How do you feel loved? Is it when you receive gifts? Is it when someone says you are wonderful and so good-looking? None of those do it? How about when your spouse cleans the entire house or makes dinner for you? Or your friend just simply wants to spend time with you? No? What if someone gives you a hug or touches your shoulder or holds your hand?
Which one of these 5 different actions generally makes you feel loved? It’s important for you and those who love you to discover. Your spouse maybe thinking that they are showing you all kinds of love and yet you may not feel loved. How can you connect if you aren’t speaking the same language?
There is a book written by Gary Chapman called the “5 Languages of Love” which is very enlightening. Essentially each of us feels loved through one or more of these 5 expressions he has labelled as love languages. The 5 languages Gary has identified are quality time, physical touch, words of affirmation, acts of service and receiving gifts.
Gary Chapman shares on his website how he came to identify these love desires. “In the book, I share some of my encounters with couples through the years that brought me to realize that what makes one person feel loved does not necessarily make another person feel loved. For a number of years, I have been helping couples in the counseling office discover what their spouse desired in order to feel loved. Eventually, I began to see a pattern in their responses. Therefore, I decided to read the notes I had made over twelve years of counseling couples and ask myself the question, “When someone sat in my office and said, ‘I feel like my spouse doesn’t love me,’ what did they want?” Their answers fell into five categories. I later called them the five love languages.”[1]
Through helping marriages be better he discovered a vital ingredient. Marriages and families need to speak the right love language for happiness to flow. All 5 languages will speak love to you but one usually is the bedrock upon which all the others build. When you are feeling unloved the question is which one will fill your love tank? For me it is quality time with my wife. She can be serving, giving me gifts, speaking affirmation and physically connecting with me but without time together I feel unloved.
So what language do you think is your predominant one? What about your significant other? Your children? Do you speak theirs? Hmm…. think on that!
(image courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net)
[1] http://www.5lovelanguages.com
Which one of these 5 different actions generally makes you feel loved? It’s important for you and those who love you to discover. Your spouse maybe thinking that they are showing you all kinds of love and yet you may not feel loved. How can you connect if you aren’t speaking the same language?
There is a book written by Gary Chapman called the “5 Languages of Love” which is very enlightening. Essentially each of us feels loved through one or more of these 5 expressions he has labelled as love languages. The 5 languages Gary has identified are quality time, physical touch, words of affirmation, acts of service and receiving gifts.
Gary Chapman shares on his website how he came to identify these love desires. “In the book, I share some of my encounters with couples through the years that brought me to realize that what makes one person feel loved does not necessarily make another person feel loved. For a number of years, I have been helping couples in the counseling office discover what their spouse desired in order to feel loved. Eventually, I began to see a pattern in their responses. Therefore, I decided to read the notes I had made over twelve years of counseling couples and ask myself the question, “When someone sat in my office and said, ‘I feel like my spouse doesn’t love me,’ what did they want?” Their answers fell into five categories. I later called them the five love languages.”[1]
Through helping marriages be better he discovered a vital ingredient. Marriages and families need to speak the right love language for happiness to flow. All 5 languages will speak love to you but one usually is the bedrock upon which all the others build. When you are feeling unloved the question is which one will fill your love tank? For me it is quality time with my wife. She can be serving, giving me gifts, speaking affirmation and physically connecting with me but without time together I feel unloved.
So what language do you think is your predominant one? What about your significant other? Your children? Do you speak theirs? Hmm…. think on that!
(image courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net)
[1] http://www.5lovelanguages.com
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