Harley, Willard. His Needs, Her
Needs: Building an Affair-Proof Marriage. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book
House, 2011.
INTRODUCTION
Willard Harley is a nationally-acclaimed clinical
psychologist, a marriage counselor, and the bestselling author of numerous
books, including Five Steps to Romantic Love, Love Busters, and His
Needs Her Needs for Parents.[1] Harley has a popular website that offers
practical solutions to marital problems—www.marriagebuilders.com Dr. Harley and wife, Joyce, host a daily
call-in show, Marriage Builders. They live in White Bear Lake,
Minnesota.
This book is the transcription of a thirteen-week
course on marriage to teach couples how to stay happily married. In 1960s, the traditional nuclear family in
America was threatened with new cultural forces and couples were no longer
willing to stay together, but rather ready to throw in the towel. So the
author, a psychologist, thought to save marriages by restoring the feeling of
love through the principle of learned associations to induce and trigger
emotions of love and intimacy. “Romantic
love is the litmus test that reveals the right way for couples to
demonstrate their caring love for each other.” (p. 13)
SUMMARY
This book
teaches married couples how to discover and then to learn to meet each other’s
most important emotional needs and where to put their greatest effort to create
and sustain romantic love. The author
has identified ten emotional needs that most couples require—admiration,
affection, conversation, domestic support, family commitment, financial
support, honesty and openness, physical attractiveness, recreational
companionship, and sexual fulfillment. The author too found out that the five
needs listed as most important by men were usually the five least important for
women, and vice-versa (p. 18). The
combination of needs for any married couple is unique. When out of ignorance or lack of skills
emotional needs are not met, partners tend to seek extra-marital fulfillment in
an affair. When the author discovered
that committed Christians were involved in extra-marital affairs, he realized
the strength of unmet emotional needs.
But there is a “Love Bank” from which each partner can deposit or
withdraw; the love bank is a concept developed by the author that consists of a
system of deposits and withdrawals.
Positive experiences and interaction cause deposits and negative or
painful interaction cause withdrawals (p. 24).
While women
would first seek affection which should be the natural environment for
marriage, men seek sexual fulfillment which is the special event; sex and
affection are interrelated (p. 39). While women need undivided attention in
intimate conversation, men need recreational companionship. The author identifies the enemies (pp. 75-78)
and friends (pp. 79-82) of intimate conversation and provides conversation
tips. While women need honesty and
openness with radical honesty—emotional, historical, current, and future (pp.
105-111), men need physical attractiveness—clothes, make-up, wellness and
fitness (pp. 117-130). Whereas women
need financial support (pp. 131-140), men need domestic support (pp. 143-156). While women look for family commitment and
for a good father that will devote quality time for the educational and moral
development of his children (pp. 157-169), men want to be admired by their
wives with less criticism and complaints (pp. 171-181).
The author wraps
us his book with a chapter on “how to survive an affair” and “how to turn the
marriage into a stronger one.” The
willingness of the betrayed partner to remain in the marriage and help the
spouse to end the affair is a key to saving the marriage. Harley advises that happy married couples
should make their time a full-time priority as they invest effort into each
other and they do it in the right places and that this commitment is mutual (p.
199).
CRITICAL
EVALUATION
This book needs
to be worked throughout the years with one’s partner. It is overloaded with exercises and questions
to be reflected on and answered. The
appendices at the end of the book contain valuable questions and exercises that
help improve one’s understanding of self and work on succeeding the marriage
relationship through meeting the other partner’s need. The stories brought home the author’s points
of view and helped one understand the other partner’s reactions, viewpoints,
and feelings; it touched on many instances that really happen in
marriages. The book is well organized
with headings and sub-headings which helped follow the line of thought and
reasoning, while taking home some few points to work on. The chapters alternated between the wife’s
needs and the husband’s needs and clearly explained the differences between
each one’s emotional needs, how to meet them, how to make joyful compromises,
and how to choose the actions that will add to the love bank.
The chapter on
sexuality was daring, shocking, and instructive, however, short. Many couples would need more than just a
chapter to understand their sexuality and to reeducate themselves as to meet
each other’s needs. What seems missing
is the biblical insights that could direct Christian couples; probably, the
author targeted a larger audience than church congregation into the secular
world. Harley overlooked the purpose of
Christian marriage which is not about “increasing pleasure and satisfaction in
living” but also about service to God that demands many sacrifices at times,
humility, and denying oneself (such as offering one’s husband or wife or
children to the service of the Lord).
The book is a
transcription of a thirteen-week course taught in 1978 on cultural forces that
he observed in the 1960s and we have moved on to the 2013—thirty-five to fifty-three
years of lapse. The cultural forces he
is speaking about have changed and American has moved on to a post-Christian
country where biblical principles of sound marriages are overruled by marriage
laws for lesbians and gays, thus, totally disintegrating and deteriorating the family
nucleus, morals, and values that American families long held for and which were the very secret of
its strength.
LESSONS
AND APPLICATION
The key issue is
meeting each other’s emotional needs.
Extra-marital affair could happen to any couple, if partners do not
consciously and deliberately meet one another’s emotional needs, to keep the
love bank always on the high for deposits.
Meeting the other’s needs could involve sacrifices—social, financial,
academic, personal, among others. The
willingness to sacrifice is not as important as the implementation
itself—intention-driven action.
Knowing the
enemies of “Intimate Conversation”—demands, disrespect, anger, dwelling on
mistakes—was constructive as a new focus in teaching because demands and
disrespect could be innocent and done without being aware, while anger is
offensive. Deliberately avoiding those
enemies will certainly improve intimacy and add to the love bank deposits.
“Financial Support” is definitely a key issue
for a marriage to hold together. The
three budgets (needs-budget, wants-budget, and affordable-budgets) promoted the
biblical principle of oneness in marriage and proper financial administration. Both partners should put their money
together in one account and withdraw according to the agreed upon expenditure
schemes. In oriental cultures, it is somewhat weird and uncommon to have joint
accounts. When one partner (the wife)
earns considerably more than the other or is wealthier, this creates problems
of inferiority and insecurity to the husband; an imbalance hurts the
relationship. The author suggested for
the spouse (husband) to learn new skills or to receive education as to improve
his professional standards to be able to get better jobs or be promoted to a
higher position at a higher salary; a matter which my daughter’s father did and
became a professional in his field and earned lots of money.
CONCLUSION
The book
contains an abundance of advice that could be useful for newly married couples
or even taught to people embarking on a marriage ship. It could serve to people married for a long
time because it is never too late to correct behavior to improve one’s marriage
and be happier. It teaches how to
develop intimacy between partners and to satisfying each other’s needs. The book is a valuable tool to discover how a
marriage cannot only be affair-proof but also fulfilling and ultimately
God-glorifying—here and now—as a Christian testimony.
His Needs,
Her Needs is a must for couples about to be married as well as for married
couples. Working out the exercises and
filling the appendices can really save a marriage. It is a valuable book that I will recommend
to people and will keep in my library.
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