Tag: love languages

The Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman

I originally put off reading this book for as long as I could, mostly because I kept seeing all the quizzes floating around Facebook offering to “Find your love language!” and the like. Ultimately though, I’m glad I read this book. I think it has more words than it needs, and can pretty accurately be summarized in one sentence. People’s emotional response to actions are often different from yours.

This is obviously a bit of a generalization from the topic of the book, which aims to be more of a relationship self-help book, but I believe it to be quite sound. Chapman aims to show the reader that your expression of love will not be interpreted as “showing love” unless you and your loved one are speaking the same “love language.”

Chapman proposes the following love languages:

• Words of Affirmation
• Quality Time
• Receiving Gifts
• Acts of Service
• Physical Touch

Quotes and Excerpts

“The important thing is to speak the love language of your souse. Seldom do a husband and wife have the same primary emotional love language. We tend to speak our primary love language, and we become confused when our spouse does not understand what we are communicating. We are expressing our love, but the message does not come through because we are speaking what, to them, is a foreign language… Love need not evaporate after the wedding, but in order to keep it alive, most of us will have to put forth the effort to learn a secondary love language. We cannot rely on our native tongue if our spouse does not understand it. If we want them to feel the love we are trying to communicate, we must express it in their primary love language.”

This is one that I think everyone needs to hear, because we are often marketed misconceptions and lies by the “love industry”:
“We have been led to believe that if we are really in love, it will last forever. We will always have the wonderful feelings that we have at this moment. Nothing could ever come between us. Nothing will ever overcome our love for each other… We observe that some married coupes seem to have lost that feeling, but it will never happen to us. ‘Maybe they didn’t have the real thing,’ we reason… Unfortunately, the eternality of the ‘in-love’ experience is fiction, not fact… After studying scores of couples, she (Dr. Dorothy Tennov) concluded that the average life span of a romantic obsession is two years. If it is a secretive love affair, it may last a little longer. Eventually, however, we call descend from the clouds and plant our feet on earth again… What happened to the ‘in-love’ experience? Alas, it was but an illusion by which we were tricked into signing our names on the dotted line, for better or for worse. No wonder so many have come to curse marriage and the partner whom they once loved. After all, if we were deceived, we have a right to be angry. Did we really have the ‘real’ thing? I think so. The problem was faulty information. The bad information was the idea that the ‘in-love’ obsession would last forever. We should have known better. A casual observation would have taught us that if people remained obsessed, we would all be in serious trouble.”

“Research seems to indicate that there is a third and better alternative (to resigning yourself to a life of misery with their spouse, or jump ship and try again): We can recognize the in-love experience for what it was – a temporary emotional high – and now pursue ‘real love’ with our spouse.”

Words of Affirmation

Verbal compliments, or words of appreciation, are powerful communicators of love. They are best expressed in simple, straightforward statements of affirmation such as:
‘you look sharp in that suit’
‘Do you ever look incredible in that dress! Wow!’
‘I really like how you’re always on time to pic me up at work.’
‘Thanks for getting the babysitter lined up tonight. I want you to know I don’t take that for granted.’
‘You can always make me laugh.’

“Verbal compliments are far greater motivators than nagging words.” And this makes sense, right? Just think about you inner B.F. Skinner and operant conditioning. I’m going to be much more motivated to do something if I receive praise for it than if I’m nagged for not doing it.

“The object of love is not getting something you want, but doing something for the well-being of the one you love. It is a fact, however, that when we receive affirming words we are for more likely to be motivated to reciprocate and do something our spouse desires.”

“Giving verbal compliments is only one way to express words of affirmation to your spouse. Another dialect is encouraging words… All of us have areas in which we feel insecure. We lack courage, and that lack of courage often hinders us from accomplishing the positive things that we would like to do.”

Dialects of Words of Affirmation

• verbal compliments
• encouraging words
• kind words
  • “Love doesn’t keep a score of wrongs. Love doesn’t bring up past failures… If I choose to forgive, intimacy can be restored. Forgiveness is the way of love.”
  • “I am amazed by how many individuals mess up every new day with yesterday. They insist on bringing into today the failures of yesterday, and in so doing, they pollute a potentially wonderful present.”
  • “The best thing we can do with the failures of the past is to let them be history. Yes, it happened. Certainly it hurt. And it may still hurt, but he has acknowledged his failure and asked your forgiveness. We cannot erase the past, but we can accept it as history.”
• humble words
  • “Love makes requests, not demands. When I demand things from my spouse, I become a parent and she the child.”
  • “If we wish to love each other, we need to know what the other person wants. The way we express those desires, however, is all-important. If they come across as demands, we have erased the possibility of intimacy and will drive our spouse away.”
  • “When you make a request of your spouse, you are affirming his or her worth and abilities. You are in essence indicating that she has something or can do something that is meaningful and worthwhile to you. When, however, you make demands, you have become not a lover, but a tyrant.”
  • “We cannot get emotional love by way of demand. My spouse may in fact comply with my demands, but it is not an expression of love. It is an act of fear or guilt or some other emotion, but not love.”

“Psychologist William James said that possibly the deepest human need is the need to feel appreciated. Words of affirmation will meet that need in many individuals. If you are not a man or woman of words, if it is not your primary love language but you think it may be the love language of your spouse, let me suggest that you keep a notebook titled Words of Affirmation. When you read an article or book on love, record the words of affirmation you find. When you hear a lecture on love or you overhear a friend saying something positive about another person, write it down. In time, you will collect quite a list of words to use in communicating love to your spouse.”

Quality Time

Chapman defines quality time as “Giving someone your undivided attention… What I mean is sitting on the couch with the TV off, looking at each other and talking, devices put away, giving each other your undivided attention. It means taking a walk, just the two of you, or going out to eat and looking at each other and talking.”

“When I sit with my wife and give her twenty minutes of my undivided attention, and she does the same for me, we are giving each other twenty minutes of our life. We will never have those twenty minutes again; we are giving our lives to each other. It is a powerful emotional communicator of love.”

“I explained the concept of giving someone your undivided attention, not talking to her while you watch sports or read texts but looking into her eyes, giving her your full attention, doing something with her that she enjoys doing and doing it wholeheartedly.”

“Her love language is quality time. You have given her so little time that her love tank is empty. She doesn’t feel secure in your love. Therefore she has lashed out at what was taking your time her mind – your job. She doesn’t really hate your job. She hates the fact that she feels so little love coming from you.”

“A key ingredient in giving your spouse quality time is giving them focused attention, especially in this era of many distractions. When a father is sitting on the floor, rolling a ball to his two-year old, his attention is not focused on the ball, but on his child. For that brief moment, however long it lasts, they are together. If, however, the father is talking on the phone while he rolls the ball, his attention is diluted. Some husbands and wives think they are spending time together when, in reality, they are only living in close proximity. They are in the same house at the same time, but they are not together.”

“Quality time does not mean that we have to spend our together moments gazing into each other’s eyes. It means that we are doing something together and that we are giving our full attention to the other person. The activity in which we are both engaged is incidental. The important thing emotionally is that we are spending focused time with each other. The activity is a vehicle that creates the sense of togetherness.”

Dialects of Quality Time

• Quality Conversation
  • Sympathetic dialogue where two individuals are sharing their experiences, thoughts, feelings and desires in a friendly, uninterrupted context.
  • Many people fall into the trap of suggesting solutions when someone talks about the misfortunes or frustrations of their day. In fact, many people simply want sympathy, to know that someone understands and validates their feelings. We must be willing to give advice, but only when it is requested and never in a condescending manner.
    • I will keep coming back to this notion of emotional validation in further posts, but know that it is central in the framework of Dialectical Behavior Therapy.
  • TIPS:
    • maintain eye contact when speaking.
    • don’t listen to your spouse and do something else at the same time.
    • listen for feelings. Ask your self, “what emotion is my spouse experiencing?”
    • Observe body language.
    • refuse to interrupt.
  • Quality Activities

Learning to Talk

“Quality conversation requires not only sympathetic listening, but also self-revelation*. When a wife says, ‘I wish my husband would talk. I never know what he’s thinking or feeling,’ she is pleading for intimacy… Self-revelation does not come easy for some of us. We may have grown up in homes where the expression of thoughts and feelings was not encouraged but squelched. To request a toy was to receive a lecture on the sad state of family finances. The child went away feeling guilty for having their desire, and he quickly learned not to express his desires. When he expressed anger, the parents responded with harsh and condemning words. Thus, the child learned that expressing angry feelings is not appropriate. If the child was made to feel guilty for expressing disappointment at not being able to go to the store with his father, he learned to hold his disappointment inside. By the time we reach adulthood, many of us have learned to deny our feelings.**”

* Self-revelation is just a synonym for “Self-Awareness”, or more accurately “Emotional Self-Awareness” within the context of the Emotional Intelligence frameworks presented in other posts.
** Within the context of Dialectical Behavior Therapy this is known as emotional invalidation. We are told we should not feel what we are feeling. It results in our emotional responses just becoming stronger and disallowing the development of the appropriate tools to deal with them.

“Perhaps he has reason to feel angry or disappointed, but he has lived so long in the world world of thought that he does not acknowledge his feelings.”

“Remember, emotions themselves are neither good nor bad. They are simply our psychological responses to the events of life*.

* This is a core concept of mindfulness

“Not all of us are in touch with our emotions, but when it comes to talking, all of us are affected by our personality. I have observed two basic types: Dead Seas and Babbling Brooks. The former so called because it receives but it does not give. This personality type receives many experiences, emotions and thoughts throughout the day. They have a large reservoir where they store that information, and they are perfectly happy not to talk. The latter so called because whatever enters the eye gate or the ear gate comes out the mouth gate, and there are seldom sixty second between the two… Many times a Dead Sea marries a Babbling Brook. That happens because when they are dating, it is a very attractive match. If you are a Dead Sea and date a Babbling Brook, you will never have to think ‘how will I start the conversation tonight?’ ‘how will I keep the conversation flowing?’ In fact, you don’t have to think at all. All you have to do is nod your head and say ‘uh-huh’, and she will fill up the whole evening and you will go home saying ‘what a wonderful person.’ On the other hand, if you’re a Babbling Brook and you date a Dead Sea you’ll have an equally wonderful evening because Dead Seas are the world’s best listeners. You will babble for three hours and he will listen intently to you.”

Receiving Gifts

“A gift is something you can hold in your and and say, ‘Look, he was thinking of me,’ or ‘she remembered me.’ You must be thinking of someone to give him a gift. The gift is a symbol of what you thought. It doesn’t matter whether it costs money. What is important is that you thought of him.”

“Don’t wait for a special occasion. If receiving gifts is his/her primary love language, almost anything you give will be received as an expression of love.”

“Physical presence in the time of crisis is the most powerful gift you can give if your spouse’s primary love language is receiving gifts.”

Acts of Service

“By acts of service, I mean doing things you know your spouse would like you to do. You seek to please her by serving her, to express your love for her by doing things for her… They require thought, planning, time, effort, and energy. If done with a positive spirit, they are indeed expressions of love.”

“They don’t necessarily require a lot of time. One man always dreaded the chore of bringing in the garbage cans from the curb at the end of a long workweek… The empty curb was a clear message to me: ‘I was thinking of you. You were with me, even when you were gone.'”

Physical Touch

“Physical tough is a powerful vehicle for communicating marital love. Holding hands, kissing, embracing, and sexual intercourse are all ways of communicating emotional love to one’s spouse. For some individuals, physical touch is their primary love language. Without it, they feel unloved. With it, their emotional tank is filled, and they feel secure in the love of their spouse.”

“Whatever there is of me resides in my body. To touch my body is to touch me. To withdraw from my body is to distance yourself from me emotionally.”

Determining Your Primary Love Language

• What does your spouse do or fail to do that hurts you most deeply? The opposite of what hurts you most is probably your love language.
• What have you most often requested of your spouse? The thing you have most often requested is likely the thing that would make you feel most loved.
• In what way do you regularly express love to your spouse? Your method of expressing love may be an indication that that would also make you feel loved.

Other Thoughts

“Thousands of husbands and wives have been there – emotionally empty, wanting to do the right thing, not wanting to hurt anyone, but being pushed by their emotional needs to seek love outside the marriage.”

“In time, however, we come down from that natural high back to the real world. If our spouse has learned to speak our primary love language, our need for love will continue to be satisfied. If on the other hand, he or she does not speak our love language, our tank will slowly drain, and we will no longer feel loved… After some years of living with an empty love tank, she will likely ‘fall in love’ with someone else, and the cycle will begin again.”

“Few men who suffer from an empty emotional love tank leave their marriage until they have prospects of meeting that need somewhere else.”

“…Fortunately Brent was the benefactor of what I call the disequilibrium of the ‘in-love’ experience. That is, almost never do two people fall in love on the same day, and almost never do they fall out of love on the same day. You don’t have to be a social scientist to discover that truth. Just listen to country music.”