GLOSSARY

Based on the concepts of Dr. Willard F. Harley, Jr.

Caring Love: The decision to do what it takes to make someone happy and avoid making them unhappy—it’s putting the Four Gifts of Love into action.

Compatibility: Building a way of life that is comfortable for both spouses.

Emotional Needs: A craving that, when satisfied, makes you feel happy and fulfilled and, when unsatisfied, makes you feel unhappy and frustrated.

Affection: A craving to receive nonsexual expressions of care symbolizing security, protection, and comfort through words, cards, gifts,  hugs, kisses, and courtesies. Affectionate acts communicate: (a) “I’ll care for you and protect you,” (b) “You are valuable to me,” (c) “I’m concerned about the problems you face,” and (d) “I will help you overcome those problems.”

Sexual Fulfillment: A craving to engage in an enjoyable sexual experience. 

Intimate Conversation: A craving to share feelings, personal experiences, topics of personal interest, opinions, and plans with another person; avoiding anger, demands, judgments, and dwelling on mistakes; showing interest in your favorite topics of conversation; balancing conversation; using it to inform, get-to-know, and understand you; and giving you undivided attention.

Recreational Companionship: A craving to engage in recreational activities with at least one other person.

Honesty and Openness: A craving to receive truthful and frank information from someone about positive and negative feelings, events of the past, daily events and schedule, plans for the future; not leaving a false impression.

Physical Attractiveness: A craving to observe someone whose physical appearance is aesthetically and/ or sexually pleasing to you.  Aspects of physical attractiveness may include weight, fitness, fragrance, tone of voice, and choice of clothing, hairstyle, makeup (if female), and personal hygiene.

Financial Support: A craving to receive help for the financial resources to house, feed, and clothe your family.

Domestic Support: A craving to receive help with the household tasks and care of the children (if any are at home).  Domestic support may include childcare tasks, cooking, washing dishes, washing and ironing clothes, scheduling, and housekeeping.

Family Commitment: A craving to receive help with the provision of moral and educational development of your children within the family unit. Family commitment may include scheduling sufficient time and energy for the moral and educational development of your children; reading to them, taking them on frequent outings, developing skill in appropriate child-training methods and discussing those methods with you; avoiding any child-training methods or disciplinary action that does not have your enthusiastic support.

Admiration: A craving to be shown respect, value, and appreciation.

Five Parts of Honesty:

Emotional Honesty: Reveal your emotional reactions—both positive and negative—to the events of your life, particularly to your spouse’s behavior.

Historical Honesty: Reveal information about your personal history, particularly events that demonstrate personal weaknesses and failures.

Current Honesty: Reveal information about the events of your day. Provide your spouse with a calendar of your activities, with special emphasis on those that may affect your spouse.

Future Honesty: Reveal your thoughts and plans regarding future activities and objectives.

Complete Honesty: Do not leave your spouse with a false impression about your thoughts, feelings, habits, likes, dislikes, personal history, daily activities, or plans for the future. Do not deliberately keep personal information from your spouse.

Four Gifts of Love®:

The Gift of Care is a willingness and effort to do what you can to make the other happy. It puts your desire to do meaningful acts of care into daily action—being a primary source of happiness.

The Gift of Protection is a willingness and effort to do what you can to avoid making the other unhappy—to avoid being a source of unhappiness.

The Gift of Honesty is a willingness and effort to do what you can to make everything about you transparent to the other—what you’ve done in the past, what you’re doing in the present, and what you plan to do in the future.

The Gift of Time is a willingness and effort to give daily time to provide the most meaningful acts of care for the other.

To learn more, click here for Four Gifts of Love® Class SUBSCRIPTION options! 

And to learn about THESE CONCEPTS IN MORE DETAIL, please go to our BOOKSTORE and consider downloading an eBook. 

Four Guidelines for Successful Negotiation:

  1. Set ground rules to make negotiation pleasant and safe (try to be pleasant and cheerful throughout negotiations; put safety first—not making demands, showing disrespect, becoming angry; and if you reach an impasse or if one of you is starting to make demands, show disrespect, or becoming angry, stop negotiating and come back to the issue later.
  2. Identify the problem from both perspectives with mutual respect for those perspectives.
  3. Brainstorm with abandon—give your creativity a chance to discover solutions that would make you both happy.
  4. Choose a solution that best meets the conditions of the Policy of Joint Agreement—mutual and enthusiastic agreement.

Habits: Learned behaviors that are a repeated part of our lifestyle.

Love Bank: It’s the way our emotions keep track of the way people treat us. Everyone we know has an account. And the things people do either deposit or withdraw love units from their accounts in our Love Bank.

Love Busters: Repeated behaviors that cause unhappiness.

Selfish Demands: Attempts to command your spouse to do things that would benefit you at your spouse’s expense, with an implied threat of punishment.

Disrespectful Judgments: Attempts to “straighten out” your spouse’s attitudes, beliefs, and behavior by trying to impose on him or her your way of thinking through lecture, ridicule, threats, or other forceful means. Examples: (1) lecturing instead of respectfully discussing issues, (2) coming across as if your opinion is superior to the other, (3) talking over the other or preventing him/her from having a chance to explain his/her position, or (4) ridiculing his/her point of view.

Angry Outbursts: Deliberate attempts to hurt your spouse because of anger, usually in the form of verbal or physical attack.

Annoying Habits: Repeated habits that unintentionally cause your spouse to be unhappy. These habits include personal mannerisms such as the way you eat, clean up (or don’t!), and talk.

Independent Behavior: Behavior conceived and executed without much consideration of your spouse’s feelings. These behaviors are usually scheduled and require thought to complete.

Dishonesty: Failure to reveal to your spouse correct information about your thoughts, feelings, habits, likes/dislikes, personal history, daily activities, and plans for the future. Dishonesty is also leaving your fiancé/spouse with what you know is a false impression.

Policy of Exclusivity: Meet each other's most important emotional needs exclusively.

Policy of Joint Agreement: Never do anything without an enthusiastic agreement between you and your spouse.

Policy of Mutual Appeal: Engage in only those recreational activities that both you and your spouse can enjoy together.

Policy of Undivided Attention: Give your spouse your undivided attention a minimum of fifteen hours each week, using the time to meet the emotional needs of affection, conversation, recreational companionship, and if married, sexual fulfillment.

Respectful Persuasion: Presenting your reasoning behind your opinion and listening to your spouse’s reasoning, with a willingness to admit that your spouse may be correct.

Romantic Love: The feeling of being in love—finding someone irresistible. It’s an incredible attraction for someone of the opposite gender that is unmistakable and can actually be measured. It’s the feeling created in your spouse when Caring Love is given to him or her.

Thoughtful Request: Respectfully explaining to your spouse what you would like and allowing your spouse the option of granting or denying your request. It uses the phrase, “How would you feel about….” 

To learn more, click here for Four Gifts of Love® Class SUBSCRIPTION options! 

And to learn about THESE CONCEPTS IN MORE DETAIL, please go to our BOOKSTORE and consider downloading an eBook.