Attending our friends' wedding and reading my new friend's blog has got me really focused on marriage lately. I think my husband and I have a great marriage, but sometimes it's nice to step back and re-center ourselves.I know many of my readers are married, so I'd like to share this website: The Five Love Languages. The gist is that there are five different ways you might want to be loved: through words, through time, through service, through touch, and through gifts. Just because you prefer one or the other, doesn't mean none of the rest matter--it simply means that's the best way to fulfill your needs in marriage.
It's helpful to know your love language so that your partner can be sure to address your needs, while you can address his or hers by knowing their love language... check out this super easy assessment.
My main love language is Quality Time, and my husbands is Physical Touch. While my love language is very obvious through my 'scores' on the assessment, my husband actually has 3 really close scores. Is he easier to love? HAHA!
I commented to him that I think these love languages reflect our current life situation, and perhaps at another time they will be different. Right now, I am constantly caring for G, and he is at work a LOT. I miss having alone time with my husband, and he misses cuddling with me as much as we did before I was carrying a baby all day. I also think that my husband does a great job of giving me love through words of affirmation, so that's already done for me...without needing to chose it as my love language. I do loads of acts of service for my husband, so that's not really a "need" for him right now either.
So, all-in-all, I think the thing about "Love Languages" is that it mostly points out what you need to make more of an effort to do for each other at this current phase of your marriage.
I'd also like to ask for your tips on keeping your marriage going strong despite children. So please leave me anything that works for you! I think Mandi would appreciate it, too!
Something that works for us? Taking walks together and holding hands--quality time AND physical touch!
I'd never thought of love languages that way - that they change according to life situation because you need different things at different time and automatically have other needs filled by circumstance. That makes a ton of sense!
ReplyDeleteMy love languages changed after we got married. The year before my husband was living 5 hours away so I leaned more towards Quality Time. Now that we're around each other more, I'm Words of Affirmation and Acts of Service. I'm sure they change after a baby too.
ReplyDeleteI wish I had tips for the after baby part, but unfortunately we only know about the After Dog phase. :)
I'm a fan of "For your marriage" on FB, and they just posted this today. I think there are a lot of great points!
ReplyDeletehttp://foryourmarriage.org/surviving-the-first-year-of-parenthood/