Acts of anger include ridicule, sarcasm, punishment, threatening or physical violence. There is nothing to gain from rage. Solution

If you apply all of my Basic Concepts to your marriage, you will do what most couples want to do, but have failed to do — fall in love and stay in love. And that's what ultimately saves marriage — restoring the feeling of love. I've never counseled a couple in love that want to divorce. Dr. Harley earned a Ph.D. degree in psychology from the University of California at Santa Barbara in 1967 and has been a Licensed Psychologist in Minnesota since 1975. For the first ten years after earning his degree, he taught psychology at both the graduate and undergraduate levels. During those years, he was also a frustrated part-time marriage counselor with little success in helping couples. You should do whatever it takes to protect each other from these cruel, yet common, habits that cause untold unhappiness in marriage. By eliminating Love Busters, you will not only be protecting your spouse, but you will also be preserving your spouse's love for you. Basic Concept #4: The Most Important Emotional Needs To help remind couples how important honesty is in marriage, I have written the Policy of Radical Honesty: Reveal to your spouse as much information But there's another reason that honesty is crucial in creating love: Honesty is the only way that you and your spouse will ever come to understand each other. Without honesty, the adjustments that are crucial to making each other happy and avoiding unhappiness cannot be made.Instincts are behavioral patterns that we are born with, and habits are patterns that we learn. Both of them tend to be repeated again and again almost effortlessly. They are important in our discussion of what it takes to be in love because it's our behavior that makes deposits and withdrawals from Love Banks, and our instincts and habits make up most of our behavior. Love Busters is heterocentric, and perpetuates old and tired stereotypes of gender essentialism. It advocates complete honesty, that a couple must enthusiastically agree on everything (including the wife asking for help with the dishes), no independent behaviour, and if you have any habits your partner dislikes you must change. Why do you engage in Love Busters? Why do you cause your spouse to be unhappy? One of the most important reasons is that, while they may make your spouse feel bad, they make you feel good. Most Love Busters gain pleasure for you at your spouse's expense. When your spouse complains about them, you rationalize your behavior and explain away the fact that you are simply thoughtless and selfish. There are many reasons for dishonesty. One attempt to protect one’s partner from the harsh reality of the other’s bad behaviour. Other causes include trying to look good, avoiding trouble and compulsive lying.

When fighting doesn't work, and we are still unhappy, the Taker encourages us to take a new course of action that triggers the State of Withdrawal. Instead of trying to force our spouse to make us happy, our Taker wants us to give up on our spouse entirely. We don't want our spouse to do anything for us, and we certainly don't want to do anything for our spouse. In this state of mind we are emotionally divorced. I'm so concerned about the risk of you hurting each other, that before I introduce you to ways you can make each other happy, I want you to understand something. If you don't protect each other from yourselves, you may not have the opportunity to care for each other. The two go hand-in-hand and without protection, care is impossible. Love Busters are your habits that cause your spouse to be unhappy. Whenever you engage in one of them, you withdraw love units from your Love Bank account. Self-imposed honesty with your spouse is essential to your marriage's safety and success. Honesty will not only bring you closer to each other emotionally, it will also prevent the creation of destructive habits that are kept secret from your partner. Basic Concept #9: The Giver and Taker Disrespectful judgment occurs whenever we try to impose our beliefs on our spouses—for instance, our political views or conspiracy theories on our mates. Other forms of disrespectful judgment include giving lectures or ridiculing our mates. Also, talking too much or preventing others from speaking up is very rude.Sadly, flawed agreements made in the state of Intimacy can lead to our own unhappiness, and that in turn wakes the slumbering Taker. As long as we are happy, our Taker has nothing to do, but when we start feeling unhappy, our Taker rises to our rescue and triggers the State of Conflict. With the Taker now in charge, we are encouraged to follow the rule: do whatever you can to make yourself happy, and avoid anything that makes yourself unhappy, even if it makes others unhappy. The Taker also encourages us to be demanding, disrespectful and angry in an effort to force our spouse to make us happy. Fighting is the Taker's favorite "negotiating" strategy.

As a love buster, disrespectful judgements breed unhappiness, disagreement and conflicts.Therefore, you could sabotage your marriage if you regularly disrespect your spouse. Solution The best way to overcome independent behaviours is to take them off your schedule. It would help if you switched such habits with something you can do with your spouse. Whatever you decide to do, be sure you and your spouse agree. As a result, both of you are happy, making decisions with each other’s interests and feelings in mind. But that's my job — to help them fall in love with each other again. I encourage them to stop making Love Bank withdrawals, and start making Love Bank deposits. I created all of the remaining Basic Concepts to help couples achieve those objectives. Basic Concept #2: Instincts and Habits You need a rule to help you override your shortsighted instincts. So I've created a rule to guarantee that no one gets hurt, and that's the ultimate goal in fair negotiation. I call this rule the Policy of Joint Agreement: Never do anything without an enthusiasticThe results of these questionnaire will help you understand the pain and unhappiness that you and your spouse create in your marriage. When you cause each other emotional pain, you not only withdraw love units, but you encourage each other to build emotional defenses that cause you to withdraw from each other. Those emotional defenses prevent you from depositing love units to make up for the loss.

Starting with the Love Busters, choose one to eliminate this week. Think about when you are most likely to do a Love Buster and plan how you will replace it with a more positive action. For example, say your spouse’s top Love Buster is breaking promises. Maybe you are most likely to do this because you get caught up at work and then are late home. Maybe you can change that and maybe you can’t. What you can change is the promise. Resolve to only make promises you are absolutely confident you can keep. Plan what you will say when your spouse or child asks, before you leave home, so that you don’t get tempted into making a promise you can’t keep. But how should you change your habits, so they are no longer annoying? It begins with realising that your annoying habits are damaging your relationship. So first, tell each other that eliminating annoying habits is a high priority for both of you. And then ask each other what annoys you the most, write it down, and go to work with a plan to end whatever bad habits you find. One of the most important consequences of our emotional isolation is that we cannot feel the way we affect others. And that creates the temptation to hurt others because in doing so we don't feel the pain we cause. If we were connected emotionally to others as the aliens were, we would be far less tempted to do anything thoughtless, gaining at someone else's expense. That's because in so doing, we would be hurting ourselves as well. And if it's compassionate to lie about sins of the past, why isn't it also compassionate to lie about sins of the present — or future? To my way of thinking, it's like letting the proverbial camel's nose under the tent. Eventually you will be dining with the camel. Either honesty is always right, or you'll always have an excuse for being dishonest. Dishonesty may “numb” some of our pain, but it compounds it later. The truth usually comes out eventually. The time of hiding the truth creates an emotional barrier and destroys trust. SolutionBut we also want the best for ourselves. We want to be happy, too. When we feel that way, our Taker is influencing us. The Taker's rule is do whatever you can to make yourself happy, and avoid anything that makes yourself unhappy, even if it makes others unhappy. If that rule ever makes sense to you, it's because your Taker is in control. Respectful persuasion is the better option. It means making efforts to reason with your partner’s opinions. Even when you disagree with their viewpoint, you should do so with respect. Practise effective communication by listening attentively and sharing ideas with your partner. Don’t jump to the conclusion that your partner’s opinion is wrong. Guideline 3: Brainstorm with abandon - give your creativity a chance to discover solutions that would make you both happy. Carry a pad and pencil with you to jot down ideas as you think of them throughout the day. Independent behaviour is the conduct of one spouse that ignores the other’s feelings. It’s usually scheduled and requires some thought to executing. Examples include sporting events you attend or your exercise program. Solution As we discuss the remaining concepts, keep in mind the value of a good habit, and the harm of a bad habit, because their effect on Love Bank balances are multiplied by repetition. Basic Concept #3: Love Busters