I’ve been married for about 25 years now, and I’ve been with the same man since I was 17 years old. That is a really longtime, some might even say a lifetime. What does a 17 year old girl really know about relationships or even guys in general. At 17 all most girls care about is if he’s cute, or sweet, or popular. Love languages and how to speak those love languages would never cross a 17 year olds mind. To be honest, I didn’t learn that a love language was even a thing until about 4 years ago and I only learned about them because my world as I knew it was about to implode.
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THOUGHTS VS REALITY
How many wives out there thought they had a pretty damn good marriage? How many of you thought that your husband was head over heals in love with you? And how many of you found out what you thought wasn’t even close to reality? I thought I had a great marriage, been with my husband forever. Now I wont say it was perfect, god knows we had our share of disagreements. There were days that we couldn’t stand each other but being young and naive I thought this was normal. The arguments never lasted, the next morning things were back to normal. If anything I was the grudge holder and would bring the issue up later. What is it with men acting like they didn’t do anything wrong after an argument? It’s enough to drive a girl insane!
So here we are thinking everything is fine and dandy in our marriages and low and behold we are clueless to reality. You see, men try to avoid conflict. They don’t like to bring up issues, or talk about their feelings. No, instead they keep it all buried deep inside until one day you find out he’s messing around with his secretary, or the nanny. The reality is, most of the time we think our marriage is fine. We think that all the little spats are normal, we chalk it up to just the way marriage is. This ladies is where we go wrong! Reality is, our men are just making internal lists of all the things about us that drives them nuts and I bet you thought only we did that.
THE WALL
So one very sad summer day I learned all about the wall. What wall you may be asking yourself. It’s the wall that my husband built brick by brick between us without me even knowing. You see, while I was busy taking care of our 3 children and trying to not drown in a mountain of household messes and chores my husband was busy building. There was a brick for the house not being spotless, a brick for bad spending habits. A brick for not spending time doing other things together that didn’t involve the kids. There was a brick for all the weight gain over the years, a brick for emasculation, a brick for unappreciaiton. So many bricks built up over 20 years and I didn’t notice any of them.
One day he told me about every brick he had laid. He said at first it was just one or two bricks and those could be over looked because the wall wasn’t blocking his view yet. But as the years passed the amount of bricks grew and the pile was pretty big at this point. So big that he was being smothered and it would take a lot to clear away that pile. How sad is it that I had no idea about his brick building? That I was oblivious to our issues being that huge that my world was about to implode and those bricks were about to crush my heart.
WHEN DEVASTATION HITS
A women will do just about anything to fix her broken heart. When the devastation hit me that my 20 year marriage may be coming to a screeching hault I started grasping for straws. I researched, and read, and took online counseling sessions, and did marriage programs. I think I tried a gazillion different things to try to fix what was going wrong in my life. We had a family and a really good life, I couldn’t understand why this man that I had spent my entire adult life with thus far would be doing any of this. As there usually is in cases of devastation in a long term marriage another woman had gotten involved. You can read all about it in my ebook coming soon, so be on the lookout.
I will own my part in the devastation, I will not pin it all on him or even her for that matter. Had I not left the door open for her to squeeze her ass into, those bricks might have not fallen and crushed my soul. However, if things didn’t happen the way they did I wouldn’t have the happy marriage I have today.
LOVE LANGUAGES
It took all that devastation to learn what I should have been doing all along. I wasted so much precious time in my marriage. Time that could have been spent having an even better life than I thought I already had. You see, that good life, yes it was good but that was the good through eyes that thought that arguing and being miserable in your marriage was normal. Today’s good life is so much different from that good life and it’s because I learned about these little things called LOVE LANGUAGES.
Gary Chapman wrote a book called The Five Love Languages which you can find >> HERE << on amazon. He basically says there are a total of five love languages and we all speak one of the five. I read that book from front to back and then I read it a second time. I read all about Physical Touch (my love language), Quality time, Gifts, Acts of Servces (my husbands primary love language), and Word of Affirmations ( my husbands close second love language). The man is a genius and this book is a MUST read for those of you struggling with your marriage!
BUT DOES IT WORK?
As crazy as this sounds once I started speaking in my husbands love language things started to change. Now, I will admit that it wasn’t an overnight change. It was more of a gradual change because after all it was 20 years of marriage and change is hard to believe after that long. But believe it or not though things started getting better around the house. My husband was coming home from work and was actually happy. He would find me wherever I was and would come up behind me, wrap his arms around me and kiss the crook of my neck. He was doing little things that he hadn’t done before. The best part was he actually sought me out. He wanted to spend his time with me instead of in front of the tv or in his “man cave” (a read for another day). Life was great!
So does it really work? Is it all for real? If you read the book and put into practice what he says, it really does work. My husband was miserable because his love tank was empty. Once I started to fill his tank he was much happier and instead of piling on bricks, I was knocking those damn things down. It is true when Chapman says a person usually speaks in their own love language. I would snuggle and kiss my hubby thinking that I was showing him how much I love him but that is MY love language so doing that didn’t really prove anything to him. But clean fresh socks to put on his feet after work made him happy. That showed him I was thinking about him enough to make sure his needs were taken care of. That is Acts of Services.
It works! Read it! Soak it up! Learn from it! You can find Gary Chapmans The Five Love Languages >> HERE << on amazon.
Until next time my friends, Live Your Happy Life
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