The premise of the book is that there are five languages of that we speak. And one of the five is the language we need to hear in order for our "Love Tank" to be full. Those languages: Words of Affirmation, Quality Time, Receiving Gifts, Acts of Service and Physical Touch. The end of the book there is an assessment to help you determine what your love language is...and there is one for your spouse to complete. The author states that in order to full our spouses love tank to give them fulfillment in love is to learn to speak their language...and vice versa.
The book goes through what each of these languages mean and what you can do to learn to speak a specific language. It also helps you gain a better understanding of the language you need to hear. But before the author goes in to these languages, he discusses love and what it is...and what it takes to keep a love tank full...and he has a chapter dedicated to falling in love. This is the chapter that I read last night.
The author refers to some research that states that falling in love is not really love...it's more a state of a euphoria. This immediately made me say "Huh? How is falling in love not real love? Isn't love just that? Love?" He goes further to say that once a couple gets past the falling in love stage (said to last about two years) that is when the work for that real love starts...this is also when people don't realize that you have to work for love and they give up. He gave three reasons why it is said that falling in love isn't really love.
- Falling in love is not an act of will or a conscious choice.
- Falling in love is not real love because it is effortless.
- One who is "in love" in not genuinely interested in fostering the personal growth of the other person.
This got me to thinking. I met my husband back in high school, though we dated off and on for two years before we became a permanent item, I remember being in that state of falling in love. I don't really recall making the transition from falling in love to loving him, but I can recall times in the past 16 years that both of us have stopped working on loving the other person. We are in one of those spots now.
It's not that we don't love each other because we do...but that love that is needed to endure anything is what we are learning to do again. It's not easy to be here but we are both working on it. "Nothing will work unless you do" ~ Maya Angelou is the quote that I came across many months ago and I have made that my status message on GoogleTalk. It is my constant reminder to keep my end of the bargin to be a better wife and to work on that third point, to make sure that I am doing my part to help my husband be a better husband.
We are working on that "real love" that Mr. Chapman spends the rest of his book talking about. I'm hoping that once I'm done that I can talk my husband in to reading this book as well, but for now...I'm just waiting for him to ask me what I'm reading.
1 comment:
I love that book. It really helped us years ago.
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