Love Languages Will Change Your Marriage

Love languages will change your marriage. That’s what we discovered when we intentionally applied the concept in our marriage. It’s no secret that George and I are opposite in so many ways (but that can be a good thing!). In the same way, we express our love in different ways and we feel loved with different actions.

Have you heard of love languages before? If you have, skip this paragraph. If you haven’t, seriously check out Gary Chapman’s The Five Love Languages. It’s totally relevant for anyone, not just people in romantic relationships. Chapman explains that there are five ways in which we receive and show our love: through quality time, acts of service, words of affirmation, physical touch and gifts.

Our Love Languages

My love languages are quality time and physical touch. I feel loved and secure when I spend quality time with my husband. When we have adequate time together to just be, I feel like our relationship is thriving. I also like to be physically close with him – hugs and kisses, arms around the waist, legs draped over his, you get the idea. Physical closeness reflects emotional closeness to me. George’s love languages are acts of service and words of affirmation. He really appreciates when things get done – a cooked meal, a clean home, and boy does he blossom when he gets verbal encouragement.

Love Languages In Action  

I’d known about love languages since I was in grade school and we have shared our love languages with each other since we were dating. But I don’t think we realized how seriously we needed to be loving each other in consideration of love languages. As we look back, we can vouch that most conflicts in our relationship were because of a misunderstanding or neglect to demonstrate love with respect to our love languages.

Now The Secrets Come Out!

We both score a whopping 1 out of 2 on one another’s love language meter.

George, being a natural acts of service type of guy, can’t help but clean the house and putter around rather than sit back, relax, and soak up some quality time with me. Throughout our dating years and early on in our marriage, I would feel frustrated and distant when he did that. I felt unloved when he seemingly prioritized doing things above spending time with me. On the other hand, he’s a natural at PDA, perhaps too much in the opinion of some. Although it’s pretty annoying to receive kisses from an unshaven face, he meets me where I’m at by showing me physical touch as I’d like.

Since becoming a wife and mother, I’ve become quite adept at taking care of the family and home. Cooking the meals, getting the groceries, and running the errands – these are things George really appreciates. However, I’m well aware that I am slow to encourage him. George would often feel hurt or discouraged when I don’t intentionally affirm him with my words.  I admit I need to work at taming my tongue, I am quick to speak my mind and often the words that come out are more critical than not. I am working on two things: criticize less and encourage more.

Concluding thoughts

Not recognizing and acting upon our knowledge of love languages could’ve been detrimental to our marriage over time as we wear each other out. I’m not sure there is a particular bible verse to hang this idea of love languages on. However, we do know that biblical love involves selfless giving (John 3:16). For example, if words of affirmation really touch George, if he interprets them as being most demonstrative of my love for him, I would gladly give him that gift. Our relationship is far from perfect but as we serve each other with willing hearts, God works in our relationship to make it flourish.

What is your/your partner’s love language? How have you sought to love each other? Tell us below!