Love Languages

My wife and I have recently had a few conversations that have been enlightening.  And I was reminded of something important that I had forgotten.  I wanted to share it here in the hopes that it will help someone on here.

We love sex.  And we love talking about sex and writing about sex.  We love Marriage Heat and we love writing stories for the site.  And we love orgasm and connecting physically through sex.  But as great as that is, it isn’t everything in a marriage.

There is a concept every couple needs to be aware of called, “Love Languages.”  This was made popular by the book of the same title by Gary Chapman.  Essentially he says that everyone has a specific way in which they feel loved.  Some people really love to hear words.  Some like to receive a gift.  Some want their loved ones to spend quality time with them.  Some like non-sexual physical touch.  And others like it when you do something for them.

So the five love languages are: Words of Affirmation, Gifts, Quality Time, Physical Touch, Acts of Service.

What this means is that if someone is a gifts person, then the way to really make them feel loved is to get them a gift.  It can be something small like a candy bar, but it’s something to say, “I love you and I was thinking of you.”  And that makes them feel loved.  But if you just spend quality time with them, it will be okay but it won’t REALLY make them feel loved.  They need the gift for that.

The problem comes in because each person naturally speaks their own love language.  So if a wife’s language is gifts, but the husband’s is acts of service, then she will buy him a lot of gifts and he will do a lot of things for her.  But both of them won’t feel loved by their spouse because their spouse isn’t speaking their love language.  So in this case, the husband needs to start buying his wife gifts and the wife needs to start doing things for the husband.  Then they will be speaking the other’s love language and then each of them will feel loved.

This is actually very common for the husband and wife to have different love languages.  So typically they each need to learn to speak another language.  And it isn’t easy at first because you gravitate back toward your own way of feeling loved.  But if you want to make the other one feel loved, you must speak THEIR language.  Otherwise they won’t hear you.

And this is where my wife and I found ourselves recently.  Again we both love sex and orgasm.  But my love language is quality time and hers is words of affirmation.  And lately we have been spending a lot of quality time together (sexually and non-sexually) so I felt like things were great!  She was speaking my love language so I thought things were great.  But I could sense a bit of a distance from her lately.  So we talked about it and she said that I wasn’t speaking her love language and she felt her love tank was “empty.”  So even though she went along with sex, she didn’t feel loved because I wasn’t speaking her language.

So we talked about it.  I apologized.  And now I’m more aware of HER love language and I’m trying to speak that language to her.  And in just a short time things have improved greatly.

But we could have avoided this bump in the road if I had remembered to speak HER love language from the beginning.  So I wanted to share this reminder to all of you in the hopes that you will avoid a similar detour.  And if you will learn to speak your spouse’s love language outside the bedroom, it will lead to more frequent (and hotter) visits to the bedroom.  Because sex is an expression of love.  A person needs to feel loved first and then they want to express it sexually.  So it’s important to speak their love language in a non sexual context first if you want to enhance the sexual aspect.

And there are two ways to discover your spouse’s love language.  One is to pay attention to what they ask for the most.  If your spouse is always saying, “You never spend any time with me,” then their love language is quality time.  If they are complaining that you never give them a gift, then their love language is gifts.

But a second way to discover your spouse’s (and your own) love language is to take a FREE questionnaire online at: www.5lovelanguages.com.  This is what we did and I highly recommend it.  Just click where it says “Discover your Love Language” and go from there.  It only takes about 5 minutes per person.  So if you each do it then it will tell you your love language.  It’s also good to do this because it will list all 5 in the order that are most important to you.  But mostly you will discover what yours and your spouse’s primary love language is.  You can also have the results emailed to you so you can keep it for future reference.

We were surprised at our results because my wife had two of the love languages tied for the number one spot.  She had words of affirmation and physical touch.  So now I know to work on those two things if I want her to feel loved.  Just as she knows the way to make me feel loved is to spend quality time with me.  So I highly recommend that each husband and wife take the survey because you will get a more accurate idea of what your love languages are.  And we felt the results were 100% accurate, so it works.

So keep this in mind as you pursue a hot, passionate sex life.  The first way to a hot sex life is through speaking each other’s love language.  Without that on a continual basis, your sex life will eventually suffer.  And one or both of you will lose some of the spark.  And you may go through the motions for a time, but who wants that?  We all want the passion on a regular basis.  Learn each other’s love language and speak it daily.  Then things will be hot outside and inside the bedroom.