What an eye-opener!
We've all seen families, probably live in one, where the love message just is not getting through very well. One spouse is sure that just being there and doing the usual is expressing love, while the other one wants meaningful conversations and quality time spent doing fun things together. Another one may splurge on gifts and be generous to a fault, but is resisted for not being able to verbalize his or her love.
Gary D. Chapman, Ph.D., who teaches in churches, and directs marriage seminars throughout the USA, and regularly counsels married couples, has thought these things through, and boiled it down to five basic love languages that we speak.
Often, however, the ones we marry do not speak the same love language, and mis-communication happens so often that many dispair and give up on their marriage. So Chapman, in his counselling began to teach people to discover each other's love language and to make efforts to speak to their spouse in the language they best understood. He tells remarkable stories of marriages rebuilt through this, when they were about to break up.
Although he focuses on marriages, and only mentions almost in passing in the last chapter, that this can be applied to children, I'm sure these principles can be applied in many other relationships. Marriage is just the most obvious place where the need is most evident.
Naturally, many will speak or receive love messages in more than one language, but our efforts to get through to someone we love, if we approach them in their best love language will be richly rewarded. Nor is this so hard to learn!
The five love languages are;
Quality Time
Words of Affirmation
Gifts
Acts of Service, and
Physical Touch
This most recent edition of The Five Love Languages, has a couple's study guide, so that it can be worked through as a team, or used in a small group.
Chapman is the author also of Toward a Growing Marriage, Hope for the Separated, and Building Relationships.
Ruth Marlene Friesen
The Responsible One
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