Most of us have a bank account. And generally, we like to keep that account in a positive balance. When we deposit money into it, the balance grows, and when we withdraw from it, the balance declines. What happens if we withdraw more than we have… we likely end up overdrawn, paying more interest or maybe just told NO by the bank.. purchase declined. I think we generally understand how that works!
I wonder how many of us realise that when it comes to relationships we have something very similar – a love bank account. We generally have a different account for different people, but for the sake of this article let’s keep our focus on the person we are in an intimate relationship with.
Consider this, you meet, you start dating and you make a ton of effort to impress and show what a great person you are and convince them you might be suitable partner material (presuming that’s what you want to be!). Each time you do anything nice, say anything nice, show admiration, affection or fondness to this person, you are depositing in their love bank. The more you do, the more you deposit and we all know how we feel when our bank account is growing! In the early days that’s easy… you are on best behaviour.
So are they, presuming they also want to impress you. So you both end up with sizeable deposits in each others account, and as the balance hits certain levels, perhaps the biggest balance you’ve ever had, you start to consider this person might just be the one.
This very concept is probably why Tony Robbins often says ‘if you do what you did at the beginning of a relationship there will never be an end’ because at the beginning of a relationship you focused on filling up your partner’s love bank.
All good.. until that horrible moment when you relax, consider the work to be done, take your foot off the gas so to speak and return to your ‘business as usual’ state. Work becomes a priority, you decide it’s time to return to all the hobbies and friends you maybe did and saw less off during the dating phase, maybe you take less care of yourself and your appearance, or you just reveal your true colours which are slightly different from who you were when you were dating. And with that change comes a shift in the account balance.
Firstly, you stat to deposit at a much slower rate, because you are no longer doing all the things you once did.
Secondly, you find yourself causing a withdrawal at a greater rate too, every argument, every criticism, every broken promise etc becomes a withdrawal to a no longer growing balance.
What happens next is interesting.
In the best case scenario, what happens next is simply that your balance in your partners account slowly runs down towards zero, and maybe theirs in yours does too… as you both pull back from putting in the effort and focus your energies on ‘life’. So you end up in a relationship that many consider just the norm when you have been together a while, and nothing more than is to be expected etc etc.
In a more common scenario, not only is your balance rapidly declining, BUT, someone else is or are (might be plural!) making deposits here and there. So now we are heading towards a bigger problem, because as someone else is making deposits into your partners love bank, and you are withdrawing, the critical level is reached when their (this other person) balance overtakes yours. Danger. At this point, it would be reasonable to expect your partner is already dealing with a whole load of thoughts as to whether this other person is better suited for them, maybe is already engaged in an emotional or physical affair with them. Or maybe, while your balances are roughly equal your partner is in a state of absolute confusion feeling as if they love both of you! That’s messy isn’t it….?!
So what we can we do if we are aware of this… how could we ensure that there is no need for our partner to be opening new accounts with anyone else?
Well, quite simply, keep doing the things that created deposits, and stop doing the things that create withdrawals 😊 Relationships don’t have to be tricky.. BUT they do require work!
I’ve lost count of the number of people I speak to who are probably going to counter that whole argument with ‘but I gave them everything, I did everything for them’… etc etc. And they feel frustrated, confused and quite frankly helpless because they feel like they have tried everything and it is still not working, the ‘money’ is flowing out not in.
So.. to them I would challenge that perhaps they have not tried everything, and perhaps they didn’t give their partner everything that their partner wanted. There’s a big difference between giving everything that we think they want, and giving everything that they actually want.
If that leaves you wondering how on earth you are going to know what the difference is, you might be wise to get some Relationship Coaching… it’s a simple, fun and effective process for getting all of this figured out, and getting the deposits flowing freely once again…