A Love Buster has to be something you do. Choosing to not do something isn't a Love Buster. Failure to meet an Emotional Need is not a Love Buster.

It's crucially important that your wife only meet your EN for sexual fulfillment in a way she is enthusiastic about, so it's crucially important that she be allowed to choose not to do so if the circumstances aren't right for her. Even if she can't put into words why that is. And without her choice being labeled a Love Buster or anything negative. Her choice is providing valuable information for you: that circumstances aren't right for her to be able to enthusiastically, sustainably, meet and continue to meet this need for you long term.

According to Dr. Harley, women typically need two main things to be able to enthusiastically meet their husband's need for sexual fulfillment:
1) they have to feel emotionally bonded to their husband
2) they have to feel that there is a prospect of enjoyment for them in the sexual experience

Marriage Builders addresses both of these - you address 1 by making sure that your account in her love bank is past the romantic love threshold: you meet her emotional needs with improving skill and learn to eliminate love busters on your part, so that your balance is continually growing. Once that is achieved, then you can communicate about how to achieve 2.

There must be some overlap between a failure to meet an emotional need and an action. Certainly I feel sad because my emotional need is not met, The way I express that sadness will probably be a love buster, in my case most likely as Disrespectful Judgments. Only in the last 12 months have I tipped over into the odd Angry Outburst. However when I look back as to how it has manifested over a much longer timeframe I'm wondering what category my begging for sex has been; is that a Selfish Demand or an Annoying Behaviour?

Likewise when my mate knows I have an emotional need that she chooses not to meet it is being expressed in some form of love buster otherwise it would not be hurting me. In my case I experience her unilateral withdrawal from sex as Independent Behaviour. I also experience failure to negotiate on it (POJA) as Dishonesty.

The way to deal with Love Busters is completely different from the way to deal with getting your emotional needs met.


Wait a minute, in order for this program to work, you need to eliminate love busters. If you probably become demanding, disrespectful, or angry in response to an unmet emotional need, that's a serious issue that needs to be addressed before the two of you can move forward to meet each other's emotional needs.

That was exactly my same problem, for years!

Your wife will likely start to feel much more enthusiastic about meeting your emotional needs some time after love busters are eliminated.


So I'm a formerly abusive husband with a very important question for you: can you guarantee that you will never have an angry outburst at your wife again? If not, that's the first thing you've got to do, and the help to learn how to do it is here. This is what I had to do. There's no other way for this to work.


The way the Marriage Builders program handles this is:
step 1: eliminate all of your love busters
step 2: learn to use Thoughtful Requests to get your emotional needs met in a way your wife is enthusiastic about. Dr. Harley's got a thoughtful requests article up somewhere, and there's more information about it in Love Busters and His Needs, Her Needs.


No, it's not a Love Buster to choose to do nothing. Maybe you need to read what Dr. Harley said to me about this:


This was a post Dr. Harley made to me in 2012!


No, that's not how Dr. Harley defines those terms

In order for this program to work buy-in is needed from both partners. That buy-in probably never happens at the same time, one party secures the other party's buy-in by working on their known love busters. However if you are not informed of what they are you are just guessing. I was somewhat surprised at my mate's ranking of her emotional needs, but I am aware I meet most if not all of them. I am less clear on what her Lover Buster list is.

Neither of us has ever been abusive and by my count I have had maybe had three angry outburst over the last 12 months that amount to a total of about 10 words. If you have a 40 year history of no angry exchanges a simple angrily delivered 2 words can be devastating to both giver and receiver.

It is my opinion a request can never be withdrawn, only a demand can be withdrawn. A demand is disrespectful, a request is the start of a negotiation. Once a request is verbalized it exists for as long as it is remembered. It might be satisfied by mutual negotiation (POJA) or the requestor's need might change and that request becomes no longer relevant or has a need to be addressed. Accepting a decline to meet a request is a change in the requestor's need at that time. If the original request was an attempt to get an unmet emotional need addressed I cannot see how that request will ever go away and will be rerequested later on. If the requestor stops making the request with the need still unmet it becomes a sacrifice.

Mature, I spent years trying to get buy-in from my wife, listened to Dr. Harley for hundreds of hours on his radio show, and I succeeded! I got quite good at it! I've been at this a very long time.



I'd like to help you get buy-in from your wife, too, but I'm not sure you're hearing everything I'm saying. We certainly have enough information here from what you've posted to talk about the Love Busters you are engaging in - it's not a mystery. I did the same stuff, and you're talking about it, here.

If you have had three angry outbursts in the last 12 months, then you have been abusive.

If you have made disrespectful judgements of your wife, then you have been abusive.

If either of these are happening, even just a few times in the last year, then it is likely your wife will not feel sexual towards you at all.

You're going to have to clean up your side of the street before she is likely to show interest.

My wife hasn't acted sexual towards me for 20 years. Things do eventually bubble to the surface.....

https://www.marriagebuilders.com/what-is-sacrifice-and-should-it-be-used-in-marriage.htm

Mature, my wife Prisca was in the same situation as your wife ... maybe instead of trying to educate her, you should listen. She's also an expert in Dr. Harley's program.

Have you considered writing to Dr. Harley himself for help?

Would you like to change that?

Hi, Mature! How's it going today?

How is it going? I feel sad for myself because I have missed the sexual fulfillment I have craved for the past 20 years of my midlife and know in my heart that irrespective of whatever happens next, my old age is not going to be able to recoup that.

And no I do not want to retract what I have already put into words. I thought it, I said it, I take responsibility for it. My wife however remains my best friend for all the other needs we fulfill in each other. I can't see that ever changing. Perhaps that is the power of unconditional love, not just a love without precondition?

I think this thread has come to its useful end.

I'm so sorry, Mature. I know that is pretty awful.


I don't understand - who has asked you to retract anything?


We'd love to help you build a better future than you are expecting.

Also, have you considered writing Dr. Harley for help?

I get feeling sad about things that happened or did not happen in the past. I feel that too, sometimes, when I think of the "lost years," as we have come to refer to them. So many lost opportunities for happiness in our early marriage, and when our kids were young.

BUT ... the solution to happiness is not in the past. It's done. It's over. There's no changing it. The solution is in the present -- what you do now to change the now so that you can find happiness today and in the future.

The marriage you can build now will more than compensate for the neglect and disappointments in the past.

So it's been over 2 years since I started this thread and I note it has had a high number of views.From looking at that number I would guess the continuing increment is coming from search engine hits rather than just local traffic. I think there are a lot of people out there with similar problems also searching for answers.

I haven't found an answer. Just knowing about the program hasn't worked for me. You can't work this one through as a one sided operation or you end up in withdrawal like me. This is perhaps preferable to not understanding what is affecting you and ending in angry outbursts. I am now more depressed than frustrated as I understand what has been the root cause of my frustration. Having read Dr Harley's books and having tried to apply the concepts I find myself having a sort of out of body experience with some third person part of me observing what is going on and knowing what is happening to my relationship but having no ability to alter the course as I observe a train wreck in progress.

I have introduced my wife to the concepts but she is not persuaded by the books and does not want to engage in the program. She did read both His Needs Her Needs and He WIns She Wins but is skeptical of the content. She has listen to a couple of the radio programs I have suggested that discuss some of our problems but is dismissive of the content. I believe she believes that following the dating concept is artificial and that everything should just work out naturally and that we should just accept each other as we are and shouldn't have to make artificial adjustments to make the relationship better. She has in fact flatly refused to read the How To Date The One You Married articles.

We have been lucky that we have been quite compatible from the start and for the most part our relationship has worked naturally without much effort. Unfortunately in retrospect this seems to have been at my expense. I have been continually making the small sacrifices along the way that have not been appreciated and the complaints about it have not been heeded and my out of body self is now watching as I careen out of control into stage 3 resentment.

I now question how good our relationship has in fact been and wonder whether the whole thing has been an illusion, that we have in fact been living a life of a freeloader relationship that has required little effort because most of our wants and needs have been being met naturally because of our common desires and life has been generally conflict free.

I did write to Dr Harley early on with our answers to some of the questionnaires and he responded that he thought that my wife probably just had a low sex drive and that it would be frustrating for me. He did suggest that perhaps there was a sexual aversion and posed a couple of questions for her, but my wife is not interested in talking to any relationship counselor and apparently particularly not to him.

I subsequently wrote a couple more emails to Dr Harley that have not been acknowledged. I wonder if there has been something wrong in my writing or perhaps I have made offensive comments in threads here that have caused a problem.

Most recently I have also been suffering the effects of a testosterone modifying drug that I started taking 9 months ago to control the effects of Benign Prostrate Enlargement. The side effects of that drug have been to severely alter my libido and any sexual performance ability, notwithstanding that it was already compromised. I have now lost the ability to enjoy something that has always been part of my needs. The needs however still exist but I can't even work through them with self gratification.

As part of my withdrawal I have now found myself unable to enjoy the touch side of signs of affection. I do not want to hold hands wife my wife anymore and my wife's touch now feels needy rather than something pleasant that I can reciprocate. She is aware of things breaking down but can't approach doing anything sexual in response. We do however still exchange other signs of affection. Although Dr Harley says these touch signs of affection for a female are non sexual, because touch is also a sexual thing for me I can't reciprocate. I guess you could say that because there has been no empathy for my sexual needs for so many years that I have now developed my own sexual aversion to touch.

Just a thought Mature. When we get into patterns in relationships and life generally, it is usually because we aren't taking massive action to turn things around. When dating, SF and meeting one's ENs is effortless. When we get comfortable, we fall back into our normal childhood conditioning. We learn how to have relationships from experiencing and observing our parents interact romantically. This includes how they communicate, intimacy, or in many cases, the lack thereof, and then we seek to recreate the familiar in our relationships as adults. In my experience, if you don't understand the dynamics of your parents, then it is nearly impossible to understand how you both interact as a couple. For MB principles to thrive and create meaningful change in our lives, we must realize that the subconscious part of our conditioning has much more to do with our relationship success and failure than our conscious mind does. In other words, your conscious mind and what you want are like a flea on the back of an elephant. The elephant is the subconscious mind and is going to call the shots.
How we create lasting change is to understand and then influence the elephant in our life, which is that subconscious programming received as a child. It has been a couple of years, but what do you recall about mom and dad and how they behaved as a couple? Did you see affection? Kissing? Hugging? How about the experience of your spouse? What did she experience as a child? Once you figure out this dynamic, it becomes much easier to understand your tendencies and triggers as you navigate this life together as a couple. MB is the key to getting your needs met, but it becomes much more challenging to navigate when there is an incredible amount of "elephant" tendencies in the background. It is like having a virus on your computer. If SF is your greatest need, but your spouse has severe trauma as a child, then it becomes much more difficult for her to fulfill this need even if she really, really, really wants to.

A reply was made to one of my comments in another thread that I think is best followed up in this thread so I'm copying those comments and giving my reply here.



Unfortunately it still is horrible time, but being 70 and 71 now and having been married 43 years, separation is really out of the question.

As much as I tried I have not been able to alter the course things headed. The topics have been raised time and time again and I have, in forlorn hope, introduced various MB and other material, books, articles and the occasional radio program to consider, but all without any real progress.

We would probably be best described now as good lifestyle partners without any sexual intimacy. The marriage has been sexless for 20 years. More than just roommates but ultimately frustrating for both. Our days are interactive, safe and supportive and we spend much more than the suggested 15 hours a week of undivided attention together in what seems to be supporting most of the important emotional needs suggested by Dr Harley, however I am definitely in withdrawal over lack of sexuality and the appreciation that would express. I am frustrated beyond endurance in that regard.

Expressing my hurt has caused untold damage to our relationship however my wife still seems determined to hide behind toxic positivity rather than address the problem.

An emotional separation (rather than physical) has developed along with my touch aversion. In her own time, perhaps in moments of lucidity, this is causing my wife a great deal of anxiety that I acknowledge has added more serious headwind. Unfortunately losing that happiness hasn't been enough to breakthrough on the problems.

What to do when your spouse really cannot fulfill your emotional need, rather than just not wanting to? What if every honest attempt to meet it just falls apart and fails due to inhibitions and lack of imagination? Dr Harley suggests a solution in such situations may be to introduce a third party advocate, but what if you cannot find an advocate?

On the other thread, Dr Harley suggested that posters write directly to him for help. Will you do so?

As noted above in reply #3016800 I have written to Dr Harley several times over a period of time.

I have not received any replies subsequent to the initial early interaction.

Are you saying you haven’t heard back from Dr. Harley at all? Have you tried emailing the MODS to ask them for help?