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Save your Marriage

Independent Behaviour

I define Independent Behaviour as the conduct of one spouse that ignores the feelings and interest of the other spouse. It's usually scheduled and requires some thought to execute, so the simplest way to overcome this Love Buster is to take it off your schedule. A wise alternative to Independent Behaviour is Interdependent Behaviour, which limits your events or activities to those that benefit both of you simultaneously. You are both happy and neither of your suffers when you behaviour interdependently, making decisions with each other's interests and feelings in mind.

Dishonesty

Dishonesty is the strangest of the five Love Busters. Obviously, no one likes dishonesty, but sometimes honesty seems even more damaging. Honesty is like a flu shot. It may give you a short, sharp pain, but it keeps you healthier over the following months. Dishonesty not only makes solutions hard to find, but it often leaves couples ignorant of the problems themselves. In an honest relationship, thoughtless acts are usually corrected. Honesty tends to make our behavior more thoughtful. And yet, without honesty -- radical honesty -- your marriage has little hope for success, and you and your spouse are very unlikely to be in love with each other.

The Policy of Radical Honesty

Honesty and Openness is one of the ten most important emotional needs identified in marriage, which means that when it's met, it can trigger the feeling of love. But it's counterpart, dishonesty, is one of the five most destructive Love Busters. When spouses are dishonest, they destroy the love they have for each other.
To avoid conflict, they sometimes deliberately misinform each other as to their feelings, personal history, activities, and plans. This not only leads to a failure to meet an important emotional need, and a withdrawal of love units when the deception is discovered, it also makes marital conflicts impossible to resolve.

To help explain this policy, I have broken it down into four parts:

1. EMOTIONAL HONESTY: Reveal your emotional reactions, both positive and negative, to the events of your life, particularly to your spouse's behavior.
2. HISTORICAL HONESTY: Reveal information about your personal history, particularly events that demonstrate personal weakness or failure.
3. CURRENT HONESTY: Reveal information about the events of your day.
4. FUTURE HONESTY: Reveal your thoughts and plans regarding future activities and objectives. Regardless of how you feel about revealing your plans, failure to do so will leave your spouse in the dark. I suggest that every Sunday afternoon at 3:30, you and your spouse set aside one-half hour to go over your schedules for the coming week.

When you and your spouse married, two became one. That means that prior to marriage, you had no one but yourself to consider when you made choices, and now you have each other to consider. There should be no part of your life that is off limits to your spouse, because literally everything that either of you do will ultimately affect each other. Privacy breeds incompatibility because it represents a part of your life that is off limits to accommodation.

Even when activities are innocent, it's extremely important for your spouse to understand what you do with your time. Give each other your daily schedules so you can communicate about how you spend your time. Since almost every thing you do will affect your spouse, it is important to explain what it is you do.

The Policy of Joint Agreement

It takes the best from the advice of both our Giver and our Taker. The Policy of Joint Agreement also avoids the worst advice of our Giver and Taker. In the state of Intimacy, we are encouraged by our Giver to sacrifice our own happiness so that the other person can be happy. In the state of Conflict, we are encouraged by our Taker to let our spouses sacrifice so that we can be happy. Neither of these are worthy objectives because in both cases someone gets hurt.

Never do anything without an enthusiastic agreement
between you and your spouse!

If you follow this rule, it will prevent you from giving so much that it hurts you, or taking so much that you hurt your spouse. It forces you into the balance you need in marriage to create and sustain a compatible lifestyle and the feeling of love.
Demands, disrespect and anger are eliminated because even negotiating strategy must be mutually agreed to, and no one likes to be the recipient of abuse. Annoying behaviour is eliminated because if one spouse finds any behaviour or activity of the other annoying, according to the policy, it cannot be done. It even eliminates dishonesty, because a lie is certainly not something that you would agree to enthusiastically. Each spouse learns to make requests and express opinions, showing respect for the other spouse's opinions.



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