I've read that book, A (probably 17 years ago, so I could see it being dated.) In fact, H and I met some very good friends when we went to a His Needs, Her Needs seminar. We did a follow-up group book study with them afterward. I thought it was a good book at the time, even purchased a copy for a friend that was getting M'd. Then we continued with his next book, Love Busters.
It does make things confusing, because it does seem contradictory in some ways. There's also the reality factor of "how it is" versus "how it should be." Human beings are naturally selfish, so whether it should be or not, M's tend to develop into a tit-for-tat situation. That's really what he's describing when he talks about the deposits and the love bank and being overdrawn.
One of them (possibly the second book) also says that you're not supposed to do recreational things without your spouse, because then you're making happy memories without them instead of with them. It stated that you already have a ton of unpleasant things that you have to do with your spouse (bills, cleaning, diapers, etc.,) so doing the pleasant things with them is needed to balance that out. So you should spend your recreational time developing things you like to do together. Otherwise, all your spouse gets from you is all the ugly. Also makes sense in a way; H had a huge problem with it. I can tell you in our case, developing our individual interests contributed significantly to our demise, among other things of course.
The one thing I did pull from Passionate Marriage that I really appreciated was that the author acknowledged that "love" and intimate relationships are unique to humans and fairly new in our evolution, and therefore, a bit of a cr@pshoot. Like the different styles of learning, there isn't a one-size-fits-all approach that works for everyone.
