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It is possible to give without loving, but it is impossible to love without giving. – Anon
A group of children were asked their opinion as to why people fall in love. One nine-year-old replied, ‘No one is sure why it happens, but I heard it has something to do with how you smell. That’s why perfume and deodorant are so popular.’
An eight-year-old boy had a different theory: ‘I think you’re supposed to get shot with an arrow or something, but the rest of it isn’t supposed to be so painful.’
Gary, aged seven, was convinced it had something to do with more than your appearance: ‘It isn’t always just how you look. Look at me. I’m handsome like anything and I haven’t got anybody to marry me yet.’
Some adults are equally in the dark about the real nature of love. They have been brought up to believe that love is principally an emotion over which we have little control, a belief that is reinforced by the lyrics of many popular songs. As teenagers, our children discovered (to their great amusement) some of our records from the sixties with phrases such as:
Before this dance is through,
I think I’ll love you too.[2]
and
I didn’t know just what to do
So I whispered, ‘I love you’.[3]
Infatuation, which can be triggered as easily by physical appearance as by any real knowledge of the other person and which is likely to go as quickly and mysteriously as it came, is often portrayed as the sum total of love. The popular understanding of love has largely been reduced to feelings.
But there is another kind of love which is deliberate and which is cultivated over a period of time. In Louis de Bernières’ novel, Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, Dr Iannis describes to his daughter the type of love that lasts:
Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the promulgation of promises of eternal passion, it is not the desire to mate every second minute of the day, it is not lying awake at night imagining that he is kissing every cranny of your body. No, don’t blush, I am telling you some truths. That is just being ‘in love’, which any fool can do. Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away . . . Your mother and I had it, we had roots that grew towards each other underground, and when all the pretty blossom had fallen from our branches we found that we were one tree and not two.[4]
Some people get married on the basis of infatuation. Eventually and inevitably, however, when their infatuation wears off, if there is no understanding of how to create a love that develops with time, their roots will fail to entwine and their marriage will wither.
Christian love, as the New Testament describes it, is not so much an abstract noun as an active verb. Love involves doing. It means reaching out to meet the needs of another, often at a cost to oneself. In marriage, it may mean doing the washing-up out of love for our partner when we would rather be watching television. It may mean sitting down to talk with our husband or wife when we would rather be getting on with some work. It may mean hugging our partner when we know that they have had a hard day. Only this sort of love is able to sustain a marriage relationship over many years, causing it to mature and to deepen.
In practice, there are five ways through which we can actively show love to our husband or wife:
1. Loving words
2. Kind actions
3. Quality time
4. Thoughtful presents
5. Physical affection
These ways of putting love into action are called The 5 Love Languages in Gary Chapman’s excellent book, in which he uses the metaphor of language to examine the different ways in which we communicate and understand love.
He explained what led him to write the book:
The five love languages grew out of my counselling with couples. They would sit in my office and one of them would say, ‘I just feel like he doesn’t love me or she doesn’t love me,’ and the other would say, ‘I don’t understand that. I do this and this and this. Why would you not feel loved?’
I heard similar stories over and over again and I knew there had to be a pattern. I asked myself the question, ‘What were they complaining about when they said, “I feel my spouse doesn’t love me?” What did they want?’
Their answers fell into five categories and I later called them the five love languages. I now explain to couples, ‘If you want him or her to feel love, you’ve got to express love in his or her love language,’ and I would help couples discover their own and each other’s primary love languages.[5]
All five are important ways of showing love, but which is primary? We may shower our partner with presents, but they may first and foremost need to hear kind words in order to feel truly valued. A husband or wife might work hard in their home, thinking that in so doing they are showing love, but their partner might need regular physical affection in order to feel loved and appreciated.
The greatest need we all share is to know we are loved, that we matter to another, that we are special to them. We must therefore ask ourselves, ‘What is it that makes my husband or wife feel most loved?’ We can find this out through conversation and through deliberate and careful observation. A friend of ours who has been married for many years claims that in order to have a happy marriage, a husband and wife must ‘study each other’. In doing so we discover important, and sometimes unexpected, information.
[1] The material in this blog is adapted from Dr Gary Chapman’s bestselling book, The 5 Love Languages®: The Secret to Love That Lasts (© 2015). Published by Northfield Publishing. Used by permission. To learn more about Dr Gary Chapman and to take the free online 5 Love Languages® Profile, visit 5LoveLanguages.com.
[2] The Beatles, ‘I’m Happy Just To Dance With You’, lyrics © Sony / ATV Music Publishing LLC.
[3] The Crystals, ‘Then He Kissed Me’ (Universal Publishing Group, 1963).
[4] Louis de Bernières, Captain Corelli’s Mandolin (Secker & Warburg, 1994), p. 281.
[5] Gary Chapman, interview for The Marriage Course © Alpha International 2020. Used with permission.
