Love Busters: Protecting Your Marriage from Habits That Destroy Romantic Love [Hardcover]

Willard F. Jr. Harley (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1, 2008

How spouses treat each other has a tremendous bearing on the success and failure of marriage. In this completely updated and revised edition of Love Busters, Willard F. Harley, Jr., helps couples identify and overcome the most common habits that destroy the feeling of love, including selfish demands, disrespectful judgments, angry outbursts, dishonesty, annoying habits, and thoughtless behavior. Harley also explains how to resolve common marital conflicts such as career choices and financial planning.
You can't eliminate conflict altogether, but once these Love Busters are eliminated, conflicts can be resolved with love and grace. With Harley's expert guidance, couples will be able to avoid those behaviors that tear a marriage apart and focus instead on building their love for each other. This companion to His Needs, Her Needs and Fall in Love, Stay in Love is perfect for pastors, counselors, and couples.

Editorial Reviews

From the Inside Flap

Is the honeymoon over?

Are you losing the love you once felt for each other? According to Dr. Harley, "After couples get married, they usually develop habits that destroy their love for each other. I call those destructive habits Love Busters. And as long as Love Busters are tolerated, love doesn't have a chance."

With this insightful book, you and your spouse can learn to avoid the six most common Love Busters that may have gained a foothold in your marriage:

• Selfish demands
• Disrespectful judgments
• Angry outbursts
• Dishonesty
• Annoying habits
• Independent behavior

Once you throw out these habits, your love for each other can be restored and your conflicts more easily resolved.

From the Back Cover

Are you losing the "chemistry" you once had?
Is sex becoming a burden?
Do you bring out the worst in each other?
Are you arguing a lot more lately?
Are you growing apart?

Then you need Love Busters. Marriage expert Dr. Willard F. Harley, Jr., identifies the six Love Busters that pull marriages apart and shows how you and your spouse can learn to avoid them.

You will see that once Love Busters are eliminated, conflicts over friends and relatives, career choices and time management, financial planning, children, or sex will be much easier to resolve.

The strength of your marriage depends on the passion you share for each other. So stop destroying the feeling of love and discover, instead, how to build your love with care and with time.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Revell; Rev Exp edition (May 1, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0800718941
• ISBN-13: 978-0800718947
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.4 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #8,151 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Dr. Willard F. Harley, Jr., is a clinical psychologist and marriage counselor in White Bear Lake, Minnesota. He is best known as the author of His Needs, Her Needs; Love Busters; Five Steps to Romantic Love; and Give and Take.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One of the Best, May 25, 2008

By 

Da_Bad_Cop (Chicago) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Love Busters: Protecting Your Marriage from Habits That Destroy Romantic Love (Hardcover)

I bought this book years ago and have given it away ever since. The update version is even better and is IMHO one of the best marriage books out there. In fact you can not go wrong with any of Dr. Harley's books but a must to have are His Needs Her Needs and Love Busters. Dr. Harley gives principles for guiding a marriage into harmony and explains how to use these principles to feed or deprive love. He moves on to explain how to use the same principle to address and rectify almost every issue you'll ever face together by showing the most common injuries that hurt your mate. I've read hundreds of marriage books and this by far beats 99% of them.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Useful insights, helpful information, December 17, 2008

By 

Victoria K. Moffet (Oregon) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Love Busters: Protecting Your Marriage from Habits That Destroy Romantic Love (Hardcover)

A wonderful book, full of insight and guidance. It really helps you see both your partner's conduct, and your own, from a different perspective - one unencumbered by emotions and baggage. You begin to understand the reasons why we act and react the way we do, and why things bother us so much - for example, why we can easily disregard an offhanded remark from a colleague, but rip up our loved one for the same thing. Contains helpful strategies for identifying, and hopefully changing, patterns of behavior (habits) that subtract loving feelings. Highly recommended.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Instructive, wise and entertaining!!, October 3, 2009

By 

Joyce Åkesson (Sweden) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Love Busters: Protecting Your Marriage from Habits That Destroy Romantic Love (Hardcover)

There is a proverb in Arabic which says: "After the month of honey is over, the month of onions start".
What does a married couple do in order to avoid such a sad prophecy? One of the advices that Willard F. Harley, Jr. offers in his book is that each person should place more importance on mutual enjoyment and less on tiresome commitments. Through numerous examples he explains the interactions between the two persons that cant trigger positive or negative behaviors.
The aim is to be able to keep the romance going. The lessons to learn are to focus on the value of compromise, deal with criticisms, manage one's temper, appreciate honesty, learn how to deal with financial conflicts and avoid annoying habits and manipulative and erratic behavior.
This is an instructive, wise and entertaining book.

Joyce Akesson, author of Love's Thrilling Dimensions and The Invitation