Learn Your Spouse's Love Language

The secret to everlasting true love in a marriage is very simple. If you want to effectively communicate with your spouse and keep the love burning in your relationship, the very first thing that you are going to want to do is to learn your spouse’s love language. That’s right. Every person has a love language and your love language may be different than your spouse’s. If you are always expressing to your spouse your love language to them, they’re not going to respond to it. That would be like speaking English to a person that only speaks German. Your spouse is not going to understand it so therefore they are not going to see that love connection. You are going to have to speak their love language and before you do that, you are going to need to find out exactly what that love language is.

But even before you do that, you need to be willing to learn it. If you want to keep the love in your marriage alive, you are going to have to work at it and the ultimate result will be mastering how to communicate effectively with your lover. You’re not going to wake up one morning and it suddenly happen. You’re going to have to put a little elbow grease into it. You may just be fortunate enough that he/she is actually willing to share it with you, but if not, you are going to have to find out answers to these three questions:

How does your spouse express love to other people?

What do they complain about the most that they do not receive well when it comes to satisfying their love language? Is it a lack of time with you? Lack of appreciation? Sexual pleasure? Lack of communication? (Please Note: There may be more than one answer here.)

What does your spouse request the most from you? Quality time? More physical contact? More acts of service? More affirmation along with direct communication? (Again, there may be more than one answer here.)

Even though your spouse’s complaints may irritate you, you have to keep in mind that they are top key indicators of what your spouse’s main love language is. Yes, they can actually have more than one so you definitely want to be quite mindful of that. Don’t reply to them defensively if they complain about something whether it’s lack of quality time, lack of physical touching, etc. Instead, you need to respond sincerely and ask open-endedly on how you can solve this problem together.

Let me give you an example. Maybe your spouse feels you spend way too much time working and doing other activities than spending time with him/her. Ask for their opinion on what it would take to resolve this. You may not be able to afford to wean back on a regular work week but maybe you are volunteering too much overtime on the weekends which is taking up your ‘together time.’ Maybe it’s best to use some of that time to do something special with your spouse. Maybe a dinner date night out along with a movie at your local theater or a drive out of town to somewhere special you both enjoy. Maybe you both like the same activities like fishing, camping, cooking, golf, playing music, hunting for collectibles, etc. If so, plan a convenient time for the both of you to partake in those favorite activities together. Quality time with your spouse needs to be done as often as you can if your spouse needs that kind of love expressed from you.

There is a great difference between being ‘in love’ and pursuing ‘real love’ when it comes to your spouse. When you first met him/her, you fell ‘in love’ with them. You had an obsession with them emotionally and they had an obsession with you. They would be in your thoughts constantly. You would relive the night before you had with them on date night over and over again in your mind and had a hard time going to sleep in order to prepare for the next day. You couldn’t stop looking at their picture hanging on a thumbtack in your office cubicle or maybe the photo of them in a cute frame that was sitting on your nightstand. Everything about your spouse was so perfect and you longed to be with them forever and ever as one flesh.

And then one day you got married and the real world of marriage happened. Your eyes suddenly opened and you started seeing some traits about them that you did not see before. Maybe the person you fell in love with used to let things slide right off their back when you first met them but now all of the sudden you notice they have a temper and use harsh words. Maybe they were a super sweet Romeo while you were dating and now they take no interest in any romance rendezvous with you. It gets to the point that these negative personality issues seem somewhat bothersome to you and now you are at the place wondering if you should stick it out to the end and just deal with it for the rest of your life or dive off the marriage boat and try falling in love with someone else all over again.

This is when you need to stop and recognize that the ‘in love’ experience you felt in the beginning was a powerful but temporary emotion you felt before you really got to know the person you fell in love with. Now that you have gotten to know them more and have learned a lot of things about them, now is the time to pursue “real love” with them which will include time, effort and persistence in figuring out, learning and speaking your spouse’s love language not once in awhile, but all of the time. If your spouse feels emotional security from you when it comes to love and affection, then you will see them reach their highest potential and maybe just maybe they will begin to speak your love language in a more intimate way that you want to always receive it. Wouldn’t that be awesome?