by Gary Chapman
He went on telling me other things that he did for Susan. When he finished, I wondered, What does this woman do?
John continued, “I do all those things to show her that I love her, yet she sits there and says to you what she has been saying to me for two or three years—that she doesn’t feel loved. I don’t know what else to do for her.”
When I turned back to Susan, she said, “Dr. Chapman, all of those things are fine, but I want him to sit and talk to me. We don’t ever talk. He’s always doing something. I want him to sit on the couch with me and give me some time, look at me, talk to me about us, about our lives.”
Susan was crying again. It was obvious to me that her primary love language was “Quality Time.” She was crying for attention. She wanted to be treated as a person, not an object. John’s busyness did not meet her emotional need. As I talked further with John, I discovered that he didn’t feel loved either, but he wasn’t talking about it. He reasoned, “If you have been married for thirty-five years and your bills are paid and you don’t argue, what more can you hope for?” That’s where he was. But when I said to him, “What would be an ideal wife to you? If you could have a perfect wife, what would she be like?” he looked me in the eye for the first time and asked, “Do you really want to know?”
“Yes,” I said.
He sat up on the couch and folded his arms across his chest. A smile broke on his face, and he said, “I’ve dreamed about this. A perfect wife would be a wife who would come home in the afternoon and fix dinner for me. I would be working in the yard, and she would call me in to eat. After dinner, she would wash the dishes. I would probably help her some, but she would take the responsibility. She would sew the buttons on my shirt when they fall off.”
Susan could contain herself no longer. She turned to him and said, “I’m not believing you. You told me that you liked to cook.”
“I don’t mind cooking,” John responded, “but the man asked me what would be ideal.”
I knew John’s primary love language without another word—“Acts of Service.” Why do you think John did all of those things for Susan? Because that was his love language. In his mind, that’s the way you show love: by doing things for people. The problem was that “doing things” was not Susan’s primary love language. It did not mean to her emotionally what it would have meant to him if she had been doing things for him.
When John realized what his wife really needed, the first thing he said was, “Why didn’t somebody tell me this thirty years ago? I could have been talking to her every night instead of doing all this stuff.”
He turned to Susan and said, “For the first time in my life, I finally understand what you mean when you say ‘We don’t talk.’ I could never understand that. I thought we did talk. I always ask, ‘Did you sleep well?’ I thought we were talking, but now I understand. You want to sit together and look at each other and talk. Now I understand what you mean, and now I know why it is so important to you. It is your emotional love language, and we’ll start tonight. I’ll give you fifteen minutes every night for the rest of my life. You can count on that.”
Susan turned to John and said, “That would be wonderful, and I don’t mind fixing dinner for you. It will have to be later than usual because I get off work later than you, but I don’t mind fixing dinner. And I would love to sew your buttons on. You never left them off long enough for me to get them. I’ll wash dishes the rest of my life if it will make you feel loved.”
Susan and John went home and started loving each other in the right love languages. In less than two months, they were on a second honeymoon. After a trip to the Bahamas, they called to tell me what a radical change had taken place in their marriage.
Can emotional love be reborn in a marriage? You bet. The key is to learn the primary love language of your spouse and choose to speak it.
Your Turn
What does your spouse do to make you feel more “significant”? How about what you do for them?
THE 5 LOVE LANGUAGES
Words of Affirmation
Quality Time
Receiving Gifts
Acts of Service
Physical Touch
chapter 12
Loving the Unlovely
It was a beautiful September Saturday. My wife and I were strolling through Reynolda Gardens, enjoying the flora, some of which had been imported from around the world. The gardens had originally been developed by R. J. Reynolds, the tobacco magnate, as a part of his country estate. They are now a part of the Wake Forest University campus. We had just passed the rose garden when I noticed Ann, a woman who had begun counseling two weeks earlier, approaching us. She was looking down at the cobblestone walkway and appeared to be in deep thought. When I greeted her, she was startled but looked up and smiled. I introduced her to Karolyn, and we exchanged pleasantries. Then, without any lead-in, she asked me one of the most profound questions I have ever heard: “Dr. Chapman, is it possible to love someone whom you hate?”
I knew the question was born of deep hurt and deserved a thoughtful answer. I knew that I would be seeing her the following week for another counseling appointment, so I said, “Ann, that is one of the most thought-provoking questions I have ever heard. Why don’t we discuss that next week?” She agreed, and Karolyn and I continued our stroll. But Ann’s question did not go away. Later, as we drove home, Karolyn and I discussed it. We reflected on the early days of our own marriage and remembered that we had often experienced feelings of hate. Our condemning words to each other had brought us hurt and, on the heels of hurt, anger. And anger held inside becomes hate.
What made the difference for us? We both knew it was the choice to love. We had realized that if we continued our pattern of demanding and condemning, we would destroy our marriage. Fortunately over a period of about a year, we had learned how to discuss our differences without condemning each other, how to make decisions without destroying our unity, how to give constructive suggestions without being demanding, and eventually how to speak each other’s primary love language. Our choice to love was made in the midst of negative feelings toward each other. When we started speaking each other’s primary love language, the feelings of anger and hate abated.
Our situation, however, was different from Ann’s. Karolyn and I had both been open to learning and growing. I knew that Ann’s husband was not. She had told me the previous week that she had begged him to go for counseling. She had pleaded for him to read a book or listen to a speaker on marriage, but he had refused all her efforts toward growth. According to her, his attitude was: “I don’t have any problems. You are the one with the problems.” In his mind he was right, she was wrong—it was as simple as that. Her feelings of love for him had been killed through the years by his constant criticism and condemnation. After ten years of marriage, her emotional energy was depleted and her self-esteem almost destroyed. Was there hope for Ann’s marriage? Could she love an unlovely husband? Would he ever respond in love to her?
Love’s Greatest Challenge
I knew that Ann was a deeply religious person and that she attended church regularly. I surmised that perhaps her only hope for marital survival was in her faith. The next day, with Ann in mind, I began to read Luke’s account of the life of Christ. I have always admired Luke’s writing because he was a physician who gave attention to details and in the first century wrote an orderly account of the teachings and lifestyle of Jesus of Nazareth. In what many have called Jesus’ greatest sermon, I read the following words, which I call love’s greatest challenge.
I tell you who hear me: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. . . . Do to others as you would have them do to you. If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even “sinners” love those who love them.4
It seemed to me that that profound challenge, written almost two thousand years ago, might be the direction that Ann was looking for, but could she do it? Could anyone do it? Is
it possible to love a spouse who has become your enemy? Is it possible to love one who has cursed you, mistreated you, and expressed feelings of contempt and hate for you? And if she could, would there be any payback? Would her husband ever change and begin to express love and care for her? I was astounded by this further word from Jesus’ sermon: “Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.”5
I surmised that perhaps her only hope for marital survival was in her faith.
Could that principle of loving an unlovely person possibly work in a marriage as far gone as Ann’s? I decided to do an experiment. I would take as my hypothesis that if Ann could learn her husband’s primary love language and speak it for a period of time so that his emotional need for love was met, eventually he would reciprocate and begin to express love to her. I wondered, Would it work?
I met with Ann the next week and listened again as she reviewed the hurts in her marriage. At the end of her synopsis, she repeated the question she had asked in Reynolda Gardens. This time she put it in the form of a statement: “Dr. Chapman, I just don’t know if I can ever love him again after all he has done to me.”
“I just don’t know if I can ever love him again after all he has done to me.”
“Have you talked about your situation with any of your friends?” I asked.
“With two of my closest friends,” she said, “and a little bit with some other people.”
“And what was their response?”
“‘Get out,’” she said. “They all tell me to get out, that he will never change, and that I am simply prolonging the agony. But I just can’t bring myself to do that. Maybe I should, but I just can’t believe that’s the right thing to do.”
“It seems to me that you are torn between your religious and moral beliefs that tell you it is wrong to get out of the marriage, and your emotional pain, which tells you that getting out is the only way to survive,” I said.
“That’s exactly right, Dr. Chapman. That’s exactly the way I feel. I don’t know what to do.”
“I am deeply sympathetic with your struggle,” I continued. “You are in a very difficult situation. I wish I could offer you an easy answer. Unfortunately, I can’t. Both of the alternatives you mentioned, getting out or staying in, will likely bring you a great deal of pain. Before you make that decision, I do have one idea. I am not sure it will work, but I’d like you to try it. I know from what you have told me that your religious faith is important to you and that you have a great deal of respect for the teachings of Jesus.”
She nodded affirmingly. I continued, “I want to read something that Jesus once said that I think has some application to your marriage.” I read slowly and deliberately.
I tell you who hear me: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. . . . Do to others as you would have them do to you. If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even “sinners” love those who love them.
“Does that sound like your husband? Has he treated you as an enemy rather than as a friend?” She nodded.
“Has he ever cursed you?” I asked.
“Many times.”
“Has he ever mistreated you?”
“Often.”
“And has he told you that he hates you?”
“Yes.”
The Six-Month Experiment
“Ann, if you are willing, I would like to do an experiment. I would like to see what would happen if we apply this principle to your marriage. Let me explain what I mean.” I went on to explain to Ann the concept of the emotional tank and the fact that when the tank is low, as hers was, we have no love feelings toward our spouse but simply experience emptiness and pain. Since love is such a deep emotional need, the lack of it is perhaps our deepest emotional pain. I told her that if we could learn to speak each other’s primary love language, that emotional need could be met and positive feelings could grow again.
“Does that make sense to you?” I inquired.
“Dr. Chapman, you have just described my life. I have never seen it so clearly before. We were in love before we got married, but not long after our marriage we came down off the high and we never learned to speak each other’s love language. My tank has been empty for years, and I am sure his has also. Dr. Chapman, if I had understood this concept earlier, maybe none of this would have happened.”
“We can’t go back, Ann,” I said. “All we can do is try to make the future different. I would like to propose a six-month experiment.”
“I’ll try anything,” Ann said.
I liked her positive spirit, but I wasn’t sure whether she understood how difficult the experiment would be.
“Let’s begin by stating our objective,” I said. “If in six months you could have your fondest wish, what would it be?”
Ann sat in silence for some time. Then thoughtfully she said, “I would like to see Glenn loving me again and expressing it by spending time with me. I would like to see us doing things together, going places together. I would like to feel that he is interested in my world. I would like to see us talking when we go out to eat. I’d like him to listen to me. I’d like to feel that he values my ideas. I would like to see us taking trips together and having fun again. I would like to know that he values our marriage more than anything.”
Ann paused and then continued, “On my part, I would like to have warm, positive feelings toward him again. I would like to gain respect for him again. I would like to be proud of him. Right now, I don’t have those feelings.”
I was writing as Ann was speaking. When she finished, I read aloud what she had said. “That sounds like a pretty lofty objective,” I said, “but is that really what you want, Ann?”
“Right now, that sounds like an impossible objective,” Ann replied, “but more than anything, that’s what I would like to see.”
“Then let’s agree,” I said, “that this will be our objective. In six months, we want to see you and Glenn having this kind of love relationship.
“Now, let me suggest a hypothesis. The purpose of our experiment will be to prove whether or not the hypothesis is true. Let’s hypothesize that if you could speak Glenn’s primary love language consistently for a six-month period, that somewhere along the line his emotional need for love would begin to be met; and as his emotional tank filled, he would begin to reciprocate love to you. That hypothesis is built upon the idea that the emotional need for love is our deepest emotional need; and when that need is being met, we tend to respond positively to the person who is meeting it.”
I continued, “You understand that that hypothesis places all the initiative in your hands. Glenn is not trying to work on this marriage. You are. This hypothesis says that if you can channel your energies in the right direction, there is a good possibility that Glenn will eventually reciprocate.” I read the other portion of Jesus’ sermon recorded by Luke, the physician. “‘Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.’
“As I understand that, Jesus is stating a principle, not a way to manipulate people. Generally speaking, if we are kind and loving toward people, they will tend to be kind and loving toward us. That does not mean that we can make a person kind by being kind to him. We are independent agents. Thus, we can spurn love and walk away from love or even spit into the face of love. There is no guarantee that Glenn will respond to your acts of love. We can only say that there is a good possibility he will do so.” (A counselor can never predict with absolute certainty individual human behavior. Based on research and personality studies, a counselor can only predict how a person is likely to respond in a given situation.)
After we agreed on the hypothesis, I said to Ann, “Now let’s discuss your and Glenn’s primary love languages. I�
�m assuming from what you have told me already that quality time may be your primary love language. What do you think?”
“I think so, Dr. Chapman. In the early days when we spent time together and Glenn listened to me, we spent long hours talking together, doing things together. I really felt loved. More than anything, I wish that part of our marriage could return. When we spend time together, I feel like he really cares, but when he’s always doing other things, I feel like business and other pursuits are more important than our relationship.”
“And what do you think Glenn’s primary love language is?” I inquired.
“I think it is physical touch and especially the sexual part of the marriage. I know that when I felt more loved by him and we were more sexually active, he had a different attitude. I think that’s his primary love language.”
“Does he ever complain about the way you talk to him?”
“Well, he says I nag him all the time. He also says that I don’t support him, that I’m always against his ideas.”
“Then let’s assume,” I said, “that ‘Physical Touch’ is his primary love language and ‘Words of Affirmation’ is his secondary love language. The reason I suggest the second is that if he complains about negative words, apparently positive words would be meaningful to him.
“Now, let me suggest a plan to test our hypothesis. What if you go home and say to Glenn, ‘I’ve been thinking about us and I’ve decided that I would like to be a better wife to you. So if you have any suggestions as to how I could be a better wife, I want you to know that I am open to them. You can tell me now or you can think about it and let me know what you think, but I would really like to work on being a better wife.’ Whatever his response, negative or positive, simply accept it as information. That initial statement lets him know that something different is about to happen in your relationship.