5. Write a love letter, a love paragraph, or a love sentence to your spouse and give it quietly or with fanfare! You may someday find your love letter tucked away in some special place. Words are important!
6. Compliment your spouse in the presence of his parents or friends. You will get double credit: Your spouse will feel loved and the parents will feel lucky to have such a great son-in-law or daughter-in-law.
7. Look for your spouse’s strengths and tell her how much you appreciate those strengths. Chances are she will work hard to live up to her reputation.
8. Tell your children how great their mother or father is. Do this behind your spouse’s back and in her presence.
Decoding Deployments with Words of Affirmation
Words of Affirmation is one of the easiest languages to speak during separations. In fact, you may find that being intentional with this language will draw the two of you closer together than you thought possible while physically apart.
1. Before the deployment, write love notes and secretly tuck them away in various places in the service member’s bags. Likewise, the service member can write several cards and label them “For When You’re Lonely,” “For When You’re Overwhelmed,” etc., so she can open them when she needs to hear from you the most.
2. Handwrite an encouraging letter to your spouse at least weekly, more often if possible.
3. Remind your spouse of the things that attracted you to her when you first met.
4. Share what you love, admire, or respect about your spouse in a letter or during one of your phone or Internet calls.
5. Write and mail your own poem about your spouse.
6. Express appreciation. Service members, tell your spouse how much you appreciate all the things she does to keep the homefront going.
7. Home front spouse, be sure your service member still feels needed by your family, no matter how well you are managing without him.
8. If your spouse is stressed when he or she calls you, allow him the opportunity to vent. Don’t try to fix the situation unless asked. Affirm him or her.
9. Write and send a tribute to your spouse.
10. Be the first to say “I love you” in every conversation.
THE 5 LOVE LANGUAGES?
LOVE LANGUAGE #2
Quality Time
I should have picked up on Betty Jo’s primary love language from the beginning. What was she saying on that spring night when I visited her and Bill in Little Rock? “Bill is a good provider, but he doesn’t spend any time with me. What good are all our things if we don’t ever enjoy them together?” What was her desire? Quality time with Bill. She wanted his attention. She wanted him to focus on her, to give her time, to do things with her.
By “quality time,” I mean giving someone your undivided attention. I don’t mean sitting on the couch watching television together. When you spend time that way, ABC or HBO has your attention—not your spouse. What I mean is sitting on the couch with the TV off, looking at each other and talking, giving each other your undivided attention. It means taking a walk, just the two of you, or going out to eat and looking at each other and talking. Have you ever noticed that in a restaurant, you can almost always tell the difference between a dating couple and a married couple? Dating couples look at each other and talk. Married couples sit there and gaze around the restaurant. You’d think they went there to eat!
When I sit with my wife and give her twenty minutes of my undivided attention and she does the same for me, we are giving each other twenty minutes of life. We will never have those twenty minutes again; we are giving our lives to each other. It’s a powerful emotional communicator of love.
One medicine cannot cure all diseases. In my advice to Bill and Betty Jo, I made a serious mistake. I assumed words of affirmation would mean as much to Betty Jo as they would to Bill. I had hoped that if each of them would give adequate verbal affirmation, the emotional climate would change, and both of them would begin to feel loved. It worked for Bill. He began to feel more positive about Betty Jo. He began to sense genuine appreciation for his hard work, but it had not worked as well for Betty Jo, for words of affirmation was not her primary love language. Her language was quality time.
I got back on the phone and thanked Bill for his efforts in the past two months verbally affirming Betty Jo. “But, Dr. Chapman,” he said, “she is still not very happy.”