The romance languages are confusing and that's why my husband and I often stammer around like Lucy and Ricky Ricardo on opening night at the Tropicana.
But "The Five Love Languages" by Gary Chapman makes sense of our conundrum. The theory of this international bestseller is that everyone has a primary love language and you can try to find yourself by perusing the five:
- Words of Affirmation
- Acts of Service
- Receiving Gifts
- Quality Time
- Physical Touch
My husband's love language is Acts of Service and mine is Quality Time. In a nutshell, he feels loved when I do something nice for him -- like make a special dinner -- and I feel loved when we date.
We're celebrating our anniversary today and my sister joked that the million dollar question is "who will be making breakfast for who?"
We have had a long standing ritual of making breakfast-in-bed for the other on our birthdays. At first I laughed off my sister's million dollar question, but then I gave it some thought. I realized if I followed the book's advice I should be the one making breakfast-in-bed since his love language is Acts of Service.
My husband already gets points for asking me on a date, appealing to my love of quality time. I suppose he gets extra credit points because he invited me to an Indian restaurant and my favorite food is Indian.
"The Five Love Languages" won't solve every issue a couple is facing, particularly deeper ones, but I have seen enough of a shift from this philosophy that I'm determined to become fluent in my husband's love language. For now I still speak broken Acts of Service.