Love Languages

Love Languages

When we first got married we lived in two small rooms in the Sharanpur library in Nasik. Rod in his eagerness to see his new bride settled and happy busied himself in building, fixing, mending and inventing new ways of making the best of the cheapest material. I loved it all but how I longed to just hear him say, “I love you”. When I asked him one day his reply was, “But of course I love you! Look at all the things I’m doing for you”. It took us time to understand that he was loving me in his own love language and I couldn’t ‘hear’ it as it wasn’t mine! All over the world, whatever the culture, love is expressed in five major ways:

The five love languages
   • Physical touch - of affection or acknowledgement
   • Words of love- written or spoken; affirming
   • Time-g planned or spontaneous
   • Gifts- thoughtful and relevant
   • Acts of service - practical and caring

Discovering Your Language
To discover your own love language, do a bit of detective work. Look at how you most enjoy expressing your love; five simple questions may help:

Physical Touch
Do you often give a touch to express love?

Words
Can you express your thoughts well in words, letters, a card, giving affirmation of your love?

Gifts
Do you love buying gifts and seeing the delight on the receiver’s face as they open your present?

Quality Time
Do you enjoy lingering over a cup of coffee, being together or planning a surprise outing or booking a special date together?

Acts of service
How about working behind the scenes, making a needed cup of coffee, putting the special touches into someone’s day?

You may find that all five are important to you; however one or two will certainly give you that “buzz”. That is your primary love language. The way we express our love to friends, family and especially to our husbands or wives is the way we enjoy being loved as well.

Most of us have one major way in which we feel loved. For example, if you feel loved when you are given a gift, you will want to show or demonstrate love in a similar way. The problem is that your partner needs to receive love in their love language, which may be different from yours. What to do?
Discover it!

Rod recognises that words of love are very important to me. When we first discovered this, he found constantly repeating, “I love you” rather monotonous! So instead of telling me, “of course I love you”, he chose to invent phases that were special to us, but meant those three important words, nobody knew what he meant, but I did and that made it all the more particular and intimate. Proverbs 25 v. 11 says, “Like apples of gold in settings of silver is a word spoken in right circumstances”.

A friend of ours recently told us how he is learning to give his fiancé ‘killer compliments’ (words of love with encouragement). She loves it! Specific words of praise and encouragement meant just for her and nobody else. “Your hands are so beautiful and they remind me constantly how caring you are”, “When you said that your eyes were incredibly sparkling, I couldn’t get enough of that look”.

If your partner’s top love language is physical touch, it may not mean a strongly sexual touch but a kindness. Add a little variety to it, when he or she is reading the newspaper or working at home bent down, gently rub his or her neck. Think of it as a comforting act of tenderness. Put your arms around her, backed up with a feeling that says, “I’m glad you are mine”.

Gifts may be very personal too. Flowers spell romance but so does an unexpected gift of your time, a phone call from the office at lunch time, a surprise outing at night, when everyone feels too tired to cook a meal at home. By speaking the love language of giving a gift, you are declaring lovingly, “You matter to me, I have thought about you, I love you”. It may be a way of saying, “I’m sorry, please forgive me”.

Our marriage can become so business-like. We can pour ourselves into our jobs, our children’s education, serving and working in the church, extended family and community needs, so that gradually the ability to communicate love dies slowly, until we feel empty.

Time together may be what you are longing for. Booking into a diary a lunch together; fifteen minutes walking together in the park in the evening; catching the minutes instead of the hours.

Be open minded, experiment, speak your love’s top language as loudly as you can. Pray for creative ideas. Keep one another guessing as to what wonderful new ways of loving are coming around the corner. To some of us, a cup of coffee, just when we need it, the fan being fixed, the broken table leg
mended, the bedroom repainted, speaks volumes. It says, “You care about me, you love me”.

If acts of service are your partner’s top language, get to it now! The greatest enemy here is not lack of time to do these things, but laziness or procrastination. Do it today, this week!

Spice it together
Take time to find out your partner’s love language. Without looking at each other’s paper, write down the list of five love languages as they are listed above and put your own priority order, i.e. 1st, 2nd, 3rd etc. Now do it for your husband/wife. Try not to think too hard. Share together now, both of you, what order you have written. Surprised?! Often a partner is right about the top first love language but unaware about the order of the others. The key element here is to choose to speak in one another’s love language as much as we can. To focus on expressing love in creative ways that means something special.

Spice from the Word
Consider the ways Jesus demonstrated all five love languages. Here are some examples:
-John 1 vs.42-47, Jesus’ encouraging WORDS to both Peter (v.42) and to Nathaniel (v.47).
-Mathew 8v.3, Jesus TOUCHED the leper, a sign of God’s love.
-John 21 v.8, Jesus SERVED as he cooked breakfast for tired, sad disciples.
-John 3 v.16, Jesus GAVE everything for everyone.
-John 6 vs. 31-32, Jesus lived out the principle of spending QUALITY TIME with those He loved.