This week, you can take a small but powerful step toward strengthening your marriage, simply by identifying your spouse’s love language. You can do this by reading the love languages book or taking a love languages quiz. If you already know your spouse’s love language, skip to the bonus step below and then read How to Speak Your Spouse’s Love Language. (Includes affiliate links)
The 5 Love Languages, by Dr. Gary Chapman, teaches simple, powerful information that can bring joy to a typical marriage, or change the course of a struggling marriage. The book explains that every person experiences love through one (or sometimes a combination) of five “languages” –
- Words of Affirmation
- Acts of Service
- Receiving Gifts
- Quality Time
- Physical Touch.
If you don’t know the “language” that allows your husband to feel and experience love, you will struggle to make him feel loved. Sometimes, a wife tries to love her husband using her own love language. But if her husband “speaks” a different language, her efforts will fall short, frustrating both of them.
If you don’t know your spouse’s love language, take the time this week to identify it. Buy (or borrow) a copy of The 5 Love Languages – it’s well worth the modest investment. If you can’t do that this week, do some research on the five languages so you begin to understand them, take the love languages quiz, and try to identify your husband’s primary language. Here are some resources to help you get started:
- The 5 Love Languages website describes the languages, answers questions, and provides links to books and information.
- Understanding the 5 Love Languages presents a series of articles Dr. Chapman wrote for Focus on the Family online.
- The 5 Love Languages Quiz – This Beliefnet site includes a “widget” that lets you assess your love language. Although I recommend reading and completing the assessments in the book, the love languages quiz online tool provides a quick and easy way for you and your husband to identify your languages.
Bonus Step – If you already know your spouse’s love language, or as soon as you identify it, do two things this week that will speak love to him in his language. I know my husband’s love language (he actually has two that are almost equal), so this step will be my challenge to myself this week, and I encourage you to take it on as a challenge for yourself too. And recognize that it may feel like a challenge, especially if your love language is different from his.
To help you connect with him in ways that most make him feel loved, check out Speak Your Husband’s Love Language. This article will help you learn how to “speak” each of the love languages, so that you can learn to show love to your husband in the way he can most easily receive it. And use it to open a conversation between the two of you and to discuss both of your love languages and how to best “speak” them.
Once you’ve used the concepts presented in The 5 Love Languages to strengthen your marriage, I’d love to know how that worked for you. Please share your experiences or tips in the Comments – I’d love to hear from you.
You may also like –
- Speak Your Husband’s Love Language
- Essential Oils for Sex and Intimacy
- 18 Ways to Spice Up Your Marriage
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