On Faith Feature: Love Languages

marek-zabriskie-fi

By Marek P. Zabriskie

My wife, Mims, and I have a commuting marriage.  She practices law in Philadelphia, while I lead Christ Church Greenwich.

Each month, I drive to Philadelphia with our Pembroke Welsh Corgi to see her, and she in turn takes the train to Greenwich to see us.  It’s not ideal, but we make it work.

It’s actually made our time together like dating.  We’re intentional about our together time, and we truly value it.  We also speak most nights by telephone to catch up on each other’s day.

Recently, when she was in Greenwich, she cleaned and organized the pantry and together we cleaned the refrigerator.  I had hosted many events at the Rectory, and there was a lot to clean up.

Having the pantry cleaned up is an enduring gift.  Each time I open the door, I think of my wife and her kind deed, her act of service, her gesture of love.

It made me think of Gary Chapman’s book Five Love Languages.  Chapman describes five key ways that people give and experience love:

Words of Encouragement

Gift Giving

Physical Touch

Quality Time

Acts of Service

I give copies of this book as a gift to each couple with whom I do premarital counseling.  Why?  Because this book is practical and learning from it can save driving a marriage into a ditch.

Chapman notes that when we fall in love our endorphins kick in.  Chemicals change in our brain, and we fall under the spell of love.  Unfortunately, the spell wears off within six to 24 months. 

Once it’s worn off, we no longer see each other with gooey eyes or say, “there’s nothing about you that I would change.”  In fact, we can think of lots of things that we would change.

While the spell is on, everything that our beloved or we do seems to register as love.  As we feel it, and we reciprocate it.  But after the spell wears off, sometimes our best intended efforts fail to register as love.  Why is this?

Chapman notes that we speak different languages of love.  One language will come naturally to us, whether it be gift giving, spending quality time, physical touch, words of encouragement or acts of service.  It’s easiest for us to express love in the way that we personally register love.

The problem is when our beloved has a different love language.  We may love giving gifts, but she prefers quality time.  We may perform acts of service, but he may equate love with physical touch.

When we don’t offer love in the way that our beloved registers love, it’s like depositing our work check in someone else’s bank account.  Eventually, when we go to check our balance expecting to find that we have deposited a lot of love in our loved one’s love account, we may be shocked to discover that the account reads “zero.”  Our beloved feels starved for our love.

The longer this goes on, the less our beloved is willing to love us in a way that may experience it, because our beloved is feeling unloved.  Yet, learning to speak our beloved’s love language can transform our marriage and our relationships. 

The same principal applies to friendships and parenting.  Each person often needs to be loved in a different way according to how they receive and recognizes us showing love.  Some appreciate a special gift.  Others appreciate quality time.  Some thirst for words of encouragement.

That brings me back to my wife and cleaning out the Rectory pantry and the refrigerator.  I really appreciated it.  When we were first married, I would not have viewed this as love.  Rather, I equated love with physical touch, quality time and words of encouragement. 

But my wife registers and expresses love through acts of service.  When we were first married, I offered physical touch, quality time, words of encouragement and gifts.  My hugs and invitations to take her out for a romantic dinner on a Friday night didn’t register as love. 

Eventually, I learned that picking up my wife’s dry cleaning, running by the grocery store to get something for our family for dinner and preparing some work for our taxes were ways that she actually experienced me loving her. 

Once I learned her love language, I could “dial in” and deliver love in a way that she experienced it.  This made her more willing to love me in the ways that I registered love.

It’s a simple, but hugely important lesson.  If we don’t learn it, we will emotionally starve those who we truly long to love and whose love we long to receive. 

A clean pantry and refrigerator.  I’m grateful.  My wife loves me.  I look forward to returning the favor with some acts of service that convey love to her.  It may not be my natural love language, but it’s hers, and I slowly learning to speak her love language more fluently.

The Rev. Marek P. Zabriskie is Rector of Christ Church Greenwich

Related Posts
Loading...