Ann and Glenn's marriage

Ann and Glenn’s marriage is presented as a test of whether sustained, attentive expressions of love can alter a relationship marked by years of criticism and emotional depletion. The six-month experiment gives Ann a practical course of action even though Glenn refuses counseling: she tries to communicate in the ways he may best receive, asks for feedback, and watches for evidence that her efforts are reaching him. The reported improvement is substantial, but the counseling account carefully distinguishes hope from certainty; Glenn’s response is not promised in advance.

Background and Conflict

By the time Ann seeks help, she has spent ten years in a marriage in which, according to her account, Glenn has continually criticized and condemned her. Her feelings of love have been worn down, her emotional energy depleted, and her self-esteem nearly destroyed. She has begged him to attend counseling and pleaded with him to read a marriage book or listen to a tape, but he has refused those overtures. As the counselor describes his position, Glenn believes that he has no problems and that Ann is the one at fault.

The counseling narrative places this impasse against a broader account of how partners can miss each other emotionally. A person may express love sincerely in a familiar way yet fail to make the other feel loved if that expression is not the other person’s primary love language. In the counselor’s account, a mismatch between what one spouse offers and what the other recognizes as love can leave both partners’ emotional needs unmet. Ann later identifies this pattern in their marriage: they had been in love before marrying, but after that early intensity faded, they never learned to communicate in each other’s love language.

Ann’s question is not simply whether the marriage can be improved; she doubts that she can love Glenn again after what he has done to her. The counselor understands the question as arising from deep hurt. He recalls that, in his own marriage, demanding and condemning behavior had fed hurt, anger, and hatred, while learning to discuss differences without condemnation and to speak each other’s primary love language helped reduce those negative feelings. He also marks the difference: unlike Ann and Glenn, he and his wife had both been willing to learn and grow. Ann’s husband has not joined that effort.

The Experiment and Its Terms

The proposed experiment begins with a model of emotional need: when a person’s emotional love tank is empty, the absence of love is experienced as pain, and positive feelings toward a spouse may be difficult to access. The counselor suggests that learning each other’s primary love languages could meet that need and make positive feelings possible again. Ann says this explanation makes sense of her experience; she believes that both of their tanks may have been empty for years.

The counselor sets a six-month objective: Ann will try to speak Glenn’s primary love language consistently, on the hypothesis that his emotional need may begin to be met and that he may then reciprocate. Crucially, the initiative rests with Ann because Glenn is not working on the marriage. The counselor presents reciprocation as a possibility, not a guaranteed result: people can reject love or walk away from it, and no counselor can predict an individual’s behavior with certainty. The experiment is therefore framed as a test of a hopeful principle rather than a means of controlling Glenn.

The first practical step is for Ann to tell Glenn that she wants to become a better wife and is open to suggestions. She is advised to treat whatever he says, whether positive or negative, as information rather than a prompt for argument. The proposed opening is meant to signal that something in the relationship is changing without requiring Ann to claim feelings she does not have. The counselor distinguishes such a chosen act, intended for another person’s benefit, from falsely professing affection.

For the first month, Ann is to focus on the counselor’s guesses that Glenn’s primary love language is physical touch and his secondary language may be words of affirmation. The plan includes giving him verbal appreciation for positive qualities and stopping spoken complaints for that month, recording any complaints in a personal notebook instead. It also asks her to take more initiative in physical affection and sexual intimacy. The advice is tied to the circumstances Ann had reported: intercourse had occurred only once or twice in the previous six months. The account presents this as a specific part of the proposed plan, not as evidence that Glenn had already changed.

At the end of each month, Ann is to ask Glenn how he thinks she is doing and accept the answer without arguing, whether he responds sarcastically, dismissively, hostilely, or positively. If he gives positive feedback, she is to wait one week and then make a specific request connected to her own primary love language. The timing matters to the experiment’s method: first she observes whether her efforts register with him, and only after an encouraging response does she ask him to do something that would help her feel loved.

Change Over Six Months

The first month offers little encouragement. Glenn is flippant and treats Ann’s effort lightly. After the second month, however, he gives her positive feedback. During the final four months of the experiment, he responds positively to almost all of her requests. These stages distinguish an initially dismissive reaction from the later pattern of acknowledgment and responsiveness.

Glenn never attends counseling, so the change does not arise from his participation in the sessions. He does listen to some of the counselor’s tapes and discusses them with Ann, and he encourages her to continue counseling. Ann does so for another three months after the six-month experiment ends. His limited engagement with the material and his encouragement of her continued sessions qualify, but do not erase, the earlier refusal that made the experiment one-sided at its outset.

As Glenn’s attitude and treatment of Ann change, her feelings for him also change drastically. The account thus describes movement on both sides of the relationship, but by different routes: Ann undertakes the planned effort, while Glenn begins to respond and becomes more open to the material. The reported outcome is not that every earlier injury disappears or that the couple’s difficulties are fully resolved; it is that a sustained change in their interaction accompanies a marked change in Ann’s feelings.

Meaning and Limits of the Outcome

The counselor interprets the case through a principle of chosen love. In the religious framework he applies, Jesus Christ’s teaching about loving enemies and doing good to those who hate them becomes a prompt to consider whether loving action can begin even where warm feelings are absent. The counselor does not equate such action with a power to force another person’s response. Instead, he says that kindness may tend to invite kindness, while acknowledging that another person remains free to reject it.

That distinction shapes the experiment’s significance. Ann’s actions are presented as deliberate expressions of care rather than proof that her pain is unreal, that Glenn has already changed, or that she can guarantee a particular outcome. The counselor’s initial hypothesis is supported in this instance by Glenn’s eventual feedback and willingness to respond to most of her requests, but the narrative preserves its qualification: the result cannot be promised for every marriage.

The story closes with a practical adaptation for other couples. A spouse can state a desire to meet the other person’s needs better, ask for suggestions, infer a likely love language from longstanding complaints if none are offered, and focus on that language for six months while requesting monthly feedback. When improvement is acknowledged, a specific request can follow; if it is not honored, the guidance is to continue expressing love rather than treat refusal as proof of inevitable failure. Ann and Glenn’s marriage supplies the example behind that counsel: change begins with one partner’s initiative, but its hoped-for continuation depends on the other person’s independent response.