Love Busters by Willard F Harley Jr. Book Review Part 5
For those of you who are following along with my book review – Love Busters by Dr. Harley, we are learning about the 3rd Love Buster in this post.
1. Selfish Demands2. Disrespectful Judgements3. Angry Outbursts
These first three love busters represent an escalation of control and abuse in marriage.
Angry Outbursts -Who wants to live with a time bomb?
Dr. Harley states that most people with anger problems are very generous people and they often will go out of their way to help others. However, sometimes when a problem arises, the angry person believes that his/her spouse should have done something to solve the problem and did not. This would cause the spouse to lose his/her temper.
As time passes, the frequency and intensity of these outbursts may increase. When a spouse loses his/her temper he/she is actually punishing the spouse and the person on the receiving end of the anger is deeply hurt!
Dr. Harley also believes that control is ultimately behind every angry outburst. And when a spouse does not do what is expected (selfish demands), recriminations usually follow.
In most cases, the angry spouse does not expect this punishment to ruin their love -after all, they promised to love each other forever.
People’s feelings for each other are determined not by promises but by the love bank. When couples deliberately try to hurt each other, they deplete their love bank accounts. Romantic love becomes a victim of their anger:(
Anger: A Threat to Your Spouse’s Safety
Your anger, Dr. Harley says, is the greatest threat to your spouse’s safety. Even if you’ve never been physically violent, and have limited your angry outbursts to verbal tirades, emotional abuse can be extremely damaging. And there’s no assurance that you will not resort to physical violence during one of your fights. But you risk more than physical or emotional harm during an angry outburst; you risk losing your spouse’s love for you. Without a doubt it’s a Love Buster.
Most of the people he’s counselled who are perpetrators of angry outbursts don’t see their anger as a serious problem in their marriage. As far as they’re concerned, the real problem is their spouse’s behavior that they think triggers their angry outbursts. In other words, most of the people who have angry outbursts feel that the other person made them do it.
Generosity can lead to angry outbursts.
Angry people tend to feel that their spouse just isn’t treating them fairly. If sacrificial generosity isn’t reciprocated as expected, it can cause one to feel resentment. Some of the feeling of injustice comes from the fact that they don’t really make their needs and expectations known. But the very nature of generosity doesn’t create an obligation at all – it does not require reciprocity. In fact, when we do something for our spouse out of generosity, it should be assumed that he or she doesn’t have to do anything in return for our sacrifice.
Angry outbursts should never be tolerated.
Dr. Harley says that there are reasons for angry outbursts, but there are no excuses. Whatever causes one spouse to feel justified in blasting away at the other, it’s outcome is always the same: it causes pain and suffering to the very person you promised to love and cherish. Instead of evening the score, or solving the problem, it withdraws love units. Your angry outburst causes your spouse to love you less. And anger is so unpredictable and so dangerous that you shouldn’t even live with your spouse until you can guarantee his or her protection.
An angry person does not reason correctly because their brain is flooded with adrenaline. This person thinks the way a paranoid person would think- that your spouse is your worst enemy and is deliberately trying to hurt you. Any effort that your spouse makes to reason with you is rebuffed. You are dangerous. You should adopt a zero-tolerance policy toward angry outbursts.
The next post will be a plan that Dr Harley offers to overcome angry outbursts.
The topics we have been discussing are so destructive and opposite to how we are to love our spouse. I want to finish this post on a positive note with the verses below about love. I am passionate about the Marriage covenant that God has designed for us- so- I pray that these posts will be helpful in realizing the destructive habits in our relationships and seek to change them by God’s power. (LRC)
1 Corinthians 13:4-7 NLTLove is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude. It does not demand its own way. It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged. It does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance.
As always, I want to 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.”
Personal comments will followed by my initials LRC.
For further resources go to: marriagebuilders.com