How should a couple go about breaking that pattern?
Before I answer that question, let me offer you a short clinical course on depression.
I’ll begin with a definition: depression is the feeling of sadness usually due to a sense of irretrievable loss. A depressed person feels incapable of ever being happy because they’ve lost what would have given them fulfillment. Happiness seems unattainable to them without it.
Some examples of depression due to irretrievable loss are reasonable. The death of a loved one is a common example. Health problems that are expected to lead to a painful death are another. An example in the realm of marriage is depression due to an affair. Even if the unfaithful spouse ends the affair and wants to restore the marriage, the betrayed spouse often feels that their loss of trust in the unfaithful spouse is irretrievable. And without trust they can never be happily married again.
And yet, even in cases where a loss is catastrophic, most people find happiness in something else. In other words, depression is rarely permanent. People often overcome their feeling of depression and go on to be happy.
There is an element of truth and an element of irrationality in people who are depressed. It’s true that they may have lost something that gave them happiness, but it’s not true that they cannot be happy again without it. And that brings us to my next point: the two types of depression—endogenous and situational. Endogenous depression has a physiological cause with little or no clear rational basis. There doesn’t appear to be any real loss. Situational depression, on the other hand, is due primarily to lifestyle factors, where the loss is quite apparent.
Almost all of the cases of depression I’ve treated during my career have been primarily situational. When I discover the lifestyle conditions that cause depression, and help change those conditions to my client’s advantage, the depression usually disappears.
But I am also aware of the physiology of depression—the endogenous factor. A loss tends to trigger neurophysiological events that make matters worse. They create the feeling of depression that makes a person feel helpless to find solutions to their problems. So I usually recommend that a depressed person take antidepressant medication to counter these unproductive neurophysiological reactions. That helps them feel more optimistic about changes they need to make in their lifestyle, and it helps them make those changes.
Without antidepressant medication, people who tend to be depressed also tend to make reluctant decisions that help sustain their depressing lifestyle. No sooner do I help them remove an unpleasant lifestyle condition and replace it with something better than they make a decision that causes some new unpleasant condition to enter their life. The solution to their problem is to avoid making reluctant decisions altogether, and try to make as many enthusiastic decisions as possible. But while depressed, they don’t believe that those alternatives exist.
As I mentioned, it’s a pattern that is very self-defeating. If you don’t believe that you can be enthusiastic about anything, you’ll tend to settle for reluctant agreements that will tend to make you depressed. If you’re depressed you believe that you can’t be enthusiastic about anything.
What Now?
So how does this analysis apply to the question: How should a couple negotiate when at least one spouse is not enthusiastic about much?
First, if you’re not enthusiastic about much, it’s very likely that you’re clinically depressed. Depression is the most common mental disorder, and treatment for depression is usually very successful. So you should be evaluated by a clinical psychologist or psychiatrist who specializes in treating depression. If the therapist is qualified, he or she will encourage you to take an antidepressant medication to help you feel more optimistic about making positive changes in your lifestyle. Then the therapist will work with you to help make those changes. When the changes are in place, you will no longer need to take the medicine because your depression will have lifted.
Second, after you have overcome depression, you should try to make all new lifestyle decisions using the POJA. Since you will be more optimistic about finding win-win resolutions to the conflicts you face in your marriage, and you will be more creative as a result, you will be successful.
Consider for a moment how your depression has been affecting your Love Bank. Since it causes you to feel bad most of the time, your spouse’s best efforts to meet your needs will not make Love Bank deposits. In other words, your depression will make you almost incapable of being in love with him or her. The success of your marriage depends on your ability to be happy—enthusiastic about the way you are living. So if you have been suffering from chronic depression, do yourself and your spouse a huge favor and be treated by a professional therapist.
18
Putting Your Skills to Work
If you’ve read this far and followed the advice I’ve given along the way, you’ve seen how effective negotiation can be. You’re getting into the habit of making win-win decisions whenever you have a marital conflict, just like Joyce and I handle our conflicts. You’re on your way to a very happy and passion-filled marriage.
But if you’ve read this book just to see what I have to say, and have not actually started making decisions with mutual enthusiasm, you have probably collected quite a few major conflicts over the years that need your attention as soon as possible. You may be feeling hopeless about resolving them and you may be feeling incredibly incompatible because you have grown so far apart. The love you once felt for each other may now be a distant memory. You may feel that my plan for marital negotiation is too little too late for you.
If that’s how you feel, I want to encourage you to give my plan a chance to turn your marriage into everything you hoped it would be. It’s been my experience in helping thousands of couples learn to negotiate that such a marriage is not beyond the point of recovery. Coming to enthusiastic agreements about almost everything is possible for any couple.
There are very few couples that begin their marriage with the skill to negotiate effectively, and most of them go through life never learning that skill. As new conflicts enter their lives daily, and pile up because they are unresolved, they eventually come to the conclusion that they are terribly incompatible.
If I could, I would require every high school student to take a class in finding win-win resolutions to marital conflicts, because it would help make their marriages successful. If that class were offered, students would all agree that it was among the most valuable skills they learned in school.
Marriage Builders Resources
In this book, I have offered many ways to find win-win resolutions to marital conflicts. But I would like you to know about other resources you can use to help you think creatively. They can be found on my website, MarriageBuilders.com.
First, there is the Marriage Builders Forum. This is a community of people who come together for marriage support, to answer questions, and to provide advice based on personal experience. It is moderated by those whose marriages have been greatly enriched by following the advice I’ve provided in this book.
Another source of help is Marriage Builders Radio. Joyce and I answer questions that are sent to us by email every weekday on this one-hour radio program that is repeated throughout the day. If we feel that a question has broad relevance and requires a greater depth of understanding, we invite the person with the question to join us on the radio to discuss the issue.
You will find the entire Marriage Builders website to be of help because it includes articles, a Q&A column, and other forms of marital help that are free to those who visit. Millions of couples throughout the world have used this service to help solve the problems they face.
But it’s a skill that must be learned outside of our educational system. And it’s not too late for you to learn it. So if you have not already been following the Policy of Joint Agreement and practicing the Four Guidelines to Successful Negotiation when you face a marital conflict, begin today.
Don’t go through life with a lov
eless, passionless marriage when all it takes to restore your love is to learn how to resolve your conflicts in a way that makes you both happy. Granted, it takes skill to do it, and you may need to practice for a while before you get it right. But once you have that skill, you will be able to have the kind of marriage you have always hoped for, and you will be able to teach your children how they can have a successful marriage, too.
Appendixes
Appendix A: Marital Negotiation Worksheet 159
Appendix B: Emotional Needs Questionnaire 163
Appendix C: Love Busters Questionnaire 175
Appendix A
Marital Negotiation Worksheet
Step 1: Establish ground rules
Rule #1: Try to be pleasant and cheerful throughout your discussion.
Rule #2: Put safety first—do not make demands, show disrespect, or become angry when you negotiate.
Rule #3: If you reach an impasse where you do not seem to be getting anywhere, or if one of you is starting to make demands, show disrespect, or become angry, stop negotiating and come back to the issue later.
Step 2: Identify the problem and investigate each other’s perspectives
The Issue:
Your Perspective:
Your Spouse’s Perspective:
Step 3: Brainstorm possible solutions
Possible Solutions:
Step 4a: Choose a solution that meets the conditions of the Policy of Joint Agreement and test that solution for one week
Step 4b: Evaluate the effectiveness of your chosen solution and either (a) go back to step 3 to find a new solution if necessary, or (b) continue implementing the current solution
Appendix B
Emotional Needs Questionnaire
© 1986, 2012 by Willard F. Harley, Jr.
Name __________ Date __________
This questionnaire is designed to help you determine your most important emotional needs and evaluate your spouse’s effectiveness in meeting those needs. Answer all the questions as candidly as possible. Do not try to minimize any needs that you feel have been unmet. If your answers require more space, use and attach a separate sheet of paper.
Your spouse should complete a separate Emotional Needs Questionnaire so that you can discover his or her needs and evaluate your effectiveness in meeting those needs.
When you have completed this questionnaire, go through it a second time to be certain your answers accurately reflect your feelings. Do not erase your original answers, but cross them out lightly so that your spouse can see the corrections and discuss them with you.
The final page of this questionnaire asks you to identify and rank five of the ten needs in order of their importance to you. The most important emotional needs are those that give you the most pleasure when met and frustrate you the most when unmet. Resist the temptation to identify as most important only those needs that your spouse is not presently meeting. Include all your emotional needs in your consideration of those that are most important.
You have the permission of the publisher to photocopy the questionnaire, enlarging to 8½ × 11, for use in your own marriage.
Ranking Your Emotional Needs
The ten basic emotional needs are listed below. There is also space for you to add other emotional needs that you feel are essential to your marital happiness.
In the space provided before each need, write a number from 1 to 5 that ranks the need’s importance to your happiness. Write a 1 before the most important need, a 2 before the next most important, and so on until you have ranked your five most important needs.
To help you rank these needs, imagine that you will have only one need met in your marriage. Which would make you the happiest, knowing that all the others would go unmet? That need should be 1. If only two needs will be met, what would your second selection be? Which five needs, when met, would make you the happiest?
_______ Affection
_______ Sexual fulfillment
_______ Intimate conversation
_______ Recreational companionship
_______ Honesty and openness
_______ Physical attractiveness of spouse
_______ Financial support
_______ Domestic support
_______ Family commitment
_______ Admiration
_______ ______________________
_______ ______________________
Appendix C
Love Busters Questionnaire
© 1992, 2013 by Willard F. Harley, Jr.
Name __________ Date __________
This questionnaire is designed to help identify your spouse’s Love Busters. Your spouse engages in a Love Buster whenever one of his or her habits causes you to be unhappy. By causing your unhappiness, your spouse withdraws love units from your Love Bank, and that, in turn, threatens your romantic love for him or her.
There are six categories of Love Busters. Each category has its own set of questions in this questionnaire. Answer all the questions as candidly as possible. Do not try to minimize your unhappiness with your spouse’s behavior. If your answers require more space, use and attach a separate sheet of paper.
When you have completed this questionnaire, go through it a second time to be certain your answers accurately reflect your feelings. Do not erase your original answers, but cross them out lightly so that your spouse can see the corrections and discuss them with you.
When you have completed this questionnaire, rank the six Love Busters in order of their importance to you. When you have finished ranking the Love Busters, you may find that your answers to the questions regarding each Love Buster are inconsistent with your final ranking. This inconsistency is common. It often reflects a less-than-perfect understanding of your feelings. If you notice inconsistencies, discuss them with your spouse to help clarify your feelings.
You have the permission of the publisher to photocopy the questionnaire, enlarging to 8½ × 11, for use in your own marriage.
Ranking Love Busters
The six basic categories of Love Busters are listed below. There is also space for you to add other categories of Love Busters that you feel contribute to your marital unhappiness. In the space provided in front of each Love Buster, write a number from 1 to 6 that ranks its relative contribution to your unhappiness. Write a 1 before the Love Buster that causes you the greatest unhappiness, a 2 before the one causing the next greatest unhappiness, and so on, until you have ranked all six.
_______ Selfish Demands
_______ Disrespectful Judgments
_______ Angry Outbursts
_______ Annoying Habits
_______ Independent Behavior
_______ Dishonesty
_______ ______________________
_______ ______________________
Dr. Willard F. Harley, Jr., is a nationally acclaimed clinical psychologist, marriage counselor, and bestselling author. His popular website, MarriageBuilders.com, offers practical solutions to almost any marital problem. He and Joyce, his wife of over fifty years, host a daily radio call-in show, Marriage Builders Radio. They live in White Bear Lake, Minnesota.
Other books by Willard F. Harley, Jr.
* * *
His Needs, Her Needs
Love Busters
Five Steps to Romantic Love
Draw Close
Fall in Love, Stay in Love
Buyers, Renters, and Freeloaders
Effective Marriage Counseling
His Needs, Her Needs for Parents
Defending Traditional Marriage
I Promise You
I Cherish You
Your Love and Marriage
Marriage Insurance
Give and Take
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He Wins, She Wins Page 12
