How the Love Languages Can Revolutionize Your Marriage

A couple of ways I try and show my wife that I love her would be to bring home a gift, maybe a flower, and then give her some of my quality time by sitting and listening to her for a few minutes before I move on to the rest of my day. My love language is words of encouragement, and then quality time. For me, it really is acts of service. This last weekend, my husband took out our front stairs.

They were crumbling, made of concrete, and he and my son took them out with a jackhammer. And that really made me feel loved. I know that sounds strange, but that was it for me. Well, some interesting perspectives on love there. How about you? Do you have a favorite way to express love or a way that communicates love to you? We're going to be learning a lot more about the five love languages from the man who identified them and wrote very effectively about them, Dr. Gary Chapman.

He joins us today on Focus on the Family with Jim Daly, and I'm John Fuller. You know, John, it's been 33 years since Gary first introduced this concept of love languages, and we know from experience it's had a profound impact on the culture and the Christian community in particular. For some people, love can be a rather generic and poorly defined word. For example, we say we love our spouse and our children.

Of course we do. But I also kind of love football, but it's a different kind of love. You know, in Greek, they have three or four or five ways to express that. For us, it's the same word. I love football and I love my wife. But I wonder if we really understand what that love word means. And today we're going to talk about what it means. I need to confess that I need to take the quiz. It's been a long time, but I never really identified the strongest one for me. I kind of like all five, I guess is my point.

Maybe that's selfish of me, but we'll find out today. Well, we are so honored to have Dr. Gary Chapman join us again. He is a very effective communicator. God has gifted him in so many unique ways. He can write, he can speak. He really has such a heart for the Lord and has expressed these five love languages in a very powerful way. And we want to encourage you to get a copy of the book that forms the foundation for so much of what Gary has to share. It's called The Five Love Languages, The Secret to Love That Lasts. And we have copies of that here.

Stop by the show notes to get yours. And you know, Gary, far too humble, but you look on this cover, it says number one New York Times bestseller, over 20 million copies sold. There's not many people that have that stamped on the face of a book. That's a big number.

A lot of interest. Well, with that, Gary, welcome. Well, thank you.

Always glad to be here. And that is a big number. That's so fun, though. I see it as fun that you hit such a wonderful theme with this that people responded. It blows my mind to be very honest with you. People have asked me how do you explain that because it's been published also in over 50 languages around the world. So it's a global language. Absolutely.

The love languages. And I say, well, from my perspective, the short answer to that is God. And the long answer is God. I couldn't have made that happen if I wanted to. Right.

No, that's so true. And I don't know if you have it down well enough. Of course, you wrote it. But you can look at somebody and say, I kind of know what his love languages are, her love language.

What do you think I've got? I cannot because I cannot read your mind. Okay, fair enough. Let me hit the five real quick again.

I'll try to point mine out if I can. What are they? Words of affirmation. Yeah, so so. Okay. Acts of service.

Nah. Doing things for the other person. Oh, that's nice. Oh, yeah.

Okay. Gifts. Giving or giving? Receiving gifts.

If it's your language. That sounds selfish to say yes to that one. Send your gift to focus on the family. We'd like to receive your gift. You want people that love you in that way. Let's find out if your love language is gifts.

We'll just have everybody send you one. Okay, that's what's. And then quality time. Quality time's good. Giving the person your undivided attention.

That's genes for sure. Number five is physical touch. And what does that look like? Describe that quickly. Many people think it's just the sexual part of marriage, but no, no, no, no, no. In a marriage it is such things as holding hands and kissing, embracing and all that sort of thing.

In other relationships it might be a high five or a pat on the back. Well now I still don't know what I am. You need to take the quiz. I thought I had it there with affection, you know, touch. But you know, Gary, one of the things we can do is we'll point people to your website too to take that quiz and maybe they can be more effective at finding out their love language than I have been so far. But I'm going to aim for the end of this program to know what I am.

All right. After speaking and writing about the love languages for more than 30 years, as we pointed out, what kind of feedback are you still hearing from people? What's really good here, Gary, is the theme has not died out. I mean, it's generational. Everybody's still interested in this great theme. What are the questions or the comments that you still hear that have not died off after 30 years?

You know, I think the fact that we are all human and one of our deepest needs is to feel loved, deepest emotional needs is to feel loved. And I think that's why it continues to generation after generation. You know, what I'm hearing more and more now from people, in fact I was in a church this last week that had a lot of international students. And they were telling me, one from Brazil, one from Venezuela, one from Uganda, were saying, you know, this is all over.

This is all over our country. Which really, really surprises me because my background, undergrad and I did a master's in anthropology, cultural anthropology. And I was very concerned about cultural differences. In fact, when the first publisher came, which was Spanish, I said to my publisher, I said, I don't know if this works in Spanish. You know, I just discovered this in middle America.

And they said, well, they've read the book and they want to publish it. Speak to the emotional love tank, another great concept that we've covered in the past. So important, I think especially for husbands to understand this, if I could be that blunt.

Yeah. I just like this idea that inside every one of us, there's an emotional love tank. We're all familiar with gas tanks and cars only run so far.

Most of us are informed about that. Not everybody. But if the love tank is full, that is your spouse genuinely feels loved by you, life is beautiful for them. And they're going to be their best person. If the love tank is empty and they feel like they don't love me, they wish they weren't married to me, life begins to look pretty dark. And much of the misbehavior of children grows out of an empty love tank. And much of the misbehavior of adults grows out of an empty love tank. So if you're in a marriage and you don't feel love for a long period of time, and on the other hand, you hear a lot of criticism from them, you're far more tempted at the coffee pot at work when you meet somebody and you get a little thought, oh, man, they look nice. Think of all that affirmation going on, whatever it might be.

That's an interesting point. So when the love tank is empty, those doors of sin tend to open up. And boy, that's powerful right there. Gary, when you look at scripture, you're a pastor and you look at scripture, man, how profound this is again, because the greatest of these is love. It's like you have witnessed and understood what God's finger is on, where he applies the pressure, what he knows we need being created in his image.

Expand on that a little bit. Why is love the most important thing? What's going on with us as human beings that we crave it? If we don't have it, we spin out?

How many women, young women, are still trying to fill that love tank whole because of damage their fathers did with bad relationships? That kind of analogy. Is it that easy to understand yet that difficult to do? I think it's so important because we're made in the image of God. And the Bible says God is love. God is love. One of the central traits of God is love.

He genuinely cares about his creatures. And we're made in his image. And so we have this desire to be loved and to love. And as you said, the scriptures command us. Jesus said, this is the way people will know you're a Christian, the way you love each other. And so we are made in his image, and we have this longing for love.

And there's something inside of us also that wants to serve people, wants to reach out to other people. And with Christians, we have the example of Christ. The attitude, let this attitude be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus.

Though he was God, he didn't demand his rights, but he became a man and then stepped down further to death on a cross. Let this attitude be in you. Right. Well, and what that love expression is, you know, the sacrifice of your own life for others. And in the Bible, I think love doesn't begin with a feeling. It begins with an attitude. And the attitude is, I want to enrich your life. And we live either with an attitude of love or an attitude of selfishness.

Selfishness, I'm in this to get what I can out of it. And that's why sometimes in marriages, you will hear people say, well, you're not making me happy and I'm out of here. Do you think it's one of the spiritual or emotional illnesses in the church? And what I mean by that, I'm sure you get pushback from Christians saying, yeah, this sounds an awful lot like psychobabble Gary and, you know, loves languages. Do you ever hear this from people? I don't hear a lot of that because I think people read it and it makes sense to them and they want to apply it. But I have had people often ask me, well, what's God's love language? So I wrote a book. God speaks your love language.

He speaks all five. And I go through the scriptures and illustrate that. And I look at conversion experiences and we have different conversion experiences that often parallels our love language. Physical touch people often have a dramatic physical experience with God.

I felt his arms around me. I started crying and weeping and not everybody has that kind of experience. Yeah. But that's a good way to filter those things and not invalidate somebody else's experience.

That's right. Or say, well, I don't know if I'm really a Christian because I didn't have an experience like that. You don't have to have an experience like that. God loves you. In the book, you make a distinction between falling in love and our emotional need for love.

I've never thought of that distinction. It helped me better understand that. Well, the falling in love experience begins with a feeling. You see the person, there's something about the way they look, the way they talk, that just gives you a warm feeling inside and you want to see them again. And every time you get together, it gets stronger and eventually it becomes an obsession. You really cannot get them off your mind. You go to bed thinking about them. You wake up thinking about them. All day long, you think about them. They're the most wonderful person you have ever met. Now, your mother can see their flaws, but you can't. Your mother will say, well, now, honey, have you considered that they haven't had a steady job in five years? And you'll say, oh, mom, they're just waiting for the right opportunity.

That's right. So that kind of love begins with a feeling. But here's what no one ever told me. The average lifespan of that kind of love is two years. Some a little longer, some a little less. We come down off that high.

Nobody told me that. And I had dated two years before I got married. I came down pretty soon after the honeymoon. And everything my mother told me about her was true.

Mom. And now, you know, the love take, the emotional need for love was met at that time. But we all come down off that high.

We don't stay up there. And that's where the love language becomes really, really important. Because if you don't learn how to express love now in the other person's language, and you're not doing this because you have feelings necessarily, because I had negative feelings toward my wife in those early years after I came down off the high and we had conflicts and argued with each other. I had negative feelings. But we can love the person.

If it starts with an attitude, we can say, okay, God, I'm married to them. You know how I feel about them. But I know you love them. And I'm married to them.

I want to be your agent. Romans chapter 5 and verse 5, the love of God is poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit. You open your heart to God. You learn their love language. With the help of God, you can express it to them even if you don't have positive feelings. But your love will stimulate love in them. Because we love God because he first loved us. We didn't start the relationship.

He started it. You can start it with your spouse even if you feel like they don't love you. Well, I'm not going to let you out the hook. I'm going to come back about you and Caroline and dig into some of those things. But first, John, let's tell you how to get the book. Yeah, the book is great.

The Five Love Languages, The Secret to Love That Lasts. And we've got copies of it here at the ministry. Give us a call if you'd like, 800, the letter A in the word family, or stop by the website.

We've got the link in the show notes. So let's jump back there for a minute. Give me more examples for those of us that could benefit from your experience. I mean, you were at a point where you thought you married the wrong woman. Yeah, yeah.

So what was going on? Well, you know, when we first got married, and I still had the tingles, you know, I call the tingles. I think that's a good word.

That's the psychological term for it. Yeah, we tend to express love in the way we want to receive it, just by nature. So I gave her what I now call words of affirmation.

I didn't call it then. I didn't know anything about love languages. But I told her how nice she looked, how much I appreciated what she did. And I told her, probably told her a dozen times a day, I love you, honey. I am so glad I married you. I love you, love you, love you. You know, and one night she said to me after a while, she said, you keep saying I love you.

If you love me, why don't you help me? I said, what do you mean? She said, well, you don't ever offer to wash dishes or vacuum floors or clean the toilet. I mean, you don't offer to do anything. I was in graduate school, okay?

I was in seminary two weeks after we got married. Got a little energy about this. When she said that, I didn't say this, but what I was thinking, what are you talking about? My mother did those things. You didn't say that. I didn't say that. Oh, that was smart.

But I was thinking. That's why you're in graduate school. Yeah, because we bring our history with us. We expect her to do what mama did. Well, you're not married to your mama. You know, we got to learn that. And she's not married to her daddy either. But at any rate, looking back on that, my wife was telling me that her love language was active service. But I didn't know anything about that concept. But that's what she was really doing.

And so what did that end up leading to for you? Well, I told her I didn't mind washing dishes. And I said, I don't mind vacuuming floors.

I can do that. I didn't know you wanted me to do it. But I said, I don't know how to clean toilets.

And she said, well, I can teach you, you know. But at any rate. You stepped right in that trap, bro. But at any rate, as it went on and I came down off the high, then conflicts came. We didn't know how to solve conflicts.

We argued with each other and said hateful things and and lost the positive feelings for sure, and had negative feelings. And really thinking, you know, this is not going to work. But what it really what changed it was I said to God, I don't know what else to do. I've done everything I know to do. 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.

Wow. And I heard God say that's the problem in your marriage. You do not have the attitude of Christ.

Hit me like a ton of bricks. Because I remember what Jesus said after he watched the disciples feet. He said, you call me teacher and Lord and you are right.

But in my kingdom, the leader serves. Wow. And I knew that was not my attitude. You know, my attitude was something like, honey, look, I know we can have a good marriage if we just listen to me, you know, and she wouldn't listen to me and I blamed her. But that day I got that message. And I said, God forgive me with all my study and theology. I'm missing the whole point. Yeah, I said, please give me the attitude of Christ. Wow. In retrospect, it's the greatest prayer I ever prayed about my marriage because God changed my heart and give me a desire to serve her.

Yeah. And three questions made it practical. I knew nothing about love languages. But when I was willing to ask these three questions, first question is, honey, what can I do to help you? Second question, how can I make your life easier?

Third question, how can I be a better husband? She gave me those answers. And I started doing those things. Nothing about love languages, but I was really serving her. Right. And acts of service is her love language.

I didn't know that. Well, what happened was within three months, she started asking me those three questions. Okay.

You didn't have to ask her to ask you. No, that is so good. And that's kind of the core of it. You're really laying out the difference between being selfish and being loving. Absolutely. And that's it. Let me ask you this, though, with the words of affirmation, did you continue those things that weren't connecting with her or were those things that you could pull back on and wash the dishes and clean the toilets?

That's a good question. I think what I would say, and I've often said this to couples, please don't hear me saying you only speak their primary love language. No, heavy doses of the primary, but sprinkle in the other four for extra credit. You know, we're not going to turn away from any one of these. They're all fine. That's probably what trips me up is I can't identify one thing that I connect with.

I kind of like a sprinkling of all of it. I don't know if I have a specific one. Well, it could be. You know, here, people who can't determine which it is, sometimes it's this. They're receiving all five from their spouse.

They just don't know which one's more important. Right. But they feel love.

And I say, if you feel love, don't worry about it. Yeah. Okay. It's simple.

I love it. It doesn't have to be confusing. Right.

Right. So what about what about things? I'm just thinking about the early marriage days, like when I gave Dina a dress, gifts, I guess, is part of my love languages, but it wasn't part of hers. She wore the dress one or two times to placate me.

I never saw it again after that. So like, okay, so I've learned what doesn't work for her. You had an illustration in the book and you've shared it before, but tell us about cabinet doors, kitchen cabinet doors, because we have a lot of confabs and mashups in the kitchen. Well, you know, there are things about our spouse for all of us that just irritate us. And one of them for me was that Carolyn knew how to open drawers, but she didn't know how to close drawers. And I couldn't understand that.

I mean, it made no sense to me. But so I just asked her, you know, I said, honey, if you don't mind, and cabinet doors in the kitchen, I said, if you don't mind, could you please close the doors when you get through? And I said the same thing about the drawers here in the bathroom.

And so she didn't change, you know. So the next week, I was taking a course in school on audio visuals. And I thought, I'm gonna see if this helps. So I went home and took everything out of the top drawer, put it on the counter, pull the drawer out and showed her how drawers work. This little wheel, you know, you could write, you could actually close this thing with one finger.

Yeah. Well, I knew she had the message that day. Well, how does she communicate that she knew this to you?

She still didn't close the drawers. Look, this thing went on for nine months. Nine months. You know, the number is frightening.

Yeah. And I came home. And our little daughter who was 18 months old, this was into our marriage a little ways, had cut her eye on the corner of an open drawer.

She fell on the corner of the open drawer and Carolyn take her to the doctor and they stitched it up. And I said, what happened? And she told me the truth. I was so proud of me. I said to myself, I didn't say to her, now God's working on her. Finally, the Lord is proving my thoughts. Then I thought, I bet she closed drawers now. No, she didn't. Two months later, it says 11 months down the road, it dawned on me.

This woman will never close drawers. I finally got the message. So I did what somebody told me to do. If you have a problem, you don't know how to solve it, sit down and list every possibility.

And I just started writing. Number one, I could leave her. I thought about that. Over the cabinet drawer.

Oh my goodness. And I thought if I ever marry again, I'm going to ask first thing, do you close drawers? Second possibility, I could be miserable every time I see an open drawer from now until the time I die. And the third one, I could close the drawers. And that's the last one I could think of. Well, I marked out the first one. I could leave her. I was in graduate school in seminary studying to be a pastor.

And I said, I never will get a church if I do that. Second one, I could be miserable the rest of my life. No, 11 months is enough. And I thought, well, how long would it take me to close the drawers in the kitchen? And I thought one, two, three, four, four seconds. How long would it take me to close the drawers in the bathroom? And I thought two, two, three seconds. Four and three is seven. Seven seconds.

I believe I could work that into my schedule. So I went home to tell her, I said, Carolyn, honey, about those drawers. She said, Gary, please don't bring it up again.

I said, no, no, it's different. From now on, you don't ever have to close any doors or drawers. I said, when I come in, I'll close them. If you want to open them again, that's fine. When I come back in, I'll close them.

And you don't ever have to close them again. She said, fine. No big deal to her. You've had some fun with this, but it's really profound to me because it's sort of like, accept those things that are never going to change and decide what really is the important thing here. Well, and some of that is a seven-second solution. Others is not a seven-second solution. So I mean, there is a degree of, how much effort is this going to take from me? But tongue in cheek, I mean, I get it. And the application is true. In the end, you can only do what you want to do.

Do you want to live miserably or do you want to live happily? And it takes a little time for you to do that and you do it yourself. Let me ask you in terms of the intensity, because you talked about knowing your spouse's love language and then being able to accentuate that one, make sure you're giving heavy dosage to that one. What about the, I think not long ago, we had a man on the program here, he described himself as a super husband because he did all the chores, which would have been your wife's love language. But what his wife wanted was quality time. So now he's got it the other way around. He's doing all the chores.

He's washing the dishes, cleaning the toilets and doing all the things. And she's miserable. Now, a lot of women are going, oh, that's not right. Something's wrong with her. But I mean, speak to that. What she really wanted was, I can do all that stuff, but when you get home, I want to spend time with you.

Yeah, no, I had that very same thing happen. The man told me all those things he was doing for her. And he said, she sits there and says she doesn't feel loved. He said, I don't know anything else I can do for her. And she said to me, he's right.

He's a hardworking man. But we don't ever talk. We haven't talked in 20 years.

He's always mowing the grass, washing the dishes, vacuuming the floors, always doing something. She was begging for quality time. He was speaking one language, but not her language. So the choice is ours. We have to, if we learn their love language, we choose to speak. I had a man say to me, my wife and I read your book.

We took the quiz. Her language is acts of service, but I'll tell you and her, if it's going to take my washing dishes and my vacuuming floors for her to feel loved, she can forget that. And I said, that's your choice. If you want to live with a wife who has an empty love tank, that's your choice. See, what he was doing is expressing selfishness.

I'm not doing anything I don't want to do. That's selfish. Love says, if I can find out what will enrich your life, then I'm going to give myself to doing it. So it's attitude. But the good news is we choose our attitude. We don't choose our emotions. Our emotions are just our responses to what's happening.

But we choose our attitude. So in the end, Gary, and this is where we have to end because of time, but you really describing kind of a symptom that's expressing itself, and then the core problem inside. So when you look at these things, especially counseling couples as you do, and you get that kind of attitude, well, guess what?

The cupboard's not being closed. Not being responsive to what your spouse may need in terms of their love language is really a core spiritual problem that you're having. It really is. It reveals our attitude. Because if you really have a loving attitude, the attitude of Christ, Jesus said about himself, I didn't come to be served. I came to serve. If we have that attitude, then I'm here to enrich your life. I'm married to you to enrich your life.

I want to help you become the person you believe God wants you to be. Just tell me what it is. Well, the love language tells you how to meet this particular need. Right. And it's so good. And to those listening and watching, I hope you feel equipped to love your spouse well.

That's a great achievement. The love languages are such a wonderful tool to protect your marriage and be more connected in day-to-day life. But if your marriage is in a difficult place and you need some extra help to get back to that place of love, please consider attending our Hope Restored program. Couples who participate in that go through a couple of days of counseling and are taught tools that transform their marriages.

John will have the details on how to find that information in just a minute. Now, as we talked about the love languages, we mostly talked about in the context of marriage, but this can help you show love to every important person in your life. And that's why I want to encourage all of you to get the five love languages and start transforming your relationships. Now, when you make a gift of any amount to the Ministry of Focus on the Family, we'll send you a copy of the book as our way of saying thank you for partnering in ministry together. Yeah, so reach out today to donate and get your copy of the five love languages by Dr. Gary Chapman. We've got the details in the show notes, or you can call 1-800, the letter A, and the word family. And we'd love to invite you to stop by Focus on the Family when you're in Colorado Springs or anywhere near. Our welcome center is a great place for your family to stop by and enjoy some free playtime in the kids' area, get a snack from Wits End, the soda shop there, and then browse our bookstore, which is tremendous. It's wonderfully stocked and very, very inviting.

All of that and more, swing by sometime. On behalf of the entire team, thanks for listening to Focus on the Family with Jim Daly. I'm John Fuller inviting you back as we once again help you and your family thrive in Christ. If the fights with your spouse have become unbearable, if you feel like you can't take it anymore, there's still hope. Hope-restored marriage intensives have helped thousands of couples like yours. Our biblically-based counseling will help you find the root of your problems and face them together. Call us at 1-866-875-2915. We'll talk with you, pray with you, and help you find out which program will work best. That's 1-866-875-2915.