Episode 64: Am I Speaking My Spouse’s Love Language?

We have discussed the paramount importance of prioritising our relationship as husband and wife in our family. Because when our marriage is strong, our family will have a stronger foundation to build on, and conditions will be much more favourable for our children to thrive and flourish in.

However, one of the challenges we face as a married couple, especially in the earlier years of our marriage, is to understand and speak the language of love that our spouse identifies more strongly with. I’ve had quite a few occasions when husbands told me in exasperation, “I’ve tried to love my wife as best as I can, but she still thinks I don’t love her enough!”

Yes, we know that love by definition is willing the good of the other. And authentic marital love is freely given, total, faithful and fruitful. Yet how each of us expresses and perceives love, our so-called language of love, can be, and often is, quite different from that of our spouse. And this can easily give rise to misunderstandings and frustrations. It is important that we get to know our spouse’s language of love in order to avoid this pitfall.

What are these languages of love? Dr Gary Chapman has proposed that, broadly speaking, individuals experience and express love in 5 different ways. These are:

1. Words of affirmation, that is, speaking words of encouragement, appreciation and compliments;
2. Quality time, giving our undivided attention, engaging in meaningful conversations and participating in activities together;
3. Giving and receiving gifts, whereby receiving or giving thoughtful gifts expresses our appreciation and affection for the other;
4. Acts of service, whereby we express our love through helpful actions to ease the other’s burden, such as helping with the housework, for example; and finally
5. Physical touch, whereby we convey or experience love through touch, such as hugs, kisses, holding hands and so on.

Every individual is unique, which means each one of us might experience and express love through different love languages. For example, one might identify more strongly with physical touch and words of affirmation, while another might prefer quality time and acts of service. None of this is wrong, of course, but problems tend to arise when one spouse speaks a love language that is different from what the other identifies with.

Let me share what happened to my wife and me in our earlier years together.
One of my love languages is acts of service. After we were married, I used to do many tasks as an act of love for my wife – washing the clothes, helping to clean the house, getting errands done for her and the household and so on. All this to reduce her workload at home. Sounds good? Think again.

One of my wife’s very strong love languages is spending quality time together. Now, what happens when I keep spending lots of time showing my love for her through acts of service? Less bandwidth for quality time. In other words, I was not showing her love the way she would have liked to experience it. So much so that one day, my wife told me straight out of utter frustration, “I don’t want to be treated like a queen. I want to be treated as your wife!”
Lesson learned. Or more accurately, one of many lessons learned!

Thankfully, over the years, we have gradually learned to understand and speak each other’s love language better, expressing our love in a way that our spouse appreciates. It has not been smooth of course. We have our scars to show for it, but thank God He healed our hurts and pulled us through the many obstacles and difficult times that came our way.

As we said before, we are sure you love your spouse very much. But are you speaking your spouse’s love language?

To help you find out the love languages that your spouse identifies more strongly with, we have put a link to the relevant website below, where you can obtain a list of questions that you can answer and share with your spouse. Go ahead and do it with your spouse. We are quite certain you will find it beneficial for your marriage.