Do Love Languages Matter?
Do you remember about 20 years ago when the five love languages were all the rage?
I remember taking the test and then thinking that this was important so that my then husband would know how to adjust his behavior so I could feel loved.
It was all about the work he needed to do.
I've since changed my ideas about the love languages, and I'd like to share with you why.
I'm not sure exactly what Gary Chapman had in mind when presenting this idea to the world, but I don't really love how it has shown up.
For me, and many other people, it became a tool to use against their spouse (or others) to seek to change their behavior.
I know I used it as a gauge to show me how much my husband did or didn't love me based on how often he engaged in my love languages.
And this was pretty damaging for my marriage.
I was expecting my then-husband to change his behavior in order to make me feel loved.
But the truth is, nobody can make me feel anything.
I wasn't feeling loved because I wasn't thinking loving thoughts, I was thinking controlling thoughts.
I was trying to control his behaviors by telling him how to express his love to me, and not being willing to accept anything else.
Expecting another person to show up a certain way that may be against their nature really isn't fair.
Not only isn't it fair, but there's also something wrong with wanting someone to be someone or something they're not in an effort to please us.
I thought that when my husband didn't show up doing acts of service that it was all the evidence I needed to know he didn't love me.
A huge problem with that is when he showed up with words of affirmation to show love, I couldn't see, nor could I accept, it as love.
I wasn't accepting him for who he was because I was so fixated on him changing to fit my mold of what love looked like.
Really loving someone means we accept them for who they are - not for who we want them to be.
It means we change our perspective from wanting them to change, to embracing who they are.
We give them the space to show up as them, and loving them all the more for it.
Some of our biggest challenges in marriage, or any relationship, occur when we don't accept others for who they are and how they want to show up.
We have all sorts of expectations that they have to live up to before we will fully accept them
So, how are the love languages useful?
In helping us see how our people are showing us love.
In seeing that if they bring us a gift, it may be a sweet offering of their heart, even if gifts are not high on our love language.
It gives us an opportunity to see them for who they are and how they are extending love to us.
