Many in the field of premarital and marriage counseling borrow heavily from Lawrence J. Crabb, Jr.’s The Marriage Builder and Gary Smalley & John Trent’s The Language of Love for teaching communication skills.
Larry Crabb sees communication in marriage from two perspectives: Manipulation or Ministry. He states words do one of three things: Words can give life, they can lay there and do nothing or they can deliver a death blow.
Smalley and Trent dwell on The Five Languages of Love, and this will be the substance of this article. These five languages are almost self-explanatory, however, I’ll define each briefly.
Words are any form of verbal conversation and can affect the hearer in the three ways Larry Crabb has suggested as mentioned above.
Gifts can be anything from a hastily picked flower in the yard to a BMV or anything in between.
Touch ranges from slight, brief touching to the most intimate aspects of lovemaking between a husband and his wife.
Acts of Service are any things one spouse does to facilitate or please the other.
Quality Time is regular time together or special times together that benefit either spouse or one spouse.
To employ this tool and begin achieving maximum levels of positive communication, as a couple, discuss what each one of these words means to you – in the fullest and what it does not mean to you. In other words set the parameter of each word as you see/feel it. Your definition may or may not match Webster’s definition.
After you fully understand each other’s definitions, separately list them in order from 1 to 5. Number one being that which speaks to you best; and number five being what speaks to you the least.
That’s it!
Now, since you know what Love Language speaks best to your spouse employ it as often as you can. CAUTION. This is where Larry Crabb speaks to the issue of marriage as manipulation or ministry.
In employing this simple approach to building a better marriage relationship you should see good marriages becoming better and every marriage showing progressive improvement.
Next time: God’s Marriage Triangle
