The 5 Love Languages:The Secret to Love that Lasts

2014 MARCH #BookCLUB Love Learning Empowerment

BOOK REVIEW

“A must read for anyone interested in having a loving relationship! Practical, informative, and filled with wisdom. Gary Chapman has a true gift.”

Love Learning Empowerment

How is your “love tank?”

• Needing to be loved is a birth right.

• Every child is born with an “emotional tank” that needs to be filled with love.

• “Much of the misbehavior of children is motivated by the cravings of an empty love tank.”

• Just like children, adults crave and seek love— often substituting toxins in order to fill their love tank.

In-Love versus Love• “The eternality of the in-love experience is fiction, not fact.”

• In-love is a type of high a temporary obsession.

• According to Dr. Dorothy Tennov, “the average life span of a romantic obsession is 2 years.” But a secretive affair may last a little longer.

• “Our most basic emotional need is not to fall in love but to be genuinely loved by another, to know a love that grows out of reason and choice, not instinct.”

Love versus In-Love

• “True love cannot begin until the in-love experience has run its course.”

• Real love with a partner is a love that unites reason and emotion; it involves an act of the will, requires discipline and personal growth.

• “We needed love before we ‘fell in love,’ and we will need it as long as we live.”

• To be emotionally healthy our need for love must be met.

Is love a choice?“If love is a choice, then [you] have the capacity to love

after the ‘in-love’ obsession has died and [you] have returned to the real world.

That kind of love begins with an attitude– a way of thinking. Then the one who chooses to love will find appropriate ways to express that decision.”

Wisdom Insights• Whatever the quality of your relationship, it can always be

better.

• Security in a relationship is established when we know our mate accepts us, wants us and is committed to our well-being.

• Becoming “one flesh” does not mean loosing ones identity, rather it means individuals enter each others lives in a deep and intimate way.

• “According to a substantial body of research, the divorce rate for second marriages is at least 60% and rises when children are involved.”

The 5 Love Languages

Love Languages

Words of Affirmation

Quality Time

Receiving GiftsActs of Service

Physical Touch

Discovering your partners primary love language can make your efforts at love productive.

Words of Affirmation• King Solomon, the wisest known historical figure, wrote “The tongue

has the power of life and death.”

• “Many couples have never learned the tremendous power of verbally affirming each other.”

• “Verbal compliments, or words of appreciation, are powerful communicators of love. They are best expressed in simple, straightforward statements of affirmation.”

• Verbal compliments motivate, nagging creates resistance.

• Express love not rejection or condemnation.

• Affirmation waters our untapped potential.

Forgiveness Affirms• “Sometimes our words say one thing, but our tone of voice

says another.”

• Forgiveness is the way of love.

• “If I choose to forgive, intimacy can be restored.”

• “Forgiveness is not a feeling; it is a commitment.”

• “You are not a failure because you have failed.”

• “Many individuals mess up every new day with yesterday.”

Quality Time• Offer your undivided attention.

• Some relationships “think they are spending time together when, in reality, they are only living in close proximity.”

• Quality conversation is a necessity.

• Quality dialog is when “two individuals are sharing their experiences, thoughts, feelings and desires in a friendly, uninterrupted context.”

• “Quality activities may include anything in which one or both of you have an interest. The emphasis is not on what you are doing but on why you are doing it.”

How well do you listen?

“Learning to listen may be as difficult as learning a foreign language, but learn we must, if we want to communicate love.”

Healthy Relationship

MINIMUM DAILY REQUIREMENTS:

“Establish a daily sharing time in which each of you will talk about (3) things that happened to you that day and how you feel about them.”

Receiving Gifts

• Global ethnographic anthropology finds a cultural pattern of gift giving as a part of the love process.

• “From early years, children are inclined to give gifts to their parents, which many be another indication that gift giving is fundamental to love.”

• Gifts are visual symbols of love. Symbols have emotional value.

• Purchasing gifts for a partner with this particular love language is an investment into their love tank.

Presence is a Gift• The gift of presence is being there when your partner needs

you.

• Physical presence in the time of crisis is the most powerful gift you can gift to a partner with this particular love language.

• “Your body becomes the symbol of your love.”

• “Material things are no replacement for human, emotional love.”

• “Isolation is devastating to the human psyche. That is why solitary confinement is considered the cruelest punishment.”

Acts of Service• Doing things you know your partner would like you to do.

• You seek to please your partner by serving them as an act of love.

• They “require thought, planning, time, effort and energy.” If done with a positive attitude they are expressions of love.

• “Love is a choice and cannot be coerced. Criticism and demands tend to drive wedges.”

• “Criticism is an ineffective way of pleading for love.”

• It is not manipulation by gift or coercion by fear.

Service Requires Reflection

• “Learning the love language of acts of service will require some of us to reexamine our stereotypes of the roles of husbands and wives.”

• What are your gender expectations associated with being a woman or being a man?

• Treating your partner as an object precludes the possibility of love.

• Love says, “I love you too much to let you treat me this way. It is not good for you or me.”

Physical Touch• “Research of child development conclude: Babies who are held,

hugged, and kissed develop a healthier emotional life than those who are left for long periods of time without physical contact.”

• “All societies have some form of physical touching as a means of social greeting.”

• “Physical touch is also a powerful vehicle for communicating marital love. Holding hands, kissing, embracing and sexual intercourse are all ways of communicating emotional love.”

• “If sexual intercourse is your mate’s primary dialect, reading about and discussing the art of sexual lovemaking will enhance your expression of love.”

Pleasure and Pain

• “Coming up with new ways and places to touch can be an exciting challenge.”

• For the partner with physical touch as their primary love language, “To touch my body is to touch me. To withdraw from my body is to distance yourself from me emotionally.”

• “Our bodies are for touching, but not for abuse.”

• A wife says, “He ignores me all day long and then wants to jump in bed with me. I hate it.” She is not a wife who hates sex; she is a wife desperately pleading for emotional love.

Wisdom Insights

• “Love is a choice. And either partner can start the process today.”

• “Love is not our only emotional need. Psychologists have observed that among our basic needs are the need for: security, self-worth, and significance. Love, however interfaces with all of these.”

• “True love always liberates.”

Create Play Time!

TANK CHECK

On a scale of 0-10, how is your love tank tonight?

0 = Empty 10 =Full of love and can’t handle

anymore

What can I do to fill it?

The 5 Love Languages

Love Languages

Words of Affirmation

Quality Time

Receiving GiftsActs of Service

Physical Touch

Discovering your partners primary love language can make your efforts at love productive.

Discover Your Love Language

TAKE THE QUIZ!

www.5lovelanguages.com

The 5 Love Languages:The Secret to Love that Lasts

Discover how to love today!

Love Learning Empowerment

ENJOY!

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