If you know your spouse’s love language, speak it. If you don’t know it, learn it.
Gary Chapman’s famous book, The Five Love Languages, offers a framework for husbands and wives to understand and engage each other. While they are not gospel, and no better or worse than the numbers and wings, they are immensely helpful.
- Words of Affirmation
- Acts of Service
- Receiving Gifts
- Quality Time
- Physical Touch
If you know your spouse’s love language, speak it. If you don’t know it, learn it.
Speak it as a ministry to your spouse. You are part of God’s plan for meeting their needs. Your care for them replenishes what daily life drains; it repairs what daily life attempts to tear apart.
Speak it as a free gift to your spouse – not an act of barter or a hook fishing for reciprocation. Be generous because it’s what you signed-up for. Make it a gift that doesn’t need a holiday or special occasion. Be intentional instead of forcing your spouse to have to ask for more of it. Yes, grownups should communicate what they need. But what if you relieved them of the waiting for the right time, strategizing the right words, the prefacing and stipulating?
Speak your spouse’s love language so that your spouse isn’t looking for someone outside of the marriage to speak it.
Talk about expectations.
Clarify which languages make the biggest impact on them.
Ask them what they need more of and less of. And if your spouse is already a fluent love language speaker, affirm and appreciate them.
If you are new to these concepts, then buy Dr. Chapman’s book—I guarantee that it’s available wherever books are sold. Buy it for yourself to grow in the ways you serve and spoil the person God gave you. Don’t buy it as a gift, hoping they will catch the hint. Even better—read it together.
If you know your spouse’s love language, speak it. If you don’t know it, learn it.
Use the share buttons to pass this along to family, friends, and church members.