Love Languages

Ah...love languages.  We've all heard this phrase but do we really know what it means?  And how important this is in our relationships?  I didn't.  I knew my love languages and Sean's, but until I read The Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman, I didn't know what a big deal this whole business was. 

My primary love language is acts of service.  My secondary love language is quality time. 
Sean's primary is words of affirmation and his secondary is physical touch (typical man! haha). 
Let me just tell you, I suck at words of affirmation. Like really bad. Which means that my husband's "love tank", as Dr. Chapman calls it, can easily run on empty unless I am intentional about affirming him.  To help me (and take some of the awkwardness out of telling my husband every day, "Honey, I really love ______  about you"), I wrote the words "I love you because..." on my bathroom mirror with a dry erase marker.  Each day I write and new message to him. Then Sean started writing them back to me.

Now I'll be honest, although I like to read the little things he loves about me, this is not my love language so it doesn't do for me what it does for him.  But the thing about love languages that I've discovered is that not only do I need to speak his love language to him, but I also need to let him speak it to me...because that, to him, is showing me love.  And I know that if I tell him not to write me these compliments on the mirror because they make me cringe more than woo, it will discourage him from showing me love- in any language. 

I am a big fan of doing things for my family.  I like to cook, and make things that they can use, and do things to make our lives easier.  Sean likes to have a clean house and good meal, but he could care less if I found the perfect way to organize the linen closet.  I also like our quality time to be playing games, or watching a tv show together or just talking.  Sean considers quality time to be hanging out in the same room together.  Like right now...I'm blogging, he's playing his video game.  And to make sure that I don't kick him off anytime soon, every once in a while he looks over at me and tells me that he loves me.  Like I'm not on to him.  But, more often than not, our quality time looks like I think it should.  And that's because Sean also knows that he needs to speak my love language and let me speak it to him. 

There have been times in our relationship where our "love tanks" have run on not just empty, but in the negative.  And that's because we're both the most stubborn people we know.  If Sean doesn't do something that I've been asking him to do (like, um, prime the master bathroom for paint...just a random example...) it's really easy for me to use the thing that makes him feel the most loved against him.  I can tell him that he's lazy and he never listens to me and make him feel like he's not a great husband. Not very affirming.  And then, in addition to not doing my "acts of service", he decides not to spend quality time with me.  So I decide that there won't be any physical touch.  (Don't be pervs....this can be a hug, a back rub or a kiss...not just s-e-x).  But do you see the cycle?  And Sean and I have been on it before.  But almost 5 years in to our marriage, I am learning (yay!) that the best thing to do when he hasn't done something that I've asked him to do is to leave all the supplies on the floor next to the bed so he steps on them when he wakes up remind him how much I love it when he does things for me that I can't or don't have time to do, and what a great job he did with the last project. 

I'm not saying that this can solve all marital problems, but I do know that nothing bad can come of being intentional in making sure each other's "love tanks" don't run on empty.