How to Better Love Your Spouse
This weekend, only a week and a half from a similar phone call, I received another call about a married for 30+ years friend, whose husband found another, much younger woman for himself. He came home, told her he didn’t love her anymore, and walked out. Unlike the first phone call, this woman is much better off because she has worked outside the home so she has the ability to live on her own without going on public assistance and she does not have young children, thank God.
At the same time I received these calls, I have also been reading a best-selling book given to my hubby & I from our marriage retreat called The Five Love Languages by Dr. Gary Chapman. Typically I hate self-help books because they border on cheesy and tend to simplify complex situations. This book, though, is one of those books that all married couples should read. As a matter of fact, I have a mental list of couples who could benefit from the sound, simple,Biblical-based advice found between the covers. What are the Five Love Languages? Quality Time, Gifts, Physical Touch, Affirmation, and Acts of Service.
Chapman argues that each person has a primary preference on how they receive love and “emotionally feel” love. He also says that we tend to love people how WE want to receive love. So, for instance, a man who needs to hear words of affirmation will complement his wife. Yet she still isn’t happy? What is wrong with her. Turns out, yes she does like those words, but those words are empty to her if her husband doesn’t spend time with her. She is a Quality Time person. And since she doesn’t get enough time with him, she is angry and resentful and instead of affirming him (what he needs to feel loved) she nags him. Over a period of time, and for many couples, years, they don’t like each other and they cannot relate to each other.
Happily married couples don’t tend to look for ways to improve their marriage because they are happy. My hubby & I decided to put into practice the ideas from the book even though we didn’t think we had much to gain since we are happy. We discovered even though we have been together six years, we still have quite a bit to learn about each other. And since we have put into practice the great advice gleaned from such a small book, our relationship has only gained from deeper intimacy.
I have no idea if this type of book can save the above mentioned failed marriages. But I cannot help but think that people do not leave happy situations. I have not met one person who has cheated in their marriage who does so because they feel loved by their spouse. Usually the cheating is a desperate cry for help that backfires terribly on their intentions.
I guess if you want to know your spouse better and want to make them happy, I would recommend this book to you.
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This is a great book. My wife and I read this book while engaged and it has helped us immensely in being able to communicate throughout the three years of our marriage. I’ve also found Chapman’s insights invaluable with not just within our marriage, but also with our close friends.
Good reminder. My wife read it a while back and liked it; I promised to read it then promptly forgot. I’ll have to check it out.
RCM
I prayed last night for your victimized women emailers and generally will include them in the future because I pray for such categories of victims all the time. It is so awful a sin to destroy a 30 year marriage….it makes all of our typical Catholic topics look trivial by comparison..including my topics. Truly awful.
“Hey Nineteen” and “Babylon Sisters” songs by Steely Dan both dealt with this delusion of males that they are younger and further from death by being with a much younger female…..from Babylon Sisters…”my friends say ‘no, don’t go for that cotton candy…son you’re playing with fire’..the kid will live and learn…as he watches his bridges burn…from the point of no return.”
It makes me reevaluate the passage in I Kings about David using a young virgin for a space heater…I’ll give it in the King James version…perhaps the attendants were catering to this same foolishness within David??:
1Ki 1:1 ¶ “Now king David was old [and] stricken in years; and they covered him with clothes, but he gat no heat.
1Ki 1:2 Wherefore his servants said unto him, Let there be sought for my lord the king a young virgin: and let her stand before the king, and let her cherish him, and let her lie in thy bosom, that my lord the king may get heat.
1Ki 1:3 So they sought for a fair damsel throughout all the coasts of Israel, and found Abishag a Shunammite, and brought her to the king.
1Ki 1:4 And the damsel [was] very fair, and cherished the king, and ministered to him: but the king knew her not. ”
It is one of the weirdest moments in the Bible but maybe it does relate to this male delusion wherein the female becomes a magic mirror that makes the man young in his imagination only.