I’m sure you’ve gotten plenty of advice on love, whether it be from your mom, your best friend, a complete stranger, or the Internet. It’s common to log onto Facebook or Twitter and see articles or quizzes that your friends have posted that seem confident in telling you how to treat your partner.
Have you ever thought about how generic those top ten lists are? How could one list work for every person reading the article?
It’s not to say that some of the articles already written aren’t helpful. It’s just that not every person responds to the same stimuli, and it is important to figure out how both you and your partner respond to different aspects of love. Over the next few blog posts, we will take a look at Gary Chapman’s book The Five Love Languages–How to Express Heartfelt Commitment to Your Mate.
Chapman believes that people speak different love languages. Here is an example of what he means by this: maybe your love language and your partner’s love language are as different as German is to Japanese. It doesn’t matter how hard you try to show your love in German if your partner understands only Japanese. If you and your partner don’t try to learn each other’s language, you will never understand how to love each other.
Maybe your partner requires words of affirmation or physical touch whereas you would rather spend quality time with him/her or receive an act of service (by act of service, I mean maybe you feel most loved when your partner cleans up the kitchen or brings home the gallon of milk so you don’t have to run out). As Chapman says, each partner has to be willing to learn the others’ love language in order to be an effective communicator of love.
Here are a few things we will be talking about in the coming posts: What is loving behavior? What comes after the euphoric, obsession stage of the relationship (and reality sets in)? What does long lasting love require?
If you can, try to pick up a copy of the book and read along. Each chapter has a study guide at the end of the book, and it might be helpful for you and your partner to go through together.
If you have any questions about today’s blog post, don’t hesitate to contact Reka by phone at 402-881-8125, by email at reka@omaha-counseling.com, or via Twitter or Facebook.
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photo credit: Brandon Christopher Warren via photopin cc
