in the red?

Have you ever heard of the "love bank" philosophy/analogy?

Well, I have been thinking about this the today. Last night Zach and I were going to spend some time together after the kids were in bed-talking about our week and such and so forth. (He started taking a class to get some letters after his name and it is going to take a lot of time and be a little crazy.-like three nights a week for three hours, plus study and tests, plus young mens kind of crazy.) So this time was important to both of us.

We email my brothers who are both on missions on Sunday. Zach sends them a sports update and I just email whatever I want. :) Anyway, he finished and I was working on my post for today...and then I had to email and I doddled and he went to bed without us even having our nice Sunday evening time. All because my priorities were out of order.

Talk about a withdrawal! I came to bed feeling bad. I climbed into bed and what does he do? He wakes up enough to wrap his arms around me and hold me before falling back to sleep. While he slept I thought of how lucky I am to be married to such a patient and forgiving guy! And I also thought about how I could make it up to him. That is where the love bank thing comes in.

Some withdrawals are little and some are big. We are best off realizing them for what they are and making deposits to build our love accounts back up.

If you have been married for a while then you have probably experienced a time or two that you were both on each others nerves, easily irritated or even hot headed with each other. These are times when you both can realize that there is a huge need for a deposit, or two, or three. :)

The apple for the day? Figure out what those deposits are! What does your spouse need and love? What do you need and love? Start making deposits today!

Maybe your love bank levels are low or are maybe in the red. You might not even feel like you can talk to your spouse about this...now would be a good time to try and experiment. Make some serious deposits. See what they do.

Sometimes when things aren't going the way we might want, it is hard not to be selfish and say that "they" need to put forth some effort too. This is true- they do. Be the first though.