J Douglas speaking below
Well, now that you’ve written down what your five greatest needs are and your spouse wrote down what they think yours are, before we go any further to look at those, we need to talk about the love bank. Again, under the same authors of the book, I’ve already mentioned the love bank is what each one of us has. Each one of us has a love bank account for everybody we come into contact with.
We either put deposits in the account or we’re taking out of the account. So you need to realize, and I’m not gonna pick on husbands, but especially husbands, but wives also, everything you do, everything you say to your spouse is either adding to the love bank or subtracting from the love bank. And like any bank, you know, after you had so many withdrawals, the account’s empty and they close the account.
And that’s what happens to so many people. They’ve got so many problems in their relationship and they don’t know answers for it, and finally the accounts are closed and they just don’t wanna deal with the other person. So we’re gonna talk about the importance of the love bank.
So just think about something you may say, and we’re gonna be talking about this later in communication, but something you may say that may be a withdrawal from your love bank. Write that down, okay? And then I’m gonna want you to share that with your spouse here in just a little bit. And spouses, when you see what they wrote down, ask them to explain to you why that is a withdrawal.
Because usually to us, we see our needs and we’re assuming everybody else is gonna be like ours, and that’s just not the case. I mean, God created us so different, which is a blessing, it’d be sad if we were all alike. It means, you know, if three of us were like me, two of you aren’t needed, and I’d hope it’d be you two that were taken out, not me.
So in understanding the different needs, I want you two to talk about this. After you’ve written that down, and then also write on that same list so you can do this, what would be a deposit? What could your spouse do or say that would be a deposit into your love bank account? Write that down, and then we’ll talk about it.