Getting married is easy – but staying happily married for the rest of your life requires effort. In his book, Psychologist Willard F. Harley offers engaged couples no-nonsense advice on how to create a loving and long-lasting relationship. 

According to him, four factors are key to a successful marriage: care, protection, honesty and time; he discusses each of these in the four parts of the book.

He explains his concept of the “love bank” firstly, in which people deposit their “love units”. Whilst positive experiences with another person lead us to like or love, bad experiences lead us to withdraw love units, resulting in a dislike or even hatred of another person. Couples on the brink of a divorce have often neglected each other, which resulted in an overdrawn love bank.  Harley believes that it is important for a successful marriage to deposit those love units and avoid withdrawing them.

Caring love is important in a marriage. Harley defines this as the willingness by both partners to take time for each other, to make each other happy and to improve each other’s quality of life. Knowing how to care for and fulfill each other’s emotional needs is vital to the success of a relationship. Among the most common emotional needs are affection, sexual fulfillment and honesty. However emotional needs and their priorities vary from person to person, and both partners need to know their respective emotional needs to care for each other. The psychologist discusses in detail each of the most common emotional needs, how to identify and meet them.

Protecting each other means making sure to be each other’s source of happiness - avoiding “love busters”, as Harley calls the nasty habits that can ruin romantic love. Love busters are for example selfish demands, angry outbursts or annoying habits. In order to avoid these love busters, a couple needs to identify them to avoid them being the source of unhappiness.

Being completely honest with each other is also important, i.e. that both partners are honest about their feelings, particularly towards each other’s behaviour, and relating to the past, present and future. Harley argues that being dishonest in certain areas - such as lying to protect or avoid trouble - can have a detrimental effect on a relationship.

Finally, taking time for each other helps to maintain a happy marriage. Harley recommends spending at least 15 hours per week with each other and suggests what he calls “the policy of undivided attention”.

This is basically making quality time to meet each other’s most important emotional needs: sexual fulfillment, affection, intimate conversation and recreational companionship. He recommends fulfilling all these needs together. The task sounds easier than it is. Finding 15 hours is hard when you have responsibilities like children and a demanding job. Spending time on a hobby together sounds like a good idea, but not every couple shares the same enthusiasm for one particular pastime. However, it makes sense to stress the importance of time, because if you can’t manage to make time for each other, you may as well not bother being together.

The book is written in an easy to understand style and Harley draws on his own experience as a couples’ counselor. Each chapter ends with exercises, which prompt couples to review what they have learnt.  Questionnaires at the end of the book help them discover more about themselves, their emotional needs and love busters. However, I think he missed out on one important point, which also contributes to a happy relationship - giving each other time and space, so you can recharge and look forward to each other.

The above review was contributed by: Helen Kaut: Freelance Journalist: To read more of Helen  Kaut’s Reviews Click  HERE