So Valentine’s Day has come and gone.
Was your Valentine’s Day one you’ll never forget or was it a total disappointment?
As women like to say, men just don’t get women. The reason has more to do with our “love will conquer all” culture – that and the way men are wired.
What IS Valentine’s Day Anyway?
In the past, I’ve gone into great detail about how the misconception of “love” begins in childhood and prepares us to fail in marriage by making us think that “love” will happen all on its own without any effort from us at all.
Many men view Valentine’s Day as simply a day that was created by Hallmark as a way to make money selling cards and other useless knickknacks.
They see Valentine’s Day as nothing more than a scam.
This harsh opinion greatly offends their wives who typically receive so little thoughtfulness throughout the year that they NEED, and in fact look forward to Valentine’s Day.
For the millions of men, Valentine’s Day is the only day of the year that they express thoughtfulness and undivided attention to their wives.
This article is not about Valentine’s Day, but rather the DAYS AFTER Valentine’s Day. I’m talking about the 364 days of the year (aside from other major holidays) when men go back to business as usual.
While “business as usual” may sound like a harsh way to describe a day in the life of a married man or woman, but that is EXACTLY what it becomes when marriages start heading south.
“I guess we just never made time for us.” Is an all too common phrase amongst couples whose marriages have taken a turn for the worst.
“So who DID you make time for? “ I ask them.
They reply that they both made time for their children, mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, uncles, cousins, friends, clubs, schools, churches, causes, missions, hobbies, pets…oh, and of course 50 hours a week for work.
“Now…when was it time for the two of you?” I ask. And of course their answer is “NEVER!”
Want to get off the “wait around all year for Valentine’s Day” bandwagon?
Start learning about your spouses’ Love Language.
This is how you can care for each other EVEN WHEN IT’S NOT VALENTINE’S DAY.
Gary Chapman created this important concept and in fact wrote a book all about it.
In a nutshell, here are the 5 SIMPLE, EASY TO REMEMBER Love Languages.
TIME: you love when your mate gives you their undivided attention.
TALK: You love it when you have long conversations about anything and everything.
TOUCH: You get excited and happy when you can hold hands, get hugs, kisses, intimate, etc.
GIFTS: It thrills you to buy gifts to show your love or to receive gifts that show it.
SERVICE: Your day is made when your mate vacuums the rug, washes the dishes, and provides all the services that say “I love you”.
Now all you need are the simple instructions on how to use your Love Languages.
Here are the steps to making Love Languages last longer than Valentine’s Day.
STEP 1: Look at each of the five languages and pick the one that makes you feel the most loved when you RECEIVE it.
STEP 2: Personalize your Love Language to read in first person. (Example: TIME: you love when your mate gives you their undivided attention, could turn into “Give me your enthusiastic undivided attention whenever we are together.”
STEP 3: Print your spouse’s Love Language to keep in your car, at work, in the bathroom, kitchen, or anywhere you look during the day. Some men and women put them on cell phone screens, computer screens, etc.
STEP 4: Every morning, greet each other by saying your own Love Language first thing, then, once a day, find a way to meet that need on your spouse’s Love Language card. When you give it out, it will come back (that is, if you have not let your marriage degrade to nothing by doing nothing and expecting love in return).
I strongly suggest that you get your own copy of Gary Chapman’s book so you can read all about Your 5 Love Languages.
You can find a link to the book in the lower right hand corner of my marriage resources page here:
https://www.fulfilledcouple.com/resources.html
I’ve provided a handy reminder card (click on the image above) that you can print out and tape up for each of the 5 Love Languages. If you happen to have Avery sticker label paper for your printer, you can make lots of them in case you want to remember that showing love doesn’t have to happen just once a year.
In closing, make time for your spouse. Don’t wait until it’s too late. Support your spouse’s love languages and your spouse will support yours in turn.
Thanks for reading, I’m Larry Bilotta.
2 Comments
Cheryl
February 15, 2008What do you do if your spouse wants you to fulfill his love language, but doesn’t care about yours. He would never call it a love language, that’s just how it’s suppose to be and wanting something different makes you selfish. I’ve tried to do as much as I can for his, but get nothing in return because our languages are not the same. It is all my fault, and then I don’t want to be intimate with him because I don’t get anything I need. He doesn’t believe in needs, except for sex. I feel like I can’t do this by myself and he refuses seminars, books, counseling etc.
Also, I don’t see a reminder card for the 5 love languages that you said was below.
Thanks
Larry Bilotta
February 16, 2008Cheryl,
Your note sounds like most every marriage I work with. No matter man or woman, he or she who contacts me, sounds like this… “He/She thinks I’m supposed to give him/her everything he/she wants, but when the shoe is on the other foot, I can’t get my legitimate needs met. I go out of my way to be a loving person in every way I know how, yet it’s not coming back my way. How’s a person supposed to be happily married when the other person is so self-centered and closed minded that you can’t even have a conversation without it degrading into yet another argument! Help!”
This is a one sided story. The guy/girl who contacts me is giving a convincing story of their side. But can you blame them? They have not found the source of divorce. Without knowing the source of divorce, they have no chance of finding happiness with each other, especially when they keep looking at behavior instead of the source.
Notice your opening line Cheryl, “What do you do….” . Everyone wants to know what to do. My response is always the same. If you knew what to do, you still wouldn’t do it. The reason? You’re married to a Chaos Kid. See the explanation and picture at https://www.fulfilledcouple.com/blog/?page_id=7
Once a person’s troubled childhood is released into their adult life, virtually no one knows what to do in order to turn it off. A chaos engine is what I call it. That means that your first ten years as a child produced a lot of emotional pain through some type of abuse or neglect. You try to bury it and you manage to do that till you’re in your 30’s, then, without warning, your chaos engine from your childhood turns on and all hell breaks loose. It’s an absolute shock. “What happened to you!?”
Once the chaos engine is on, the whole family is thrown into great turmoil and your children suffer regardless of whether they are 2 or 21. Every kid suffers, especially when this chaos engine turns on in their dad.
The only cure for this I’ve found is for the spouse without that chaos engine to learn how to become what I call an Environment Changer. That’s the only way I’ve seen to help you spouse shut off their chaos engine. An Environment Changer is a person who has learned how to feel so calm, so secure, so together and positive that their feelings flow out and cause their mate to change how they feel.
This is not some simple technique. It’s something you must literally become in steps, it must be practiced in the middle of chaos and only the strong can succeed at it. Becoming an Environment Changer is a course I teach to only one spouse. I require that any spouse who wants to take this course talk to me by phone before starting so I can answer their questions about what this experience will mean. It’s not easy to learn. Only those with a great cause and determination can turn off that engine and literally save their family.
I wish I could dispense quick tips and cool advice that you could quickly implement Cheryl, but if you have yourself a Chaos Kid, no tip or trick will ever work. They work in good marriages, but they don’t work when chaos engines are running loose.
By the way, if you want to know if a person has a chaos engine running, read these criteria (I’m using a husband in the example, but it could happen to wives just as easily): He’s full of self pity one day, arrogant and defensive the next, a great dad in the morning, a lazy selfish playboy at night, makes perfect sense at 10am, sounds insane at noon, disappearing for long periods without explaining, showing up days later and condemning himself for everything. This is the chaos engine; the result of abuse and neglect in those first ten years.
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