Measuring Love In A Relationship

Rob Bell shares about performing a wedding for a couple who were broken by their previous relationships. Both the bride and groom had been devastated by divorce and adultery.

Determined to move beyond their past they stood before cheering friends in a field of flowers and exchanged their vows. They let balloons fly as a symbol of releasing their past. It was a day no one would ever forget. Unfortunately, three years later they were divorced. As Bell explained, “Life is messy.”

But what if there were a way to quantify love, a method to track our progress and measure the quality of our relationships? What if we could consciously stack the deck in our favor in spite of the messiness of day to day living so that we might experience the love we were intended to?

Following is one of the most helpful principles you can follow in this very regard, and the great thing is that it works for any relationship, be it husband and wife, boyfriend and girlfriend, parent to child or friend to friend.

Though various relationship experts share this information under different names, I first learned it as a marriage counselor from a man named Gary Smalley who calls it the “love bank.” I believe that if you truly implement these ideas the quality of your relationships will be transformed.

Simply put, imagine your partner has a bank account, and every time that you do something loving you make a deposit of five dollars. In the reverse, each hurtful thing you say and do is a withdrawal of five dollars.

When a couple first begin dating and fall in love they make a tremendous amount of deposits in one another’s accounts. They share their heartfelt feelings and take care to meet one another’s needs with complete abandon. In six months they could easily have deposited over a thousand dollars.

Then one day a hurtful comment leads to an argument and words get said neither intended to say, and a number of deductions get made. However, because of the strength of the previous deposits, even after a few withdrawals are made they still have a sizable amount of money in their individual love banks, thus they have a healthy relationship.

However, if they continue to make more withdrawals than deposits, in a year or two or ten they could easily find their love banks are in the red. Inattention or failing to meet one another’s needs as they did in the beginning quickly deplete stocks.

Or consider scenario number two, in which a couple continues to make more deposits than withdrawals, purposefully caring for one another and meeting their partner’s needs the way their partner wants.

In five, ten or twenty years this couple will have built up a tremendous reserve of money in their love banks, thus their relationship will really grow over time and become more fulfilling and rewarding the longer they are together.

The question for every couple that wants to have a thriving relationship is simply this; are we making more deposits than withdrawals? So stop and consider your accounts, consider ways to make more deposits, and remember the words of Jesus, “It is better to give than to receive.”