Saturday, December 29, 2007

Quality Time

Quality time is giving someone your undivided attention. I don’t mean sitting on the couch watching television. I mean sitting on the couch with the TV off, looking at each other and talking, and giving each other your undivided attention. For some people, quality time is their primary love language, and if you don’t give them quality time, they will not feel loved. Is it possible that your spouse’s primary love language is quality time?

Listen for Clues
Quality time is a powerful emotional communicator of love. One medicine does not cure all diseases. So one love language does not communicate emotionally to all people. If you give your spouse affirming words; If you express love by acts of service; If you touch them affectionately; and they still complain, “You don’t ever have time for me. We used to do things together. Now you are always too busy or too tired,” they are telling you that their primary love language is quality time.

The Essence of Quality Time
A central aspect of quality time is togetherness. I do not mean proximity. Togetherness has to do with focused attention. A husband who is watching sports on television while he talks to his wife is not giving her quality time, because she does not have his full attention. A husband and wife playing tennis together, if it is genuine quality time, will focus not on the game, but on the fact that they are spending time together.

Dialects of Quality Time
Like words of affirmation, the language of quality time also has many dialects. One of the most common dialects is that of quality conversation. By quality conversation, I mean sympathetic dialogue where two people are sharing their experiences, their thoughts, their feelings, and their desires in a friendly, uninterrupted context. If your spouse’s primary love languages is quality time, such dialogue is crucial to his or her emotional sense of being loved. Sit down. Ask questions, and listen.

Tips for Keeping the Love Tank Full
I want to conclude by giving you four tips on how to have a quality conversation with your spouse:

1. Maintain eye contact when your spouse is talking.
2. Don’t listen to your spouse and do something else at the same time.
3. Listen for feelings. Ask yourself, “What emotion is my spouse experiencing?”
4. Refuse to interrupt. Such interruptions indicate, “I don’t care what you are saying; listen to me."

Such active listening will fill the love tank of the person whose primary love language is quality time.

posted by Lighthouse @ 10:55 AM 0 Comments

Tuesday, December 18, 2007

Keeping the LOVE tank FULL



Keeping the Love Tank Full

The Need for Love
Love is the most important word in the English language - and the most confusing. The apostle Paul said that in the last scene of the human drama, only three characters will remain: “faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.” Yet, love is a most confusing word. Our purpose is not to eliminate all the confusion, but rather to focus on the kind of love that is essential to our emotional health: the need to feel loved.

Running on Empty
I liked the metaphor the first time I heard it: “Inside every child is an ‘emotional tank’ waiting to be filled. When a child really feels loved, he will develop normally, but when the love tank is empty, the child will misbehave. Their misbehavior is a misguided search for the love they did not feel. Many of their parents also suffer from an empty love tank, and much of the misbehavior of married individuals grows out of an empty love tank.

Speak Their Language
 The need to feel loved by one’s spouse is at the heart of marital desires. I believe this need can be met in any marriage, if each of them will discover the primary love language of their spouse and speak it regularly. There are only five love languages. Your spouse desperately craves one of them. Make it your goal to discover it and speak it, and their love tank will be full.

Love is Learned
Marriage is designed by God to meet our deep need for intimacy and love. Again and again I have heard the words “Our love is gone, our relationship is dead. We used to feel close, but not now. We don’t meet each other’s needs.” Their stories bear testimony that their emotional love tanks are empty. Can these marriages be reborn? Absolutely! Because love is learned.

"Lord, What Can I Do?"
Could it be that deep inside hurting couples exists an invisible “emotional love tank” with its gauge on empty? If we could find a way to fill it, could the marriage be reborn? I believe the answer is “Yes.” God made us with a capacity for giving and receiving emotional love. Nothing is more important to the emotional climate of your marriage than asking God to teach you how to effectively love your spouse. Learning his or her primary love language and speaking it regularly will make you an effective lover.

Excerpt taken from The Five Love Languages by Dr. Gary Chapman. To find out more about Gary Chapman's resources, visit www.fivelovelanguages.com.

posted by Lighthouse @ 11:34 AM 0 Comments