“I’m an extrovert,” said Jorge. “And when I come home from being underway, I relax by getting together with friends. Maria is always welcome to be part of the group, but sometimes she chooses not to. If she wants to be with me so much, why would she stay home?”
Maria didn’t want to be part of a group. She wanted his focused attention to reassure her of his love. “If we could have some quality time together first, just us, I’d be much happier for him to see his friends. But when he asks to do something with them right away, I wonder if he even missed me while he was gone.”
Maria is clearly revealing that her love language is quality time. That is why she finds Jorge’s desire to spend time with his friends as an act of rejection. If Jorge is wise, he will fill Maria’s love tank before he dashes off to see his friends.
Quality time is critical and should be carefully timed—but unfortunately, it cannot be stored up like water in a camel’s hump, ready to be used on a journey through the desert. Connor was already gone from home on a TDY when he learned of an upcoming deployment with the National Guard. So he flew home every weekend to spend quality time with his wife, Susan. Each weekend was to be spent without distractions of the Internet, email, texting, webcam, or TV.
“It was a tall order for anyone to fill, especially under such difficult circumstances, but he longed to spend quality time with me, to have my undivided attention,” remembered Susan, who contributes to an online support group for military wives. “So each weekend, we read together, prayed together, listened to the Gary and Barb Rosberg predeployment DVDs, completed a barrage of home repairs, and spent time preparing our four children, as best we could, for our next assignment. He even went out of his way to sit next to me, as I wrote blogs and devotionals, like he used to do before his TDY.”
But the fact that Susan spent any time on the blogs for military wives hurt Connor. “His heart was crushed by my inability to give him the undivided attention he needed,” she said. “Through his eyes, my priorities were displaced. He no longer affirmed my writing, and he struggled to find the encouraging words I so desperately longed to hear. As a result, I struggled to express my heart, physically, verbally, and in writing. To make matters worse, there was no time to process the feelings and emotions that surfaced before he had to leave again on his yearlong deployment.”
Connor is demonstrating a common source of conflict. He was making great efforts to meet his own emotional need for love, probably assuming he was also meeting Susan’s need for love. When he did not get the quality time he thought he deserved, he became critical of Susan. Her love language was words of affirmation, so she felt deeply hurt by his negative words. So, another couple starts a long deployment with a fractured relationship.
Connor’s expectations were unrealistic. He was trying to “load up” on enough quality time to see him through deployment. The truth is that quality time cannot be stored up. However, we can speak quality time while deployed. (See suggestions at the end of this chapter.)
QUALITY CONVERSATION
Like words of affirmation, the language of quality time also has many dialects. One of the most common dialects is that of quality conversation. By quality conversation, I mean sympathetic dialogue where two individuals are sharing their experiences, thoughts, feelings, and desires in a friendly, uninterrupted context. Most individuals who complain that their spouse does not talk do not mean literally that he or she never says a word. They mean that he or she seldom takes part in sympathetic dialogue. If your spouse’s primary love language is quality time, such dialogue is crucial to his or her emotional sense of being loved.
Quality conversation is quite different from the first love language. Words of affirmation focus on what we are saying, whereas quality conversation focuses on what we are hearing. If I am sharing my love for you by means of quality time and we are going to spend that time in conversation, it means I will focus on drawing you out, listening sympathetically to what you have to say. I will ask questions, not in a badgering manner but with a genuine desire to understand your thoughts, feelings, and desires.
I met Patrick when he was forty-three and had been married for seventeen years. He sat in the leather chair in my office, and after briefly introducing himself, he leaned forward and said with great emotion, “Dr. Chapman, I have been a fool, a real fool.”
“What has led you to that conclusion?” I asked.
“I’ve been married for seventeen years,” he said, “and my wife has left me. Now I realize what a fool I’ve been.”