As we opened our session, Jeff burst out with, “We have read The Five Love Languages 10 times. I know she likes words, and I give them to her even though it’s hard for me—cards and conversations when I don’t feel like it and even Post-it notes in her backpack. Still, it seems she constantly finds fault with me. Nothing is ever enough.” It was obvious that these two people had read The Five Love Languages: The Secret to Love That Lasts by Gary Chapman and taken his wisdom and suggestions to heart, and like many people, they believed his formula would cure their many relationship troubles. According to Chapman, the five love languages are words of affirmation, quality time, acts of service, physical touch, and gifts. His book on the love language theory addresses one of the most important aspects of a healthy relationship, which is the understanding that “my partner is not me.” One of the great lessons love teaches us is the ability to really see our partner as “other” and find ways to understand and make room for someone who is not like us. Chapman encourages efforts to speak love in our partner’s language, not ours, and to give not what we want but what our partner wants. This useful information is an essential part of any couple’s tool kit for skillful loving. But there are many things people tend to get wrong about the love languages. When we turn the love languages into an exercise in scorekeeping, it just becomes yet another addition to the ongoing issue many couples face about who does more overall for the relationship. They’ll look at who does the cleaning, cooking, moneymaking, child care, planning vacations, initiating sex, making up after an argument—and may fall into the trap of adding practicing their partners’ love languages the most to that list. While we can of course fill that tank for each other by bestowing our partners with small acts of love, we know that to be truly fulfilled, we need first to fill our own tank. Do you use words of affirmation, gifts, touch, and quality time with yourself? The No. 1 issue I see with couples is what I call “infinity loops.” Leigh feared disconnection, so she interpreted Jeff’s natural introversion and bookworm nature as a rejection of her. When she was triggered by him reading the newspaper when she wanted to talk, she went into her old pattern of criticism and tried to get his attention. “You always disappear,” she would say, so he would protect himself by withdrawing, which made her feel more abandoned. Then she criticized more, and off they went in this loop. Giving gifts, words, or acts of service doesn’t address this core issue or stop the spiral. For example, the most painful problem couples have is that they lose one another; at the heart of most fights or withdrawal is a small, sad feeling of losing one’s best friend and a little voice wondering, “Where did you go?” This requires another skill to soften, repair, forgive, and find our way back to each other. People love the idea of a quick fix, but the human condition (which doubles in complexity within the context of a long-term relationship) doesn’t have a quick fix. A relationship requires an entire tool kit, not just a single tool. Alongside touch, quality time, words, and service, they also need honesty, trust, shared goals, and ways to repair and reconnect after the inevitable conflicts. Jeff and Leigh became aware of the dynamics they were each bringing to their ongoing power struggle. Jeff discovered that the feeling that he could never do enough had begun when he was very young. Leigh’s tendency to blame as her first response to her hurt feelings was an old strategy, which she discovered had as much or more to do with her than it did Jeff. They began to do the inner repair work within themselves. Each person bringing this empathy to the relationship is what began to heal it. A flourishing relationship begins with the mindful practice of knowing our own inner landscape and how to bring a healthier, clearer, more receptive, and more mature self to all our relationships, especially our most intimate ones.
