Kelly and I have led a His Needs/Her Needs (emphasis mine) Growth Group over the past three months here at the Living Stones Church.  It has been a blast of a group, lots of laughter (which you have to have do discuss such serious topics and issues).  As a group we have worked through Dr. Willard Harley’s book, His Needs/Her Needs.  I really enjoyed it and would highly recommend it to anyone married or thinking about doing so.  The thing I like the most about it is it takes marriage, which is a complex relationship, and makes things simple (also my definition of a genius…someone who can take something complicated and make it simple).  This is important, especially for guys, who already feel completely idiotic when it comes to relationships.  The language of relationships is like Rocket Science jargon.  So, Willard breaks it down for us simpletons in a few basic points (which he does a much better job of communicating in the book):

1. Everyone has a love bank.  You make deposits or withdrawals based on positive or negative experiences with your spouse.
2. Emotional Needs (that we all have) are the things that most influence our deposits or withdrawals of love bank currency.
3. In the main (and this is generalized which he concedes) men have a “top five” emotional needs; and women have a “top five” emotional needs.
4. Unfortunately (or as God designed?), men’s top five ARE NOT women’s top five…thus the potential struggle and frustration in marriage (I’m still trying to convince Kelly my #1 emotional need is also her #1 emotional need…so far I haven’t been persuasive enough).
5. Men’s top five are (in order of importance):  sexual fulfillment, recreational companionship, physical attractiveness, domestic support, and admiration.
6. Women’s top five (which also are corresponding to the men’s top five): sex, sex, sex, sex, and sex…oh sorry, I misread my notes…O.K…I’m back…O.K…affection, conversation, openness and honesty, financial support, and family commitment.
7. When a spouse fails to meet their mate’s emotional need (even one of them) it makes their marriage vulnerable to an affair (at worst), resentment and anger (at best).  All it takes is one emotional need unmet for someone to enter into the scene, meet that particular need, and establish very high “love bank credits!”
8. Over and over again Harley point out that when most couples get married they find each other irresistible.  This was so, especially in the dating phase, because they met each others emotional needs (or as much as they could for that state of their relationship).  In marriage, when we become more comfortable, selfish, or lazy, we begin to not commit as much time to meeting our spouse’s emotional needs.  Over time we find we have gone from irresistible, to incompatible.
9. If you want to rescue a marriage that has become “incompatible” then both partners need to commit to once again meeting each other’s greatest emotional needs and thus becoming irresistible again.

Willard Harley has another book entitled Love Busters.  I just got it in the mail yesterday.  It is his second book that is supposed to be the part 2 of His Needs/Her Needs.  In it he contends that there are behaviors that destroy love.  He covers that in part 2.  But overall, his premise is that a good marriage isn’t all that difficult to understand.  It basically takes two commitments:

1. Do the things that causes your spouse to love you (meet emotional needs).
2. And avoid the things that causes your spouse to dislike you (overcoming habits that destroy romantic love).

Fortunately for Kelly, I have no habits that destroy romantic love and I have clearly been meeting all of her emotional needs and thus she finds me absolutely irresistible.  At times it can be a little overboard.  But, it is “the cross” I must bear.