Love Language in Marriage - Lisa U Maki
One of the biggest battles that women face is their emotions. Men will never understand women in this arena. You have to be a woman to know exactly how it feels. Being emotional is not just the issue here. It's all about how women's brains are wired. They are very analytical and want everything explained. This is the reason why they can't just brush things off.
My being a woman is the reason why I am even writing this article. If not for my emotions and my analytical nature, I wouldn't have discovered the reason for my doubts over my husband's love for me. It is my being a woman that even helps me process everything that I am learning, which is benefiting my marriage a lot, and of course, which pleases God.
I want to share something with you about my marriage, something that I know a lot of women are going through. I want to share this not just to the wives, but to the husbands, so that they can understand their wives and even themselves better. I want to share this to single men and women, as well, so they will be better prepared for their future marriage.
If there is one great thing that endears me to my husband, it is his constant "I love you(s)" that I don't get tired of hearing. He says it almost every hour, and even several times in an hour. He says it when we go to bed at night, when we wake up in the morning, when I walk past him, when he calls me up on the phone, and in so many different instances. There are more than a million reasons for me to feel so confident of my husband's love. Yet there are times when I doubt this love, times when I ask myself, "Does he really mean it when he says he loves me?"
These feelings of doubt occur when... he is with other guys and he seems oblivious of my presence, when he gets so engrossed with what he is doing and he is not paying attention to me, when I talk to him and his mind is somewhere else, when I try to express myself to him and he doesn't even have the patience to listen, more so to understand where I'm coming from.
I remember one incident when I tried expressing to him my doubts. He assured me of his love by showing me some physical love. He kept saying, "I love you". At that moment, I was still hurting, and I couldn't even respond to his physical touch. Since I didn't want to hurt him, I just went with the flow. As a result, I got hurt more.
For a while I couldn't explain what was going on inside of me. I felt there were two voices battling with each other in my head that went like this... "How can he just shift from being so sweet to me to ignoring me just because he has his friends here"? "Come on, Lisa, he is entitled to have his friends over. Besides, he is not doing anything bad. You are just jealous". "I am not jealous. I just don't understand". "Admit it, you are just so hungry for his love and attention all the time". "No, I'm not"!
Since I couldn't explain what was going on and what I was going through, I kept everything to myself, thinking it was the best way to deal with it. On the contrary, it created in me a feeling of detachment from my husband, which led to more feelings of doubt and uncertainty. I tried processing all these emotions and prayed for God to reveal things more clearly to me. Not long after, I discovered Gary Chapman's "Love Languages". God surely used this man, through his book, to help me understand myself and my husband better.
According to Dr. Chapman, there are five different emotional Love Languages: Words of Affirmation, Quality Time, Gifts, Acts of Service, and Physical Touch. Each person has his own love language. It can be a combination of two. This love language is a person's way of expressing love and also appreciating and understanding love.
I took the test and I convinced my husband to take it as well. This gave me a clearer understanding of our similarities and differences when it comes to giving and receiving love for each other. I ranked highest in quality time and next in words of affirmation, my husband ranked highest in both words of affirmation and physical touch.
Now let me explain the meaning of these scores in relation to what I have already expressed in this article.
So there I was, doubting my husband's love just because he was spending time with his friends or he was not paying attention to me. My feelings were valid. Since my love language is quality time, this was what my heart and my mind were familiar with as a means of expressing love. This justifies why I doubted my husband's love when he wasn't spending quality time with me, or when he wasn't paying attention to me.
On the other hand, my husband's misunderstanding of my doubts was very clear. Since his love language is words of affirmation, he knows that his constant expression of "I love you" to me is a clear sign of his love. No wonder he says that I am unappreciative when I doubt his love. And because his other love language is physical love (which is very common in men, by the way), he thinks that by expressing his love physically to me, he can further assure me of his love.
From this love language, I realized that even our concept of God's love is based on our love language. I've always been very intimate with God. My way of expressing my love to Him is by spending quality time with Him, undivided, just Him and me. Truly, God knows our love languages fully well which is why He expresses His love to us in this love language.
This brings to my mind that just like my Father, I should love my husband in his love language. Instead of me expecting my husband to give me quality time, I should give him more words of affirmation and physical touch, since those are his love languages. It is not so much for me but for him. Love is not self-seeking, as 1 Corinthians 13 says.
1 Cor. 13 also says that Love is kind. I can express this kindness to my husband in his love language. I should affirm him not only of my love for him but of how good he is as a husband to me. I should speak encouraging words to him every day.
How about you? What is your love language? What is your spouse's love language? If you still don't know, I suggest that you find out. Dr. Chapman's Love Language book is available in bookstores, libraries, and on the internet.
My purpose for this article is not to promote Dr. Chapman's book, but to share with you how amazing God is for using our own hurts and frustrations to lead us higher into His love.
So if you are going through something difficult in your marriage right now, use it as an opportunity to draw closer to God and for Him to reveal His ways to you. Don't just brush off your feelings or give up on your situation. In the first place, God is allowing you to go through that so He can increase your capacity to love as you conform to His standard of love.
And if you are single and waiting to be married, learn from what I am sharing with you. Marriage is a lifetime commitment. You and your future spouse are two different people with different sets of issues. Once you come together, all these issues are brought into the marriage. Your waiting time is a time of preparation for this kind of life and commitment, a relationship that should be founded on, and sustained through God's love.
Lisa Maki is a Professional Writer, Author (Unveil Me), and founder of a Bible-based online magazine for women (God'z Gurlz). She offers Resume Writing services, Website Content Writing, Business Letter Writing, Business Plan Writing, etc. You can find more about her services at http://lisamaki.webs.com/ Read more of Lisa's articles on her online magazine at http://godzgurlz.com/ Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Lisa_U_Maki Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/6661722