In the Most Important Emotional Needs section of my Basic Concepts, I describe 10 important emotional needs that should not be ignored in marriage. The following Q&A columns address five of those ten needs.

Affection

Affection is extremely important in marriage, yet after a few years and a few children, couples usually drift into a relationship void of affection. This is unfortunate because without it, couples miss much of what marriage has to offer. In the column, How to Meet the Need for Affection, I address not only the importance of affection in marriage, but the fact that it's a skill that can be learned by anyone. And if you want to have a great sexual relationship, the environment of affection turns out to be an essential ingredient.

Sexual Fulfillment

Sexual fulfillment is also an important emotional need. In fact, after questions on infidelity, the next most commonly asked questions I receive are about sexual problems. Since most of these questions are from women who don't enjoy sex as much as their husbands do, the columns I've posted encourage husbands to make sex more attractive to their wives. But the solutions I offer can often be applied to men as well, where wives must learn to make sex more attractive to their husbands.

How to Meet the Need for Sexual Fulfillment is a column about how to improve sexual interest. Since the problem is so complex, it just scratches the surface, but sometimes a scratch is all that's needed. I emphasize the importance of conversation and affection in providing a necessary environment for sex. A related column is Changing a Willingness to Make Love into a Desire to Make Love. Through a series of e-mail Q&A letters with a frustrated woman, I guide her through a procedure that changes her willingness to make love into a desire to make love. Many have found this column particularly helpful after children arrive.

A good sexual rule of thumb is "don't have sex if it's painful." But when it is painful, what should you do? How to Overcome Pain During Intercourse addresses a common complaint among women. In this column I describe both primary and secondary causes of sexual pain, and how they can be eliminated.

When someone regularly associates pain and discomfort with sex, a sexual aversion is likely to form. And when it does, it can bring sex in marriage to an end. How to Overcome Sexual Aversion is in response to letters from women who have come to a point where sex has become repulsive and frightening. Is there any hope for women with a sexual aversion? There is, if they follow my suggestions.

What to Do When Your Spouse Has an Addiction to Pornography is especially relevant in this age of the internet. Pornography has become an unwanted intruder in many marriages. I offer ways to kick the intruder out.


Conversation

If you and your spouse don't talk to each other enough, how can you expect to have a good marriage?

For many couples, conversation has become downright painful. If you and your spouse have trouble talking to each other, you would benefit from What to do When Your Conversation Becomes Boring and Unpleasant. In this column, you will learn how the enemies of good conversation will keep you from talking to each other. But you will also learn how the friends of good conversation can get you back to those deep and intimate conversations that helped create your love for each other.

Recreational Companionship

One of the biggest risks of marriage is growing apart. Left to your own devices, you and your spouse will develop separate lifestyles, and ultimately slip into incompatibility, and possibly divorce. To avoid that unhappy outcome, I encourage you to spend most of your leisure time together. I can't emphasize this point enough. Unless you and your spouse are each other's best friends and favorite recreational companions, you will not have the love for each other that you want and need. Why Should a Couple Be Together When They Are the Happiest? addresses that issue.

Recreational companionship is a key factor in drawing spouses together. It was what got you together when you were dating, and it helped you fall in love with each other. But what was fun when you were dating may now be boring to at least one of you. I have posted two columns that are designed to encourage you to become each other's best friends. They are What to Do When Your Recreational Companionship Becomes Boring and Unpleasant (Part 1) and What to Do When Your Recreational Companionship Becomes Boring and Unpleasant (Part 2).

On a related theme, another column wrestles with the complaint, We Don't Spend Enough Time with Each Other. Neglect not only withdraws love units, but it turns out to be the single most important reason that women divorce men, and they divorce men twice as often as men divorce women. College educated women divorce 10 times more often as men. Men, if you want to keep your wife around, listen up.

Physical Attractiveness

One of the most controversial aspects of my program is to include physical attractiveness as one of the important emotional needs in marriage. Remember, I am not telling anyone what their emotional needs should be -- I simply list those that have been the most commonly identified by others. But I get lots of complaints, mostly from women, that I should not even mention it as an alternative. Sadly, these women are ignoring a way to deposit love units. In my column, Meeting the Emotional Need for Physical Attractiveness, I have a chance to defend my position on this important subject.

We will see how I feel later...but for now, I am making it o.k. It would be one thing if I am having my own problems and need medication. I will not allow him to drive me to that for this. I would much sooner have him gone. I will get help if needed, but at this point I am o.k. It is really tough though!!! Tonight he asked what the plans were for tonight and asked if I wanted to to go to the gym or all go to the pool. I just took the kids to the lake all day yesterday, so I said I might just go to the gym while you take them to the pool. Then he called back...Just wanted to let you know that you know who takes a class on Thurs. nights....AHHHHH! I said calmly...no of course I wouldn't know that considering you told me she no longer went to outr gym. He jumped down my throat...I said nothing more...Then I called him back and just said based on my response His reaction was uncalled for. He called back and apologized and said it was hard for him to make that call, but he didn't want me to walk into that situation without knowing. (Of course if he wasn't talking to her he wouldn't have known that) Ahhhhh.

But not all emotional needs are created equally. When some are met, you may only feel comfortable--they make small Love Bank deposits. There are others, however, that can make you feel downright euphoric. In fact they make you so happy that you're likely to fall in love with the person that meets them. I call those our most important emotional needs because they make the largest Love Bank deposits of all. And those are the very same emotional needs that a husband and wife expect each other to meet in marriage.

By now you can probably see where I'm headed. My first goal when counseling a couple is to help them identify their most important emotional needs. Once those needs are identified, I help them learn to meet those needs for each other. I want them to make the largest deposits possible into each other's Love Banks. If all goes well, they begin making those large deposits and eventually they are in love with each other.

When I first began using this approach to saving marriages, I didn't know what made people the happiest in marriage -- I didn't know what emotional needs would be the most important. So I had to ask hundreds of men and women that question, "What could your spouse do for you that would make you the happiest?"

As spouses explained what they wanted most, I classified their desires into emotional need categories. And almost all those I interviewed described one or more of only ten emotional needs as being most important to them (admiration, affection, conversation, domestic support, family commitment, financial support, honesty and openness, physical attractiveness, recreational companionship and sexual fulfillment). Very few ever named a most important emotional need that was not included in this list of ten.

I also made a revolutionary discovery that helped me understand why husbands and wives tended not to meet each other's most important emotional needs. Whenever I asked couples to list their needs according to what they needed most, men would list them one way and women the opposite way. Of the 10 emotional needs, the five listed as most important by men were usually the five least important for women, and vice-versa.

What an insight! It is no wonder that husbands and wives have so much difficulty meeting each other's needs: They lack empathy. They are willing to do for each other what they appreciate the most, but it turns out that their efforts are misdirected. What they appreciate the most, their spouses appreciate the least!

Pay close attention to this next point I am about to make, because it is one of the most misunderstood aspects of my entire program.

Everyone is unique. While men on average pick a particular set of five emotional needs as their most important and women on average pick another set of five, any given man or woman can and do pick various combinations of the ten. So even though I know the most important emotional needs of the average man and woman, I don't know the emotional needs of any particular husband or wife.

I'm in the business of trying to save all marriages, not just average marriages, so I encourage each couple to ignore what I say about average male and female needs and identify those that are unique to them. That way each spouse's list of the most important emotional needs reflects what he or she appreciates the most. When they meet those needs for each other, they create the greatest happiness, and trigger a mutual feeling of love.

These conclusions are reflected in my book His Needs, Her Needs where I explain how couples build romantic love by learning how to meet each other's most important emotional needs. Readers are encouraged to identify these needs by using the Emotional Needs Questionnaire that I provide at the back of the book. Then I encourage them to become experts at meeting those needs. This questionnaire is also available to you on this website. Just click, Emotional Needs Questionnaire, to discover the most important emotional needs for you and your spouse. Be sure to print two copies so you and your spouse each have one.

Before you fill out the questionnaire read a short description of each need that I've provided for you so that you will be accurate in the choices you make.


Affection
Sexual Fulfillment
Conversation
Recreational Companionship
Honesty and Openness
Physical Attractiveness
Financial Support
Domestic Support
Family Commitment
Admiration
Once you have identified each other's most important emotional needs, your next step is to learn how to meet them. I've written several Q&A columns to help you achieve that objective. Listed below are some of those columns