The Five Love Languages book is designed for couples and is an awesome way to check in with your spouse and see how you can love each other better and in a way that is appreciated. As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago Maria and I come from almost two different worlds and definitely two different cultures with her being from England and me from Tennessee. The love languages book does an excellent job at explaining the emotional love tank and the 5 love languages: words of affirmation, quality time, physical touch, gifts, and acts of service.
In this article there are two things I want us to look at: what is your and your spouse’s love language and how do you keep each other’s emotional love banks full?
If you are interested in finding out what your love languages are, there is a test you can take to help you find out. Even if you feel like you already know what yours is, I recommend taking it again because you may find out that you actually have a different love language than you thought. Once you discover your own love language, you should have your spouse take the test and find out theirs. Knowing each other’s love languages can be crucial in showing your spouse how you love them and showing them how they can care for you.
I will never forget the first time Maria and I sat down and talked about this book and read it together. Maria’s love language is acts of service. She loves to care for people and loves to do things for people. I love to spend time with people and have coffee/tea and talk with them. So when we got married, I thought I was being a good husband by offering to take Maria out to eat a lot, however, she took it as I did not like her cooking. This was not true at all! I was thinking that when she would cook, she spent a lot of time preparing the meal and then by the time we ate and cleaned up, we were so tired that we didn’t want to spend time together. The thing is that we were talking in our love language and not to our spouse.
The other thing I learned from this book is that it is important for me to fill Maria’s emotional love bank (as the book calls it) and that it is important for her to fill mine. Here is an example of what happens when your emotional love tank is empty.
Your alarm goes off late, you get in the shower and it goes cold, then you get coffee as you go out the door and spill it over you and burn yourself. Then you are running late to work and a person almost runs you off the road, making you even more late. You get to work and everything continues to snowball. One after another you get yelled at by clients, co-workers, and then you go home and your wife asks, “did you remember to get the milk?” Then you lose it and say something like “why did you expect me to get the milk?” Why did you respond that way? Because your emotional tank is empty.
But what about this?
You get up on time. You have coffee and read God’s word. Then you get to work early. Someone compliments you and you have a great day at work. Then when you get home and your wife asks if you got the milk, you can say, “oh I am so sorry. I forgot, but I’ll go right now.”
When our love tank is filled, we will respond to things differently because we feel full. Even if the negative things were to happen on the day when my love tank was full, it probably wouldn’t have quite as harsh of an impact because the tank is full. Hebrews 3:13 tells us to “But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called “Today”.” No one needs encouragement more than your spouse. We need to work together in our marriage to encourage one another daily because one little bit of encouragement can have an impact on our reactions to daily struggles and how we treat others.
– David Coggin