Hi Praise,
I can’t seem to understand my wife’s insatiable appetite for material things. Left to her, she would buy everything in this world and I am beginning to feel that she was sent to wreck me, but the only thing that holds me back from that conclusion is that she doesn’t demand for expensive gifts. You can imagine a woman I do everything for, including taking care of the home and even joining her to cook, yet all she cares about or what makes her extremely happy is whenever I buy her something. In fact, she is always asking me what I bought for her each time I come back from work. Don’t you think that this type of woman is too selfish and only cares about herself?
– Hussain Alex (Abuja)
Communication is everything in a relationship and a breakdown in communication is a breakdown in the entire relationship and that is why too many people are having serious issues in their marriages. I have seen people move from one man to another and from one woman to another and each time I sit back to watch, because many people ignorantly think that a change of spouse is what they need when they have failed to do the needful, which is addressing a fundamental flaw or knowledge deficiency that they haven’t addressed. This marital illiteracy has led to situations where people wrongly diagnose marital issues and place a label on the issue with their limited understanding. The next thing, a man calls his wife stupid or a witch while the woman calls her husband stupid, wicked or stingy, yet their common enemy, which is ignorance, sits back laughing at the two of them.
The fourth love language couples speak is gifts.
4. Gifts- Have you had to relate with a spouse who is always asking you for what you bought for him/her or a spouse who seeks to show you or tell you about what someone else bought for his spouse? Have you had to relate with a spouse that you have wrongly labeled as being materialistic or spendthrift without really understanding the issue?
I hope you have’t forgotten that your language is the way you have learnt to receive I love you and whosoever speaks your language is the person you bond with. There is a category of people who interpret love by what you give. Their motto is ‘for God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten son’. Hmmmmm!
Are you married to someone who seems to get carried away with gifts no matter the quality or the quantity of the gift? Truth is, this category of people don’t really care about the quality of the gift as much as they care about the frequency and the consistency of the gift. A gift to them is their way of interpreting the fact that ‘I am always in his/her thoughts’. The truth is, your spouse has got an emotional bank account and you are not the one that determines the currency that is acceptable in that bank; he/she does. And that is why it is your responsibility to find how to exchange your currency with the currency of his/her bank and speak the language he/she understands.
That your spouse is asking for gifts may not mean they are out to wreck you; where I would have a problem is where they are asking for a type of gift that they know you can’t afford. For people whose love language is gifts, it is not about the quality or the cost of the gift; it is more about the frequency and the consistency of the gift and you’d notice that they blush and smile each time they get something from you. Each time you give a gift to this person, what you have communicated is ‘You are always on my mind and you are my priority’. But if you get angry and accuse them of being too demanding, what you have also communicated is ‘You are secondary to my plans and I care less about what happens to you because I don’t love you that much’. That may not be what you meant to communicate, but that is what they hear and that is why the same way your mouth speaks, your action actually speaks louder. That is why we recommend that you learn to live intentionally in a way that you seek to respect, accept, understand and love people the way they want to be loved.
To be continued.