Dating the One You Married, Part 1:

How Is Romantic Love Created and Sustained

Willard F.  Harley, Jr., PhD

 

One of the questions that I am often asked is, Why is dating so important after marriage? It is usually in response to reading about one of my basic rule for marriage, the Policy of Undivided Attention. That rule requires spouses to spend a minimum of fifteen hours each week meeting each other's needs for affection, sexual fulfillment, intimate conversation, and recreational companionship.  The best way to meet those needs is on romantic dates that are planned each week.

That's usually what couples do when they date before their marriage. Those dates create the feeling of romantic love that convinces them that they should spend their lives together. But once married, what they did on dates usually comes to an end, and along with it goes their feeling of romantic love for each other.

I draw a distinction between a romantic date that includes affection, sexual fulfillment, intimate conversation, and recreational companionship from a date that does not meet one or all of those needs for a couple.  Romance for most women is a date that meets the need for affection and intimate conversation.  Romance for most men is a date that meets the need for sexual fulfillment and recreational companionship.  Put them all together and you have a romantic date for both men and women.

So, in 2017, I started writing a series of articles, entitled Dating the One You Married, to help couples understand why romantic dating is so important in marriage, and how they can do it when their responsibilities and distractions make it seem impossible. 

I begin with a couple that were very close but not quite in love with each other. It almost seemed unrealistic in the way that they were able to follow my plan to the letter. But that's because they liked each other before seeing me. Following my plan to help them recapture their passion was very easy for them.

The next couple I introduce don't like each other. So, following my plan was not as easy as it was for the first couple. But by eliminating the Love Buster, Independent Behavior, they were able to eventually follow my dating plan, and their romantic love was restored.

The third couple represents the couples I'm most likely to counsel. They hate each other. There was nothing easy about the way that they first eliminate the Love Busters, Selfish Demands, Disrespectful Judgments, and Angry Outbursts. And it wasn't easy for them to learn what to do on a date. But when this couple, and couples like them, followed the plan, their romantic love was eventually restored and their marriage was saved.

I've added a fourth couple that differs from the third couple in a very important way: They never did love each other. They married to have children. But even this couple, with their commitment to save their marriage for the sake of their children, found romantic love for each other for the first time. And their love for each other made them much better parents than they ever would have been without it.

After showing you how four very different couples learned how to have romantic dates, I will then discuss common obstacles to dating.  By reading the titles of each article, you can determine if you face any of those obstacles.

If you apply all of my basic concepts to your marriage, you will do what most couples want to do, but have failed to do — fall in love and stay in love. And that's what ultimately saves marriage — restoring the feeling of love. I've never counseled a couple in love that want to divorce.

If you are new to my Basic Concepts for Marriage, I recommend that you read through the summary listed in this website.  These basic concepts for marriage will be referenced throughout these articles as these four couples successfully learn how to date the one they married.

Here is a quick review of how romantic love is sustained.

How Is Romantic Love Sustained 

While I was a college professor, I studied the psychology of romantic love. I was curious to know what it was, what created it, and what destroyed it. A college campus is a perfect place to study this behavior since it’s full of students who are falling in and out of love. I designed many questionnaires that students completed that helped me understand what this feeling was all about.

One of the most important questions I asked was, “what was it that caused you to fall in love?” Very few were confident in how to answer that question. For many, they thought that they were simply meant to be together.

Those who did have an answer would often say that physical attraction was a starting point, especially among men. But if the relationship were to develop, the quality of conversation was usually mentioned as a contributing factor. Common interests, particularly recreational interests, and sexual attraction were also included as important. Their answers conveyed the impression that the person they loved made them very happy by meeting these criteria.

While teaching, I also had the opportunity to counsel married couples, and I asked them some of the same questions. But I added the question, What does or could your spouse do for you that would make you the happiest? That question was open-ended, so they could write paragraphs if they chose to expand on their answer.

I told couples that I wanted their answer to that question to focus on what their spouse would do for them, not what their spouse would avoid doing. For example, I didn’t want them to say that they would be happy if their spouse would stop complaining or arguing so much.

After reading scores of answers, I found that they could be classified in one or more of ten categories that I called emotional needs. Those categories were 1) admiration 2) affection, 3) intimate conversation, 4) domestic support, 5) family commitment, 6) financial support, 7) honesty and openness, 8) physical attractiveness, 9) recreational companionship, and 10) sexual fulfillment.

My next step was to determine which of these needs when fulfilled made them the happiest. Which ones made the largest Love Bank deposits?

Basic Concept Review: The Love Bank is the way our emotions keep track of how people treat us. Good experiences deposit “love units,” leading us to like a person. Bad experiences withdraw units, leading us to dislike a person.  If enough deposits are made, it’s possible to breach the romantic love threshold which creates the feeling of romantic love.

So, I changed the question to ask: Rank the following ten ways that your spouse could make you happy with 1 being the most and 10 being the least. I also gave them an opportunity to add to the list anything else that their spouse could do for them.

I found that almost no one added other categories to the list. It appeared that the list covered just about everything that spouses could do for each other that would make them happy - that would make large Love Bank deposits.

But I noticed something very peculiar about the couples’ ranking of these ten categories. Men tended to rank them one way, while women tended to rank them the opposite way. For men, the top five categories tended to be: 1) sexual fulfillment, 2) recreational companionship, 3) physical attractiveness, 4) admiration, and 5) domestic support. But women tended to rank them as: 1) affection, 2) intimate conversation, 3) honesty and openness, 4) financial support, and 5) family commitment.

This discovery helped me understand something about what it takes to make people happy in marriage. It takes something that’s usually different for men and women. What makes the largest Loe Bank deposits in women tend not to be what makes the largest deposits in men and visa versa.

And I noticed something else: I found that the two emotional needs men tended to rank highest (sexual fulfillment and recreational companionship) and the two women tended to rank highest (affection and intimate conversation) were consistently met in almost all dating and marriage relationships when couples were in love with each other. The meeting of those four emotional needs consistently seemed to define a romantic relationship.

But if the need of men and women are so different, why are couples who are not yet in love successful in meeting each other's emotional needs while dating?

Truth is, they're not very successful, at least at first.

My experience studying college dating and then later, managing a dating service, is that most dating couples don’t make it to the altar. It’s only those who understand that if they really want the other person in their lives, they’d better figure out what that person needs from them, and then deliver.

Men who are skilled in attracting women have learned that affection and intimate conversation are very important to them, and women learn that sexual fulfillment and recreational companionship are very important to men. While sex is not necessarily consummated during dating, these women know that the man she’s interested in dating should find her to be sexually attractive.

Romantic dating provides an opportunity to make the massive Love Bank deposits necessary to create the feeling of romantic love. Remember, a romantic date meets the most important emotional needs of a man and woman.  In other words, it makes both spouses the happiest, depositing the most “love units.”

 

But the Love Bank leaks. If a couple doesn't keep filling it, love units slip away. In that way, the Love Bank is not exactly like your checking account – unless some unscrupulous manager at your bank makes illegal withdrawals. So, a couple must keep making Love Bank deposits if they want to stay in love. And those deposits must be large, the way meeting the needs for affection, sexual fulfillment, intimate conversation, and recreational companionship make deposits.

In Part 2, Dr. Harley will explain Norah and Jason's story and answer: How can we restore the feeling we once had by dating?

Click to start reading Dating the One You Married, Part 2.