Chapman’s languages are ‘Words of Affirmation’, ‘Quality Time’, ‘Receiving Gifts’, ‘Acts of Service’ and ‘Physical Touch’.
Basically, different people feel optimally loved when it is approached in a certain ‘language’.
If your husband craves the physical touch or sex, as the core way of you demonstrating your love for him, then try to understand and speak his love language. For, no matter how much he speaks Physical Touch but you answer in Acts of Service, you will remain wondering, “What haven’t I done for that man…!”
Yes, polish his shoes, starch his clothes, cook his meals and even pay all the bills in the home, but as long as your husband does not get any physical activity from you in terms of great sex, he will seem to not appreciate you enough, and he may seem incapable of speaking your own love language, which could be Acts of Service.
Yet the flipside of that coin is true too; some wives invest so much in the Physical Touch dialect, but totally ignore the Acts of Service love language that could sound more poetic to the husband’s heart.
Or if your wife speaks Quality Time, why are you spending all your free time with friends and other family members, but never her? Acts of Service (providing, building her a beautiful home, getting her a new car) may go unappreciated when you are never there, because well, that is the primary love language your wife understands.
The Christmas break is coming, and you will ferry her with everybody else – like you have done every Christmas season for the last 10 years – to the country home to be part of an even bigger crowd, without asking if she would rather go away with just you and the children this year, to speak her language.
When they say there is a communication breakdown in a marriage, it may not be that you are not speaking to each other at all; you are just speaking different love languages, even as those languages are all delivered in a local dialect you both understand well.
Do you emasculate your husband when he really lives for hearing Words of Affirmation from you? Many men love to feel that they are ‘The Man’, especially from their wives. And when that fails, a man whose love language is Words of Affirmation will subconsciously gravitate towards people who speak to him in the language he understands.
That could be his secretary, a colleague…someone who has mastered the art of making him feel adequate. In response, he speaks that person’s own love language; it could be Acts of Service, Receiving Gifts, Quality Time or Physical Touch. And all that could lead to amazing sex outside his marriage. Fact.
“At the heart of mankind’s existence is the desire to be intimate and to be loved by another,” Chapman writes. “Marriage is designed to meet that need for intimacy and love. That is why the ancient biblical writings spoke of the husband and wife becoming ‘one flesh’. That did not mean that individuals would lose their identity; it meant that they would enter into each other’s lives in a deep and intimate way.”
Ironically, during dating and courtship, couples tend to speak one another’s love languages fluently, but then get selective amnesia once the wedding is done. Remember that Christmas you came up with an excuse not to join the rest of your family in Ntungamo? Where were you, again?
Remember how you tapped into her need to be spoilt with gifts and dates in swanky places and spared no expenses to deliver on that front? What happened?
Remember during courtship when you understood his love language of Acts of Service, and cleaned, organised him, took his mother to hospital when he was busy and cooked your way into a wedding? Are you still that person?
I have loved this book greatly. It is available on Kindle too. I would strongly recommend it for all married couples struggling with that “our love is gone, our sex relationship is dead” dilemma.
Learn each other’s love language and start speaking properly.
carol@observer.ug
