The Five Love Languages

We were on the road by 10 am and decided to take a new route to avoid our previous snowy one. The forecast called for "scattered snow showers" which was exactly what it said before when it was more like a blizzard; so we decided it would be best to avoid it altogether. This route actually ended up being more scenic and wasn't any longer so we are glad we decided to change it up.

No snow + beautiful scenery = very pleasant 9 hour drive

Ayden did pretty well considering it was an all day trip instead of overnight. He had a couple of fussy, "Get me of of here!" moments, and he had a complete melt down when there was about an hour left in the trip. Other than that, he still did a nice job looking at his books, napping and clapping for us after every song we sang to distract him from the fact that he had to be strapped in the car for 9 hours.

During Ayden's morning nap, I read some of this book to David:

Our friends Jess and Adam read it during their premarital counseling and gave us a copy when we were down for a visit over the summer. We started reading tid bits here and there but brought it along to finish during our road trip. I read it out loud to David and we feel that it would be a great read for any couple. Anything that helps us deepen our relationship and bring each other even more happiness is a win in our book!

The premise behind it is that there are five "love languages" and so long as your partner, or other loved ones, "speak" yours regularly then you will feel emotionally satisfied (or your "love tank" will stay full). I won't go into too much more detail because I want everyone to read it for themselves but I will share what the five love languages are and what ours turned out to be.

The Five Languages are:
1) Words Of Affirmation
2) Quality Time
3) Receiving Gifts
4) Acts Of Service
5) Physical Touch

There are quizzes in the back of the book (that you can also find here online) that we took to find out where we stand. As we read the book, we both had a difficult time pinpointing what we thought ours were and finally made it to a paragraph that explained what that meant. Apparently if you have a hard time determining your own love language, your tank has either been really full or really empty for quite some time. Since David and I are both very happy in our marriage it was safe to say that we had been doing a pretty good job of filling each other's love tanks already.

After taking our quizzes, we determined that David's primary love language is Physical Touch, closely followed by Quality Time as his secondary love language. Coming in third for David was Words Of Affirmation, Acts Of Service got a few points, and Receiving Gifts didn't get any points at all. My results were interesting... I had a tie for both my primary and secondary love languages, or I am "bilingual" for both. My primary love languages are Physical Touch and Acts Of Service and my secondary languages are Words of Affirmation and Quality Time. I also did not score anything for receiving gifts. David and I both appreciate gifts and cherish gifts from each other, but gifts are not what satisfy either of us emotionally. With all four of my languages coming in so close together, David sure has his work cut out for him.  The fact that he was already keeping my tank full is pretty impressive! It is also nice that we already speak each others languages which is probably why our tanks have stayed pretty full over time.

It was neat to read through each language, and the examples provided, and pin point what was missing during "rough patches" that we have had throughout our [almost] 13 year relationship. We also got some ideas for how to prevent issues that seem to reoccur between us every now and then.

As I said before, I really think this book is a great read for any couple whether or not you are content with your relationship. Even if you don't completely buy into it, it is still a great tool to help you put things into perspective and get you thinking as a couple. No person or relationship is perfect and there is always some area that could use more effort or a little improvement.

A lot of our pre-baby ideas have changed since Ayden's arrival but one thing has stayed the same. We still fully believe that "the best gift you can give to your child is to love each other."

~Sarah