7. When family or friends are visiting, touch your spouse in their presence. A hug, running your hand along his or her arm, putting your arm around him as you stand talking, or simply placing your hand on her shoulder can earn double emotional points. It says, “Even with all these people in our house, I still see you.”
8. When your spouse arrives at home, meet him or her one step earlier than usual and give your mate a big welcome home. The point is to vary the routine and enhance even a small “touching experience.”
Decoding Deployments with Physical Touch
Spouses whose primary love language is physical touch have a difficult time feeling loved during deployments. As with the quality time love language, you may want to increase your efforts on your spouse’s secondary love language to help compensate for the deficit he or she feels while apart. Also try the following suggestions.
1. When talking or emailing, say things like, “I wish I could give you a big hug right now,” or, “If I were with you, I’d give you a back massage to ease some of the tension away.”
2. Send pictures of yourself to your spouse at various times while apart. Being able to hold a photo of you becomes very important when holding you in person is impossible.
3. Next time you have your hair cut, save a lock of it and send it to your spouse.
4. Spray some perfume or cologne you normally wear on a card or piece of fabric and send it to your spouse. Wives, be sure to seal your card with a kiss (wear some lipstick when you do this).
5. Trace your hand on paper and mail it to your spouse. He or she can high-five it or lay a hand on it to help feel connected to you.
6. Service members, arrange for a professional massage for your spouse at home. When you’re not around, your spouse may go for weeks or months without human touch.
7. Send handwritten letters. Unlike emails, these are tangible pieces of your love that your spouse can touch.
8. Wives at home, if physical touch is your love language, try wearing a special clothing item of your husband’s with his cologne placed on it. Marlene said, “I have developed a tradition of wearing my husband’s denim shirt or robe around the house while my husband is away. It feels like he is hugging me when I wear it.”
9. More tips for the spouse at home with a physical touch love language: Use a heated blanket on the empty side of the bed, so the bed won’t feel cold. Sleep with pillows next to you so you don’t get used to having the bed all to yourself. Spray a small amount of your spouse’s cologne or perfume on the pillowcase or a sachet you place inside it. Don’t replace the empty spot with a child or your child will get used to sleeping there. When your spouse returns home, your child might become fearful or resent him or her for taking his or her space in your bed.
THE 5 LOVE LANGUAGES?
Love Language
Scramblers
Some aspects of military life make it especially challenging to interpret and express love. These are love language scramblers, the experiences that can cause mixed signals and tangled lines of communication. Let’s look at just a few of these together.
TACTICS TRAINING
Service members are trained to operate in a hierarchy, to take orders and give them, to complete missions. Emotions are irrelevant, and order and obedience are critical for the military to function. But in marriage, the military style of communication can drown out any love language.
“My instructions during my time overseas were simple: do your job, and do it now,” said Vernon. “I became good at it, and enjoyed the time, because my schedule was often predictable, and my training sufficient to handle most pressures I faced.”
But when he came home and tried the same approach to meet his wife, Jackie’s, love language, his mission failed. “At work, when given an order or task, the expectation is that it gets done with little to no delay; this laser focus is necessary in meeting mission assignments. I call this ‘running sprints’ in relationship building. It took me a long time to understand that relationship building at home is more of a marathon. I needed to slow down on my approach and understand that once a ‘task’ has been completed at home, there are many other skills that need to be developed, like becoming an empathetic listener, and speaking my wife and children’s love language. This for me was a new type of training that would be a lifetime of practice, making mistakes, learning from them, and trying again.”
Military training, to obey orders without reference to your emotions, can be extremely helpful in speaking your spouse’s love language. You don’t need warm feelings to do acts of service or words of affirmation. Love begins with an attitude, moves to actions, and often stimulates positive emotions.
WHEN DUTY CALLS