,

Before I go any further, I just wanted to say one thing. I have literally been pondering this for a while now, as I wanted to respond with a well-thought-out, thorough response, and writing about "love" "commitment" and "covenant" are major topics!!! HOWEVER, I wanted to say that I am SO PROUD of you for really thinking about this and having some excellent questions! Your questions reflect that you are actually dwelling on the topic and not just "surface reading" so I'm tickled!!

Okay...on to your questions. You wrote:


Just to be sure we are on the same page, I hear you saying that you're interpreting the concept of "love" as defined in Surviving An Affair (SAA) as saying that we are under the control of our LoveBanks and that whoever comes along and puts deposits in our LoveBanks and does not make withdrawals...we "fall in love with them." Is that basically how you are interpreting it?

Let me start off by saying that I do not take any of Harley's books as "bible truth"--the only book I accept as "bible truth" is, in fact, The Bible!! It is much more authoritative about Love and the true definition of how GOD defines Love--and that is what we should measure by. (Sorry about that dangling participle!) <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/pfft.gif" alt="" /> Therefore any book OTHER than the Bible that talks about Love is a book that I consider, ponder, test according to biblical definitions, etc.

In the instance of SAA, I think you have to remember that it is not meant to be the definitive book about all affairs all the time. It is not meant to be a book that fully defines Love and marriage from the Christian point of view. It is not meant to psychologically analyze every single aspect of an affair or how they occur, etc. This is a book that is MEANT to be fairly general and fairly simple. It is meant to reach the most people in the easiest of terms. Thus, lots of things in the book are the BEGINNING of knowledge...not the "end all/see all." To be specific, I think there are lots of people in the U.S. today who get married who have NO IDEA why they are attracted to who they are attracted to...have NO IDEA why they "feel love"...have NO IDEA about how to have any kind of mature relationship...they are just beginning! And Harley specifically addresses the basics.

Let me give you an example. In a wise marriage, the people either listened to the wise council of their parents or others in their church (something like that) who taught them that a lifelong covenant requires a CHOICE and requires certain BEHAVIORS. The wiser folks might have helped the teenager or young adult figure out what kind of person THEY ARE and what kind of person/personality would be a good match for them. The wiser folks might have demonstrated to the teenager or young adult how to handle their anger in a healthy way (avoiding LB's)...and how to think of what their partner needs (meeting EN's) without ever USING those terms. Know what I mean? Yet, LOTS and LOTS of folks out there in the world today are either too stubborn to listen to wise council...or their parents are bad examples themselves...or zillions of other reasons, and for THOSE people, Harley began at the beginning. Love is LIKE a bank. You can make "deposits" and make the love balance go higher and higher...or you can make "withdrawals" and take out the love that you put in there. He does this so that people have some sort of analogy...something they can picture in their mind that they can understand...that explains how that infatuated, "in love" feeling can start, and how it can end! People can visualize a "bank of Love". It's also the same with the EN's and LB's because those are THE MOST COMMON emotional needs and lovebusters, but it is not a definitive list. The concepts described are simple and will help the MOST people.

Comparing these simple ideas with the Bible seem to match for the most part. Husbands are told to love their wives as Christ loved the Church. Well...He was pretty selfless in His loving wasn't He? That possibly sounds like Affection to me. And wives are told to respect their husbands...that's a command! Do you think maybe that might match "for the most part" with the Admiration EN? I do.

Where the concept seems to confuse you is the idea of the LoveBank being in control of us. As I know you are glaringly aware, a person can be a Christian and "say" they are committed, and then let someone else have the opportunity to put "deposits" in their LoveBank. However, this is the way I see it. I am a married lady. If I am really a believing follower of Jesus Christ, I WILL NOT behave in a way where my behavior would even lend the appearance of evil. I would know where my own weaknesses are toward members of the opposite sex, and I would put up defenses and protections that assist me in living the godly life that pleases God and to defend and protect MY HUSBAND. My LoveBank is my personal responsibility.

Did ya see that? My LoveBank is my personal responsibility. I am responsible for choosing who I allow to continue to make deposits or not. In my instance, I do not even give other men the opportunity to MAKE a deposit! And if I'm caught off guard, and someone does make some deposits, then I am responsible to remove my LoveBank and make it off limits to the other person...whoever that may be. So does that make sense? As a fully-grown, mature woman, I know that I am susceptible to X, Y, or Z...and I should have protections in place that make X, Y, and Z available only to my husband. If I do not, then that is where sin enters in...because I am choosing to continue to keep my LoveBank available to someone who should not have access to it.


Haha! You are tricky, grasshopper! You are using "love" all over the place there! Does it create infatuation, "in love" feelings to deny the addict their addiction? NO! It certainly DOES NOT! But could it be the most loving thing you do to deny the addict their addiction and stay with them through their withdrawal? Absolutely! Soooo... we better define what you mean here, huh?

Let's be somewhat specific to your situation, okay? I'm sure your WW is saying something to the effect that one of her "needs" is to be able to have a boyfriend while married to you (or something equally foggy and silly). OBVIOUSLY it is not "loving" to allow your wife to have a boyfriend while she is married to you. Neither would it be loving to allow your wife to continue in any other UNHEALTHY, DAMAGING choices and claim they are a "need." In fact, when she says she "needs" a boyfriend, what she probably really does "need" is a counselor to help her face childhood abuse issues and lack of self-esteem and all kinds of stuff like that! <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/pfft.gif" alt="" />

I suspect that the absolutely most LOVING thing you can do for your WW right now is to allow her to experience the consequences of her choice to open her LoveBank to another man. Allowing her to experience what life without you there to meet SOME of her EN's...and allowing her to experience how much time with the children she is going to loose...is LOVING because it will help her to learn her lesson faster. Standing in the way and not giving her the chance to experience those things will actually inhibit her chance of growing! I guarantee you this will not create "in love" feelings in your WW, but there is no reason why you can't give her the opportunity to live with her choices -AND- remain the calm, steady, dependable, wise husband that you are -AND- continue to be the man who initially attracted her in the first place!


For now, even though they aren't EXACTLY the same, I'm going to assume commitment and covenant mean the same thing. Now, if you had been a person who never, ever knew about some of these MB concepts, and your M was falling apart due to an A...after reading SAA you might be saying to yourself, "A HA! So THAT'S why I fell in love with her back in college!" or "A HA! I can see a possible way to get the love back into our M!" But HMM, you and I both know that not every M has "in love" feelings all the time. In fact, I'll bet you know of someone in your grandparent's era who remained M'ed even though they obviously hated each other and did not get along in any kind of fashion. So commitment and covenant do not always EQUAL "in love." With the MB concepts of meeting EN's and avoiding/eliminating LB's, the idea is to not only honor your commitment/covenant, but also to keep a loving feeling for the whole time. <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" /> BTW...it's not about that "infatuation, butterflies in the stomach" thing but more like a deep affection and caring and love and protection of each other.

Anyway...back on topic!

I think concepts like commitment and covenant are a little deeper than the "basics" of Harley's books. Honoring a commitment, a person could choose to sleep in separate rooms and live completely separate lives...and yet it honors the commitment. <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/teary.gif" alt="" /> COVENANT is an agreement made between two people of the same faith who stand before GOD (who administers the covenant) and who pledge that from this point forward they will run their lives according to God's will. Now...you can't really be in a close relationship with God and then do what is directly against His will. And HMM...you tell me...how does God deal with people who break a covenant that He is administering?

To summarize, I think that if you look at the Harley books as "the basics" and look at them as the starting point from which a mature person can begin to have a fulfilling, intimate, loving marriage...then they are consistent. It is consistent with scripture to explain that not all people are loved in the same way--and that husbands should find out how to love THEIR OWN wife and wives should find out how to love THEIR OWN husbands! It is consistent with scripture to explain that a soft answer turns away wrath...or that hurtful judging of your spouse destroys love. It is consistent to understand how Love is built and destroyed in your loved-one AND to accept that each person is responsible for their own LoveBank. But some of the deeper concepts of commitment and covenant are not really discussed or mentioned very deeply by Harley because SAA is meant to be "the basics" to explain to people who have no clue how this could happen. It's the jumping off point.

Your faithful friend,



CJ

The chapter on love in the Bible (I Corinthians 13) show/explain how real love is action and not feeling:

"Love is patient, love is kind.” – Patience and kindness is actions e.g. one chooses to act patient and kind. Therefore one chooses to act in loving ways.

“It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not rejoice in evil but rejoices with the truth.” – These also implicate action. One chooses to not envy; not boast; not act proud, rude, self-seeking, angry. One chooses to not keep record of wrongs and not rejoice with evil. In other words one chooses to NOT act in ways which will be unloving and destructive for self and others.

”It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails." – Again, one chooses to act protective; to trust, hope etc.

In “Road Less Traveled” the author (M. Scott Peck) also describes how real love is action and not feeling, but how the common tendency of people to confuse these two allows them all manner of self-deception e.g. possessing a feeling of love and then acting in response to that feeling in all manner of unloved and destructive ways (like WS’s and OP’s in A’s). Underneath are a view extracts from the book:

[color:"blue"] Of all the misconceptions about love the most powerful and pervasive is the belief that ‘falling in love’ is love or at least one of the manifestations of love. It is a potent misconception, because falling in love is subjectively experienced in a very powerful fashion as an experience of love.

Falling in love is not an act of will. It is not a conscious choice. Not matter how open to or eager for it we may be, the experience may still elude us. Contrarily, the experience may capture us at times when we are definitely not seeking it, when it is inconvenient and undesirable. We are as likely to fall in love with someone with whom we are obviously ill matched as with someone more suitable. Indeed, we may not even like or admire the object of our passion, yet, try as we might, we may not be able to fall in love with a person whom we deeply respect and with whom a deep relationship would be in all ways desirable.

This is not to say that the experience of falling in love is immune to discipline. Psychiatrists, for instance, frequently fall in love with their patients, just as their patients fall in love with them, yet out of duty to the patient and their role they are usually able to abort the collapse of their ego boundaries and give up the person as a romantic object. The struggle and suffering of the discipline involved may be enormous. But discipline and will can only control the experience; they cannot create it. We can choose how to respond to the experience of falling of love, but we cannot choose the experience itself.

Love is not a feeling. Many, many people possessing a feeling of love and even acting in response to that feeling act in all manner of unloved and destructive ways. It is not only possible but necessary for a loving person to avoid acting on feelings of love. I may meet a woman who strongly attracts me, whom I feel like loving, but because it would be destructive to my marriage to have an affair, I will say vocally or in the silence of my heart, ‘I feel like loving you, but I am not going to’. My feelings of love may be unbounded, but my capacity to be loving is limited. I therefore must choose the person on whom to focus my capacity to love, toward whom to direct my will to love.

True love is not a feeling by which we are overwhelmed. It is a committed, thoughtful decision. Genuine love implies commitment and the exercise of wisdom. When we are concerned for someone’s spiritual growth, we know that a lack of commitment is likely to be harmful and that commitment to that person is probably necessary for us to manifest our concern effectively.

Genuine love is volitional rather than emotional. The person who truly love does so because of a decision to love. This person has made a commitment to be loving whether or not the loving feeling is present. If it is, so much the better; but if it isn’t, the commitment to love, the will to love, still stands and is still exercised.

The common tendency to confuse love with feelings of love allows people all manner of self-deception. It is clear that there may be a self-serving quality in this tendency to confuse love with the feeling of love; it is easy and not at all unpleasant to find evidence of love in one’s feelings. It may be difficult and painful to search for evidence of love in one’s actions. But because true love is an act of will that often transcends ephemeral feelings of love, it is correct to say, ‘Love is as love does’. [/color]