If you're married, if you feel loved by your spouse, life is beautiful. But if you've lost it, then where are you going to start to rediscover it?
It's not in telling them, you need to be doing this and you need to be doing that. No, it's in asking those three questions can revolutionize your life. So you go back to day one of our marriage 44 years ago. I was convinced that I am going to build the greatest marriage and greatest family ever.
I thought that too. I wanted to. And then we got married and I realized I have no idea. I had no idea. I had never seen it. I didn't know how to do it, but we had a heart that wanted it.
Yeah, but I got so scared because I'm like, I don't know what to do. I grew up in a divorced home. You grew up, I thought your home was fantastic. My parents were great. They were married over 70 years, but it wasn't a Christ centered home.
And I wanted that and I didn't know what it looked like. We wanted a healthy home and we've got the guy with us today. Because every person listening wants that whether we came from it or not, we want to build that. So Dr. Gary Chapman, a beloved friend of family life today, is back to talk about your book's called Five Traits of a Healthy Family. Gary, welcome back. Well, thank you.
It's great to be with you again. That story you just heard from us. I mean, and people, if they don't know who you are, they're not alive. Because Mr. Five Love Languages Language, you've got a PhD.
That's why we call you doctor. I mean, you've written how many books? I don't know. Over 50.
Don't even know. Yeah, we're on number three. So we're way behind you. And Gary, maybe some people have heard your story, but take us back to the beginning of your marriage. Because the first time I heard that, I had no idea.
Yeah. So take us back there because I bet a lot of our listeners haven't heard this. Well, we had a similar experience, to be honest with you, to what you just shared. Because we were both Christians and I had known her my whole life. We grew up in the same church. I dated her best girlfriend in high school. She broke up with me when I went off to college. Three years later, I started dating Carolyn that I eventually married.
I was in love with all those high euphoric feelings and we were going to have the greatest marriage the world had ever known. And nobody told me, first of all, that the average lifespan of those euphoric feelings that we call being in love is two years. That's average. That's average two years. Some a little longer, some a little less.
Average two years. And we had dated seriously for two years before we got married. So I came down pretty soon after the honeymoon. And then we had conflicts and I didn't dream we'd have conflicts.
You're in love. You know, whatever she wants is fine with me. And so we ended up arguing and I knew I was right. She knew she was right. We tried to convince each other and we raised our voices. I remember one night we got into an argument. It was pouring down rain outside. In the middle of the argument, she walked out the front door into the rain and I thought, man, this is bad.
When a woman walks into rain, it's bad. So, yeah, we had we had a really hard time looking back on it. I think God was using that and did use that to give me empathy for people who are struggling in their marriage. Because I thought if we were Christians like we were at that time, we were both committed and we had all those problems. Man, you know, I can be empathetic with people that have problems. So, you know, God used it. But it was a hard, hard time.
I mean, how did you dig out? How long did that go? Well, it went on real long, really. And not only did I lose the euphoric feelings, then I got negative feelings toward her. And then I started thinking I made a mistake. I mean, and then I got mad at God because I said, I prayed before we got married. Don't let me marry her if she's not the right one.
And you let me do it. And so I'm getting mad at God. And the other factor was two weeks after we got married, I enrolled in seminary to study to be a pastor. So here I am studying to be a pastor and I'm miserable in my marriage. And I'm thinking to myself, there is no way I will ever be able to get up and preach hope to people and be this miserable in my marriage. But what revolutionized it really is I said to God one day, I know I don't know what else to do. I've done everything I know to do. It's not getting any better.
If anything, it's getting worse and I don't know what else to do. And as soon as I said that, there came to my mind a visual image of Jesus on his knees, washing the feet of his disciples. And I heard God say, that's the problem in your marriage. You do not have the attitude of Christ toward your wife. It hit me like a ton of bricks and I just wept.
I broke down and wept. And I said, forgive me with all my study of theology, I've missed the whole point. And then I said, please give me the attitude of Christ toward my wife.
In retrospect, it's the greatest prayer I ever prayed for my marriage because God changed my heart and gave me a desire to serve her. And three questions made it practical. And when I was willing to ask these three questions, my marriage began to change.
Simple questions. Number one, honey, what can I do to help you? Oh, game changer right there. Did you just tell my wife?
I just told you I really didn't know about my marriage. Oh, game changer. That's the first one. What can I do to help you? Second question. How can I make your life easier?
Oh. How can I make your life easier? Honey, can you keep the emotions down a little bit? And the third question, how can I be a better husband? And when I was willing to ask those questions, she was willing to give me answers. And so I started doing those things and it didn't turn around overnight.
But within three months, she started asking me those three questions. What can I do to help you? How can I make your life easier? And how can I be a better wife?
We've been walking this road a long time now. We've been married 62 years. Now she says she doesn't know how that's possible because she's only 49. I told her the other day, I said, you know, Carolyn, if every woman in the world was like you, there'd never be a divorce.
Why would a man leave a woman that's doing everything she can to help him? And my goal through these years has been to so serve her that when I'm gone, she would never find another man to treat her the way I've treated her. And I believe this is God's intention.
God did not ordain marriage to make people miserable. He made us for each other. And if we do it God's way, serving each other, we both become winners. In the early years, we were both losers.
We shot each other and we stayed wounded most of the time. But then you become winners and then you can turn and bless the world using your individual abilities, you know, to help other people. That's one of the first pillars or traits you call them of a healthy family is serving. These are simple but hard questions to ask.
What would keep someone from asking those questions? A selfish heart. And that's where all of us are.
That's where I was in the early days. Selfish. You know, I want my way.
My way is the right way. And love is the opposite of selfishness. But the good news is we choose our attitude. We don't choose our feelings. We choose our attitudes. And so if we choose an attitude of love, it's an attitude of service.
Because Jesus said about himself, the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve. If we have an attitude of love, then we will serve. What I'm trying to do in this book, Five Traits of a Healthy Family, is to help people who in our generation don't even know what a healthy family looks like. I'm saying that one of the traits of a healthy family is to be an attitude of service on the part of the husband and the wife.
And it can start with one or the other. Like it started with me in our marriage. But then we also, we're serving our children, and then we're teaching our children how to serve each other and how to serve us. That service is a big deal in our family. And in a healthy family, that attitude of service will permeate the family. So wherever you are in the journey, if you're already married, then you ask yourself, who has an attitude of service in our family? And if nobody does, then why don't you start with yourself? Say, God, give me the attitude of Christ toward my wife, toward my children, if you have children. It can start anywhere, any juncture in a family. We can always take this step to begin to move in a positive direction.
I mean, you look at those three questions you just said, and so often we do the absolute reverse. How can you help me? How can you serve me? How can you make my life easier? How can you make me a better man, a better woman? And that's just, like you said, it's selfish.
It's got to be Jesus transforming your heart or you'll never get there. And my response would have been, why don't you ever help me? Why don't you make my life easier? And when you say, how can I be better?
I'd be like, you have made me worse. I mean, that's selfish as well. You're putting your eyes on your spouse thinking the reason we're not doing well is because of him.
You can go both ways. So to be the first to bow, it's really, to me, it's how do you coach somebody to do that when their answer is going to be, yeah, but my wife. You don't know who I am.
My husband does nothing. I don't want to do that. I'm going to wait till he makes the first move. What do you say? Well, you can wait a long time.
That's a good answer. If I'm talking to a husband, I'm saying you be the man to lead. If I'm talking to the wife and her husband won't come, I'm saying you take the start. It's hard to reject a spouse that's serving you. That's a magnet.
You're drawn to that. I had a young man say to me one day, he said, Gary, the first month we got married, my wife served me breakfast in bed. It took me a month to get up the courage to tell her that I don't eat breakfast. It's just hard.
It's hard to turn away from service. So this whole thing of serving, you know, it's so important and teaching our children to serve. I remember when our kids were 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, those years right along in there.
We have a boy and a girl and they're four years apart. In the fall in North Carolina, the leaves fall. And so I would get the two kids in the car with the rakes in the back of the car, drive through the neighborhood and look for yards where the leaves had not been raked. And I would knock on the door and say, hi, I'm Gary Chapman and we live down the street.
And I'm trying to teach my children how to serve other people. And if you don't mind, we'd like to rake your leaves for you. And they would say, say what?
And I would repeat my little speech. And then they would say, oh, I will pay you to rake my leaves. I mean, I've been looking for somebody to rake my leaves. I said, no, I don't want money. I'm trying to teach my children how to serve other people.
I just want to do this for you. I never had anybody that wouldn't let us rake their leaves. Did your kids ever get mad about that?
Like, oh, Dad. No, they loved it. They loved it.
And the part they really liked is when you get them all in a pile, you jump in the pile. So you had fun doing it. Oh, yeah, it was a fun thing.
It was a fun thing. And I talked, we talked about before how we're going to help this lady or this man, you know, and so. And now our two grown children both have an attitude of service. Our daughter is a medical doctor. She delivers high risk babies.
She loves what she does. Our son for years has worked with people on the street, you know, and it just. And really, when you think about it, imagine what would happen in our country if every Christian had an attitude of service. Yeah. You know? There wouldn't be enough pews to hold the people coming to our churches. You're right.
They wouldn't be there. You're absolutely right. Yeah. If everybody in their circle of influence were just reaching out to serve people.
Yeah. Gary, for young families, like you gave us that one example. Let's say you have, you know, you're tired and you've put in a long day of work and now I have to teach my kids to serve. Talk to that mindset. And even if you have like a two, four and six year old, like where does this start?
How can I get that mindset? Yeah. Not only in myself, but my kids. Yeah. I think when they're little like that, you help them serve each other.
What's that one? The one that's a few years older than the little one. Let's help him put his toys up or let's help him or her make her bed rather than you just doing it all. You're getting them to help the younger ones along the way.
That's good. And then they're seeing you serve your wife and you talk about it. You talk about it in the family. In fact, when they're a little older, you can say after the dinner at night, let's everybody share one way that you serve somebody else today.
And so the little Johnny says, well, I did this or if he's in kindergarten, he might say, well, Mary's pencil broke and I took it to the teacher and she gave her a new pencil. And all the family says, yay. And then daddy tells something he did to help somebody and mother does the same thing.
It can be in the family or out of the family. But what we're teaching them just by having that little report time is our family's all about serving other people. This is what life is about, serving other people. You had that mindset as a young man, even in your ministry and discipleship. Where'd that come from?
Yeah. You know, I don't know that my parents consciously ever talked about that, but that's what they did. Dad would go mow yards for people that if they were in the hospital and that kind of thing. Mother was always baking stuff and taking it to people, you know. So I grew up in a family where that was, you know, and at our church, the young people always they did things like that.
The youth group would go out and do things like that. So yeah, and I consciously, I wasn't thinking at that time that I'm developing an attitude of service. I'm just thinking this is a part of life and this is a good part of life is serving other people. So I'm very fortunate with that. Yeah. When you told the story about your marriage starting out that way, I mean, you mentioned that in chapter one from pain to pleasure.
Yeah. How long did it take then to dig out of the pain and start to feel those euphoric feelings again? Well, whenever she started asking me those questions and she started responding to what I said, then my positive feelings began to come back.
But before that, they weren't there when I was asking her those questions. I still didn't have the positive feelings. I just had the attitude, this is what God wants me to do. It was out of obedience. Yeah, it's an obedient attitude to God. But I wasn't pushed by my feelings. I was pushed by the reality I had failed in being an example of service to her.
Yeah. But the feelings came back. The Bible says we love God because God first loved us. So whether it's a husband or wife that starts the process, love stimulates love.
If you're serving me in a way that's meaningful to me, then I'm going to be drawn to you. Yeah. And it's interesting too that you think if I want to get the love back in my marriage or really in anything, I need something to be given to me. I need you to respond to me. And you're saying it's what Jesus said. Give your life away. Yeah.
It's like empty yourself, you'll be filled. That's what happened. Yeah. Yeah. And I recognize we have an emotional need to feel love.
I'm not denying that. It's one of our fundamental needs to feel love. If you're married, the person you would most like to love you is your spouse.
You know, if you feel love by your spouse, life is beautiful. But if you've lost it, which all of us do, then where are you going to start to rediscover it? It's not in telling them, you need to be doing this and you need to be doing that. No, it's in asking, what can I do? You know, those three questions can revolutionize your life, you know? And essentially looking back on all of that, her answers were telling me her love language. That's what I was going to ask. Based on what she answered with, could you tell, like, were they similar in her love language? Yeah. See, and I knew nothing about love languages. I didn't have a concept in those days. There's a book about it. I don't know if you've heard.
The author's good. But looking back on it, that's exactly what she was doing. She was telling me, well, she said, you know, what can I do to help you? Honey, if you could wash the dishes at night, that would be such a help to me. And how could I make your life easier? You know, it was things like I would do something else for her. If I would put gas in the car or something else, you know, how could I be a better husband? It was always things I could be doing.
That's a clue. What were your answers to her when she asked you those questions? Well, mine were that she would express some appreciation for the things I was doing.
Say once in a while, honey, I really appreciate you washing dishes. That would be meaningful to me. And how could you make my life easier?
By seeing something positive about me. So you're a words of affirmation. She's acts of service.
She's acts of service. Wow. Yeah. So in a sense, we discovered how to love each other without the concept of the love languages. Yeah. There were many good marriages before I wrote the love languages. Sure.
But those that were thriving were couples who had learned how to express love to each other. Without even knowing. Without even knowing the concept. Yeah. Well, your book says five traits. Are you the five guy? Everything's five?
Well, I do like five. I'm guessing serving one another is one. Yes. Okay.
What's the next one? In any marriage, a healthy family, there will be intimacy between the husband and the wife. You know the Genesis passage where God said about Adam, it's not good for man to be alone, cut off, isolated.
I'm going to make him a helper and the two will become one flesh. Deep, deep intimacy. So in a healthy family, the marriage, the couple will have intimacy. Now, most people, when you say that word, they're thinking of the sexual part of marriage.
It's far more than that. It's intellectual intimacy. Sharing our thoughts, our ideas, our plans, our visions, our dreams of the future. Intellectually discussing things. It's emotional intimacy. And this is where you have the love language fits in there. There's emotional intimacy.
You feel love by each other, but you're also sharing your feelings with each other. One of the things I suggest in the conferences that I do is the minimum every day would be, tell me three things that happen in your life today and how you feel about them. Minimum. That's a minimum.
A minimum. And they don't have to be important things. You can say, well, honey, I stopped on the way home to get gas in the car. How'd you feel about it? To be honest, I felt angry.
I looked at the price of it and I felt angry. Sharing our emotions with each other. So it's emotional intimacy. And then it's social intimacy. We're sharing life with each other outside the family.
We're doing things together outside the family. There was a story I read several years ago about a tornado that came through this Midwestern town and lifted the roof of a farmhouse off the house. And the couple were in the bed upstairs.
It lifted their bed outside and planted them in the field. And she was just hysterical and crying. When they're on the ground, he said to her, honey, it's okay.
It's okay. We're on the ground. We're safe, honey. We're safe. And she said, I'm not crying because I'm afraid.
I'm crying because I'm happy. This is the first time we've been out of the house together in six months. I asked couples, do you get out of the house together? Do you do things socially together? And then obviously it's sharing physical intimacy and then spiritual intimacy.
Both of those. And by spiritual intimacy, I don't mean you preach to each other, but you do share with each other. You know, honey, I read this passage this morning. It was so meaningful to me. And I just wanted to share it with you.
You're not saying I read this and you need to hear it. You just share life with each other. And then the whole physical thing. Do you guys pray together? Yeah. I teach people how to pray silently. I found out in my conferences, not more than 15% of the couples that attend my conference, and most of them are Christians, not more than 15% pray together each day.
If you don't count, thank you for the food. Amen. And so I say, let me teach you an easy way to pray. Hold hands. Close your eyes. Pray silently. And when you get through praying, you say amen out loud. So they know you through. You hang on till they say amen out loud. I say, anybody here thinks you couldn't do that? Then I take them through the motions of doing it.
And I say, now, I want you to, this is your homework tonight. Pray together silently. And I say, if you'll start this about six months down the road, one night, one of you will slip out and pray out loud. But if you never pray out loud, it'll help you.
You come together silently praying. Yeah, I saw a statistic just this year, it's about a seven or eight year old statistic from Gallup that said the divorce rate in our culture is 50%. In the church, it's about 27%. So it's less. Yeah. But a couple that prays together didn't say daily, it said regularly.
It's one in 1,021 or something like that. Well, well. It's just that.
But Gary, I like that. Because praying out loud, if you've never done it, it's very intimidating. And it feels scary.
You're very vulnerable. So I like that if taking that step is too big of a step, then just hold hands and pray silently together. And you know, you cannot come to God together every night silently and not begin to affect the way you treat each other.
Yeah. Spiritual intimacy. I know in our marriage, it was often easier for me to approach in intimate wise physically than it was emotionally. That was scarier because I didn't want to open my heart. I mean, I wanted to, but I was afraid to. And yet it was harder for me because emotionally we weren't intimate. And so it felt weird and almost disconnected to my heart. And so it made me feel vulnerable. Yeah, what do you say to the guy that's like me going, that's scarier than talking to actually share an emotion and a fear or a weakness or a struggle with my spouse.
I often just keep a wall up. Yeah. And I would say, you know, that's one reason why the sexual part of the marriage is probably not what you want it to be.
Because until she feels connected with you emotionally that you're sharing your life and being honest and open with her, then she's far less interested in being physically intimate with you. Yeah. So, yeah, they're all tied together. So in some ways, for me, it's like, have the courage. You got to have courage.
It's scary. Step in there. And the only other thing I'd add is if your husband does that and he's never done it, do not respond with, that's all you got. You know, something like negative. It's like he just stepped out and you sort of squashed him. Guess what?
He's not stepping out there again. But if you said, thanks for sharing, that's going to lead us to more intimacy. Well, guys, I'm still stuck at the beginning. I'm just thinking about I might say these things, but do them with an attitude of being a martyr of a servant. But what would it look like if I said, honey, how what can I do to help you? How can I make your life easier and how can I be better? You have to be humble to be able to say those things. I'm looking forward to that conversation.
I was convicted, but it's really good. It's amazing how a lack of selfishness and being purposefully others focused can improve your relationships in practically every way. And, you know, we've only covered part of what Dr. Chapman wants to share with us about the traits of a healthy family.
There's there's going to be even more tomorrow. I'm Shelby Abbott, and you've been listening to Dave and Ann Wilson with Dr. Gary Chapman on Family Life Today. Dr. Chapman has written a book called Five Traits of a Healthy Family Steps You Can Take to Grow Closer, Communicate Better and Change the World Together. This book is going to be our gift to you when you give any amount today. You can get your copy right now by going online and giving your donation at familylifetoday.com. Click on the donate now button at the top of the page, or just give us a call with your donation at 800-358-6329.
Again, that number is 800 F as in family, L as in life, and then the word today. Or feel free to drop us something in the mail if you'd like. Our address is Family Life 100 Lakehart Drive, Orlando, Florida 32832. Now, coming up tomorrow, Dr. Chapman is back with David and Wilson to talk about husbands being loving leaders and parents teaching and training their children. That's coming up tomorrow. We hope you'll join us. On behalf of David and Wilson, I'm Shelby Abbott. We'll see you back next time for another edition of Family Life Today. Family Life Today is a donor-supported production of Family Life, a crew ministry helping you pursue the relationships that matter most.
