His Needs, Her Needs for Parents: A Book Review

I have been taking the kiddos to the library lately and checked out a book called His Needs, Her Needs for Parents by Harley.  I had heard of His Needs, Her Needs:Building an Affair Proof Marriage in Sunday School.  I have never read the original book, but picked up this one in hopes of learning something new to apply to our marriage with very busy kiddos.

His Needs, Her needs is basically about the fact that all of us have very similar emotional needs in relationships but when men and women are asked to rate the importance of these needs they are very different.  Our priorities are completely different...in general, of course, as there are always exceptions.  According to Harley, women's highest needs include affection, conversation, family commitment, etc.  Men's highest needs include sexual fulfillment, recreational companionship, and an attractive spouse, etc.  He describes everyone as having a love bank that your spouse is either making deposits or withdrawals in, due to their behavior or lack of fulfilling your needs.  He talks about love busters as being things that make withdrawals in our emotional bank accounts, such as disrespect, selfish demands, angry outbursts, etc. and therefore we make our spouse lose their love for us or become less lovable.  He also suggests something called the Policy of Joint Agreement where basically both you and your spouse are supposed to be enthusiastically in agreement before a decision can be made.  So that is a very brief description of His Needs, Her Needs and the for Parents version he does go over all of this again in a shortened way but then talks about what happens when you add kids to the mix.

I have some big problems with a lot of the things Harley talks about in the book.
1.  First of all, I am a statistics girl...He says that almost always, each gender lists these needs in a particular order.  How many people did he ask? What were the variations in answers? etc.  Maybe he goes over this in the original book, but I like my evidence not just someone making huge assumptions.  Plus I think that you should ask your spouse what is most important to them and not make assumptions yourself.
2.  I think that both you and your spouse coming to enthusiastic agreement on EVERY SINGLE DECISION is completely UNREALISTIC.
3.  He suggests that you spend quality time with your spouse in order to fulfill a wife's need for conversation and a husband's need for recreational companionship...okay, sounds good.  He suggests 15 HOURS!!  Then in order to make sure that you are being a good parent and fulfilling a wife's need for family commitment and a husband's need for domestic support you should spend another 15 HOURS as a family spending quality time together.  He had rules for this to: couple time is completely without kids and sex does not count.  Family time is focused quality time...pretty sure going to the movies together would not count.
4.  Also, he alludes to the dangers inherent in having a hobby that does not include your spouse.  You should not have a hobby that your spouse is not doing with you.  Quit all those hobbies that the other person doesn't like and choose all your interests together...What?  Say What?
5.  The Love Bank thing sounds good, but I think that I would be obsessing about making sure that I was making deposits so that Levi would continue to find me lovable...doesn't sound healthy to me.  Sounds codependent.
6.  He has a very cynical view of the possible success of blended families.  I have seen many blended families prosper...to be so negative is not helpful.

So what good came from reading the book...cause I always try to find something that I can use.
1.  It is very interesting to see how men and women think and feel differently.  I am not sure that I learned anything new, but a reminder that my husband has different primary needs than myself is helpful.
2.  The Love Busters and Love Bank seemed overcomplicated for what it was, but I gleaned a little information from it.  Don't be rude, selfish, disrespectful, or annoying.  Got it.  Do things for my spouse that will fill his Love Bank...have sex, do fun stuff with him, cook dinner.  Got it.
3.  15 HOURS! I just can't get over this one...Okay, I understand that he is trying to get you to spend more time together, which I would love.  You don't want to become passing ships and wake up one day and have nothing to say to each other.  But this guy surely doesn't have three children, right?  Then I read his run down of his time...8 hours for sleep, 8 hours for work, 1 hour for drive time, to him leaves plenty of time for our quality time.  Here is the problem or problems: Levi works more than 8 hours a day.  His drive to work is an hour so his total commute is 2 hours...hey, it is better than the four he was doing before we moved.  And meal time and childcare alone takes up most of the rest of the day.  I talked to Levi about this guys time requirement, and after he got over the initial shock of thinking this guy has lost his marbles and surely my lovely wife does not think this is possible, he saw the merit in being more intentional about spending time together.  We decided that we could try for 7 hours with the occasional week of a whopping 10...go us!  He could also see that being intentional about spending quality time with the kids is important.  That one is a lot easier for us as we do a lot as a family.  We can very easily meet the 15 hours there.
4.  Be careful when enjoying hobbies that don't include your spouse to guard yourself from getting too close to someone of the opposite sex that enjoys the same hobby as you...completely agree.  Don't leave yourself open to temptation and opportunity.  I think it is completely healthy to have a hobby for yourself, but I think you should carefully balance those with hobbies that you and your spouse can enjoy together.
5.  He says you should talk about your views of child rearing before you have kids.  I say, just understand that once those kiddos come along that some of your best laid plans will be thrown out the window and you and your spouse will learn to make kiddo decisions on the fly.  Cause you know...before you have kids you believe that YOUR kid will never be THAT kid that is throwing the fit in Target or having a meltdown in a restaurant.   Good luck with that.  But talking more about kiddo issues...good idea...got it.

So there you have it.  My first book review.  So if my choice is skip it, read it, buy it and give it to all your friends, too:  I say skip it.