How can I make my working marriage even better - my thoughts about The 5 Love languages by Gary Chap
The 5 Love languages by Gary Chapman is an easy read with just over 200 pages. The introduction of the theory is well organized and explained with many practical examples.
My first takeaway from this book is that it has motivated me to seriously think about the status of my own marriage. My husband and I are reaching our 10 years milestone next year, we have 2 lovely kids, never fight and barely argue, and yes we still talk to each other:) . So I feel my marriage is working, definitely not in danger. But, is my love tank full? Do I feel being loved at 100%? I am not that sure. And I am not positive it's a yes on my husband's side either. Working a full-time job, and having a 6 year old and a little toddler to look after, we were too busy thinking about that. Do we really care for the true happiness of the other and enjoy the marriage everyday or we are just living together in proximity? So apparently there is a lot room for improvement, where we can fill the love tank and make it overflow. Otherwise the marriage may work when we're busy and need the resources from each other to support the family obligations, but we could run into issues when we're less busy or more independent.
My second learning is to realize that the reason we're in a relationship or marriage is to make our partner happy, rather than have them do what we want them to do. And by making our beloved happy, we fill their love tank and they will naturally reciprocate by doing things we like to make us happy. And if what we need to do is not that interested to ourselves sometimes, we should still do it. My husband and have quite different taste in movies/TVs. I like dramas and romantic stories, and my husband's choice would be cartoons, cartoons, cartoons. The number of movies we watched together after marriage can be counted with one hand, and I felt really bad about that. Whenever we finally had a day off without the kids and decided to relax and watch a movie together on Netflix, we had to spend a long time picking the title. I definitely didn't want to spend my precious vacation day watching the kid stuff which I'd rather watch with my 2 years old. My husband being a gentleman, always said yes to the one I picked. However, he didn't do his due diligence to watch the movie with me together otherwise he could get an A+ . He either played with his phone or laptop while watching, or fell asleep less than 1/3 through the movie. After reading the book, I've learnt that both of us could do it differently to make that 2 and half hour more meaningful, even if one of us would not enjoy the movie itself that much. So I've decided next time if we are to choose a title, I'll go with a cartoon that my husband likes.
Regarding the main topic of the love languages, it makes perfect sense to me. It wasn't very difficult for my husband and myself to figure out the primary language, and to my surprise, my husband is willing to try the techniques recommended by the book, as he is normally not that into such kind of books. That being said, we haven't started any action yet, yeah, procrastination, which can be another book to read about. :)
My final note is that I think the love languages idea works way beyond couples, and it basically applies to any relationship that involves 2 or more players. And I can't help thinking about the language for my parents, my kid, my manager and my co-workers. Don't assume what you're doing makes sense to yourself would also make sense to other people who might have a totally different primary language from you.
