The 5 Love Languages: The Secret to Love that Lasts

Chapman, Gary

ISBN 10: 1589269063 ISBN 13: 9781589269064

Publisher: Oasis Audio, 2005

Synopsis

Simple ideas, lasting love.

Between busy schedules and long days, expressing love can fall by the wayside. We forget to compliment, to give gifts “just because,” to linger in an embrace. The things that say “I love you” seem to either not get said or not get through. This is an audio book about saying it — and hearing it — clearly. No gimmicks. No psychoanalyzing. Just learing to express love in your spouse’s language.

With over 10 million copies sold, The 5 Love Languages® has transformed countless relationships. Its ideas are simple and conveyed with clarity and humor, making this audio book as practical as it is personable. You’ll be inspired by real-life stories and encouraged by its commonsense approach. Listening to this audio feels like taking a walk with a wise friend. Applying it will forever change your relationship — starting today.

Includes The 5 Love Languages Personal Profile

About this title

About the Author

Gary Chapman — author, speaker, and counselor — has a passion for people and for helping them form lasting relationships. He is the best-selling author of The 5 Love Languages® series and the director of Marriage and Family Life Consultants, Inc. Gary travels the world presenting seminars, and his radio programs air on more than 400 stations. For more information, visit 5lovelanguages.com.

Reviews

In this unabridged recording of material the author has been perfecting for years, he says that people experience love most strongly through one of five love languages--quality time, words of encouragement, gifts, acts of service, and physical touch. Chapman's thoughtful, youthful sounding voice offers these insights not as the Five Commandments of Marriage, but as suggestions he hopes will be helpful. He provides humble examples from his counseling practice, which illuminate his ideas and give a human, down-to-earth quality to the lesson. Without making light of the work a marriage requires, he'll convince most listeners that with just a little planning and effort they can make a good marriage great and a broken partnership truly satisfying again. T.W. 2006 Audie Award Finalist © AudioFile 2006, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

The Five Love Languages

How to Express Heartfelt Commitment to Your MateBy Gary Chapman

Oasis Audio

Copyright © 2005 Gary Chapman
All right reserved.
ISBN: 9781589269064

Chapter One

What Happens to LoveAfter the Wedding?

At 30,000 feet, somewhere between Buffalo and Dallas,he put his magazine in his seat pocket, turned in mydirection, and asked, "What kind of work do youdo?"

"I do marriage counseling and lead marriage enrichmentseminars," I said matter-of-factly.

"I've been wanting to ask someone this for a longtime," 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, andeach time, it was wonderful before we got married, butsomehow after the wedding it all fell apart. All the love Ithought I had for her and the love she seemed to have for meevaporated. I am a fairly intelligent person. I operate a successfulbusiness, 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 sixyears."

"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 weloved each other, but the honeymoon was a disaster, and wenever recovered. We only dated six months. It was a whirlwindromance. It was really exciting! But after the marriage,it was a battle from the beginning.

"In my first marriage, we had three or four goodyears before the baby came. After the baby was born, I feltlike 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, andafter 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 Idid not understand the stress of being a twenty-four-hournurse. She said I should be more understanding and helpher 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 thatthe marriage was over.

"My last marriage? I really thought that one would bedifferent. I had been divorced for three years. We dated eachother for two years. I really thought we knew what we weredoing, and I thought that perhaps for the first time I reallyknew what it meant to love someone. I genuinely felt thatshe loved me.

"After the wedding, I don't think I changed. I continuedto express love to her as I had before marriage. I told herhow beautiful she was. I told her how much I loved her. Itold her how proud I was to be her husband. But a fewmonths after marriage, she started complaining; about pettythings at first-like my not taking the garbage out or nothanging up my clothes. Later, she went to attacking mycharacter, telling me that she didn't feel she could trust me,accusing me of not being faithful to her. She became a totallynegative 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 nevercomplained about anything. Everything I did was wonderful,but once we were married, it seemed I could do nothingright. I honestly don't know what happened. Eventually, Ilost my love for her arid began to resent her. She obviouslyhad no love for me. We agreed there was no benefit to ourliving together any longer, so we split.

"That was a year ago. So my question is, What happensto love after the wedding? Is my experience common?Is that why we have so many divorces in our country? I can'tbelieve that it happened to me three times. And those whodon't divorce, do they learn to live with the emptiness, ordoes love really stay alive in some marriages? If so, how?"

The questions my friend, seated in 5A was asking arethe questions that thousands of married and divorced personsare asking today. Some are asking friends, some areasking counselors and clergy, and some are asking themselves.Sometimes the answers are couched in psychologicalresearch jargon that are almost incomprehensible. Sometimesthey are couched in humor and folklore. Most of thejokes and pithy sayings contain some truth, but they are likeoffering an aspirin to a person with cancer.

The desire for romantic love in marriage is deeplyrooted in our psychological makeup. Almost every popularmagazine has at least one article each issue on keeping lovealive in a marriage. Books abound on the subject. Televisionand radio talk shows deal with it. Keeping love alive in ourmarriages is serious business.

With all the books, magazines, and practical helpavailable, why is it that so few couples seem to have foundthe secret to keeping love alive after the wedding? Why is itthat a couple can attend a communication workshop, hearwonderful ideas on how to enhance communication, returnhome, and find themselves totally unable to implement thecommunication patterns demonstrated? How is it that weread a magazine article on "101 Ways to Express Love toYour Spouse," select two or three ways that seem especiallygood to us, try them, and our spouse doesn't even acknowledgeour effort? We give up on the other 98 ways and goback to life as usual.

The answer to those questions is the purpose of thisbook. It is not that the books and articles already publishedare not helpful. The problem is that we have overlooked onefundamental truth: People speak different love languages.

In the area of linguistics, there are major languagegroups: Japanese, Chinese, Spanish, English, Portuguese,Greek, German, French, and so on. Most of us grow uplearning the language of our parents and siblings, which becomesour primary or native tongue. Later, we may learn additionallanguages but usually with much more effort. Thesebecome our secondary languages. We speak and understandbest our native language. We feel most comfortable speakingthat language. The more we use a secondary language, themore comfortable we become conversing in it. If we speakonly our primary language and encounter someone else whospeaks only his or her primary language, which is differentfrom ours, our communication will be limited. We must relyon pointing, grunting, drawing pictures, or acting out ourideas. We can communicate, but it is awkward. Languagedifferences are part and parcel of human culture. If we are tocommunicate effectively across cultural lines, we must learnthe language of those with whom we wish to communicate.

In the area of love, it is similar. Your emotional lovelanguage and the language of your spouse may be as differentas Chinese from English. No matter how hard you try toexpress love in English, if your spouse understands onlyChinese, you will never understand how to love each other.My friend on the plane was speaking the language of "AffirmingWords" to his third wife when he said, "I told herhow beautiful she was. I told her I loved her. I told her howproud I was to be her husband." He was speaking love, andhe was sincere, but she did not understand his language.Perhaps she was looking for love in his behavior and didn'tsee it. Being sincere is not enough. We must be willing tolearn our spouse's primary love language if we are to be effectivecommunicators of love.

My conclusion after twenty years of marriage counselingis that there are basically five emotional love languages-fiveways that people speak and understand emotionallove. In the field of linguistics a language may havenumerous dialects or variations. Similarly, within the fivebasic emotional love languages, there are many dialects.That accounts for the magazine articles titled "10 Ways toLet Your Spouse Know You Love Her," "20 Ways to KeepYour 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 numerousdialects. The number of ways to express love within a lovelanguage is limited only by one's imagination. The importantthing is to speak the love language of your spouse.

We have long known that in early childhood developmenteach child develops unique emotional patterns. Somechildren, for example, develop a pattern of low self-esteemwhereas others have healthy self-esteem. Some developemotional patterns of insecurity whereas others grow upfeeling 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 andpeers will develop a primary emotional love language basedon their unique psychological makeup and the way theirparents and other significant persons expressed love tothem. They will speak and understand one primary love language.They may later learn a secondary love language, butthey will always feel most comfortable with their primarylanguage. Children who do not feel loved by their parentsand peers will also develop a primary love language. However,it will be somewhat distorted in much the same way assome children may learn poor grammar and have an underdevelopedvocabulary. That poor programming does notmean they cannot become good communicators. But it doesmean they will have to work at it more diligently than thosewho had a more positive model. Likewise, children whogrow up with an underdeveloped sense of emotional lovecan also come to feel loved and to communicate love, butthey will have to work at it more diligently than those whogrew up in a healthy, loving atmosphere.

Seldom do a husband and wife have the same primaryemotional love language. We tend to speak our primarylove language, and we become confused when ourspouse does not understand what we are communicating.We are expressing our love, but the message does not comethrough because we are speaking what, to them, is a foreignlanguage. Therein lies the fundamental problem, and it isthe purpose of this book to offer a solution. That is why Idare to write another book on love. Once we discover thefive basic love languages and understand our own primarylove language, as well as the primary love language of ourspouse, we will then have the needed information to applythe ideas in the books and articles.

Once you identify and learn to speak your spouse'sprimary love language, I believe that you will have discoveredthe key to a long-lasting, loving marriage. Love neednot evaporate after the wedding, but in order to keep it alivemost of us will have to put forth the effort to learn a secondarylove language. We cannot rely on our native tongue ifour spouse does not understand it. If we want him/her tofeel the love we are trying to communicate, we must expressit in his or her primary love language.

Chapter Two

Keeping theLove Tank Full

Love is the most important word in the English language-andthe most confusing. Both secular and religiousthinkers agree that love plays a central role in life.We are told that "love is a many-splendored thing" andthat "love makes the world go round." Thousands of books,songs, magazines, and movies are peppered with the word.Numerous philosophical and theological systems have madea prominent place for love. And the founder of the Christianfaith wanted love to be the distinguishing characteristic ofHis followers.

Psychologists have concluded that the need to feelloved is a primary human emotional need. For love, we willclimb mountains, cross seas, traverse desert sands, and endureuntold hardships. Without love, mountains becomeunclimbable, seas uncrossable, deserts unbearable, andhardships our plight in life. The Christian apostle to theGentiles, Paul, exalted love when he indicated that all humanaccomplishments that are not motivated by love are, inthe end, empty. He concluded that in the last scene of thehuman drama, only three characters will remain: "faith,hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love."

If we can agree that the word love permeates humansociety, both historically and in the present, we must alsoagree that it is a most confusing word. We use it in a thousandways. We say, "I love hot dogs," and in the next breath,"I love my mother." We speak of loving activities: swimming,skiing, hunting. We love objects: food, cars, houses.We love animals: dogs, cats, even pet snails. We love nature:trees, grass, flowers, and weather. We love people: mother,father, son, daughter, parents, wives, husbands, friends.We even fall in love with love.

If all that is not confusing enough, we also use theword love to explain behavior. "I did it because I love her."That explanation is given for all kinds of actions. A man isinvolved in an adulterous relationship, and he calls it love.The preacher, on the other hand, calls it sin. The wife of analcoholic picks up the pieces after her husband's latest episode.She calls it love, but the psychologist calls it codependency.The parent indulges all the child's wishes, calling itlove. The family therapist would call it irresponsible parenting.What is loving behavior?

The purpose of this book is not to eliminate all confusionsurrounding the word love but to focus on that kind oflove that is essential to our emotional health. Child psychologistsaffirm that every child has certain basic emotionalneeds that must be met if he is to be emotionally stable.Among those emotional needs, none is more basic than theneed for love and affection, the need to sense that he or shebelongs and is wanted. With an adequate supply of affection,the child will likely develop into a responsible adult.Without that love, he or she will be emotionally and sociallyretarded.

I liked the metaphor the first time I heard it: "Insideevery child is an `emotional tank' waiting to be filled withlove. When a child really feels loved, he will develop normallybut when the love tank is empty, the child will misbehave.Much of the misbehavior of children is motivated bythe cravings of an empty `love tank.'" I was listening to Dr.Ross Campbell, a psychiatrist who specializes in the treatmentof children and adolescents.

As I listened, I thought of the hundreds of parentswho had paraded the misdeeds of their children through myoffice. I had never visualized an empty love tank insidethose children, but I had certainly seen the results of it. Theirmisbehavior was a misguided search for the love they didnot feel. They were seeking love in all the wrong places andin all the wrong ways.

I remember Ashley, who at thirteen years of age wasbeing treated for a sexually transmitted disease. Her parentswere crushed. They were angry with Ashley. They were upsetwith the school, which they blamed for teaching herabout sex. Why would she do this? they asked.





Continues...

Excerpted from The Five Love Languagesby Gary Chapman Copyright © 2005 by Gary Chapman. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Edition details

• Publisher: Oasis Audio
• Publication date: 2005
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1589269063
• ISBN 13: 9781589269064
• Binding: Audio CD