A Real Man Values Marriage - I
When the Reward is Far Greater Than the Work
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In my book, What is a Man, I call men up to be responsible initiators in their relationships and to work to understand their wives. This is not easy work. This 3-part series is just my observations of ideas that many men don’t understand about women and what has worked in relationships. This series involves love languages (love them or hate them, they can be helpful), male and female differences in neuroscience, and a simplistic breakdown of the Four Horsemen laid out by John Gottman (again, love him or hate him, John Gottman has contributed significantly to the field of understanding relationships).
Does a man value marriage? Of course you value marriage. But valuing it doesn’t mean you understand it. We are not going to fully understand women in our lifetime. It won’t happen. But we can attempt to at least get better at it, even if we never arrive at a place where we fully understand them. Learning their love language and learning proper verbal and nonverbal communication skills will go a long way to enhancing the quality of your marriage.
Love Languages
There I am, sitting on the couch watching football, something I love to do. My wife walks in and says, “You want to go to the grocery store with me?” I’m thinking, “There is no possible way I want to go to the grocery store with her, I’m watching football!” What I do next is important. I reach down for my shoes and say, “Sure honey. Let me pause the game and put my shoes on and I’ll be ready.” She smiles from ear to ear and heads for the door. Why is that important?
Often, we feel loved by certain things in certain ways and because we feel loved that way, we send love in that manner. The problem is the way we want to be loved is not exactly axiomatic in the other person’s eyes. In this scenario, she wants to be loved by spending time with me. This is because out of the five love languages, quality time is the most important to her. The problem is, it is not most important to me. Words of affirmation are most important to me. So what happens is I often find myself telling her how beautiful she is or how awesome she is. And she just thinks, “Well ok.” Meanwhile, she just wants to spend time with me.
For me, I don’t need to spend constant time with her. I love her just as much if I see her every day or if I don’t see her for three weeks. There is no change. This is because quality time is low in importance of my love languages. But this is precisely where it gets tricky.
Years ago, my dad said,
“If you want to have a successful marriage, you have to learn to hear what she’s not saying.”
Naturally, I thought that was the most ridiculous thing I’d ever heard. But eventually, I got it. My wife doesn’t communicate nearly the same way I do, so I must hear what she’s not saying in order to love her correctly.
So when she comes to me while I’m sitting on the couch watching football and asks me to go to the store, what she’s really saying is, “I’d like to connect with you on a deeper level that makes me feel loved in the fullest manner available today.” And that’s what I have to hear. I must hear beyond the grocery store. I must hear beyond her asking me to stop watching football. Beyond that, I hear the words of love from her, along with what Dr. Gottman calls a “bid.” She is requesting my reciprocity in loving each other. As a result, going to the store with her made her feel very loved and this made her want to love me in my language.
The difficult part of all of this is learning to love them in their language. It is easy for me to tell her how awesome she is on a regular basis, because that’s how I want to be loved. It is not as easy for me to look for ways to spend time with her. Likewise, it is easy for her to just want to be around me, signaling that she loves me. But it does not come naturally to say good things about me. This is something she has to work at. It is a process. Wanting to spend more time with her is something I have to work at. It does not come naturally.
A couple more things about love languages. I would recommend taking the quiz and learning what your #1 love language is as well as learning your spouse’s #1 love language. This will put you in a better place to begin working toward consistent happiness in your marriage. I would also recommend taking the quiz about every 4 or 5 years. The reason for this is that they change. What was important to a woman at age 25 and newly married is very different to a woman that is 30, has one child, and has one on the way. Most in this predicament find acts of service as the most important, for obvious reasons. “But Grainger, how in the world could I ever learn to hear what my wife is not saying when I can’t figure out how her brain works at all!” I thought you’d ask that. The next part covers the differences in our brains.
Stay Classy GP!
Grainger
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