That's the goal, but that is not always possible if the stimuli and the learned behavior is stronger than the rational brain can manage. That's the definition of psychological disorder.

Otherwise there would never be such as thing as post traumatic stress disorder. Everyone would return back to normal, which is the fatter tail than your posts are allowing for the potential.

wiftty

Mark,

Are you teaching any more classes in the Chicagoland area?

I have two couple-friends from there (my old stomping ground). One couple is recovering from an affair, the other is just trying to figure out how to meet each other's EN's.

I recommended your group, but I can't remember what suburb you're in.

I know you're already in a group, but I'd love to see them get involved... they've been reading the website and books. Can you give me any info so I can direct them your way?

Thanks Mark!


Thanks

Telly,

I might be doing another one soon at another church in the area around Plainfield Illinois. This is roughly 40 miles SW of Chicago. I am trying to set up a meeting with the pastor of that church but we're having trouble resolving our schedules in part due to our NFP gearing up to attend the Illinois Horse Fair in a week and a half. It will probably happen, I just don't know when right now.

I might also repeat the group at our church again, which is a little farther down the road in Shorewood Illinois. We're also kicking around the idea of doing a two weekend half day type of thing but that will have to wait until we get the remodeling done at the church.

Have them email me if they are interested and I'll keep them up to date on when we'll be doing it again.

Mark

This is a good discussion, and (if I may) would like to see how it fits with what my MC has been teaching.

His conceptual model is a little different than the "love bank" model.

To paraphase what he has told me, it's the effective COMMUNICATION and ability to empathize with each other's emotions that strengthen the emotional bonds between two people.

As Mark states, everybody gets feelings and emotions in response to what they have experienced. These feelings are real. And, of course a favorable emotional response is always desirable and actions that cause unfavorable responses should be avoided. But, the response alone is not enough.

We have to be able to communicate our feelings and emotions to the other spouse and have them empathize with what we are feeling. And, the other spouse has to take the time to listen carefully, understand what the other is feeling, and provide enough feedback to ensure the first spouse that they do indeed understand and empathize. It is the SHARING and UNDERSTANDING of each others feelings and emotions that creates the strongest emotional bonds.

In this way of thinking, even an unfavorable emotional response can be an opportunity for love bank deposits if the emotions are effectively communicated to, understood by, and empathetic feedback given back by the other spouse.

Something to think about.

Wiftty,

I realize that there are filters on the stimulus that affects the response. I think this is actually accounted for by Dr Harley's model in that it is SPECIFIC stimulus that must be provided and not just random stimulus.

We see this in the importance of identifying the top emotional needs rather than just striving to meet the typical or the same emotional needs that we have for ourselves.

Love Busters are something that I think might be more damaging to some depending on what Love Buster we are talking about, but since pretty much all love busters fall into the six categories, in absence of any real input from a WS I think that striving to eliminate all six, at least within our own ability to identify annoying habits, usually things the WS has complained about repeatedly anyway, we can normally actually do pretty good at these.

I don't think the tail of the curve is so fat that it accounts for a failure rate that makes talking about the exceptions necessary beyond stating that they do exist. Even many of the exceptions can result in happy healthy marriages when MB is properly applied. But a lot of those exceptions need to be dealt with first before any real progress can be made in the marital quarter.

Here's my point about Plan A and B. If a good solid Plan A is attempted, it MIGHT result in the recommitting of the WS to the marriage. It typically does not and it is the expectation that it will that prevents the BS from continuing it for very long in most cases. JMO...

Then we come to Plan B and in Plan B the intent is not that additional leverage is applied to cause the reaction we want to take place but simply that we become willing to wait to see if the affair will end on its own.

The time limit placed on Plan A and Plan B have to be individually determined but when Plan A, done well, is continued beyond a certain point it usually results only in the BS ending up with nothing left to give if and when the affair finally self destructs.

And when we are NOT getting a good response we need to first determine if we are providing the right stimulus before deciding that the MB program will not work because our spouse is one of those anomalies or exceptions.

Back to work for now...My meeting awaits.

Mark

Plainfield... tornado town!

I think that's a little far... Shorewood might be too. They are in Lake in the Hills and Grayslake, respectively.

But I'll have htem e-mail you if they are interested in going that far, or in doing the 1/2 day program.

Thanks Mark!

What a great discussion!

WIFTTY, I love your addition to the discussion. I think you were able to state what I intuitively understand about behavior but am unable to verbalize or back up. basically that there are many mitigating factos that come into play with the cause and effect of emotions and behaviors, not just with people on the "extremes" of the spectrum, but those in the mainstream as well.

Mark, I really appreciate your going into such detail on the Plan A/Plan B thing, especially with regard to affair situations. Having never experienced that situationmyself, I have a hard time understading that perspective, and I think the perspective IS slightly different when it's not an affair situation, but a reluctant spouse/renter mindset situation. And sadly these days, I think MANY MANY people getting married have the renter mindset to start with.

How does one use Plan A/Plan B with a renter, and how does it look different from using MB with a betrayed spouse? One major difference I see is that in the "renter" situation, the "buyer spouse" has no justification to leave (at least not in the same way that a betrayed spouse does). In the affair situation, the affair is the enemy, but with the renter/buyer marriage, what exactly is the enemy, and how do you defeat it? You can't exactly "expose" the renter mindset. In fact, I think most people would actually support the renter mindset these days.

Schtoop,

The program you are talking about sounds a lot like Harville Hendrix, Getting the Love You Want. Am I right?

I don't know what article it's in,, but Harley does address this approach and Hendrix specifically as being ineffective compared to his own MB program. Hendrix's program is called "Imago Therapy". I once had an IC use that with me many many years ago, and I can say that as a single person it was extremely beneficial for me in understanding myself.

However, it is still an approach based on feeling moreso than action. I think one of the most beneficial parts of that approach is the idea of "closing your exits," that is, the escapes people use to stay in withdrawl from their spouse. Beyond that, it is just about communication, becoming honest and safe with your spouse. That is definitely VERY important in a relationship, but that alone will not build romantic love, which is the goal of Marriage Builders.

So two VERY different goals of the two programs.

If your goal is honesty, empathy and communication, Imago is a great tool.

But if your goal is romantic love, MB seems to be the only program out there designed for it.

I hate to say this, but I suspect that your MC is like the vast majority out there who are feeling-based, not action-based. Imago is not pro-marriage in the same way that MB is. And Hendrix himelf has been divorced. Not sure if that matters, but something to consider.

Just another quick thought/hypothetical for discussion, which goes back to the idea of cause/effect and expectations.

A "buyer" spouse may employ filling EN and removing all LB effectively, but get the exact opposite results than expected in this scenario: that instead eliciting positive feelings in the "renter" spouse, having EN met and LB removed results in feelings of guilt (possible even unrecognized guilt). That emotional response would prevent the Love Bank from being filled in much the same way resentment would. And said guilt would likely manifest itself as anger, both outward to the spouse and inward toward self. I suspect this scenario happens to an even greater degree in an affair situation. In fact, there's another discussion going on over there about the extreme anger that waywards exhibit.

This would be another scenario where a perfect MB Plan A would not work. And I think this could be quite common. Feelings of guilt proably more common than personality disorders

Thanks, thinkin.

I am not well-read on this subject and am glad someone can educate me on the approach our MC is using.

My goal is to gain some insight and useful techniques from both approaches (MC and MB). I'm hoping that our MC can get my wife to a point that she will enthusiastically explore the Marriage Builder's program with me. It was a major victory to get her to counseling at all and she seems to be opening up to this counselor (I feel he is good at what he does).

Right now she sees any suggestions from me as trying to control the situation. If I push MB too hard, it will be categorically rejected.

And one more quick question, with regard to being an extreme Giver creating and extreme Taker;

If the Buyer Spouse is naturally a Giver, and the Renter Spouse is naturally more of a Taker, and the Buyer Spouse decides to implement MB starting with Plan A, doesn't this just turn Renter Spouse into more of a taker?

I have seen this scenario a lot, especially with the male posters here. They give, give, give and it's never enough for their Taker wife who is quite content with the rental agreement and sees no reason to change. Throw in the guilt masked as anger. How is it possible for the Love Bank concept to fix this scenario?

VERY interesting discussion! Thank you to Mark and others for providing the solid information about emotions, the brain, stimuli, etc.


To me, this sounds like a description of someone with a high EN for Conversation (or, IOW, whose Love Language is Conversation) and maybe Opennes and Honesty. Not all people "bond" through communication. Some "bond" through sharing happy experiences with each other (Recreational Companionship) or through physical touch (ENs of Affection and SF; Love Language of Physical Touch) or other ways.

I have a high EN for Conversation. DH's need for Conversation is so low that it's almost an LB! So while the above scenario would certainly promote a strong emotional bond for me, it most certainly would NOT promote such a bond for my H.

I think a LOT of personality models and counseling techniques have this problem of only being effective for certain people. There is no "one size fits all." Most of these models and techniques rely on a single concept.

IMHO one of the biggest strength of MB is that it is broad enough to accommodate different personality types. (Other models that acknowledge different personality types are the 5 Love Languages and the Enneagram.)

For a person who has to talk all day at work and who just wants to come home and feel safe and warm and fuzzy, they probably would feel more emotionally bonded by spending the evening cuddling while watching tv, or enjoying a recreational activity, or having SF. I could certainly imagine that having a MC-ordered session of talking to each other could be an LB.

I imagine if a person is a counselor it must be easy to think that what would make you feel bonded is the solution to your patients' problems as well. It's much more difficult to come up with a model that works for various types of people.

Hopefully, counselors are properly trained NOT to project their own filters on to their patients. That's a horror story in the making!

True!

But I could imagine it would still be easy to fall into that... of course, I haven't gone through any such training...

OTOH not all training is of equal quality.

schtoop,

Your marriage counselor, like many others, subscribes to the theory that communication is the key to good marriage. All good communication can do is help improve understanding and empathy. Communication is just one skill, not a holistic approach. It takes more than effective communication to solve other problems, meet emotional needs, and create more romantic love between a couple.

Other paradigms are based on finding the root cause, on the assumption there is one root cause, and that is the key to repairing a broken relationship. This approach, rooted in Freud, require months or years of psychoanalysis. It often downplays the other issues that have been created over the years by a cycle of unmet ENs, withdrawal, and trading lover busters.

Action-based therapies, like Marriage Builders, focus on changing behavior now. It's like a fisherman with a tangled fishing line. If it is a small tangle, you work it apart, roll the line back on your reel, and resume fishing. But if it is a huge bird's nest, you don't waste your time trying to untangle that; you just cut it out, throw it away, forget about it, retie you line, and get to fishing.

Bad behaviors (lovebusters) are like anything else, a habit and can be unlearned. That's what I love about MB. You take *action* to unlearn the habit rather than sit around and dissect how you feel about it.


Absolutely. Anyone can hang out a shingle. That's the scary part.

Thank you, Thinkin'. that was my point exactly. Of course we all change, and we should all be willing to change in some ways for our spouses. But don't try to completely change or suppress the core of your identity. I tried to do that for a number of years to try to please a wife who, due to undiagnosed clinical depression, couldn't be pleased. So Pretz the Husband and Pretz the Father were on the go everyday, but Pretz the Me was under a rock somewhere. That's no way to live.

What I objected to so strongly in that post was the suggestion, if I understood correctly which is by no means certain, that if you make significant deposits to your spouse's love bank and avoid making withdrawals, then your spouse will necessarily love you, and here I mean 'necessarily' in the logical sense. The love bank metaphor is a brilliant and useful metaphor, but it is just a metaphor. It isn't physics.

Mark obviously knows something about neurochemistry, and in another context we could have a fascinating scientific and philosophical discussion regarding the nature of free will. In this discussion we would recognize the influence of external events, internal thoughts, and chemistry on a person's emotions. The discussion will take us further, into the structure of the brain, the relationship between the functions of the cerebrum, the cerebullem, and the hippocampus. We'll delve into the structure of different areas of the brain, then groups of neurons, then even individual neurons themselves and the synapses and neurotransmitters between them. Then we'll delve farther down into the quantum mechanical processes of the atoms within the neuron (see for example Roger Penrose) and ask whether consciousness in some way harnesses the probabilistic behavior at that level to get around the apparent determinism of physical systems. And after we have exhausted every avenue of thought, we still will not be able to say with certainty that if you do so-and-so and don't do such-and-such, your spouse will love you again. That was my objection.

Some people will not love you no matter what you do, even if they loved you at one time. You can't assume it's all your fault, nor that it is within your power to make them love you. Maybe it is, but maybe not. That's the nature of life and love, neurochemistry notwithstanding.

If you made it this far, thanks for reading.

- Pretz

Too many big words, too many big words . . . .

Sadly, I think most people in the "helping" professions tend to be pretty disordered themselves, and probably can't help but project onto the people they are "helping."

Its not just men who give, give, give.

Just saying.

So to summarize so far, if what we do affects how other people feel about us (love or hate), then if we do the things that elicit feelings of love (meet EN) and avoid the things that elicit feelings of hate (stop LB), that's ALL it will take to create romantic love in the vast majority of typical people, regardless of background or personality, according to MB theory.

To put it succinctly, ACTIONS of love produce FEELINGS of love. Feelings of love follow actions of love.

Except when they don't.

Why don't they? As Mark points out so well, there are MANY cases on these boards where meeting EN and stopping LB is not really being done "correctly". I contend that it is hard if not impossible to meet the EN of a spouse who is not honest. As Mark says, we can strive to eliminate all LB fairly easily without knowing which LB in particular are draining the bucket. Heck, we ought to be doing that anyway, in ALL our relationships! But meeting EN is tricky, because we can't assume that we know what our spouse's top 5 are. And if they are purposely NOT telling us either to justify an affair or justify their withdrawn or renter mindset, then we will be incapable of correctly following Plan A no matter how good our intentions are.

Essentially, the reluctant or wayward spouse is deliberately short-circuiting all efforts of a good Plan A. In fact, Plan A may actually elicit feelings of being smothered or manipulated, because a spouse who isn't honest about their top EN is also likely to distrust the person who is trying to meet their EN (whether justified or not). Essentially afraid of the quid pro quo, especially if they are certain that their spouse is not going to divorce them. They have no incentive to change.