“Who Says You Can’t Teach an Old Dog a New Trick or Two”

Discovering the primary love language of your spouse is essential if you are to keep their emotional love tank full. But first, let’s make sure you know your own love language.

What is your primary love language? What makes you feel most loved by your spouse? What do you desire above all else? If the answer to those questions does not leap to your mind immediately, perhaps it will help to look at the negative use of love languages. What does your spouse do or say that hurts you deeply? If, for example, your deepest pain is the critical, judgmental words of your spouse, then perhaps your primary love language is “Words of Affirmation.” If your primary love language is used negatively by your spouse – that is, does the opposite – it will hurt you more deeply than it would hurt someone else because not only is he neglecting to speak to your primary love language, he is actually using that language as a knife to your heart.

Gary Chapman – The 5 Love Languages

I think from Gary’s comments above, we can see that if we are not meeting the needs of our partner’s love language we are in effect not showing or giving them love as they know love.

Obviously this in of itself will create problems within a relationship, but there is another culprit that at times gets in the way, even when we know exactly what we need to be offering to our partner. Now I can’t speak for others, but for myself, at times my ego demands that my needs be met first. At these times it seems like only after my needs are met – will my ego relinquish control and consider meeting the needs of my partner.

The challenge, control my ego, meet my partners love language needs and have the faith that in time, things will fall into place.