The Happiest Lives Podcast

E42: Make Deposits In Your Love Bank

• Jill M. Lillard, MA LPC • Season 2024 • Episode 42

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This is part three of the series How To Get Your Relationship Back On Track.  When you nurture positive sentiments and good feelings in your marriage, you are making deposits in your love bank.  These emotional investments become valuable resources that you will withdraw from when you face conflict in your relationship.  Join me to learn three ways you can make deposits in your love bank today. 

If you are ready to become the woman God says you already are, you have to join me in Clarity+Courage, my cost-effective coaching group for Christian women. Learn more and enroll at www.myhappyvault.com/clarityandcourage

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Questions? Email Jill directly at Jill@thehappiestlives.com

Speaker 1:

You are listening to the Happiest Lives podcast with Jill Lillard, episode number 42. Welcome to the Happiest Lives podcast, where you'll learn to think better, feel better and become the woman God says you already are. Here's your host, jill Lillard hey, hey, hey, everyone, welcome back to the podcast. We are going to continue the series how to Get your Relationship Back on Track, and today we're going to talk about making deposits in your love bank. And so our love bank is all the positive sentiments, good feelings, that we have about our relationship and about the other person. If you're not making deposits in your love bank, you are going to find that you become bankrupt, because every time that you have conflict anytime there's anything negative going on that there's a problem. You are withdrawing from the pool of the positive, and if there's nothing to withdraw from, your relationship is going to spiral into negativity that you may not be able to recover from. So we're continually wanting to make slow and steady deposits into that account.

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The Bible has scriptures that emphasize the importance of enjoying and celebrating our marriage. There's an entire book of the Bible devoted to this song of Solomon that really speaks to delighting in, finding satisfaction in and being able to take pleasure and being with your spouse. Another verse Proverbs 5, 18 through 19,. May your fountain be blessed. May you rejoice in the wife of your youth, a loving doe, a graceful deer. May her breast satisfy you always. May you ever be intoxicated with her love. We read in Ephesians 5, 28 through 33,. He who loves his wife loves himself, for we are members of his body. For this reason, a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh. Ecclesiastes 9, 9. Live joyfully with the wife whom you love, all the days of your fleeting life which he has given you under the sun, all the days of vanity and futility, for this is your reward in life and in your work in which you have labored under the sun.

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So not only our relationships, our teachers, not only do they become a catalyst for our spiritual growth, as we have opportunity to either become less like Christ, to turn away from him and turn away from depending on him and try to find our own way, or we use that relationship as a way to deepen our relationship with the Lord, because we need him so much, because sometimes it can be hard to love. So our relationships can be things that shape us and make us better people as we discover what love really is, but our relationships are also things that we can enjoy. It is natural for us to always look for problems to solve, to try to fix things, to see how things can be better, because we have that blueprint of perfection on our DNA. But it is equally important for us to pause and to actually enjoy the relationship, and I think a lot of us miss out on that. So, though your relationship may not be perfect, what I have directed you to do if you want to get your relationship back on track is number one create a healing separation, and that is simply seeing your relationship, seeing yourself in the relationship as being part of the greater whole, that you are a cog in the wheel, and so your role is important. It is essential, but rather than focusing on what you can't control all the other cogs in the wheel you're going to focus on you, what your role is in the body, what is your role in this relationship and what can you control in the relationship? You can control your thoughts, your feelings, the way that you're going to show up. So we're going to create a picture of who you want to be in the relationship and reverse engineer that. What does that look like? And so this is going to be a much better use of your energy, as opposed to managing the other person and focusing on all the ways that they fall short.

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The second thing we talked about is regulating your emotions. It's so important to regulate your emotions because if you can't do that, if you aren't aware of what you're feeling, you're going to be reactive in your relationship and that may show up as becoming overreactive, more fighting, yelling, engaging in negative ways, or it can be through withdrawing, stonewalling, detaching, disconnecting in an unhealthy way. So when we create a healing separation, we want to ultimately position ourselves to turn toward in a better way, but we can't do that if we don't know how to regulate our emotions and if we're not aware of our emotions. How we respond to our emotions is probably how we are responding Responding to our partner's emotion. We also want to be able to have a flood plan in place when we do become emotionally flooded, when our partner becomes emotionally flooded, so that we can support one another and being able to physiologically self soothe and processing through the emotions and coming back in a new way to talk about it. That's going to be more effective. So the third thing that we want to be able to do to get our relationship back on track is to make deposits in your love bank.

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So John Gottman of the Gottman Institute has done the research and came up with a I don't know a number a fraction five to one. I'm not entirely sure all the details of where this fraction came from, but to me it doesn't really matter. I'm a bottom line girl. The bottom line is for every one negative in your relationship, you want to have five positives, and so those who are the masters of marriage, those who are doing well at marriage, it's not that they don't have problems, it's not that there's not negativity, but the positivity, the good things, override, overshadow the negative in this number of five to one. For every one negative, there's five positives, and so this is a good way for you to look at your relationship and to evaluate. For every negative, do you have more positives going on and how much are you investing in the positive?

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I know our brains the smarter you are, the more your brain wants to look for the negative. It wants to look for the problems to fix. Our brains gravitate toward negativity and we have to train our brain to focus on the positive, to nurture the positive and to even acknowledge the good things that are happening. And so when I have couples come in, when I work with them, I always have them start with what is going well in the relationship. Tell me all the good things, tell me things that you've enjoyed together, things you've appreciated from your spouse, things you've appreciated from yourself. And sometimes this is a really hard question for couples to answer because their mind so much wants to go toward the problem. They're afraid to acknowledge anything that's going well because it might dismiss or minimize any pain or discomfort that they're feeling. And yet if they're not able to see the good things, they're never going to be happy in their relationship, because good things could be happening and they're not able to receive those. And so that is why I always start those sessions with the positive, because I want to remind them hey, are you looking for the positive? Do you see what's going well? Are you taking time to enjoy the blessings? Are you taking time to enjoy the good things that are happening? If we aren't able to celebrate and acknowledge our wins and what's going right, then we will always be stuck in negative sentiments.

Speaker 1:

So I wanted to share with you about a couple who I saw We'll just call them Sarah and James and their journey is really such a beautiful testament to the effectiveness of being intentional to nurture the positive sentiments and the positive sentiments and good feelings, and it really speaks to this concept of making deposits in your love bank. So, as a therapist, I first met them during a period when they were facing some really big challenges in their marriage, some external stressors which were putting a lot of pressure on their relationship. So, like any couple, they had moments of disagreement and tension. However, what set them apart was their commitment to actively nourish their emotional connection. And they were a pretty young couple. Oftentimes, when I start seeing couples, they have been married for a long time and they have sat in the negativity for a long time and they're coming in because they are feeling desperate and at the end of their rope. And the difference with Sarah and James is they were willing to ask for help. They had a very humble spirit and they were able to ask for help sooner than, I think, a lot of couples, and so this was such a benefit to them, and so, like I shared with you, I would start their sessions with what is going well, and I remember Sarah.

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At one of our recent sessions, she shared as a positive how she had noticed that. I had noticed that James just looked really stressed after he would come home for work, and there was a lot of pressure going on at work. And so, instead of allowing that strain to linger, as she had done before, she just made conscious efforts to make deposits in their love bank, and so one way that she found to do that was preparing a meal that she knew he enjoyed, greeting him with a warm embrace and creating a safe space for him To unwind and share. James in turn, reciprocated Sarah's kindness, recognizing that she too had a busy schedule and did not necessarily have all the time in the world to prepare this dinner. He helped her clean up the dishes and was thoughtful to communicate appreciation of her efforts, and so this exchange of acts of service became a regular practice for them, and it helped reinforce the idea that the small acts contribute significantly to our emotional connection.

Speaker 1:

Their commitment to active listening was another key element, a way that I saw them make deposits in their love bank. So in our sessions they learn to truly hear each other's perspectives and express genuine interest in the other person's thoughts and feelings. This act of listening made each other feel understood, and it served as a consistent deposit in their emotional bank. As a therapist, I witnessed them celebrating each other's successes, supporting one another during challenges and consistently expressing gratitude, physical affection, laughter, genuine compliments became routine deposits that enrich the relationship, and this helped take them from a negative place to one that felt more positive. The positive sentiments were overriding the negative, so when conflicts arose because they still did they were able to consciously maintain that five to one ratio. They really strive to find areas where they agreed on things and they were able to empathize with each other's perspectives, even if it wasn't their same perspective, and they were able to sincerely apologize when they needed to, taking ownership of their actions. Their commitment to resolving conflicts positively ensured that their love bank remained resilient, providing a buffer during more challenging times.

Speaker 1:

I couldn't be prouder of the progress of Sarah and James, and their story underscores the significance of depositing in the love bank. Their journey reminds us all that a thriving relationship is built on a foundation of positive interactions, genuine affection and a commitment to fostering love and trust. This work, however, did not start outwardly. It didn't start by changing outward actions. It started with a willing spirit and really it started with a humble attitude. It began by creating a healing separation, taking personal ownership, slowing down to regulate their emotions and create a vision of who they individually wanted to be in the relationship, and each one of them reversed, engineered that outcome using the heart scan process.

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So what are the ways that you can build positive sentiments and good feelings in your relationship? How can you make those deposits? What are some of the things that you can do and what is the mindset that those actions have to come from? I like how Gottman talks about the foundation of our relationship, which is our friendship, and he breaks that down into three parts Love maps, fondness and admiration, and turning toward, and so I would summarize that these are the three ways that we can make deposits in our love bank, and I like to apply this to my relationship with God. It's the same concepts that I would used to strengthen my relationship and friendships and in my marriage.

Speaker 1:

So the first one is love maps, and so love maps is just the knowledge of who your partner is, it's feeling known and knowing your partner, and that comes by asking questions, that comes from listening so that you can understand what are the things your partner is struggling with, what are the things that made him happy that day, what are the things that he enjoys in life. And so a lot of times we can take for granted that we know our partner, and yet if we're not hitting refresh daily, we can grow really disconnected, and I think that's even true with our relationship with ourselves. A lot happens in your inner world on a daily basis, and if you aren't staying connected to that, you can become very disconnected. And so you can see this spiritually in our relationship with the Lord as well. If we're building love maps, then we are constantly reading his word, we are listening for what he says and we're asking questions so we can understand it more.

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And though you have the same Bible if you've been a Christian your whole life and you've had the same Bible since you were little, and maybe you've gone to Sunday school and Bible studies and church your whole life as you continue to read God's word, as you continue to be taught God's word, your relationship with God grows and deepens. You find that you can know him more each year, and hopefully that is the case. Hopefully the case isn't that your relationship feels stagnant or you know him less each year. Hopefully, you're getting to know him more and more and as you get to know him more, you realize how much you don't know him and you can strive and long to know him more. And you're also letting him know you. I mean, he sees everything, he knows the number of hairs on your head, but you're communicating and sharing with him what's going on in your heart and in this way you get to know yourself more and invite him to shine a light on what is going on so we can see love maps. We can see that in your friendships, your marriage and in your relationship with God.

Speaker 1:

The second part of making deposits in your love bank is fondness and admiration, and so, spiritually, we can think of this as worship, where you can see where we are lifting up the name of God. We are focusing on his attributes, we are focusing on his faithfulness, the good things that he has done. And we can do the same thing in our marriage, when we focus on what is good and right, what we enjoy about our partner, when we acknowledge things that they have done, that they probably have been intentional to do, bids that they have made to connect, ways that they are there for us, ways that they love us. When we acknowledge those things and we verbalize and we express that appreciation, it reinforces it for ourselves, because we're allowing our brain to scan for what is going well and we're reinforcing that with our partner, that we I see you and I appreciate you and I love you, and that feels good to be affirmed. It feels good to feel seen. And that is something that you can do in your relationship as you make deposits in your emotional love bank.

Speaker 1:

And the third part of building your friendship and making deposits in the love bank is turning toward. Now the opposite of turning toward would be turning away, dealing with things on your own. Turning toward, you are making bids to connect, and so you are making bids to connect with your partner and hopefully they are making bids to connect with you. But you have to acknowledge those bids to connect. Sometimes we overlook them, we dismiss them, we underestimate the value of those things, and so, if you want to make better bids to connect, open your eyes, look for little ways your partner is trying to connect with you, and then you can see the value of that thing.

Speaker 1:

I've said it before and I'll say it again. If my husband is sharing sports trivia with me or talking to me about movies, I will have to tell myself he is making a bid to connect. And then I love that. I like that. I want him to try to connect with me, even though I may not know what to do with that information. What I do with it is I just see that he's trying to connect and so I ask him, like okay, is that a good thing, a bad thing, how do you feel about that? And then I can value that he's wanting to connect with me. And so what ways are you connecting with your partner?

Speaker 1:

If your partner's love language is acts of service, maybe you step alongside them and you help them clean out the dishwasher If they're cleaning out the dishwasher or if they're folding laundry. If your partner likes to watch television and shows, then maybe you're watching some shows with them that they enjoy watching, so that you're sharing that time together and making a bid to connect. So these are some ways that you can make deposits in your love bank, but it is not going to just happen by focusing on those actions. You want to start inwardly. You want to look at how you're viewing your partner, how you're viewing the value of those interactions, so that you feel committed, you feel clear, you feel engaged with the process. You want it to feel authentic for you. And sometimes we do take actions and we don't fully feel them. We don't necessarily feel motivated, right. So I'm sure if my husband helps me clean out the dishwasher, he's not feeling like, oh, this feels so exciting and I feel so loving right now, but he might feel committed, knowing that that's important to me and that becomes valuable for him.

Speaker 1:

So I remember a time in my relationship where the level of stress was high. We had two young children, my husband had had a lot of loss in his life and he recently had lost his mother. We were working with some intensive clients who had a lot of chronic trauma in their life. A lot of them had clinical depression, and so there was a lot of stressors, a lot of demands on each of us individually. And so I know I felt that and there was part of me that felt like we've got to be proactive in dealing with these negative things. Right, I was focused on the negative feelings. That felt like it was there between us, problems that maybe needed to be solved, things that needed to be handled in a different way.

Speaker 1:

But I felt prompted to, instead of focusing on the negative, to ask the question how could I increase positive sentiments and good feelings in my relationship? What could I do? That was gonna make me feel more connected, more loving, and how could we make time for good things between us? How could we protect that time? And so when you start there in your relationship, then you are going to be making deposits in that love bank and so you have something to withdraw from.

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If that tank is depleted and you're trying to just solve problems, if you're trying to problem solve and that account is bankrupt, then you have to start with making the deposit, which I know can be hard. When there is a lot of negative sentiments there, when the negatives overriding the positive, it can feel very hard and challenging to make the positive deposits. And that's where you have to do the hard scan. You have to do some of that hard work so that you can get there. You can generate the thoughts and the feelings that are going to help you take the actions and get some new results. And so if your result you want is to get your relationship back on track, we have to find a new way to think about it. So thank you guys for joining me today. If you guys wanna do more of this work, we are starting the relationship reinvention next month and I hope you can come. I hope that you will be there.

Speaker 1:

This is my coaching group for couples. I have only offered a coaching group for couples one other time before. Last year we did relationship reinvention and it was great. I felt like it went really well and you can go find everything you need to know about it at myhappyvaultcom. Look for relationship reinvention so that you and your spouse can get registered. So, in summary, if you want to get your relationship back on track, make sure that you're making some deposits in your love bank, that you are building your love maps, your knowledge of one another, that you are building fondness and admiration, you're creating a culture of appreciation in your home and that you are turning toward your making bids to connect versus turning away, and that your eyes are open. You see ways your partner is trying to connect. You're not just giving them the cold shoulder or blowing them off or seeing it as unimportant. You're opening your eyes, you're seeing that and you are being responsive. All right, guys, I will see you next week on the podcast, where we're gonna talk about finding your hidden dreams.