Love is simple

Loving is simple. It is easy. But, it is in the details. If you want to communicate to your wife that you love her, you don’t have to hire a marching band. You don’t have to buy her three dozen roses. You might try this. You might go home tonight, turn off the television, set down the control and ask this question: “Tell me about your day. What were you doing at 10:00 a.m. this morning? What did you do for lunch? What were you doing at 3:00 this afternoon?” And, just listen for as long as she wants to talk. Keep asking follow-up questions, “Then, what did you? How did you feel about that? And what did you say? How did that make you feel?” Just keep listing and see if she does not feel thoroughly loved.

The examples above assume you are speaking her love language. More on that later

Guys are even simpler. If you want to make them feel thoroughly loved, all you have to say is, “I would really like to make love with you tonight; any chance you would be willing to make love with me?”

This example only works . . . well; I think it works pretty much all the time. I am only half kidding.

The above example would have worked with my first wife, but not my second. In some ways I feel 18 years of marriage prepared me to be married to someone I am not married to any more.

This is why, by the way, all marriage books need to be taken with a grain of salt. Whenever a marriage books says, “This is how to love a woman . . .” You need to ask, “Which woman?” You need to ask your wife if it would help her feel really loved. The fact that you asked is probably a good start.

It is a good start, unless. Unless she is under the mistaken notion that being in love makes you a mind reader. This is a mistake a lot of people make: “If he loved me he would know I like him to. . .” Or, “If you have to ask. . . what is the point of that?”  The point is you might get what you want. You might not, or course, but you might. And, over time you can educate your spouse as to what you like and what doesn’t mean that much to you. If you do this your marriage will get better over time.

If I were in the mood to make Missy feel really loved, I would go at it differently. I would fix the fireplace. (The gas fireplace keeps going out.) I might fix the door —that one that has the hinges falling off. Fixing almost anything is good. So is cleaning stuff. Doing the dishes is good. Picking up stuff is good.

If you have read Gary Chapman’s Five Love Languages you know where I am heading. If you have not read Five Love Languages you really need to. Toss this book aside and go read that one. It is a great read. Every couple ought to read it.

If you have read it, you can guess by now that my love language is physical touch and Missy’s is acts of service. Sharon’s love language was quality time. She wanted to talk, talk, talk. Missy’s attitude is, “forget the talk—do something for me.”

When I said my live language was physical touch, I am actually not sure that is right. If I could edit Gary Chapman’s concept, I would put sex in a different category. It is, for me, like air. I don’t think too much about it as long as I have enough. If I have enough, it is hard to think about anything else. Air is that way. When was the last time you considered how great it is to breath? Hold your head under water for about 60 seconds and let me ask you want it would take for you to feel really loved.

As long as I have enough sex, the rest of physical touch is not that important to me. Assuming the sex need is met, I’d say my love language is words of affirmation. I just love it when Missy tells me how wonderful I am.

I have mentioned four of the five love languages:

• Quality time, which Sharon had. For her it was mostly about talking. It could include doing things together.
• Acts of service, which is Missy’s love language.
• Physical touch, which includes both sexual and non-sexual touches. I know, I know, guys. It is a tough concept to understand.
• Words of affirmation. Can include saying the words, “I love you” as well as any complement or praise.

There is one more: gift giving. Some people really feel loved when you buy them stuff. We were talking about this in the care with one of the kids. “Who doesn’t like people to buy them stuff? That seems like that is everyone’s love language.”

Actually, not so. This is my least favorite language. For one thing, in the context of a marriage, you are really spending each other’s money. So, when Missy buys me a gift she is using my money to do it and when I buy her a gift I am using her money to do it. Also, I am picky and I tend to like expensive gifts. If you aren’t buying me new L lenses for my camera (starting in at 4 figures) why bother?

But, for some people gift giving rings their bell.

There two applications to the concept of love languages. First, you could spend a lot of time and energy trying to communicate love and your spouse still doesn’t feel loved. If you are telling her you love her in a language she doesn’t understand, she is not going to feel love. And, it doesn’t help to speak louder.

It is like sending a radio signal on a frequency and the radio is dialed to a different frequency. It doesn’t help to turn the volume up.

The second application is more hopeful: when you are speaking your spouse’s love language, a little bit goes a long way. It starts to get easy.

In a way, making your spouse feel loved is either easy or impossible. It is either something you do and do regularly without too much thought, or it is something that seems too much trouble, or you don’t know how to do, or you are not willing to do.

If time and energy and money were in unlimited supply, it would be easy to make someone feel loved. Buy 3 dozen roses. Take a trip to Hawaii together. Hire a marching band. But, who can sustain that?

Love must be simple. Communicating love must come down to a handful of things that you do by habit. They are a lifestyle. You put it on autopilot.

But, that is not exactly right either. It is somewhere between lavish and simple. We will try to put that together in the next chapter.