L•O•V•E
In American Sign Language, the signed letters I, L, and Y, when shown together, form a single handshape (shown above) as the symbol for I love you.
Today is my husband's 30th birthday! Thirty years ago, he was brought into this world, and how do we celebrate? We get to be stuck in social isolation… To lighten the mood, I thought I would dedicate this post about love to him.
First, I must give a little history of our love. He was the first person to make me feel truly loved inside and out. I had just returned from my time abroad when mutual friends introduced us. I was filled with a sense of adventure but longed for a companion at the same time. We met my very first night home and instantly hit it off. Despite being drawn to each other, we were both painfully shy. The early days of our relationship were built on awkward silences and double dates with the couple who put us together. Slowly we warmed up to each other, and the love blossomed. It did not take long for me to feel completely safe with him and knew that must be what it felt like when you found "the one."
That summer, our love took off in a whirlwind of drive-in movies and ice cream. When the time came for me to go back to campus, we hit a few bumps in the road. It's not easy only seeing each other on weekends. Still, that new love didn't falter. We powered through our first year with the ease of something in a romance novel. At least that's the way it's pictured in my memory.
In reality, we had a lot of figuring out to do. But that's the magic of new love, isn't it? You see your relationship as something untouchable. Flash forward nearly seven years later, that love is a fond memory, but that isn't the love we have anymore.
So, what happened? Together, we are going to dissect this thing called love. From what I have gathered, love has five languages, and it takes the shape of a triangle.
That all sounds confusing right now, but love is complicated. Hopefully, I can clear it up for you so we can navigate love with clear minds, instead of letting the magic muddle our minds causing us to fall prey to the blind belief that love conquers all.
Love Triangle
Robert Sternberg, psychologist and psychometrician, developed the Triangle Theory of Love. Most people may find it unsettling to take the wonder of love and file into a carefully calculated formula. Years of growing up on fairytales have us believing that love is something with magical properties that is unconditional and can "conquer all."
The whimsical feeling of love is not entirely in our imagination. Unfortunately, the late psychologist Dr. Dorothy Tennov studied this whimsical sensation and found it only to last about two years into the relationship. It's no wonder we find our divorce rates so high. Two people get married in a whirlwind of emotion, fooled by the belief that their love will naturally last forever. Soon the couple will inevitably meet their first crisis in the marriage and no magical power of love can save them. They begin to wonder if what they had was real. They start to think the person they married is not the person standing next to them today. When in reality, they were the same person. They just didn't have their eyes open wide, blinded by the fantasy and the promise of that four-letter word. But if we look at love as something of an equation, it all starts to make more sense. That is where Sternberg's triangle model comes so critically into play.
Triangles have three corners. The corners of this triangle consist of passion, intimacy, and commitment. To have all three is called consummate love and should be the goal of marriage.
Meanwhile, only having one of the three corners is dangerous. In truth, you will likely fluctuate throughout your marriage. But to be aware of where you are and at what point of the triangle you are lacking can make all the difference in keeping your love alive.
Intimacy: To be "intimate" with someone is commonly misused, referring to having a sexual relationship. To be intimate is to be familiar and close, or liking as Sternberg calls this corner of the triangle. This means sharing your dreams, your fears, your every interaction from the mundane to the extraordinary. The person you first want to call when something exciting happens to you and the person you turn to in a state of despair. This person, you are intimate with and you have a liking relationship. It has nothing sexual about it. Sex can be intimate if it is with someone of this closeness. But the terms are not to be used interchangeably. Intimacy is something special and, in my opinion, the most important corner on the triangle. However, someone with only intimacy would be better described as "best friends" and nothing more.
Passion: "Passion, like fire, was a dangerous thing. It so easily went out of control." (Celeste Ng, Little Fires Everywhere). This side of the triangle most favored by everyone but the least likely to stick around. This is the sexy corner, purely made up of physical attractions and interactions. A couple with only this corner has what Sternberg called infatuate love. They might consider themselves to be "friends with benefits." The unfortunate thing about infatuate love is, passion will always fade in and out of any relationship. That being said, it is not a corner on which to hang your entire relationship.
Commitment: Though I named intimacy the most essential corner, commitment is a close second. Once married, commitment and intimacy become equally important. I don't believe this corner needs any explanation. It's simple but admittedly not easy. This corner is the "for better or for worse" corner of the triangle. While commitment is essential, it cannot carry a relationship alone. A relationship with only commitment Sternberg labeled as empty love. This empty love will keep couples together merely out of resistance to divorce. They committed to each other, and to them, that is a promise you do not break. The good news is, as long as you both are committed, you can regain your love. By working towards improving the remaining two corners, you can bring back the spark that led you to commit in the first place.
Some couples will end in one corner or another, but landing on the sides of the triangle is more common. A combination of the three corners layout as follows:
Passion + Intimacy= Romantic Love: The couple who have a strong physical and emotional connection to each other but don't want to take the plunge to be tied together forever. Since passion always fades, you soon with be left with just a close friend. Assuming the intimacy doesn't fade away as well.
Passion + Commitment= Fatuous Love: This combination is a dangerous one. Imagine the couple who "fell in love" through a whirlwind of sexual romance and rushed into a marriage. Unless intimacy is achieved and fostered before the passion fades, the relationship is left hanging on to the commitment they made to one another.
Intimacy + Commitment= Companionate: Alas, my idea of the most important corner, coupled with the second. As you may have guessed by now, this is the side of the triangle with the most promise. Unless, of course, you have the whole triangle.
Passion + Intimacy + Commitment= Consummate Love: If you have this love, congratulations! You have hit the love lottery! This is the couple to which every couple should aspire. This couple is everyone's "relationship goals." They are passionate about each other but have a closeness that is unlike any other. Above all, their commitment to their marriage leaves them untouchable. Strive for this relationship, even if you land somewhere on the side of the triangle, always keep trying.
Where does your relationship fall? If it is just on a corner of the triangle, your marriage has some major room for improvement. If you fall along one of the sides, you have a good start, but still haven't reached perfection. Basically, if you fall anywhere but consummate love, you have some work to do. So now what? An excellent place to start is by learning each other's love language. In determining the way you feel love and how your spouse does, you are learning how to love each other on a more permanent level. When the magic of the new love fades away, loving each other in this more mature manner will keep the magic alive.
Love Languages
If anyone has not read The 5 Love Languages by Gary Chapman, I highly recommend it. In the meantime, I will give you a brief overview since it is from this book that I pull most of my conclusions in the remainder of this post. Dr. Gary Chapman explains that each of us speaks a unique love language.
Trying to show love to your spouse in your love language would be as effective as trying to speak English to a Spanish speaker. You might be able to get your point across eventually, but not entirely. He references the metaphor of an "emotional tank" often used in child psychology and explains that each of us has a "love tank." If we do not speak the right love language to our spouse, this love tank may not fill up to the optimum capacity. Simply put, empty love tank = empty love (refer to Love Triangle above).
We do not want our spouse to have an empty love tank because we don't want empty love. We want consummate love or at least compassionate love. Since we are talking about speaking another language, this won't come naturally. It is going to take work. So we need to make an effort to speak our partner's love language and fill their tank!
All the information you need to understand each love language better is in the book. However, I am going to give you a brief overview of what stood out most important to me.
Words of Affirmation
If we believe words can hurt, imagine what good we can do with them? Speaking positive words to our partner can show in more forms than we may realize at first. First, compliments hold more power than nagging. When we replace some of our nagging with compliments, we may notice the nagging not to be necessary anymore. Perhaps our spouse will listen to our wants and needs more if they feel we are paying attention to everything they are doing. Encouragement can serve as a boost for your spouse and insight for yourself. To encourage our partners, we have to understand his point of view. Putting ourselves in our loved one's shoes is something we all should do more.
Remember to be humble and never underestimate the power of apologizing. To be able to recognize where you may have gone wrong and be able to admit that fault is a huge step for some couples. Finally, we come down to just saying nice things. Speak kind words in front of other people when our spouse is there to hear it or even when he isn't. If you are giving your husband compliments to others when he isn't even around, that shows a true belief in your words. If those words get back to him, it'll mean that much more. Chapman suggests writing out a list of all the positive traits you see in your partner. Give out a compliment per week in place of criticisms. Keep adding to the list as you think of more. If you find this approach to be turning your husband's attitude around and brightening his day, you may have found his love language.
Quality Time
"Where will you find the time? You will make it" (Gary Chapman, The 5 Love Languages). This language is an important one for me because I'm finding this might be one of my higher love languages. Achieving quality time together is more than just being in the same house. It involves removing distractions, listening intently instead of just responding, and learning how to open up to talk to your spouse. If you have heard complaints from your spouse about never being around, never doing things together like when you were dating, never listening, your partner's love language might just be quality time. This conclusion leads us to another list. Make a list of all the things you know your husband or wife might want to do with you, and do them! Couple that with putting the phone down or turning off the TV now and then, you will notice a difference in your partner's love tank.
Receiving Gifts
"You must be thinking of someone to give him a gift" (Gary Chapman, The 5 Love Languages). I never thought of receiving a gift as my love language, but I have to admit when I get a gift carefully chosen just for me, it does make me feel special. The thought that goes into gift-giving is what fills the tank of a person with this love language. Chapman points out that children from a very early age are drawn to giving people gifts. These acts make a case for the possibility that gift-giving is fundamental to love. If you suspect your spouse's love language might be receiving gifts, make a list of potential gift ideas and do not wait for special occasions to give them out.
If a more frugal person is married to someone of this love language, how would the two get along? Consider buying gifts as an investment in filling the love tank and also never underestimate the value of a handmade gift or even the gift of self. We give gifts a lot more when we are in the dating phase. If the gift-giving stopped after marriage, this could be disheartening to a person of this love language. We don't think twice about paying for gas to fill the tanks in our vehicles. If your spouse is of the language of the receiving gifts, I suggest you consider filling their love tanks the same way.
Acts of Service
At this point in the book, I thought I had already discovered my love language was quality time, but the more I read this section, the more I realized I have a second love language. Throughout our marriage, I have been nagging my husband for not doing enough around the house. When he would finally catch on and clean up now and then, I was so happy! The downside was he told me he would do it if that would make me happy. I was always so resistant to this, "You shouldn't do it because I want you to. You should do it because it needs doing." I resisted his way of going about it because then the moment we would get into an argument, and he didn't want to make me happy, he would revert to not doing those little things around the house. What I didn't realize until now was that he had unknowingly read my love language. He was doing things around the house to show love to me and instead of accepting that I was resisting.
Chapman points out a few key points about acts of service. The first is the difference between doing an act out of love or out of demand. An act of love needs to be done on free will alone. To make this easier, he resorts to lists again. He suggests making a list of a few things done around the house that would make you feel loved if they were done for you. Your loved one has the option to do these things or not, but to do them would be to show love for you. He also makes it clear that someone performing acts of service should never become what he calls a "doormat." A loved one is not an object to be used. Acts of service are to be done out of love and not out of fear of consequence. He makes a point in saying if you find yourself in this situation, for the sake of your marriage, it needs to be addressed.
After learning about all this, I shared my revelation with my husband. I acknowledged that he was doing exactly what he was supposed to be all along without knowing it! (Being that his love language is so clearly words of affirmation I decided commanding him on his efforts would be appropriate). It is always nice to do something for a loved one now and then, but making an effort to do the things you know will lighten the load on your spouse and make them happy will come back around in the form of a full love tank.
Physical Touch
The next time you are in a public place, look around at the couples you see. I am betting you can pick out the new love couple versus the more seasoned couple just by how much they are touching. It could be a 90-degree day, and you will still find young-love couples holding hands or walking with their arms around one another. With all this touching going on in the beginning, it might not be clear if your partner is speaking their language that way, or if it is just all new. That is until the touching stops. It's simple; at some point in the marriage, the partner who does not show love this way will stop touching so much, and the partner who feels love through physical touch will start to feel less loved. Neither partner is really to blame, but it can be fixed if the problem is recognized! I find it necessary to point out at this point; physical touch can come in many forms. It can be as simple as brushing past each other in the hallway, to giving a full massage, all the way to sex. Physical touch can mean holding hands while walking or brushing your leg against his under the table. The next time you're watching a movie together, snuggle close!
What if touching does not come naturally to you? Dr. Chapman proposes a challenge to think of new ways to touch your partner each week. Your list can be as simple as the ways I just mentioned above. My husband and I are cuddly, hand-holding people, but that comes naturally to us. Hugging your spouse before he walks out the door each day may not come naturally to you. But if it is his love language, it's a simple addition to your daily routine that can leave him with a full love tank for the rest of the day.
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Paris, France
"People tend to criticize their spouse most loudly in the area where they themselves have the deepest emotional need" (Gary Chapman, The 5 Love Languages). My most common complaints to my husband are always, "Can you please put your phone down??" (Quality Time) "This house is a mess! If I don't do it, it doesn't get done" (Acts of Service) "Why don't you ever want to go on a walk with us?" (Quality Time) "Why can't you change his diaper for once?" (Acts of Service). I could go on and on for days. Meanwhile, what I often hear in response to my complaints is, "You never appreciate all the things that I do around here. Nothing is ever good enough." (Words of Affirmation). Our miscommunication is all so clear now after understanding each other in our own language.
If I haven't said this enough times already, read this book. I am not getting any kind of kickback from this. Gary Chapman doesn't even know my name. The lessons in this book are that eye-opening to me that I believe everyone needs to learn how to read their partner's love language. Figuring out your love languages together is your best way to give love and feel loved by your husband as long as you are both willing to put in just a little more effort.
I said at the beginning of this post that my husband and I no longer had the new love we experienced when we were young. We still hold hands now and then, and snuggle up on the couch together. We continue to love each other but in a new way. We have matured into a secure love full of commitment and support. That doesn't mean it is guaranteed or that we have it perfected. Just in researching for this post, I have learned more about our love. We are to be always learning about one another and putting in the time to improve continuously. It will take work for as long as we live. It is a part of growing to change and mature with the life we build. We have to keep putting ourselves in their perspective to understand their love language. Continuously be aware of where you stand in the love triangle. Never stop pursuing consummate love and full love tanks.