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Real Answers™
jd33
Copyright: © ©2006 Jill Darling
500 words

SPEAKING RIGHT “LOVE LANGUAGE” MAKES FOR GREAT MARRIAGE

By: Jill Darling

Norm gets home from work before his wife, Jean, and starts preparing supper.  Most nights the meal is just about ready when Jean gets home. Afterward, he usually washes the dishes. Throughout the week, he folds clothes after they come out of the dryer, vacuums the house and does the yard work.  

Most women would love to have their husbands do what Norm does. Despite his efforts, though Jean didn't feel fulfilled and described their 35-year marriage as empty, lacking a connection. 

In his book, The Five Love Languages, Dr. Gary Chapman talks about how Norm and Jean, like many couples, fail to connect with each other in giving and receiving love. Many spouses think their actions are meaningful to the relationship, but don't realize how much they miss the mark in truly fulfilling the needs of the other.  

What speaks volumes to you may be meaningless to your spouse, Chapman says. It's like making deposits in a bank for years only to realize that you've been depositing the money in the wrong account. The balance says zero and you wonder why. Once deposits are made to the proper "love bank" account, then you reap the rewards. 

Chapman lists the five love languages:

1. Words of Affirmation

2. Quality Time

3. Receiving Gifts

4. Acts of Service

5. Physical Touch 

Norm's love language is "acts of service," so he assumed his homemaking skills would make Jean feel loved. Although Jean appreciated what Norm did, his helpfulness didn't meet her longing to spend "quality time" together with him in meaningful conversation.  

Norm, in turn, longed for Jean to do some of the things he had been doing for her to make him feel loved. Once they understood each other's love language and made adjustments, they both felt fulfilled and their relationship blossomed. In fact, their ho-hum existence was transformed into a second honeymoon. 

The Five Love Languages, an international best seller with over three million copies in print, has radically transformed thousands of marriages. The book includes a self-test which determines a person's love language so that couples can better learn how to specifically meet their partner's needs. 

I gave this book to my son, Greg, when he and Faith married five years ago. They read a lot of marriage books before and after their wedding.  Greg said this book, along with The Act of Marriage by Tim and Beverly LaHaye, was the key in making their relationship what it is today.   

Faith's love language is "physical touch" while Greg's is "acts of service. Though Faith appreciates Greg helping around the house, it's his hugs, kisses and tender touches which make her feel loved. She fills Greg's love bank by cooking healthy meals that he enjoys and tending to a chore that Greg would normally be responsible for.  

Husbands and wives are designed to complement one another. Once you understand your partner's love language and start "speaking" it, you're on the way to a satisfying marriage.  As the apostle Paul encourages "let everything you do be done in love."

"Real Answers™" furnished courtesy of The Amy Foundation Internet Syndicate. To contact the author or The Amy Foundation, write or E-mail to: P. O. Box 16091, Lansing, MI 48901-6091; amyfoundtn@aol.com

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