Five steps to romantic love : a workbook for readers of "Love busters" and "His needs, her needs"

224 Pages·2009·7.19 MB·English

by  Harley, Willard F.

Digitized by the Internet Archive
in 2012
http://www.archive.org/details/fivestepstoromanOOharl

Introduction
Dear Friends,
After 30 years of helping couples avoid the tragedy of divorce, I am convinced that passion is
not just desirable in marriage, it's absolutely essential. When a husband and wife feel passion toward
each other, they find it easy to give each other what they need the most in marriage: heartfelt affection,
dynamic conversation, devoted friendship, enthusiastic lovemaking.
But without passion, spouses usually feel that their marriage was a big mistake; they
feel cheated.
Passion is much easier to create than most people think. It's done by simply meeting each
other's most important emotional needs. But it's also easy to lose. All it takes to lose passion is to fail to
meet those needs. When a couple first marry, these emotional needs are usually met and, as a result,
passion is the rule. But it doesn't take most couples very long before it becomes the exception. Couples
tend to get out of the habit of meeting each other's emotional needs. The pressures of adjusting to a
new family make meeting emotional needs seem like a luxury rather than the necessity that it is.
Once passion is lost in a marriage, it often seems impossible to regain because, without passion,
spouses no longer feel like meeting each other's emotional needs. But if a couple can be convinced that
meeting each other's emotional needs is crucial to their own personal happiness and the success of their
children, they find that it's not only possible to regain passion for each other, it's much easier than they
thought.
I wrote the book, His Needs, Her Needs: Building an Affair-proof Marriage, to help couples
identify and learn to meet each other's most important emotional needs. Well over two million copies
have been sold, and it's been translated into sixteen languages. Thousands of couples have learned to
restore passion to their marriage by reading this book and following my advice.
Granted, as they try to learn the habits that meet those needs, they usually feel very
uncomfortable at first. Just like trying to type for the first time, it doesn't seem natural. But once those
habits are learned and their needs are mutually met, their passion for each other is restored. And with
that passion comes a comfort that makes continuing to meet each other's needs seem instinctive and
almost effortless.
I have had many requests for more help on this subject, especially motivational help. Spouses
usually know that they should meet each other's needs, but many just can't seem to motivate them­
selves to do it.
So I recorded this audio series as a motivational companion to my book, His Needs, Her Needs.
It is intended to help spur you on to do the right thing—to make each other very happy.
This His Needs, Her Needs audio series and its audio companion, Love Busters: Overcoming
Habits That Destroy Passion, work together to help you restore your love for each other. While His
Needs, Her Needs will help you rebuild your love for each other by showing you how to meet each
other's emotional needs, Love Busters will help you avoid losing your love for each other.To help you get
the most from this audio series, I suggest that you follow the lesson assignments that I have included.
The time it takes to complete each lesson will depend on how much you have to learn and how
important the lesson is to you. Some lessons can be skipped entirely if neither of you show interest in
it, while others may require weeks of study. But before you finish a lesson, be sure you (1) listen to the
lesson, (2) read the corresponding chapter in His Needs, Her Needs, (3) answer the questions at the end
of the chapter and discuss them with each other, and (4) complete thecorresponding worksheets in
your workbook, Five Steps to Romantic Love. These four steps will lead you to a plan of action that
helps you form habits that meet each other's emotional needs.
Your marriage can provide you with the greatest happiness and fulfillment this life has to offer.
But if you and your spouse fail to meet each other's most important emotional needs, it can become
your greatest source of unhappiness and frustration. Learn the habits that will help your marriage
become everything it was meant to be.
I wish you the happiest and most passionate marriage!
Willard F. Harley, Jr.
Lesson 1: The Love Bank 5
Lesson 1: The Love Bank
Welcome to the Marriage Builders course, His Needs, Her Needs: Habits for a Lifetime of Passion. I
will do my best to guide you through this course successfully, so that when you have finished the lessons,
you will know how to fall in love and stay in love with each other.
This course focuses attention on making Love Bank deposits efficiently and effectively, and the best
way to make those deposits is to meet each other's most important emotional needs. This course will help
you identify those needs in each other, and then teach you how to become experts in meeting them.
But that's only half of the story. What goes up can also come down. If you want to be in love with
each other, you must do more than make Love Bank deposits; you must also avoid making Love Bank
withdrawals. So I have developed a companion course, Love Busters: Overcoming Habits that Destroy Passion.
In that course, I show you how to keep your Love Bank balances high by avoiding common habits that ruin
marital relationships.
If the worst problem in your marriage is your failure to make each other happy, this His Needs, Her
Needs course is where you should begin. When you are finished, immediately begin the Love Busters course
to fully prepare you for a lifetime of love.
But if you feel that your worst problem is your failure to avoid making each other unhappy, you
should begin with the Love Busters course, and follow that with the His Needs, Her Needs course. The
reason I recommend this sequence of courses is that if you are making each other miserable, you must first
learn to stop hurting each other before you will want to make each other happy.
This His Needs, Her Needs course consists of 12 lessons, and the companion Love Busters course also
has 12 lessons. But if you have attended the Marriage Builders Weekend, you can skip the 2nd lesson in this
course and go right on to the 3rd lesson. That's because the purpose of the second lesson is to identify each
other's most important emotional needs, and you have already done that if you attended Marriage
Builders Weekend.
If you complete one lesson a week, you will attend "class" for a total of 24 weeks starting today if
you did not attend Marriage Builders Weekend, and 23 weeks if you did attend. But you will find that a
week is not enough time to complete some lessons, especially those that require the creation of new habits.
So in actual practice, this course may take you as much as a year to complete if you make sure that you have
adequately addressed each topic. Just make sure that you get into the habit of setting aside time each week
for a lesson.
Each lesson will usually consist of four assignments. The first is to listen for about 20 minutes to an
audio CD where I give you information regarding the topic of the lesson; the second is to read a chapter in
my book His Needs, Her Needs', the third is to answer questions at the end of the chapter in His Needs, Her
Needs', and the fourth assignment is to complete worksheets in the workbook, Five Steps to
Romantic Love.
But this first week the four assignments will be a little different. The first two are similar to the ones
you will have throughout the course, while the third and fourth will help me explain an essential condition
that must be met if you are to have a lifetime of love.
Here are your assignments for this lesson:
Assignment 1
Listen to audio lesson #1: Hie Love Bank—1 low CDur Emotions Keep Score in Marriage. It will
6 HIS \IIDS Hl R \EH)S 11 SS()\ XSSIGWIIM'S
take you less than half an hour, and you can either do it together, or apart (while in your car on your way to
and from work).
Assignment 2
Read the Preface, the Introduction, and Chapters 1 and 2 in His Needs, Her Needs. I suggest you use
two highlight colors, one for him and one for her. If you read something you would like your spouse to pay
special attention to, highlight it. Then after you have both read the assigned chapters, go through them once
more to see what your spouse wanted you to be sure to notice. It's a way for you both to communicate your
interests and concerns without having to say a word.
Assignment 3
Read Chapters 16 (Building Romantic Love with Care) and 17 (Building Romantic Love with Time)
in Love Busters. A copy of Love Busters is included in the companion course, Love Busters: Overcoming Habits
that Destroy Passion.
Assignment 4
Read "Learning to Set Aside Time for Undivided Attention" in Five Steps to Romantic Love, and
schedule the time you will be together for this first week. Then, throughout the week fill out the Time for
Undivided Attention Worksheet and the Time for Undivided Attention Graph. You should make copies of
the Time for Undivided Attention Worksheet because you will need a new one each week.
Let me explain why these third and fourth assignments are so important.
One of my cardinal rules for a successful marriage is the Rule of Time: Give your spouse your
undivided attention a minimum of fifteen hours each week, using the time to meet his or her most
important emotional needs. It should be obvious to you that it will take time to meet most of each other's
important emotional needs, and unless you schedule that time, you simply won't get the job done. Time has a
wav of slipping away if you don't set it aside for important objectives. And what objective is more important
than you and your spouse being in love with each other?
"But Dr. Harley, we don't have 15 extra hours each week!"
You're right. If you schedule 15 hours to give each other undivided attention, something else you were
planning to do with those 1 5 hours will have to go. But if you are organized, and prioritize your time,
whatever it is you will not be doing will turn out to be the least important objective for the week, and in its
place you will be substituting the most important objective. A smart swap, wouldn't you say?
I he bonus feature of the Policy of Undivided Attention is that it will not only help vou meet each
other's important emotional needs, but it will also help you complete this course. That’s because I suggest that
you use a few of those fifteen hours to complete each week's course assignments. After all, what good are the
fifteen hours if you don't know how to use them effectivelv?
1 usually recommend scheduling one hour a day during the week and five hours a dav on Saturday
and Sunday. I hen, you must decide what you will be doing with those 15 hours, and I suggest setting some
of th cm aside for your weekly course assignments. T his week, all 4 assignments will require no more than 3
hours of your time—maybe 4 if you discuss them with each other. The remaining 11 hours are to be spent
enjoying each others company, so have fun! If you have not vet learned how to enjoy each other's company,
it's especially important for you to schedule 15 hours together each week so that you can learn how to do it. I
want vou to learn how to make it the best 15 hours of vour week. And if vou follow the advice I give vou in
the next 5 lessons, you will have come a long wav toward achieving that objective.