WHAT HAPPENS TO LOVE AFTER THE WEDDING?
At 30,000 feet, somewhere between Buffalo
and Dallas, he
put his magazine in his seat pocket, turned in my direction, and asked, “What
kind of work do you do?” “I do marriage counseling and lead marriage enrichment
seminars,” I said matter-of-factly. “I’ve been wanting to ask someone this for
a long time,” he said. “What happens to the love after you get married?”
Relinquishing my hopes of getting a nap, I asked, “What do you mean?” “Well,”
he said, “I’ve been married three times, and each time, it was wonderful before
we got married, but somehow after the wedding it all fell apart. All the love I
thought I had for her and the love she seemed to have for me evaporated. I am a
fairly intelligent person. I operate a successful business, but I don’t
understand it.” “How long were you married?” I asked. “The first one lasted
about ten years. The second time, we were married three years, and the last
one, almost six years.” “Did your love evaporate immediately after the wedding,
or was it a gradual loss?” I inquired. “Well, the second one went wrong from
the very beginning. I don’t know what happened. I really thought we loved each
other, but the honeymoon was a disaster, and we never recovered. We only dated
six months. It was a whirlwind romance. It was really exciting! But after the
marriage, it was a battle from the beginning. “In my first marriage, we had
three or four good years before the baby came. After the baby was born, I felt
like she gave her attention to the baby and I no longer mattered. It was as if
her one goal in life was to have a baby, and after the baby, she no longer
needed me.” “Did you tell her that?” I asked. “Oh, yes, I told her. She said I
was crazy. She said I did not understand the stress of being a twenty-four-hour
nurse. She said I should be more understanding and help her more. I really
tried, but it didn’t seem to make any difference. After that, we just grew
further apart. After a while, there was no love left, just deadness. Both of us
agreed that the marriage was over. “My last marriage? I really thought that one
would be different. I had been divorced for three years. We dated each other
for two years. I really thought we knew what we were doing, and I thought that
perhaps for the first time I really knew what it meant to love someone. I
genuinely felt that she loved me. “After the wedding, I don’t think I changed.
I continued to express love to her as I had before marriage. I told her how
beautiful she was. I told her how much I loved her. I told her how proud I was
to be her husband. But a few months after marriage, she started complaining;
about petty things at first—like my not taking the garbage out or not hanging
up my clothes. Later, she went to attacking my character, telling me she didn’t
feel she could trust me, accusing me of not being faithful to her. She became a
totally negative person. Before marriage, she was never negative. She was one
of the most positive people I have ever met. That is one of the things that
attracted me to her. She never complained about anything. Everything I did was
wonderful, but once we were married, it seemed I could do nothing right. I
honestly don’t know what happened. Eventually, I lost my love for her and
We must be willing to learn our spouse’s primary love
language if we are to be effective communicators of love. The answer to those
questions is the purpose of this book. It is not that the books and articles
already published are not helpful. The problem is that we have overlooked one
fundamental truth: People speak different love languages. In the area of
linguistics, there are major language groups: Japanese, Chinese, Spanish,
English, Portuguese, Greek, German, French, and so on. Most of us grow up
learning the language of our parents and siblings, which becomes our primary or
native tongue. Later, we may learn additional languages but usually with much
more effort. These become our secondary languages. We speak and understand best
our native language. We feel most comfortable speaking that language. The more
we use a secondary language, the more comfortable we become conversing in it.
If we speak only our primary language and encounter someone else who speaks
only his or her primary language, which is different from ours, our
communication will be limited. We must rely on pointing, grunting, drawing
pictures, or acting out our ideas. We can communicate, but it is awkward.
Language differences are part and parcel of human culture. If we are to
communicate effectively across cultural lines, we must
learn the language of those with whom we wish to
communicate. In the area of love, it is similar. Your emotional love language
and the language of your spouse may be as different as Chinese from English. No
matter how hard you try to express love in English, if your spouse understands
only Chinese, you will never understand how to love each other. My friend on
the plane was speaking the language of “Affirming Words” to his third wife when
he said, “I told her how beautiful she was. I told her I loved her. I told her
how proud I was to be her husband.” He was speaking love, and he was sincere,
but she did not understand his language. Perhaps she was looking for love in
his behavior and didn’t see it. Being sincere is not enough. We must be willing
to learn our spouse’s primary love language if we are to be effective
communicators of love. My conclusion after thirty years of marriage counseling
is that there are basically five emotional love languages—five ways that people
speak and understand emotional love. In the field of linguistics a language may
have numerous dialects or variations. Similarly, within the five basic
emotional love languages, there are many dialects. That accounts for the
magazine articles titled “10 Ways to Let Your Spouse Know You Love Her,” “20
Ways to Keep Your Man at Home,” or “365 Expressions of Marital Love.” There are
not 10, 20, or 365 basic love languages. In my opinion, there are only five.
However, there may be numerous dialects. The number of ways to express love
within a love language is limited only by one’s imagination. The important
thing is to speak the love language of your spouse. We have long known that in
early childhood development each child develops unique emotional patterns. Some
children, for example, develop a pattern of low self-esteem whereas others have
healthy self-esteem. Some develop emotional patterns of insecurity whereas
others grow up feeling secure. Some children grow up feeling loved, wanted, and
appreciated, yet others grow up feeling unloved, unwanted, and unappreciated.
The children who feel loved by their parents and peers will develop a primary
emotional love language based on their unique psychological makeup and the way
their parents and other significant persons expressed love to them. They will
speak and understand one primary love language. They may later learn a
secondary love language, but they will always feel most comfortable with their
primary language. Children who do not feel loved by their parents and peers
will also develop a primary love language. However, it will be somewhat
distorted in much the same way as some children may learn poor grammar and have
an underdeveloped vocabulary. That poor programming does not mean they cannot
become good communicators. But it does mean they will have to work at it more
diligently than those who had a more positive model. Likewise, children who
grow up with an underdeveloped sense of emotional love can also come to feel
loved and to communicate love, but they will have to work at it more diligently
than those who grew up in a healthy, loving atmosphere. Seldom do a husband and
wife have the same primary emotional love language. We tend to speak our
primary love language, and we become confused when our spouse does not
understand what we are communicating. We are expressing our love, but the
message does not come through because we are speaking what, to them, is a
foreign language. Therein lies the fundamental problem, and it is the purpose
of this book to offer a solution. That is why I dare to write another book on
love. Once we discover the five basic love languages and understand our own
primary love language, as well as the primary love language of our spouse, we
will then have the needed information to apply the ideas in the books and
articles.
Once you identify and
learn to speak your spouse’s primary love language, I believe that you will
have discovered the key to a long-lasting, loving marriage. Love need not
evaporate after the wedding, but in order to keep it alive most of us will have
to put forth the effort to learn a secondary love language. We cannot rely on
our native tongue if our spouse does not understand it. If we want him/her to
feel the love we are trying to communicate, we must express it in his or her
primary love language.
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