Road Map For A Happy Marriage – Part 2

Last week I talked about the road map for a happy marriage – part 1.

I know I left you in suspense wondering…what was the gift we gave?

 The Five Love Languages

How to Express Heartfelt Commitment to Your Mate

By: Gary Chapman

Men Are Like Waffles
Women Are Like Spaghetti

Understanding and Delighting in Your Differences

By: Bill and Pam Farrel

Men, do you want your wives to desire you  and be more intimate more often?
Women, do you want your husbands to be more loving and understanding?

Read these books!

Ryan and I have been married now for 7 1/2 years.
We do not have a perfect marriage; we are not perfect people.

However, we are both committed to each other and to God.

In an effort to strengthen our marriage and honor God, we have continually read many books on marriage and intimacy, attended marriage seminars, and are involved in a weekly bible study focused primarily on marriage from a biblical perspective.  We also meet with our mentors – who’ve been married themselves now for 51 years!

Of the many marriage books we’ve read, the two I listed above have really been a paradigm shift for our marriage.  It’s given us a road map, or at least given us a common language, for our marriage.  It has helped open the lines of communication for us, and to better understand our spouse and their needs.

From Gary Chapman’s, The Five Love Languages, we learned that:

• Ryan’s primary love language is:
  Words of Affirmation

  and he showed love by:
  Acts of Service

• My primary love language is:
  Quality Time

  and I showed love by:
  Physical Touch

You can easily see how we used to have problems expressing and receiving our love for each other!

As I desire primarily quality time, when Ryan would try to express his love by doing acts of service (ie. cooking, laundry, etc.), I would feel hurt thinking that he didn’t love me since he wouldn’t spend time with me.

On the other hand, when I would try to show my affection to my husband with physical touch, he would feel reserved because he wanted to hear how I loved him and appreciated him.

Now that we better understand each others’ love languages, we both make an effort to speak the love language that the other prefers to hear.  Ryan makes an effort to just be near me, and I try to make more of an effort to verbally express my love and appreciation of him.

And by the way, my hubby still does a lot of acts of service - that is just his nature.  But now that I understand that better…let me tell you…there is nothing sexier than a man that vacuums!

We hope our friends, Chad and Juli, find as many nuggets of wisdom from these books as we have!

By the way, I am in no way getting paid for this post in any way. 
I am just providing my heartfelt and honest opinion.