Wednesday, October 11, 2017

The 5 love languages

The 5 love languages, Gary Chapman, 2010.
Note: I book this book on 2011.8.19. But I didn’t finish it until today, 2 years after a failed relationship. Too many factors involved: parental death, losing job, career change.
There are 5 emotional love languages, 5 ways that people speak and understand emotional love. In the fields of linguistics, a language may have numerous dialects or variations.
The important thing is to speak the love language of your spouse. We tend to speak our primary love language but it may be a foreign language to your spouse. We have to identify and learn to speak our spouse’s primary love language.
Inside every child is an emotional tank waiting to be filled with love. A child will develop normally when he really feels loved, but misbehave when the love tank is empty. Their misbehave is because they were seeking love in all the wrong places and in all the wrong ways.
Be careful that people behave differently when their emotional love tanks are full.

1 words of affirmation

verbal compliments, or words of appreciation, are powerful communicators of love. such as:
  • you look sharp in that suit.
  • do you ever look hot in that dress.
  • I really like how you’re always on time to pick me up at work
  • thanks for …. I want you to know I don’t take that for granted.
  • I love how you are so responsible. I feel like I can count on you.
what would happen to the emotional climate of a marriage if such words are a habit?
encouraging words. Encouragement requires empathy and seeing the world from your spouse’s perspective. It may not be your primary love language and may take a great effort for you to learn this second language.
kind words.love doesn’t keep a score of wrongs. love doesn’t bring up past failures. we can’t erase the past but can only confess it. We can ask for forgiveness and try to act differently in the future. I am amazed by how many individuals mess up every new day with yesterday. They pollute a potential wonderful day.
humble words. love makes requests, not demands. The way we express those desires, however, is all-important.
love is always a choice. That’s what makes it meaningful.
indirect way of affirmation. Say positive things about your spouse when she is not present. when you are given public honor for an accomplishment, share the credit with your spouse. try hand writting words.

2 quality time

focus attention

We are doing something together and giving our full attention to the other person. The important thing about the father rolling the ball to the 2-year-old is not the activity itself, but the emotions that are created between the father and his child.
When a couple plays tennis together, the important thing is not on the game but on the fact that they are spending time together. what happens on the emotional level is what matters. Our spending time together in a common pursuit communicates that we care about each other, that we enjoy being with each other, that we like to do things together.

quality conversation

sympathetic dialogue where 2 individuals are sharing their experiences, thoughts, feelings, and desires in a friendly, uninterrupted context. It means I will focus on drawing you out, listening sympathetically to what you have to say, ask questions to understand your thoughts, feelings and hopes.
… Now I realize that she didn’t want advice when she told me about her struggles at work. She wanted sympathy. She wanted me to listen, to give her attention, to let her know that I could understand the hurt, the stress, the pressure. She didn’t want advice; she just wanted to know that I understood.
My goal is to discover your thoughts and feelings. My objective is not to defend myself or to set you straight. It is to understand you.

learning to talk

Not only sympathetic listening but also self-revelation. She wants to feel close to her husband, but how can she feel close to someone whom she doesn’t know?
Self-revelation does not come easy for some of us. Many adults grew up in homes where the expressions of thoughts and feelings were not encouraged but condemned. request a toy, express anger, express disappointment are not allowed. By the time we reach adulthood, many of us have learned to deny our feelings.
thoughts are not a substitute for emotional feeling.
attitude is not a substitute for competence.
Write down your feelings 3 times a day and you will develop an awareness of your emotional nature. Remember, emotions themselves are neither good nor bad. They are simply our psychological responses to the events of life.

dead seas vs babbling brooks

These are 2 basic personality types. Dead sea is content not to talk. Babbling brook output whatever enters into the eye/ear gate to the mouth gate.
5 years after marriage, they wake up one morning and want to make a change. Dead sea can learn to talk and Babbling brooks can learn to listen. One way to learn new patterns is to establish a daily sharing time that each of you talks about 3 things that happened to you that day and how you feel about them. I call it minimum daily requirement for a healthy marriage.

quality activities

The emphasis is on being together, doing things together, giving each other undivided attention.
The emphasis is not no what you are doing but on why you are doing. The purpose is to experience something together, to walk away from it feeling “he cares about me. He was willing to do something with me that I enjoy, and he did it with a positive attitude.” That is love.
One by-product of quality activities is that they provide a memory bank to draw in the future.

to fall in love, do this

exchange 36 questions in 45 minutes plus 4 minutes staring each other.
The idea is that mutual vulnerability fosters closeness. To quote the study’s authors, “One key pattern associated with the development of a close relationship among peers is sustained, escalating, reciprocal, personal self-disclosure.” Allowing oneself to be vulnerable with another person can be exceedingly difficult, so this exercise forces the issue.

3 receiving gifts

gifts are visual symbols of love.
The gift of presence. Physical presence in the time of crisis is the most powerful gift you can give if your spouse’s primary love language is receiving gifts.
If the physical presence of your spouse is important to you, I urge you to verbalize that to your spouse. Don’t expect them to read your mind.
A husband’s mother died and the wife’s supervisor only granted 2 hours off for the funeral, otherwise, she will lose the job. She said, my husband is more important than my job. …

4 acts of service

Mark and Mary had the same primary love language, but they were speaking different dialects. They were doing things for each other but not the most important things. When they were forced to think concretely, they easily identified their specific dialects.
3 observations:
  1. what we do for each other before marriage is no indication of what we will do after marriage. Our actions are influenced by the model of our parents, our own personality, our perceptions of love, our emotions, needs and desires.
  2. love is a choice and cannot be coerced.
  3. only the mature lover will be able to hear. People tend to criticize their spouse most loudly in the area where they themselves have the deepest emotional need. Their criticism is an ineffective way of pleading for love. Criticism often needs clarification. Initiating such a conversation may eventually turn the criticism into a request rather than a demand.

doormat or lover?

manipulation by guilt (“if you were a good spouse, you would do this for me”).
coercion by fear (“you will do this or you will be sorry”).
We may allow ourselves to be used. But you are actually allow him ro her to develop inhuman habits.
learning the love language of acts of service will require some of us to reexamine our stereotypes of the roles of husbands and wives. Due to the sociological changes of the last decades, the number of stereotypes has multiplied. A willingness to examine and change stereotypes is necessary in order to express love more effectively. Remember, there are no rewards for maintaining stereotypes, but there are tremendous benefits to meeting the emotional needs of your spouse.
Simple? yes. Easy? No. Bob had to work hard at tearing down the stereotype with which he had lived for 35 years. It didn’t come easily. But it makes a tremendous difference in the emotional climate of a marriage.

10 love is a choice

Love doesn’t erase the past, but it makes the future different.

11 love makes the difference

We reason, if someone loves me, I must have significance.
When my spouse lovingly invests time, energy, and effort in me, I believe that I am significant. Without love, I may spend a lifetime in search of significance, self-worth, and security. I am now freed to develop my potential. I am more secure in my self-worth and can now turn my efforts outwards instead of being obsessed with my own needs. True love always liberates.
female quality time vs male acts of service

12 love the unlovely

put your faith in god. love the “enemy”. 6-month experiment. Do whatever you can without losing heart.