It's Monday and this evening my husband and I are doing a Couples Class at our church. Today's topic is "The Five Love Languages" by Gary Chapman. Have you heard about it?My husband and I read the book together about 5 years ago and we loved it. At the same time we went on a couples retreat where the focus was to get to know eachother's "love languages". It became an eye-opener for us both. Even though we had been married 10 years at the time, we had very different ways of communicating our love for one another.
According to the book, The Five Love Languages: How to Express Heartfelt Commitment to Your Mate, Dr. Gary Chapman began his quest to find the ways in which couples attempt to communicate their feelings to one another.
According to the book, The Five Love Languages: How to Express Heartfelt Commitment to Your Mate, Dr. Gary Chapman began his quest to find the ways in which couples attempt to communicate their feelings to one another.
In his search, Chapman found that people generally express themselves in five ways:
1. Words of Affirmation
2. Quality Time
3. Giving and Receiving Gifts
4. Acts of Service
5. Physical Touch
The "Love Tank" in Relationships:
Dr. Chapman also discusses what he refers to as a "love tank" that has a system of deposits and withdrawals. When a person feels loved, he or she is receiving a deposit. When that same person feels unappreciated, he or she is being withdrawn from.
Too many withdrawals can leave someone with an empty tank. And if your tank is empty you will find it hard to express love for your partner. The problem is that you are speaking two different languages. If you express your love in a manner that your mate doesn't understand, he or she will not realize that you have expressed your love at all. The book focuses on how to better speak and understand the unique languages of love and effectively express your love as well as feel truly loved in return.
On a personal note I can testify that discovering that my husband said "I love you" many times each day without me actually hearing it, opened up a whole new line of communication between the two of us. He also started to understand that I had certain needs that had to be met for me to feel loved.
I recommend the book if you would like to start focusing on how to communicate your love for your mate. You can order it here. It's a very easy read. So easy that you can skim through it in a few hours - but that is not the point. I think the best thing is to read it together. Read one chapter and then talk, talk, talk... 
The next couple of days I will give a brief summary of each of the languages. If this topic interest you, please come back and visit me.
The next couple of days I will give a brief summary of each of the languages. If this topic interest you, please come back and visit me.
12 comments:
That is very interesting I must say. People always can learn.
Have a nice evening
Hey Dreamgirl
Not only have we read the book we too own it and also have been on a weekend conference through our church.We found this book to be one of the most informative books we have studied.
Gary Smalley's books are very good too,based on the same idea of understanding your mate through his /her communicating.
Your post is very well done.
Gracie
I will have to check this book out.
Can't wait to hear more.
Hi! So very nice to meet you in the blogosphere.
I agree that is a wonderful book, I've read it a couple times and it helped me in learning my own 'love language' and in identifying others language as well.
i think i may have to take a trip to the library!
thanks for visiting my blog :o)
Thanks so much for stopping by!
I have heard of the 5 love languages, and, just like in every relationship, it's definitely my husband and I need to keep working on.
Hei vennen,
boka er på norsk også, er den ikke?
Klemmer
great post. very interesting!
Yes, Nanni, the book has been translated to norwegian. If you want to borrow it, I'll let you have mine:-)
Ooooh, I love this sort of stuff!! Looking forward to finding out more!
Oh, we went through this study just a couple of months ago at our church! It's a great one. =0)
Thanks for dropping by my little corner of the world on my blog. It's always great to meet new bloggy-friends!
Erica =0)
I've heard of this book, but never read it. I'm glad to hear you've had such a positive experience with it. All I know after 9 years of marriage is that good communication is essential!
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