5) The Love Bank

4 min read

The Love Bank Concept

There are factors that build or destroy a romantic relationship. Intimacy is not a gift; it is a skill, and they are developed through learning and practice. A good romantic relationship is not someone you find but rather something you make!

There is a “Love Bank” inside each one of us that keeps an emotional account of the love deposits and withdrawals we receive from people around us. If a person treats us well and makes us feel good, he or she makes a deposit into our account. But if a person makes us feel hurt or miserable, he or she makes a withdrawal from our account.

Our Love Bank balance motivates us to be with people who treat us well and avoid those who hurt us. And if we allow someone to make deposits beyond the invisible love barrier, we would naturally develop a romantic feeling for that person and “fall in love” with him or her.

“Conflict” Environment

Most conflicts arise due to a misunderstanding or a great desire for our “hidden agenda” (emotional needs) to be met. The real issue, hidden under the surface, is the desire for more love and attention and this issue is the number one reason for many quarrels. When this desire is not met, resentment grows and breeds conflict, and we see this manifested in irritating, unhelpful, rude, disrespectful behaviour. We may grow up but we never outgrow our need for love!

Prov.10:12 – “Hatred stir up conflict as love covers all mistake”
“Withdrawal” Environment

Marital conflict usually starts when couples fail to meet each other’s emotional needs. When our Love Bank is empty, it makes us feel frustrated and we tend to unconsciously but deliberately hurt each other.

If we are not intentionally meeting our spouse’s emotional needs, the deposit in their Love Bank account can deplete slowly and steadily and soon become overdrawn; and all the way into the red or even bankruptcy. Our spouse can be the person we resent most in our lives if we continue to allow him or her to make withdrawals from our emotional account.

Before Marriage – Obsessive stage. We are very much motivated to make deposits of love units into our partner’s Love Bank.

After Marriage – Proactive or Intentional stage. We must be driven by unconditional love to continue meeting our spouse’s emotional needs, and to continue making deposits of love units into their Love Bank.

We must make the transition from the obsessive stage to the intentional stage for the relationship to continue growing and flourishing. To grow closer as a couple, we must be proactive in building a loving relationship, but unfortunately, we often react negatively to each other’s behavior or comments, blaming each other when things go wrong and retaliating when we are hurt.

Romantic love is very fragile and requires skills to maintain, and good intention itself is not enough. If we want to be committed to our marriage vow made before God to always make our spouse feel cherished, their Love Bank must be intentionally and constantly replenished. Too many husbands and wives go to bed & wake up feeling unloved by their spouse.

When we fail to meet our spouse’s emotional needs, we make them frustrated, miserable and unfulfilled. This is often the start of the vicious circle of a deteriorating marriage. None of us plan to have an affair to hurt our spouse when we enter into marriage, but the hard truth is, under the right or wrong conditions, any of us can fall victim to infidelity, regardless of our spirituality.

1 Cor.10:12 – “Therefore let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall.”

Emotional deficits make us vulnerable to affairs! Sometimes, affairs are caused by push factors rather than pull factors. When affairs happen, many tend to blame the “third party” for pulling their spouse away, without considering that we may actually be the ones who pushed our spouse away as we allow their love bank to deteriorate to a state of emotional bankruptcy.

Life is difficult and our emotional needs often cry out louder than the love and fear of God in our lives. When we are suffering from emotional deficits and someone else comes along to meet our emotional needs, it makes us feel significant, loved, encouraged, comforted and supported. It pulls us like a strong powerful magnet. Thus, the pull and push factors both contribute to the potential of affairs.

Whether you are newly married, have had average marriages, or is having a “bad” marriage, we all can learn to build or rebuild our marriage by learning to be students of our spouse’s emotional needs. We need to be aware about each other’s emotional needs and learn to diligently meet them.

Points to Ponder: