A reminder that the purpose of the Love Busters book is to help couples eliminate habits that destroy Romantic Love in marriage often leading to divorce.
Annoying Habits are behaviors repeated without much thought that bother the other spouse.
Does you spouse have any habits that drive you crazy? Like picking their teeth with their finger after a meal, looking at their phone at bed time, taking a phone call during meal time, leaving a mess in the bathroom sink, dirty laundry thrown in a corner of the bedroom? According to Dr. Harley, women seem to find men more annoying that men find women. But, male or female, he says, our annoying habits draw love units out of our spouse’s Love Bank every time.
“As a marriage counselor, I tell couples that eliminating annoying habits will improve their marriages. This is not rocket science. It only makes sense that you’ll get along better if you stop doing things that drive each other to distraction. But you’d be amazed how many couples just don’t get it.”
Couples often try to convince him that they should be able to do whatever they please-that the objecting spouse should adjust to the annoying habits. The thing is when we get annoyed we usually think that others are being inconsiderate but when our behavior annoys others, we think that they should just adjust to us. To try to overcome this, Dr. Harley tries to help couples become more empathetic with each other- to see situations through each other’s eyes.
Couples often resist making any changes to their annoying habits because they are just being themselves and believe that it is up to the spouse to to accept them and love them as they are. However, if the annoying habits are ruining the love you have for one another, then the annoying habits need to change. Our identity is NOT changed when we change a habit, we often begin new habits in life.
Whether they’re intentional or not, habits affect the love spouses have for each other.
“Annoying habits usually have an element of innocence, so couples generally don’t view them with the same seriousness as, say, angry outbursts, which are an intentional effort to hurt the other spouse.” He goes on to explain that there may be more love units lost from annoying habits though as they occur unrelenting, day after day, while angry outbursts may only occur every six months.
Overcoming Annoying Habits
We do have the power to change. Annoying habits can be turned into pleasing ones if we have a good reason to do so.
A list of Action Steps:
Step I: Identify each other’s annoying habits.
Make a list and beside each annoying habit, enter a number between 1 and 10, indicating how intensely you are annoyed. (1=mildly annoying, 10 = extremely annoying.) The numbers help identify the behavior that is withdrawing the most love units.
Be careful when you make the list not to be disrespectful in the way you describe the annoying habit. Remember that most annoying habits are innocent-you happen to find them annoying.
Step 2: Eliminate the easy ones first.
Some habits may be easily changed with a simple decision to stop doing them. These may not have had time to become hard-wired into your brain or perhaps do not provide much gratification.
Other habits will take longer to overcome and will not just be a simple decision to change.
Step 3: Select the three most annoying habits to overcome.
Work on eliminating these first.
Step 4: Determine why the annoying habit exists.
It is important to know why each habit formed and what is keeping it there. The following questions will help a couple investigate the background of each habit.
- When did this habit begin?
- What are the most important reasons you began this habit?
- What are the most important reasons you have this habit now?
- When you engage in this habit, how do you feel?
- When you engage in the habit, how does your spouse feel?
- Have you ever tried to avoid this habit” If so, how did you do it?
- Why didn’t it work?
- What would make the elimination of this habit more likely?
Most spouses engage in annoying behavior for trivial reasons. It just became a habit because it was repeated often.
Step 5: Create a plan to overcome the annoying habit.
Since habits are formed by simply repeating a behavior long enough, it can be overcome by repeating another behavior in its place. It’s a simple strategy that will work every time you try it.
Two approaches that Dr. Harley recommends to overcoming an annoying habit are:
Change the conditions that trigger the habit. For example, if you are used to coming home and slouching in an easy chair in front of the TV- a habit that your spouse finds annoying- you could instead make an effort to change the home coming routine. Upon arriving home, try spending 10 minutes or so with your spouse, just talking about how the day went and plans you might have for the evening together. You could help out with something he/she is working on. This new habit will eliminate a habit that caused anger and resentment with a habit the will meet your spouse’s need for intimate conversation. Any new behavior can be uncomfortable at first but will become effortless in time.
Step 6: Measure your progress.
Dr. Harley recommends that each spouse document the progress of habit changes by keeping track of how things are going. This record represents a failure to follow the plan that was made to overcome the annoying habit and should include, the date, the time and the circumstance. A habit is not considered to be overcome until at least three months have passed with no failure.
Step 7: Overcome the next three annoying habits on the list.
The next three will be much easier to overcome as you now know the system for changing bad habits into good habits.
“Almost everything you do affects each other, so take your annoying habits very seriously. When you learn to overcome them, you will have eliminated one of the most insidious ways that spouses lose their love for each other. After you go to the trouble of changing a few habits, it will be just as easy to make your spouse happy as it was to make your spouse miserable.”
Final thoughts: Habits are much more difficult to change than most people think. However, all habits can be changed. When an annoying habit is overcome, your personal identity remains the same, but you become a much more attractive person.