He Wins, She Wins

by Willard F. Jr. Harley

  You might think that I gave up on the way I enjoyed having friends over and that Joyce had to put up with a more chaotic way to spend evenings. But that’s not what happened. We both enjoyed our new friends, and we both enjoyed the way we spent time with them. We were invited to other couples’ homes far more often than we had been to the homes of my single friends. And Joyce and I worked together when we had friends over. We became partners in choosing our friends and partners in the way we entertained them. It turned out to be a far wiser solution than what either of us alone would have considered to be appropriate.

  It Pays to Be Prepared

  Because many of the decisions you make regarding the care of your parents or friends have to be made instantly, you and your spouse should discuss many of these issues before they actually arise. For example, if your parents or your spouse’s parents were to require your care, what kind of care could you provide with an enthusiastic agreement? Neither one of you should feel pressured into making an agreement that is not actually in your own best interest. So now is the time for you to start thinking about what kind of care you can provide and how long that care should continue.

  What would you do if a friend needed help moving? Or if a friend invited you both out to dinner? Or if a friend invited one of you out to dinner but didn’t invite the other? Or if the friend had been a former lover?

  Trust me. Former lovers should be left completely out of your lives. But what about friends of the opposite sex in general? How friendly do you really want these relationships to be? I have warned couples for years that most affairs begin with opposite-sex friendships that start out innocently. Are you willing to risk an affair by developing a good friendship with someone of the opposite sex? In most cases, your opposite-sex friendships that are the most dangerous will make your spouse uncomfortable. You will not have your spouse’s enthusiastic agreement when you try to get together with those friends, or even have casual communication via social networking sites, email, or texting.

  The Policy of Joint Agreement forces you and your spouse to negotiate fairly with each other, and it keeps you focused on each other’s best interests even when you reject each other’s proposed options. It keeps you thoughtful when you’re tempted to be selfish. If you follow the POJA, your family and friends will never come between you.

  Get into the habit of discussing all invitations with your spouse before responding. When somebody invites you, say to them, “Let me get back to you after I’ve discussed it with my spouse.” Your family and friends will get used to the idea that you make your decisions together.

  Don’t let friends and relatives destroy your love for each other. When conflicts pit the interests of your spouse against those of your friends and relatives, he or she should always be your highest priority. Your spouse is your most important friend and relative. No other should ever be allowed to come between you. Follow the Policy of Joint Agreement and Four Guidelines for Successful Negotiation to make sure they don’t.

  Consider This . . .

  What are five strategies to resolving conflicts over friends and relatives? Why should you always avoid four of them and learn to become experts at using the fifth?

  Think of a conflict you have over friends and relatives. If you used the first strategy to resolving conflicts that I describe in this chapter, how would you try to resolve it? If you used the second strategy, what would you do? How about using the third or fourth strategies? Why would all four of these strategies for marital problem solving diminish the love you have for each other?

  Use the fifth approach I suggested to help you resolve the conflict you discussed in question #2. Remember to use a notebook to help guide your discussion (refer to appendix A as an example).

  Try to anticipate some of the conflicts you may have with family and friends. If your parents or your spouse’s parents were to require your care, what kind of care could you provide with an enthusiastic agreement? Where will you be spending Christmas? What would you do if a friend needed help moving? What if a friend invited you both out to dinner? Or if a friend invited one of you out to dinner, but didn’t invite the other? Or if the friend had been a former lover? Think of other situations with family and friends that might lead to conflict in the future. How will you handle these situations so that you’ll have an enthusiastic agreement?

  9

  Conflicts over Career Requirements and Time Management

  Everything you do throughout the day makes either deposits or withdrawals in each other’s Love Banks. That’s why it’s so important to decide what you will be doing before you do it. And that decision should be made with enthusiastic agreement if you want to maximize Love Bank deposits and minimize withdrawals.

  But how can you have a mutually enthusiastic agreement about your daily schedule when you have enlisted in the army and have just been assigned to a year’s tour of duty? Or when you’re on call at a hospital for emergency care? Or when you work for an airline that assigns you to a travel schedule? The requirements of a career will usually trump the Policy of Joint Agreement when it comes to how you schedule your time.

  Marital conflict over a career usually has more to do with the way the career dominates a time schedule than its other aspects. Some careers are so flexible regarding time schedules that the interests of a marriage can be easily accommodated. But other careers are notoriously damaging to marriages because of the time constraints they impose. This is especially true when a career separates a couple or prevents them from having enough time to meet each other’s emotional needs.

  If your spouse is unhappy with what your career requires you to do, you’re making Love Bank withdrawals every time you go to work. You may think that when it comes to earning a living, you don’t have any choices. Your spouse simply must learn to adjust to your career’s demands. But after complaining about it for a while, your spouse is likely to adjust by becoming emotionally disconnected from you so that the effects of the career don’t hurt as much. In other words, your spouse will simply fall out of love with you.

  Take it from me, a seasoned veteran when it comes to changing people: it’s much easier to change a behavior than it is to change an emotional reaction to a behavior. If you tell your spouse not to feel the way he or she does when you do something, you’re making a terrible mistake because your spouse’s reactions are very unlikely to change. On the other hand, if you change your behavior to produce a positive reaction instead of a negative one in your spouse, that reaction will also persist as long as you continue your new behavior.

  If your work schedule or career requirements make your spouse unhappy, change them. And if necessary, create a new career that gives you enough flexibility to keep your marriage healthy and happy.

  When I introduce this idea of changing careers to couples, many of them think I’m being unrealistic. And yet when you consider the career paths of most people, they usually change several times during a person’s lifetime. One way or another, you are likely to have at least one new career during your lifetime. Are you willing to change your career path out of consideration for your spouse, or will you let some of the random factors of life make those changes for you?

  Your career should support your spouse and family, not the other way around. Its primary purpose is to provide a satisfying lifestyle. But what if the career itself causes you or your spouse to lose your love for each other? Then the career is defeating its very purpose. Instead of creating a comfortable lifestyle, it’s creating a miserable lifestyle, at least for your spouse.

  Some people have tried to argue that their career choice is a personal decision. Since it’s something that they will be doing most of their waking hours, the first and foremost consideration should be whether or not they like doing it. People who use this argument are usually afraid that their spouse will force them into a career that they really don’t want.

  But the Policy of Joint Agreement handles that problem. It requires both of you to be enthusiastic about your final decisio
n. It guides you to a career that you will enjoy because that’s one of the conditions that must be met.

  If you follow the conditions of the POJA, when your negotiations are over you will have a career that’s just as fulfilling as the one you have now, if not more so. And your spouse will be as enthusiastic about it as you are.

  Is Your Schedule Destroying Your Love?

  Is your schedule, particularly your work schedule, any of your spouse’s business? Do you resent any attempt by your spouse to change an appointment or business trip that he or she finds objectionable?

  If you don’t think that your schedule is your spouse’s business, your love for each other doesn’t have much hope. That’s because it plays such an important role in the way spouses care for each other. When you make scheduling decisions over the objections of your spouse, you are offering positive proof that you care more about your job than you care about your spouse.

  I’ve heard many arguments about how unreasonable a spouse’s objections are. “If I were to do what my wife wants me to do, we’d lose everything. She doesn’t understand how much commitment it takes to support the family.” It takes commitment, all right. But is it commitment to support the family or commitment to support a job?

  Has your work schedule become a higher priority than your care for your spouse? There’s an easy way to determine the answer. Ask your spouse how he or she feels about your schedule. If your spouse is unhappy with anything you’ve planned, are you willing to change that plan to accommodate his or her feelings? If the answer is no, your schedule is more important than your care for your spouse. You’re not working to make your spouse happy because the way you’re working fails to achieve that objective. Your career fulfillment comes at your spouse’s expense.

  How to Create a Mutually Enthusiastic Schedule

  If you want to have a schedule that helps you make Love Bank deposits instead of withdrawals, you must negotiate with each other. I suggest that every Sunday afternoon you meet to discuss your schedules for the coming week. No time should be spent on any activity, including work, unless first agreed to enthusiastically. Everything planned for the entire week should be approved by both of you before it can be enacted. Literally every hour should be spent doing what you have agreed to do. If, during the week, a change in schedule is requested by either of you, you must both enthusiastically agree to the change for it to take effect.

  The first time you attempt to complete this assignment, it won’t be easy. You may have become so accustomed to making your schedule independently of your spouse’s input that you will have great difficulty negotiating at first. So I suggest that you set aside several hours, or even a weekend, for your first negotiating session.

  One of my cardinal rules for couples is to schedule a minimum of fifteen hours each week to meet each other’s intimate emotional needs. During that time you are to be affectionate, talk to each other, enjoy recreational activities together, and make love (see His Needs, Her Needs). So make sure that your schedule includes this time for undivided attention. Don’t let a week go by without giving each other the attention you need to make the most Love Bank deposits possible.

  Another high priority is the time you spend together as a family. I call it quality family time, and unless it’s carefully scheduled, it won’t happen. Other, less important activities will crowd it out of your lives.

  I’ve spoken to many people who are close to death, and none of them have ever told me they should have spent more time at work. If people have regret later in life, it’s that they didn’t spend more time with their spouse and children.

  As you plan your week together, you’ll find that you won’t have time for everything you want to do. But if you schedule it ahead of time, and follow your schedule, you will accomplish what is most important to both of you.

  Men and Women Interpret Career Requirements and Time Management Differently

  In general, wives want their husbands to spend more time with them and their children. They resent careers that separate them. That’s because women appear to have an instinct for the importance of a father being an integrated part of the family unit. They also seem to have an understanding of how their time together is essential for emotional bonding. A wife is usually the first to know when a marital relationship is in trouble.

  A husband, on the other hand, often doesn’t see how his schedule affects the quality of his marriage. His schedule is not only filled with career requirements, but also with personal recreational activities, hobbies, the internet, church responsibilities, fitness programs, and a host of other interests that take his time and attention away from his wife and family.

  At first, a wife makes a valiant effort to work out a schedule that brings their lives together. But when it becomes apparent that her husband wants to go it alone, she gives up and follows her own interests without him. It doesn’t take her long, however, to discover that their independent lifestyles are leading to marital disaster. She knows that they are growing apart.

  A few years ago, I counseled a couple who was about to divorce. The wife said that she could no longer live with a husband who spent his weekends golfing and was never willing to include her in his recreational interests. I encouraged him to find another activity that he could enjoy with her, but he was adamantly opposed to changing his golfing routine. Then he hurt his back and was unable to golf for about a year. During that time, he discovered new activities that he could share with his wife, and today they are happily married—without golf.

  Spouses can live happily without careers and activities that ruin their marriage. Why wait for chance events to do it for you when you can make the decision now?

  I planned my career with my wife in mind. Joyce was uncomfortable with my first and second career choices because she felt they would adversely affect our time together. But we finally agreed on a profession that allowed me the flexibility in my schedule to be an integrated part of her life: psychology.

  It would have been pointless for me to start my career development without her enthusiastic agreement. After all, my career was to be a joint effort with joint compensation. Without her support, the career would not serve our mutual purposes in life. Her encouragement has made my choice particularly satisfying and undoubtedly accounts for much of its success.

  Joyce’s career choices were also made with the same consideration for my interests. So throughout our lives together, I have supported her career as enthusiastically as she has supported mine. I consider her work as a gospel singer and radio host/producer to be an effort we make jointly. I never resent the time she spends pursuing her career, because she is willing to accommodate my interests with her schedule and choice of career activities.

  Since we are both ambitious people, our careers could have wrecked our marriage. They could have driven us in opposite directions. But instead, our careers have strengthened our marriage, because we consider each other more important than our work. Our deep love for each other is the result.

  Don’t lose your love for each other due to neglect. Every Sunday afternoon, make a date to review your schedules for the coming week. Use the Policy of Joint Agreement and the Four Guidelines to Successful Negotiation to try to resolve any conflicts you may have as you are putting your schedule together. Also, don’t forget to include fifteen hours for undivided attention so that you can meet each other’s emotional needs for affection, sexual fulfillment, intimate conversation, and recreational companionship. And also include time for you to be together as a family. Your influence over your children is greatest when you take time to be with them.

  Each of you brings a valuable perspective to every decision you will make in life. But when it comes to time management, I tend to find a wife’s perspective particularly important because it recognizes the value of time together in marriage. Women usually have a keen sense for what it takes to make a marital relationship work, and what they want most is their husband’s undivided attention.

  The careers you b
oth choose, and the way you schedule your time, should always be carried out with each other in mind. Make your career and schedule Love Builders, not Love Busters.

  Consider This . . .

  Have you been demanding, disrespectful, or angry when you’ve discussed your career responsibilities or time schedules with each other? Have you used any excuses for these abusive tactics to try to justify them?

  Instead of arguing about your career responsibilities or time schedule, do you simply do what you think is right and hope that your spouse will adjust to it? What is the likely outcome when a spouse is expected to adjust to a decision that has not been enthusiastically accepted?

  When does a career responsibility or a time schedule become a Love Buster? Do either of you feel you have the right to make decisions about your career or schedule independently of the other’s interests and feelings? Are you willing to give up that right by following the POJA for the sake of your love for each other?

  Careers are not the only obstacle to time schedule agreement. Are recreational activities, hobbies, the internet, church responsibilities, fitness programs, or other interests crowding out the time you should spend together? Each of these should either occur with your mutual enthusiastic agreement or be eliminated from your lifestyle.

  10

  Conflicts over Financial Management

  Financial conflicts can go on endlessly in marriage unless you establish basic guidelines. Those guidelines are called a budget, and every household should have one. So before wandering into the trees of specific financial issues, let’s first step back to see the forest. I strongly encourage you to create a budget before you face the myriad of individual financial issues.