Question: "My husband and I have been married for eleven years. He has a successful business in which he works long hours while I care for our two young children and our home. He usually gives me a special gift for Valentine's Day, but to tell the truth, I would rather just spend a quiet evening with him. I try to explain this to him but he usually becomes hurt and we argue. How can I avoid this problem this year?"
While your husband's gifts to you are intended to express love, it seems that you would gladly do without the gifts in return for some of his undivided attention. Many couples experience similar stress in their marriages. Dr. Gary Chapman believes these tensions have their roots in the different ways we communicate. In his book The 5 Love Languages he states that, "We are expressing our love, but the message does not come through because we are speaking what, to them, is a foreign language." Dr. Chapman explains that our love language is how we understand and share emotional love, and he identifies five of them:
Words of Affirmation
Quality Time
Receiving Gifts
Acts of Service
Physical Touch
Since each of us enters a marriage speaking the love language of the family in which we were raised, we do not always recognize the way our spouse understands or gives love. For example, you may come from a family that shares a great deal of spoken love—: "I love you," "Thanks for doing that," "Great job!" However, you may marry into a family that does not speak their love, but rather shows love through acts of service, such as fixing your car or cooking your favorite meal. As a result, you have a reliable car and a growing waistline, but your ears may long for affirmations and your heart might not feel so full.
When we do not recognize the love that our spouse is expressing we can feel empty and unloved, while our spouse may feel frustrated and unappreciated. This combination of miscommunication and uncomfortable feelings can drive a wedge between two otherwise loving people.
There is hope! You can learn to speak each other's love language. As a matter of fact, as Baptized members of God's family you have a common "family of origin" and speak a common love language, one that your Heavenly Father has first spoken to you. "This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins" (1 John 4:9-10).
In His love language God speaks forgiveness and reconciliation. He speaks His Word of affirmation in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. He gives you His undivided, quality time as you turn to Him in prayer. You receive His good gifts of forgiveness, salvation, and eternal life in Baptism and His body and blood. How more could Christ serve you than to carry your sins and to die for you? What is more, God shares His physical touch through the loving touch of all believers, the body of Christ.
How can we better express and understand our love for each other? First learn how God shows His love to us. Spend some time together listening to and studying the Scriptures. Then, explore the five love languages together, in a couple's Bible Study or with a Christian counselor. Just as Christ's sacrifice healed our broken relationship with the Father, so too can our sacrifices of love for our spouse bring us into a more loving relationship.
It may sound or feel foreign to you to share love in the way that your spouse best understands it, however it will be loving to do so and it will strengthen your marriage. Remember, learning any language takes time, but with practice and encouragement you'll soon be speaking the love that each of you longs to hear, as well as the love of Christ to one another. "Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another" (1 John 4:11).
Amy Rast, MSW is Lead Counselor--Covenant Partners at Cross Connections Counseling and Training, and is pursuing a Masters in Deaconess Studies at Concordia Theological Seminary. She happily speaks words of affirmation and enjoys quality time with her husband of 23 years. If you have questions for Cross Connections, please go to "Ask a Counselor" found on our web site at CrossConnectionsCounseling
