Physical Touch

Hugs, pats on the back, hand holding—all show “excitement, concern, care, and love” to someone who is Physical Touch (“The 5 Love Languages”). As I mentioned in the previous post, sometimes women jump to the conclusion that they are Acts of Service because they enjoy help around the house. I think some men assume they are Physical Touch because they like…you know: marital relations.

If Physical Touch is your love language, you desire for touch will go beyond sexual intimacy. You will find yourself hugging friends, patting people on the back, roughhousing with your kids, sitting as close as you can on the couch with someone special. One of the ways I know my husband really is Physical Touch is because he touches even his guy friends often: from hugs to shoves.

Dr. Chapman says it’s hard to pinpoint a child’s love language when he or she is under two, and that it is important to speak all languages to your kids as they form their language. Still, Jack (my two-and-a-half-year-old) has been obsessed with physical contact since he was born. The colicky baby needed to be held close, bounced, and whacked slightly-beyond-gently on the back for most hours of the day and too many hours of the night. These days, he adores hugs and kisses: from family, friends, strange babies, and even “beautiful girls” he doesn’t yet know but wants to. (I’m already praying God puts purity high in this boy’s heart!)

Once I was talking about this love language in a class. A student and I were both wondering why, scoring so high in Physical Touch, we are often reserved. We wondered if, mixed with our introvert status, we were naturally more cautious. She explained she held Physical Touch in such a high regard that it took someone being quite dear to her (“in my inner circle”) to get her love in that way.

A discussion with your spouse or some time thinking over how you treat a friend is in order if you aren’t both Physical Touch.  Any time you are speaking outside of your native tongue, you will find you have to make a concerted effort. Physical Touch is no different. Rethink where you sit as you watch television together, hold hands when you say grace, hug when he comes home from work, kiss when she has washed the dishes. With Physical Touch, distance can bring resistance, and nearness can mean dearness. 

 Jack hugging his best friend Malachi

 sweet brothers

 giving his Nana Sugie and unsolicited hug

 one of my mom's favorite photos of Jack randomly kissing his cousin Charlie

an old favorite of Jack and Jonas

Before bed each night, Jack and I snuggle in my bed and watch cartoons.

 each post in this series

Introduction

Acts of Service

Physical Touch

Quality Time

Gifts

Words of Affirmation

Chapman, Gary. The 5 Love Languages. Chicago: Northfield, 1995. Print.

“The 5 Love Langugages.” The 5 Love Languages. Moody Publishers. n.d. Web. 11 May 2012.

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Considering Acts of Service

The words an Acts of Service person wants to hear most are these: “Let me do that for you” (“The 5 Love Languages”). Making more work or promising to help and then not can bring hurt feelings (“The 5 Love Languages”).

I decided to start with this language because it is my lowest. I thought for a long time it was tied with the rest, but I decided to take the “For Singles” quiz on the 5 Love Languages website and got a zero.

I think women can falsely believe this is our love language because we feel pleased when our husbands pitch in around the house. As progressive as we are, women, in general, are still often expected to take care of the majority of that work. I don’t say it to be controversial—I say it because I see it over and over and over again: in my generation, in ones before me, and in younger generations as well. “We’ve come a long way baby…” but some mindsets are still lingering. I also don’t say it to make some sweeping statement about who should be doing what in a home, but I do think a conversation on roles and responsibilities would be valuable.

If you aren’t married yet, you can watch how your possible in-laws handle things, or ask your fiancé how things were handled in his or her house. Often we mimic the setting we grew up in.

One difference in the traditional mindset may arise when love languages are considered. Whether or not your father-in-law helped around the household chores, if your husband’s love language is Acts of Service, he might be more obliging to do these tasks because he is saying “I love you” with every sweep of the broom, every folding of the socks. In turn, your mopping, vacuuming, wiping, and cleansing will mean a lot more to him than you simply doing what needs to be done.

Men, if your wife’s love language is Acts of Service, then your helping around the house is far more than a comment on your stance on feminism. It actually has nothing to do with that at all, but everything to do with learning to show your affection for her in one of the ways she needs it most.

Just because I scored low on Acts of Service doesn’t mean I don’t need help. In fact, I find myself getting incredibly frustrated when this language is left unspoken. Why? Because, as I wrote before in this post, marriage is a partnership, and with us both working outside the home, I need us both to be working equally inside the home as well.

Besides taking the quiz on the book’s website, you can consider this question: do you feel loved, appreciated, and cared for when someone helps you with chores, lawn work, cooking, or cleaning? Do you feel neglected and extraordinarily frustrated when these things are ignored, or when it feels that each of these areas of work is left up to you?

Here is a question to discuss with your spouse: what are three things you’d love to have done around the house without having to mention it? Make sure you are careful with your wording. “You are such a mess; please just pick up your socks for once in your life,” isn’t the best way to say it. “I love it when you pick up your socks,” is much more positive. Once you’ve come up with some answers, it will be time to put intention into action.

 each post in this series

Introduction

Acts of Service

Physical Touch

Quality Time

Gifts

Words of Affirmation

Chapman, Gary. The 5 Love Languages. Chicago: Northfield, 1995. Print.

“The 5 Love Langugages.” The 5 Love Languages. Moody Publishers. n.d. Web. 11 May 2012.

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Five Love Languages: Series Introduction

Self assessment of the Five Love Languages (Words of Affirmation, Quality Time, Receiving Gifts, Acts of Service, and Physical Touch), can improve our relationships and communication skills: this is a thesis statement I have used in a presentation on Dr. Gary Chapman’s book The 5 Love Languages.

If you haven’t heard of this book, it is an excellent read. He has editions devoted to how you communicate with your teens, children, spouse, friends….but, really, if you are able to read one copy and think of how to translate that information into all of your relationships, then you don’t need to feel overwhelmed by the amount of reading that seems to lie ahead in order to help you say “I love you” the way the people you love need to hear it.

If you’ve ever felt as though you were pouring a lot of energy in a relationship but getting nothing in return, it is possible one or both of you have different love languages—that you express love and need it expressed to you in different ways. For some reason, I’ve noticed that our dearest friends often have our same love languages while our spouses have different ones. (Do we want to be forever encouraged by our friends and frustrated by our lover? Do we think the “two becoming one” reference to in Genesis 2:24 means our trying to marry two differing personalities in an effort to make one complete person?)

As I mentioned in the first sentence, self assessment is the first step. No matter your marital relationship status, knowing your love language can help you better understand yourself: why you react the way you do to others. I use this evaluation in several of my classes as self-discovery, right alongside Myers Briggs personality tests and Howard Gardner Multiple Intelligences quizzes. Dr. Gary Chapman has its own website with easy quizzes. If you never have, I encourage you to go here to take at least one quiz. Since I am married, I took the one for wives, but, for curiosity’s sake, I also took the one for singles. (I wondered if I showed or desired love any differently with my friends. I’ll share more about those slightly differing results throughout the series.)

In the quiz, you are asked to pick between a pair of two phrases that most describes you: you may feel the two phrases (such as you being asked to pick whether “sweet notes from my husband make me feel good” or “I love my husband’s hugs”) are impossible to chose from. I usually want to say, “I need both, please, thank you” to every question. Laughingly (yet somewhat truthfully), I say that I am all five love languages.

“Well, doesn’t that make things easy for your husband?” I’ve been asked.

“Not really—it means I need all the languages spoken.”

The second step—after taking the quiz, perhaps reading the book, and then coercing your spouse and best friends to study up with you as well—is to spend time in pondering and practice in becoming more fluent in the language of those dear to you. The next five blog posts that I will share over the next two weeks will look at each language, incorporating stories from my journey with questions and challenges you can use.

There is no Rosetta Stone, just a mix of trial, error, and effort. But if you want to get to the core of “I love you,” it’s worth the work.

 each post in this series

Introduction

Acts of Service

Physical Touch

Quality Time

Gifts

Words of Affirmation

Chapman, Gary. The 5 Love Languages. Chicago: Northfield, 1995. Print.

“The 5 Love Langugages.” The 5 Love Languages. Moody Publishers. n.d. Web. 11 May 2012.

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Spend Time Apart

Secret #7 (the final of this series) is to spend some time apart (Behen 7). In reflection of this secret, I decided to take photographs (and find some previously-taken photos) of the things I like to do without my spouse. Cultivating my own interests and hobbies (some alone, some with other friends) is a must. Sometimes I have that wistful longing: I wish he liked all the same stuff I do, but then I remember Secret #5 to accentuate the positive and Secret #6 to have other friendships. (See the full list of secrets below.)

One of my passions is photography, so compiling this montage (while my husband was working and my children were napping), was a happy task. After you look through, I challenge you to think of something you love to do or someplace you love to go--find a friend who shares that love, or enjoy some time alone treating yourself. 

In Kate Chopin's "A Pair of Silk Stockings," a young mother who spends all of her energies devoted to her family and none on her own desires ends up blowing a lot of money one day on a wild self-indulging extravaganza. By the end, as she is riding home, she feels "a poignant wish, a powerful longing that the cable car would never stop anywhere, but go on and on with her forever" (Chopin 156). Don't let the challenges of wifery and motherhood take away who you are, or you might end up losing your mind one afternoon, emptying your savings account, and "powerfully longing" never to return home again. 

You can be all things to all people most of the time (Isn't that, after all, what it means to be a woman?), but every once in a while, you need to be just you.  

hobbies and interests pictured above: writing, playing Mah Jong, having tea, songwriting and singing, reading Hemingway (current research project), practicing photography, sewing onesies for friends, planning and thinking of possibilities, painting pottery, eating good food, going to work, shopping (though the fantastic design of Anastasia Morozova is currently out of my price range--one day!). 

 the entire series (with written posts linked)

Introduction 

Secret # 1 Have Realistic Expectations 

Secret #2 Sweat the Small Stuff 

Secret #3 Consider Yourselves a Team

Secret #4 Remember the Little Things

Secret #5 Accentuate the Positive

Secret #6 Have Other Friendships

Secret #7 Spend Time Apart

 Behen, Madonna. “The Seven Secrets of Lasting Love.” USA Weekend 27-29 April 2012. Print. 

Chopin, Kate. "A Pair of Silk Stockings." Great American Short Stories. Ed. Paul Negri. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 2002. 152-56. Print.

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Have a Little Help from Your Friends

According to Madonna Behen, secret # 5 in this series on lasting love is to have friendships other friendships. This secret reminds me of a portion from a chapter of Proverbs through the Generations, a book my grandfather, dad, and I wrote (coming this month to www.omorepublishing.com). Though it was written during my pregnancy with now-nine-month-old Jonas, I’d like to share it here.

“Sometimes we are a little overwhelmed with the idea of how blessed we are to be a part of this group. You are an answer to prayers we didn't even know we were making.”

This is something I wrote today as an online posting to a small group of Christian friends we meet with every Friday and many holidays. I also wrote online that I was “looking around myself and realizing that God has been building up a strong defense in our lives to make us better equipped to handle this coming baby. It still may be like being thrown into a deep pool, but at least there are multiple life rafts to swim to.” I acknowledge that I mixed my metaphors in that latter quote, but both are strong images I keep seeing lately.

When we had Jack, we didn’t have the most solid support system. We were surrounded by young, single friends and couples who didn’t have children, and we both struggled to keep these friendships alive. Don’t get me wrong; several of these friends would have done anything we could have ever asked for—but we honestly didn’t know what we needed enough to ask. Friendships crumbled. We crumbled. If it wasn’t for my parents and their help, I don’t know what I would have done. But, as valuable as parents are, they are not the same as having friends who are in a similar situation in life.

The other image is of drowning, which I continually thought of during those first several months of motherhood. Since I had let most of my friendships fall away, I sunk deeper and deeper. Fear of a similar outcome kept me worried about ever having a second child, but my planning came to nothing: God had other plans.

I’m almost in the third trimester, awaiting the birth of our second son, and I have finally noticed that God’s plans didn’t mean He was giving us a child and walking away. He’s been preparing our family’s growth for the past year as we have developed new friendships and as some of our old friends have started having babies of their own.

I remember watching other new moms and wondering how they had the strength to spend time with their friends with all that motherhood takes out of you; I now see that the friendships are the strength.

Solid friendships are an extension of family, a blessing from God, a defense against the hardships of the world, a life raft when the waves threaten to cover us, and a source of strength and solace when we are in need.

 the entire series (with written posts linked)

Introduction 

Secret # 1 Have Realistic Expectations 

Secret #2 Sweat the Small Stuff 

Secret #3 Consider Yourselves a Team

Secret #4 Remember the Little Things

Secret #5 Accentuate the Positive

Secret #6 Have Other Friendships

Secret #7 Spend Time Apart

 our small group on the 4th of July 2012

Below is a collection of some of the photographs I was able to take of a few of the children that day. 

 Behen, Madonna. “The Seven Secrets of Lasting Love.” USA Weekend 27-29 April 2012. Print. 

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Accentuate The Positive (Secret # 5)

Growing up, my family didn’t have cable television. This meant we spent a lot of our time reading, talking, or hanging out together. Sometimes I miss the quiet I grew up enjoying. If you catch me at home alone these days (a rare occurrence other than naptime when I am "alone"), you will probably find the television off, the room soundless.

One Friday night when I was in middle school, my dad and I somehow starting on a list of one hundred qualities my future husband must have. For the sake of humor and recollection, I wish I had that list today. I remember a few of the running jokes. Early on in the list, my dad wrote Must have hair somewhere on his body.

“But, Dad,” I offered, “what if he’s on the swim team?”

An addendum was added: Must have hair somewhere on his body, unless on the swim team or suffering from some sort of hairless disease. Randomly throughout the list a qualification is cancelled out by the joke of unless on the swim team. Some of these connections made no sense, which added to the comedic value.    

I also remember a couple of the qualities:

• Must like plain pasta.
• Must like Taco Bell.
• Must like The Beatles.
• Must own a car.
• The car must not be a Pinto. (A Maverick is acceptable.)
• Must read the Bible.
• Must love Jessa.
• Must love God.
• Must love babies.
• Must know when to cry.
• Must not make to big a habit of crying.
• Must like British comedies.

What would Jay’s score out be out of that list of one hundred my dad and I wrote around fifteen years ago? Hmmmm….

Too often I think we look at the “he’s not” instead of the “he is.” When you focus on the first, you forget about the latter. Jay may not like plain pasta or my favorite British comedy, but he does love me, God, our kids, and The Beatles. And he doesn’t drive a Pinto or cry too much.

These are just some of the qualities I like about Jay: he is

• a good father,
• hilarious,
• appreciative of my sense of humor,
• patient,
• able to reach things on high shelves,
• kind enough to reach things on high shelves for strange old ladies at the supermarket (Yes, they ask.),
• a good friend,
• willing to work to support our family even though he’d rather stay at home,
• intelligent,
• humble,
• musically talented,
• trusting,
• calm (except for if his team loses).

I didn’t realize until I finished the list, but it reminds me of this verse: "Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.  It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres" (1 Corinthians 13:4–7).

I guess it is just as well that I don’t still have that list of longings from my early-teenage heart. Besides the good laugh my dad and I could have over the memories, I don’t need to dwell on how Jay does or doesn’t “measure up.” I can better spend my time making sure I try to fill the qualifications in that 1 Corinthians list, and focusing on the ways Jay does instead of how he doesn’t.  

 the entire series (with written posts linked)

Introduction 

Secret # 1 Have Realistic Expectations 

Secret #2 Sweat the Small Stuff 

Secret #3 Consider Yourselves a Team

Secret #4 Remember the Little Things

Secret #5 Accentuate the Positive

Secret #6 Have Other Friendships

Secret #7 Spend Time Apart

 their humorous nonchalant pose 

 my sweet boys (above and below)

Behen, Madonna. “The Seven Secrets of Lasting Love.” USA Weekend 27-29 April 2012. Print.  

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