Love Busters by Willard F Harley Jr. – Book Review Part 2
Why do couples in love lose their intimacy and fall into conflict, withdrawal and finally divorce?
The parable of the net- taken from Love Busters Willard F Harley Jr -gives a very clear word picture as to why it is so important to ensure that in marriage we keep communication open and not allow resentment and frustration to build up.
Marriage is like a fishing net. Each day fishermen use their nets to catch fish and sell them at the market.
One fisherman takes his fish from the net every day but let’s debris from the ocean accumulate. Eventually so much debris is caught in the net he can hardly cast the net out of the boat, and when he does it’s almost impossible to retrieve. Finally, in a fit of anger, he cuts the net loose and goes home without it. He’s unable to catch and sell fish again until he buys another net.
Another fishermen removes debris every time he retrieves the net with the fish he caught. Each time he cast his net, it’s clean and ready to catch more fish. As a result, he catches and sells enough fish to support himself and his family.
In this parable, the fish are emotional needs met in marriage and the pieces of debris are love busters. Love Busters are habits that cause unhappiness by draining the Love Bank.
Good marriages are like the second fisherman’s net. Love busters are eliminated as soon as they appear, making it easy for the spouses to meet each other’s emotional needs. Love is sustained because the love busters are tossed overboard.
LOVE BUSTERS fall into six categories: selfish demands, disrespectful judgments, angry outbursts, dishonesty, annoying habits, and independent behavior.
Occasional mistakes do not drain a love bank As long as they are seen as mistakes. An apology that acknowledges the specific mistake quickly heals the wound and the deposits continue unabated. It’s when a mistake turns into a habit, repeated again and again, that love bank balances are at great risk. In these situations, apologies mean very little because the same mistake keeps getting repeated. Nothing is done to keep love units from flowing out of the love bank.
More to come next post….. Part 3
As always, I acknowledge my source. Information-quoted or summarized is from “Love Busters, protecting your MARRIAGE from HABITS that destroy ROMANTIC Love” by Willard F. Harley, Jr., a Nationally acclaimed clinical psychologist, marriage counselor and best selling author of “His Needs, Her Needs.” Also, visit: www.marriagebuilders.com