I grew up learning German, but never quite got the hang of it. With a dad from Germany and my extended family still living there, German was important to learn. Unfortunately, I never got past a basic level.
So when my Oma from Germany would call us and I "talked" to her on the phone, I didn't understand much. She may have been expressing wonderful, touching feelings for me, her grandson, but all I heard was the rough tones natural to the German tongue.
I wanted to express interest and love for my Oma, but without much language ability in German, I was stuck with stock phrases and bad grammar.
This is a perfect allegory for problems many of us have in marriage.
We all feel love in certain ways-typically in one (or a mixture) of these five:
Words of affirmation
Physical touch
Quality time
Acts of service
Gifts
That's our "love language," a concept developed by Gary Chapman in his groundbreaking book The Five Love Languages. It's built in to us. Naturally, then, we give love that way too, because we assume that everyone speaks our language.
And then we get married...to someone who probably speaks a different love language or, at the very least, a different dialect of a similar one.
So here we are loving and loving (in our language), but if our spouse has a different love language they feel like we're not loving them at all. He's speaking German and she's speaking English!
Understanding this concept of the 5 love languages honestly transformed the way Beth and I reacted to each other. Over the next 5 weeks we'll explore each one of these different languages.
To start off, here is a fantastic short video that illustrates the 5 love languages without any words. Check it out. It's really worth it.
The 5 Love Languages Trailer from Dr. Gary Chapman on Vimeo.
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