“Every day is Valentine’s Day!” is the usual quip Rich jokingly says to Shelly EVERY Valentine’s Day. Yet, joking aside, it does lead to a very important question. Are you intentionally expressing your love on a daily basis and is it being received effectively? Or is it only intentionally expressed on special occasions… like Valentine’s Day?
Simply saying “I love you” every day is nice, but sometimes it’s meaning can easily become diluted and be received as an obligatory statement. That’s when knowing your spouse’s love language can make a significant difference in how love is intended and received. According to Gary Chapman’s Book, The Five Love Languages, love is expressed in emotional languages. Speaking someone’s love language is intended to express love and affirmation to them in their primary emotional language. Our tendency is to express love in ways that we appreciate and come naturally to us. However, the goal here is to speak your spouse’s primary love language and heighten the love message they receive. Here is a quick rundown of the love languages in case you are not familiar with, or don’t remember all of them:
Encouraging Words– building others up through verbal encouragement.
Acts of Service– doing something special for another person that you know they will appreciate.
Gift Giving– This is often a simple gesture that says “I love you” and “I was thinking of you when we were apart.”
Quality Time– Spending meaningful time with another, free of distraction, doing something they enjoy doing.
Physical Touch and Closeness– Touch can be expressing love through holding hands, an embrace, just standing close to each other or next to one another on the couch.
Thoughtfulness– This sixth love language, added from the Parenting from The Tree of Life curriculum, can be expressed in all of the other 5 Love Languages, but carries with it an extra special thought and attention to detail.
All of this may seem very familiar as we’ve mentioned Love Languages several times in previous letters. That’s because we believe it is a critical tool that you can use to make the health of your marriage a top priority. So, for this Valentine’s Day, we want to give you a fun assignment to try out:
- Take the Love Language/Emotional Touchpoint test – Click Here for the PDF link on our resource page. Make sure you and your spouse take it separately and don’t share the answers yet! Maybe even take the test before you go out for the evening?!?!
- At dinner or possibly after you put the kids to bed, try and guess your spouse’s top two primary and bottom two love languages and see if you are close.
- Talk about why you think the top ones and bottom ones are ranked that way.
- Now describe to your spouse how you would like your top two love languages expressed to you. The idea is to help your spouse know what you would truly appreciate in those love language moments. For example, Rich loves randomly receiving short “love” texts from Shelly as Encouraging Words. Shelly loves it when Rich randomly takes the initiative to do one of her household chores as an Act of Service.
- Write down each other’s top two Love Languages and put it on the refrigerator! This will remind you to be intentional and effective about loving your best friend each day. We have also added reminders to surprise each other with a loving gesture to our google/outlook calendars!
- Repeat again in 3-6 months as a fun date night activity. There may be no changes, but it will give you another opportunity to describe to your spouse how you would like to your top two love languages expressed to you. For us, as seasons of life change, we’ve seen our Love Language rankings change as well, so it’s good to check-in on love languages from time to time.
While this exercise is aimed at the husband and wife relationship, this is also a fun family night activity you can do with your older children beginning around age 5 or 6 (see the Kids Test on our Resource page). Teaching your children to love intentionally and effectively is a valuable life lesson. And seeing that demonstrated, between mom and dad, provides them with a tangible example of what love looks like!
“The Object of Love is not getting something you want, but doing something for the well-being of the one you love.” Gary Chapman, The Five Love Languages
“Everyday we choose to love and everyday we choose not to love.” Gary & Anne Marie Ezzo
Blessings to your family and may every day be Valentine’s Day!
Shelly and Rich