Gifts: a little goes a long way

Every time my mom comes to our house she has something with her.  It could be an magazine article that she

thinks one of us will like, some clothes for the kids that she got for a GREAT deal at a thrift store, bananas she got on sale at Marc's, or some other this-or-that.

I guess I was used to it, since it's my mom after all.  Beth, though, was often puzzled by the odd assortments accompanying my mom's visits.  After a while, we realized-my mom loves bringing little gifts.  Honestly, sometimes, even now in her 70's she will physically jump up and down because she's so excited about a great find she has brought over.  This is the heart of a person with gifts as a primary love language.

Like we've mentioned before, each language has dialects.  Gifts might be odds and ends like my mom, or it might mean wrapped presents, or crafts, or flowers, and so on.

Does your spouse always bring things to you or leave things in your lunch box?  This is his or her way of saying "I love you."  Remember to see it that way, especially if you don't share that language.

In fact, this may be a source of conflict for some couples if gift giving includes spending money.  It may be worth creating a budget for your gift-giving spouse.  This way you can acknowledge that it is important enough to budget for, but also has some agreed-upon limits.  Don't forget, to budget or plan for it for you too.  If your spouse is giving lots of gifts, it might very well mean that she also wants to receive them, and will truly feel love when she does.

Acts of Service: house projects can turn you on!

Long ago, in a galaxy far, far away Beth and I didn't have kids!  It's hard to remember that time!  One memory does stick out, though.

I had come home after a long day at work to find Beth in the basement.  She was really in a peppy

mood too.  You see, she had organized and cleaned our oh, so cluttered space.  It truly was a big undertaking.  I could tell she was really proud of it as she showed me around what she had done.  "Way to go!" I thought.

I don't know exactly when she finally told me this, but she was a bit disappointed.  She had done all this for...me.  Me?  I didn't get it.  She thought this would really be an awesome way to do something sweet and loving for me.  This was an early indication that, first of all, my love language was anything but acts of service, and, more importantly, that Beth's love language had a dart sticking right into the bullseye of that "acts of service"!

This confused me a great deal as a young husband.  Love and touch were, to me obvious ways to express love.  Heck, isn't that what you do, especially when you want to turn a girl on?  You romance her with words and with romantic touch.

Oh!!!  Those were MY love languages!  (I was starting to get it!)

I honestly had to take language classes on this one because I didn't see how cleaning a basement or hanging a picture on a wall would make my wife feel loved, let alone romantic, but I was wrong.

I still don't feel love this way myself, but I've learned to help Beth out, do nice house projects, or even just fix things around the house.  I've trained my brain to remember that this is one of the best ways to drop love deposits in her bank account and, surprisingly, it even stokes the home fires too!

Quality time: more than words can say

"I love you!"
"You're so great at that!"
"I appreciate everything you do!"

For some people, this puts them on cloud nine.  For some others, this is like white noise from a radio in between stations.  Not that they don't like it per se, but if that's it, it feels hollow.

It's not uncommon for a guy who is not a big words of affirmation guy, to think, "I appreciate the praise, but what I really want is for her to go biking with me."

It might also look like this: a wife who enjoys making love with her husband, but who still feels low on the love-meter because he rarely takes time to sit down with some coffee and just talk to her.

These are examples of people whose love language is quality time.  This language, like the others, has many dialects.  That means that quality time can look very different to different individuals.

Here are just a few of those dialects:

-participating in a sport together
-having intimate talk time
-watching TV, movies, plays, or concerts together
-going for walks
-working on a project together
-playing together with the kids
-reading a book together in bed

The list can be as varied as there are various kinds of people.  If you're a quality time person, analyze yourself.  What counts as "quality" time for you?  In other words, what kinds of activity leave you feeling loved and valued?

Once you figure those out, make sure to talk with your lady or your man and work out a way to make it happen regularly.

Physical Touch: Don't caress in public!...at least in 1938

This 1938 newspaper dating suggestion is pretty funny.  Oh, how times have changed.  What dating couple does not
express familiarity in public these days?  And, for certain, most of us don't consider "any open show of affection" as "bad taste" (within reason).

What's funny is that, though, we expect it from dating couples, many of us drop this open affection after being married for a while.

Why does this happen?

Our experience with couples shows us that it often is a difference in love languages.  Often one spouse feels and gives love physically naturally.  The other spouse often expresses and receives love in another way.

The trouble is this: the non-affectionate spouse WAS affectionate while dating and even early on in marriage.

Two suggestions:
1. The spouse who feels loved by physical touch in public (and at home) needs to express to the other what this provides for them.

This is not nagging.  This is explaining how receiving touch makes you feel emotionally as well as how it makes you respond, then, to your spouse.  Since your other half doesn't feel this way naturally, you have to explain how it makes you feel.

2. The other spouse needs to learn a foreign language.
We each speak different languages in love.  To one person hand-holding is like saying "I love you."  To another if you don't actually say "I love you," hand-holding doesn't rate.  One person's love language is physical touch.  The other's is words of affirmation.  There are many forms of love languages.

The point is, that if you're the spouse who doesn't naturally speak physical affection, you'll need to do what people do when they learn a foreign language: learn how it works and practice speaking it, even when it feels awkward to you.

The goal, of course, is that if you want your spouse to understand your love, then you've got to learn to speak his or her language.

Words of Affirmation: a hole in your heart shaped like words

When my mom was a young girl in the 1950s she was a top-notch student.  Sharing her straight A report card with her mom, though, was a very deflating experience.  My grandmother never praised her.  My mom was so desperate for affirmation that she made it a habit to take her report card to show to a friend's mom who would lavish her with adulation!

If you can relate to any part of this story, you are someone with a "words of affirmation" primary love

language.

This is not some self-absorbed means of boosting your ego.  Your heart is shaped to be filled with words, and almost nothing else can fill up that spot.

If you grew up with a parent or parents who neglecting this love language, you have probably become painfully aware of your need for it.  On the other hand, if you had parents who spoke it well,  you probably felt very loved, and may even not realize how crucial it is to your sense of wholeness.

Either way, the man or woman you married, if your relationship is at a healthy place, wants to love you, but if he or she doesn't speak words of affirmation readily,  you will need to verbalize your need.

Explain what it does for you when they say "I love you" or verbally praise the work that you did or what you did in bed that really revved their engine.

Don't ask for affirmation as an act of nagging, but as a way to create motivation for your spouse to speak love in the way you hear it best.

Once you have that conversation, hear me saying via the mysterious internet: "Good job!"  

Does it ever feel like you and your spouse speak different languages? Well, you are!

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.