Video Transcript: Love Busters Part 3

We're having a wonderful week. We're in a great series of programs. This is actually number four out of a series of five that we'll be having, and they're first time guests here on it's a new day, and it's will I be will Bill and Joyce. It's okay. It's Willard. Actually. Where did Bill come from?

Nickname?

Just a nickname.

Joyce and my Joyce's father had the same first nickname. And we had the same second nickname, Bill, and his name was Wilbert, mine was Willard. So just a little trick, I had a leg up on everybody else. 

Yeah, we got it all well, Willard is Willard here on the show. So, so it's good to have a Bill and a Willard, but it's been really good having with having you with us. You know, thank you for investing, yes, but also just really dedicating and committing your life to rescuing others. I am so honored to be able to have you with us and and to see how much you know, the labor of love that you've done to put these resources so that people can take them and make them part of life, so they can enjoy life. It really is. Let me see, I'm taking a look here. You know, so many to look at. Earlier this week, we talked about his needs, her needs. Now yesterday and now today, we've transitioned into the book, Love Busters. We're identifying our needs. You know, those kinds of things. Many times we don't even notice or what they are. But then we are also beginning to discuss, what we're making withdrawals, and we're living bankrupt in our marriages. And I don't, I haven't even noticed. You know, what I've done? I didn't see it. You know that I've been withdrawing all this time. This is just going to help you and help you as a couple. There are love busters, but there's also a place of restoring. And we conclude yesterday. Joyce, you saying so well, it's not too late. You can start right now. So today, as we move forward, how do we want to start? Do we want to talk about, I think yesterday we talked about the different three categories. Let's just give an overview of those three categories that deplete love from another.

Basically. And of course, even to give people a little more background, we had talked about the fact that there are ways to make deposits that's described in his needs her needs, yes, but there's no point in making deposits if you're also making withdrawals. Now we're talking about the most common ways that people make love-bank withdrawals. And the first category that we had was abuse and control. There are three love busters that fall in that category. Love Buster is any habit that makes your spouse unhappy. One way to make your spouse unhappy is to make a demand. Another way is to be disrespectful and another is to have an angry outburst. Those three come in various forms of escalation when a couple is having a fight. So the point is that you start by saying, This is what I expect you to do for me. Spouse says, Forget it, fella, you're not getting it. And so you call your spouse a name, you end up being disrespectful. Your spouse says, Nope, I'm still not doing it. Then you lose your temper. You blow up, okay, you know. And of course, both spouses could be doing that to each other during this sort of a thing, and it is a huge way to withdraw love units, and it doesn't get the job done. So that's the that's the first set of love busters, okay? Selfish demands, disrespectful judgments, angry outbursts. 

Let me answer the angry outbursts, because often you will hear it said at parties, even you know, we had a fight but the making up was well worth the fight. Have you heard that before? 

Absolutely. Makeup sex, you know?,

Exactly. In fact, often they'll try to instigate a fight, because the making up is so wonderful. And we're here to say it's destructive. Avoid it at all costs, and just go right to what you call the making up that is so wonderful. Do the making up avoid the conflict at all costs Did you hear anybody saying that? Say, you know, it really doesn't work. That good. Don't make that a habit in your life. Arguing, angry outbursts are so hurtful and destructive in a marriage. Yeah. Needs to be cut out.

And then, you know, if there's that makeup sex kind of thing, all you're doing is using and abusing the other person. Tthat's really what's happening here, and there is no honor and there is no respect, right? There are three more love busters. One of them is independent behavior that we touched on last time just at the very end. Another one is dishonesty, lying to your spouse about things. And the third is what I call annoying habits, which are something that are almost exclusively the problem of men. 

But what you place these under a category of creating incompatible compatibility. In other words, the more that tends to be the complaint that people say, I'm incompatible, and it's usually because someone's being dishonest or annoying habit or independent behavior.

And they're not doing anything about it. See, so the more independent you become, the more incompatible you become. 

And you've heard it said, we just grew apart, and that's how it's how it erodes the relationship.

And if you're dishonest, if you're dishonest, you grow apart. And if you persist in annoying behavior, your spouse isn't really going to want to have much to do with you. They're not going to want to be in the same room as you. So the basic idea is, stop doing these three things. Stop being dishonest. 

Coming from the doctor, it's really good to stop it. I mean, that's some great counsel, right there.

A rule called a policy of radical honesty, which is, there are no circumstances under which you should give your spouse false information about yourself. A lot of people think there are reasons to be dishonest. They think there are reasons protecting them. I'm protecting you. I am. I don't want to get into trouble. I know that I'll upset you if I tell you about this. They say, Well, you're talking about love units, if I'm honest, I'll make huge love bank withdrawals, because then my spouse will will know that I did something that upset him or her. My argument is that the dishonesty is an additional way to take love-units, to make love bank withdrawals, and your spouse is going to find out about this eventually. The other category of of annoying behavior, annoying habits, is an interesting problem, because, again, it's almost always women who find men annoying and my argument is that it's the way a woman's brain is made. They are aware of a lot of what's going on. They're aware of their surroundings. They can't ignore your habit. They can't Ignore the thing you're doing that bothers them. Men can ignore what a woman is doing, and they can put it out of their minds. And a lot of men will say, Look, you know, you do a lot of things that I would find annoying if I thought about it, but you're not doing it. I'm not thinking about happening in the moment. I'm gonna get you off the hook. Why can't you get me off the hook? And the answer is, because our brains are different, the women can't get the man off the hook. And the question is, do you want me to tell you about what's bothering me about you, because it is withdrawing love units, or do you want me to ignore it and let it build up and let me become more and more annoyed and eventually lose my love for you. And so there are ways of avoiding annoying habits. There are ways of getting over an annoying habit, and we encourage people to take annoying habits very seriously and get rid of them. But the one that I'm really most interested in is independent behavior. Independent behavior is behaving as if the other spouse doesn't exist, making choices independently of the other spouse, not asking the other spouse, how would you feel if I were to do this or that, but just going ahead and doing it, and then the comment, you know that comes out is, you know what I didn't ask because this doesn't involve you. Oh, you know, say, what? Since when does everything you do involve me? We are a unit. We are a team.

Yeah, and, but you see, that's the independence again, that's right, you know, I'll involve you when it involves you. 

And this is essentially what marriage is. Marriage is a relationship where everything involves the other person. You're either depositing or withdrawing love units with everything you do. When you do something, should you talk to your spouse about it before you do it? Because it will. To impact your spouse positively or negatively independent behavior is when you say, my spouse has no business knowing about it or making a decision about it, so I'm just going to go ahead and do it independently of my spouse. And that is the number one cause of fights, because as soon as your spouse finds out you did, what you bought, what you said, where Bill and I consult each other's calendars all the time before he accepts someplace to speak, before I go someplace to speak, or even go out with some friends or schedule a Bible study. You know, I say, what's your calendar look like? How would this work on your calendar. If I did this, he does the same with me, and that's blending our schedules. Neither of us are deprived. We both have full calendars, but they're done with the blessing of each other as we schedule them in harmony. I think it's very important. 

Lot of people feel that that kind of lifestyle makes you trapped, and that you end up being kind of a slave of the other person's feelings or will or something like that.

And that's language of the wounded. You think, yes, yeah, yeah. You know that's the wounded speaking out because they have been ignored. You know, they haven't been included, and  they aren't negotiating effectively. See, they haven't really learned how to resolve conflicts in a way that benefit both of them simultaneously. So they feel that either they do what they feel like doing, or they capitulate, they let the other person do what they want. A lot of men will say, this is what I'm planning to do. And then his wife says, Well, I wouldn't, that wouldn't work for me. And then he says, well, then what do you want me to do? In other words, as if that's the only other choice that there is out there, and a lot of men feel that the only way for me to get along with my wife is just go ahead and do anything she wants to do. And my approach to that is that if she's a very thoughtful woman and really does care about you, that might work, but in most cases, the resentment eventually builds up. You start feeling like I've been doing things her way all these years, I should finally get to do things my way once in a while. People come up with excuses for independent behavior that will eventually destroy the compatibility of their of their relationship, and it withdraws love units. They end up not being in love with each other. I mentioned last time that that there are four categories of marriage, divorced people, people living apart permanently, people unhappy in their marriage, and people that are happy in their marriage. 20% live completely independently, live in separate houses. They have developed an independent lifestyle that is so complete that they have nothing to do with each other, and yet they're still married. Now the question is, is that a marriage? In my book, it isn't married. They're not divorced, but I don't think they're married either. But you see, this is the ultimate out. This is where you eventually come to independent behavior, self. You have separate vacations, you have separate friends, you have you celebrate, your, your your your occasions separately. Birthdays are spent separate. why

why marry, you're separate,

And then as well, your family, my family, right? Your relatives, my relatives, my friends, your friends.

Several years ago, there was a movement afoot, and I don't know where it's gone. I doubt that it survived, but it was called marriage or married apart, and it was the very thing Bill described: two separate households. I'd have a party, I would invite Bill over. He'd have a party, he'd invite me over, or I'd have a party, and didn't invite him. I mean, it was just totally bizarre. And they were suggesting this is a new approach to marriage.

This was civil, you know, being civil with one another, but it wasn't, it wasn't anything negative that separated them. It was by design. Marriage apart. 

They had benefits, they had whatever, but that's not what we're promoting here.

I haven't heard anything about it. Hopefully it's down the drain.

 Okay, let's consider it down the drain. Let's move on. That's not marriage. I mean, that's not the benefits, that's not the design of God, you know? That's not the glory of God being made manifest in your relationship.

It's two people living together alongside, but they haven't joined to become one, right? In this independent behavior, right? 

We kave here how to resolve these most common marital conflicts,. Let's bring some resolve to this. Is that? Okay? All right. Resolve is good. 

This is going to help the most common conflicts. Let's just talk about one of the five most common conflicts: friends and relatives. Should you have friends that the other person doesn't appreciate? Should you let your relatives? Should you  you leave your parents? Should you let them make decisions about your married life that your spouse is not going to agree with basically? When it comes to your friends and relatives, should your spouse be able to veto any decision you make? Should you make all of your decisions jointly and enthusiastically or not do it at all. And this is where I come on the side of negotiating to an enthusiastic agreement about friends and relatives, because it is one of the worst conflicts that a couple could possibly have. If you don't get along with your wife's parents, it would very negatively impact your life, wouldn't it?

And we're not saying that it's going to be easy all the time, those types of things, but there's definitely an 'Audrey and I.' I'll share this one. Just the other night, Audrey and I were apart at this time, she's home and I'm here, those kinds of things. So we Skyped last night, and we're talking with each other on the computer, and we're just talking about our schedules and events and things that are going on, family life, work life, all those kinds of things. And then this one event and what's going to happen, and I'm not happy about it. You know about, you know, the arrangement, I'm just not and it involves family. She's not happy about it. I'm not happy about it. We're talking about, what can we do about it? I don't know what we can do about it, but we really had to wrestle through the emotion of it.  And it's: okay, we weren't enthusiastic, either of us with the resolve, but at least we were together. Have you made a decision yet? 

We made a decision, and we have an understanding. It's not necessarily what we would prefer, but we recognize in the moment, this is what has to be done, and it has nothing to do with her fault or my fault. There's no blaming going on. It's just that we would prefer this, and  you know what? We do not have that privilege at this moment. But you had to work it through, otherwise it could have become a point of contention. And I could have thought something bad about her, and she could have thought something about me that wasn't true,  and it could have been my family against her family, her family, against mine. We worked it through. And you wrestle with  it, and it comes with emotion, their little passion with it, you know, those kinds of things, feelings, all those stuff. But it's nothing against us. These are the things that you've got to work through, because friends and relatives, you're going to have them. Your family is family, and be face to face and don't attack the other person, right? You know, don't attack your spouse in this way just because you don't agree on something. 

One of the standards that I use is enthusiastic agreement. Now that doesn't mean that it's easy. It doesn't mean that you're going to be happy with it. Enthusiastic means you're both in agreement and that it's something that ,under the circumstances, is going to work, because there isn't anything else that you can think of; you can both settle it for it. But the basic idea of family is that the family can come between you. Now your friends can come between you and my feeling has always been that that particular conflict where you say, Well, my family is more important than you are, so I'm going to go ahead with the wishes of my family instead of thinking about you'' is a huge area of problems for marriage, and my feeling has always been, don't ever side with your family if your spouse is on the other side of the issue. Side with your spouse. Work together as a couple, and in many cases, the family is irrational about the issue. They're more interested in their own happiness than they are in the success of your marriage. 

Let's talk on the in law side too, because the in laws can help in this situation. Let's take the case of where to celebrate Christmas, where to celebrate any holiday, and maybe you want to start your own traditions. And we've heard this over and over again. Well, meanwhile, the family, the parents, are just mortified. What? You've always come to our house, you're going to do what? Before you come to our house, we won't see the children open their gifts and yada yada. No, no! The point is, be happy for your daughter and her new husband and their children, that they're starting new traditions because they're going to come to you, they're not leaving you out, but support them in the decision that they made together. Because in laws can sure cause a lot of problems in that very type of a scenario.

It's not intentional, and I shouldn't be chuckling here with everybody.

You're pointing fingers. I understand. But this is very real, and this is what happens. But you are famil I had a big question to ask, don't forget. And the question is, is, what if my family's right and my spouse is wrong? Whose side do I take? All right, we'll be back with Joyce and Bill right after this. We're having fun yet, right? We're having fun. W