There is no point speaking Spanish to a German because there can’t be effective communication until there is a mutual definition of terms. If the person you are trying to pass a message to doesn’t understand your codes, what you will get is what happened to the people in Babel who tried to construct a tower to heaven and God came to scatter their language. The moment they could no longer understand each other’s language, that was the end of the project. A lot of marriages are like Babel where even though the man is trying his best to communicate, the wife is not interpreting correctly what he is trying to say because he is not speaking the language she understands. The home becomes a home of Spanish Romeo and Italian Julliet. Is that your home?
3. Love Language Problem – One of the critical issues I have had to take couples in troubled marriages through is this critical factor called love language. I was speaking at a conference the other day and a woman complained bitterly about her man who has never told her how much he loves her in a long while. She was almost in tears and I watched the man try to defend himself with a long list of all he has been doing and buying for the woman and even accused her of being ungrateful. I kept observing the two of them go back and forth, but it was clear to me from the first statement that the problem was a love language issue.
Your love language is the way you have been conditioned to receive love and whosoever speaks your love language is the person you bond with naturally. It is like going for a conference in Australia as a French man without an interpreter. You can imagine the frustration of trying to negotiate everything in French, which is the only language you understand, then you suddenly bump into another guy who speaks French fluently and could understand you. Of course, you know that you’d naturally stick to such a guy till the end of the conference.
It is the same way with your spouse. Not speaking your spouse’s love language drains their emotional bank account and it is the singular reason a lot of couples nag and fight themselves till their home becomes a permanent quiet room.
– What does your spouse complain the most about you?
– What do you complain the most about your spouse?
– How has he/she been trying to express love to you?
– How have you been trying to express love to him?
Speaking another love language without understanding how your spouse wants to be loved is like speaking a language of hatred and frustration which may not generate any form of positive response.
Garry Chapman identified 5 basic love languages in a lot of us and he went ahead to say that an average person would have a dominant and a complimentary, which means that each of us would naturally have about two of such languages.
A. Words of Affirmation – There are couples who only hear the language of love by you verbally expressing it and until you do that, every other form of expression becomes an exercise in futility. Does your spouse complain about the way you talk? And does he complain about your lack of affirmation and compliments when he is dressed for work? Always bear in mind that if you don’t give compliments to your spouse, he/she will start bonding with that colleague or boss at work who compliments what he wears and does. Your expensive gifts and quality time with your spouse would never receive any form of appreciation until you learn to communicate love the way your spouse loves to receive love. So, if you have a spouse that is sensitive to words, you must do everything not to shout on them and also be strategic in your bid to correct their wrongs because they can begin to pretend when you are too blunt around them.
Words of affirmation is like blood to a spouse whose love language is words and that is why you can’t starve them of words because communication would naturally die in your relationship and the moment communication is gone, you can be sure the relationship will die a permanent death.
– How have you been talking to your spouse?
– Does he/she complain about your bluntness?
– Does he/she complain about your lack of romantic words and affection?
– Does he or she express disappointments at you for not observing what he/she wears or the new shoes and hairdo?
Then, you are dealing with a words of affirmation freak and if you want communication to be effective in your home, you must master words of affirmation, whether it comes naturally to you or not.
To be continued.