At a glance: this is a 14-week study and discussion guide for His Needs, Her Needs by Willard F. Harley Jr., with 101 questions organized by reading assignment. Week 1 is free to read, with no card required.
His Needs, Her Needs by Willard F. Harley Jr. is one of the most widely read and practically grounded books on marriage ever written. Harley's central thesis is both simple and striking: affairs don't happen because people are bad — they happen because needs go unmet. Drawing on decades of marriage counseling experience, Harley argues that every spouse carries an "emotional bank account," and when that account runs dry through neglect, the marriage becomes dangerously vulnerable to an affair. The antidote is not willpower or guilt — it is learning to identify your spouse's most important emotional needs and meeting them with consistent, loving effort. Harley organizes those needs around a revealing pattern: the five needs he finds most common in husbands and the five most common in wives are often quite different, creating a gap that, left unaddressed, quietly erodes the marriage from within. The book's goal is to help couples understand each other across that gap and become "irresistible" to one another — building what Harley calls an "affair-proof marriage."
This study guide is designed for use in small groups or as a personal study companion, working through one chapter per week. The suggested rhythm for each week is: (1) read the assigned chapter before the group meets or your scheduled study time, (2) journal your honest responses to the questions before discussing them with others, and (3) close with prayer, inviting God into the honest and sometimes uncomfortable work of becoming a better spouse. Some questions are straightforward comprehension checks to make sure you've engaged the chapter's argument; others press you toward personal application and reflection. The most valuable conversations will happen when participants move from "I understand the concept" to "Here is where I actually see this in my own marriage."
By the end of this guide, you should be able to name your own top emotional needs and your spouse's top emotional needs, describe the "Love Bank" concept and how it shapes marital vulnerability, articulate how affairs develop — and how they can be prevented — and have a specific, practical plan for meeting your spouse's needs more consistently. Whether your marriage is struggling or healthy, this book and this guide ask the same question: Are you truly meeting your spouse's deepest needs? That question, taken seriously, has the power to transform a marriage.