Many of us plan to get married, settle down and start a family.
And without even thinking about it, we assume that our marriage will be a ‘love marriage‘.
Unlike arranged marriages, the prerequisite to love marriages is that both parties have fallen in love with one another.
Falling in love, a somewhat magical phenomenon, is the requirement that most people have put upon themselves when it comes to progressing with their life plans.
But how much do we know about the inner workings of this phenomenon?
How does “I like you” turn into “I love you”?
How do people fall in love?
Today, I’d like to share the Love Bank Framework purported by Dr Willard F Harley that arguably explains the mechanism of falling in love. At the same time, his framework also neatly explains the converse phenomenon, of people falling out of love.
A clinical psychologist cum marriage counselor, Dr Harley uses his Love Bank phenomenon to help married couples build an affair-proof marriage.
What is a Love Bank?
“I believe each of us has a Love Bank. It contains many different accounts, one for each person we know. Each person makes either deposits or withdrawals whenever we interact with him or her. Pleasurable interactions cause deposits, and painful interactions cause withdrawals.” – Dr Willard F. Harley
Say you meet a friend named Bob for lunch and the both of you have a great time chatting, enjoying each other’s company and leave with wide smiles plastered on your faces.
Since the interaction was pleasurable, Bob figuratively deposits 5 love units into your Love Bank. If the time with Bob made you feel particularly elated, he may have deposited 10 or maybe 20 love units into your Love Bank.
Bob has accumulated a sizable deposit in your Love Bank. You consider him a good friend now, but if things progress further, you may even consider him to be more than a friend.
Now, let’s say you have a colleague named Joe that always rubs you the wrong way at work. In every meeting that involves Joe, he likes to point out flaws in your work. He’s always dramatic around you and every interaction you have with him just ends up stressing you out.
In this Love Bank framework, Joe withdraws 5 to 10 love units every time he interacts with you.
But actually, you used to be good mates with Joe when you first joined the company. You used to hang out with him all the time and you guys got along well a few years ago. But since you got promoted, your relationship with him started to sour and things have changed.
Joe used to have quite a large deposit in your Love Bank. But as he started to cause you stress and pain, he gradually withdrew more and more love units over time. He’s currently in the red in your Love Bank. You don’t consider him a friend anymore, and you prefer to just avoid him when possible.
While this is all figurative, the Love Bank framework explains how we have a different level of connection with each person in our lives. The larger the account they have in our Love Bank, the more emotionally connected we feel to them.
Falling-In-Love: The #1 Account
So, what does it mean to ‘be in love’ within this framework?
Here, to fall in love with someone means to have a person within our Love Bank that’s surpassed the threshold of being our lover.
That person has deposited so many love units in our Love Bank that we find them irresistible. They’ve become the #1 account in your Love Bank.
Different Ways of Falling
This framework explains how different people fall in love differently.
For some, the accumulation of small gestures that bring joy over many years is what causes a person to go over the threshold to finally fall in love. For others, it’s the grandiose gestures that sweep them off their feet that makes them hopelessly fall in love.
For most of us, the combination of small and large gestures is what accumulates love units in our Love Bank, making us find love.
For some, it only takes a little bit of love unit deposits before they feel like they are in love. For others, a huge sum of love deposits are required before they can feel like they can fall in love.
In reality, the threshold for love is relative to our relationships with others.
If we are blessed by many loving friends and family members, the ‘one’ for us is gonna have to work a little bit harder to win our affection. For the less fortunate, it may not take much.
Maintaining the #1 Account
To those who have found love: How wonderful and congrats to you!
And to those who want to keep love: Keep it up and never stop.
You may have worked hard and long to continue depositing love units into your lover’s Love Bank, but the work should never really stop.
As life ebbs and flows and you spend more time with your lover, you will inevitably have unpleasant interactions with them. You will say something that annoy them, do something that they dislike and cause something that hurts them.
All these will cause you to withdraw love units from your account in their Love Bank. Which is why you must continue to put effort in depositing love units to supplement what’s been withdrawn over time.
While you cannot avoid friction with your lover all the time, you can certainly continue to do things that show that you love and care.
Once you’ve worked to get to the top, you’ve gotta keep working to stay at the top.
Falling-Out-Of-Love: Losing the #1
But one day, if your partner simply forgets or gives up on trying to deposit more love units, slowly but surely, the amount of love units in their account will continue to be withdrawn and dwindle. And with it, your infatuation and affection for them.
By the time you know it, the feelings of love that used to be so potent would have faded. You no longer see them as your lover, but simply a friend, or worse, a stranger.
This is how people fall out of love.
Falling out of love can happen to both sides at the same time, or tragically to only one side at a time.
At this juncture, the best scenarios are that:
- Both parties try to reinvigorate the relationship by doing things that deposit love units into each other’s Love Bank accounts. They try to fall in love with one another again.
- Both parties mutually agree they no longer want to be in a romantic relationship, and decide to part ways. They have a ‘good’ break up and go through a ‘healthy’ divorce.
The worst scenario is that one or both sides decide to cheat on the other, or if they are married, have an affair.
The Affair Account
“Usually an affair consists of two people who become involved in an extramarital relationship that combines sexual lovemaking with feelings of deep love. – Dr. Willard F. Harley
In the perspective of the Love Bank framework, it’s when someone allows another person outside of the official romantic relationship to accumulate so many love units in their Love Bank that this person also surpasses the threshold of being their lover.
In short, a spouse has allowed an external person to enter the same category as their married partner.
When there is supposed to be only one exclusive account in the highest Love Bank category, there are now two accounts.
Aiyaiyai.
Affair-Proof Marriage
I highly recommend Dr Willard F. Harley’s book ‘His Needs, Her Needs’ for anyone interested to learn more about how to build an Affair-proof marriage. He shares stories of the many different ways affairs can form within a marriage and what we can learn from them.
But to me, there are two very important takeaways from his book.
The first is the Love Bank framework above, which teaches us the mechanism of how relationships can grow and dwindle.
The second is about the 10 emotional needs that men and women have. As humans, those emotional needs are innate to us and we fulfil those needs through relationships.
The 10 emotional needs also describe the practical things that we can say and do to be able to deposit love units into Love Bank accounts. They specifically explain what we can do to meaningfully connect with another person, as well as what we ourselves find meaningful.
The 10 emotional needs will be the main topic I discuss in next week’s newsletter.
Thanks for reading my newsletter today! 😊
I’ve been away for the past two weeks mainly due to my being unwell + overseas travel to meet family. But I am back on track now!
Till next week,
Ruiz
PS: What do you think of the Love Bank framework? Im curious to know your thoughts on it.