Don’t you love a good story? What if you could learn to love others better by listening to a good story? That is the aim of a well-known Christian counselor who wrote "The Five Love Languages".
April 27, 2009
Love is a Verb, Part 1 w/Gary Chapman
To last for the long haul and through the stresses and complexities of life love has to be more than something we feel. It has to be something we do.
Welcome to Haven Today. I’m Charles Morris sharing the great story that’s all about Jesus and in the next few minutes we will be joined by Christian counselor and my friend Dr. Gary Chapman. And this is a program called “Love is a Verb”. To last for the long haul and through the stresses and complexities of life love has to be more than something we feel. It has to be something we do. We have to demonstrate it concretely in our marriages and families, among our friends and acquaintances and yes, even among our enemies. Don’t go away. You’re going to appreciate these next few minutes as we bring Gary Chapman, the author of the bestselling book “The Five Love Languages” back to Haven Today. Now Gary also has a brand new book out “Love is a Verb: Stories of what happens when love comes alive.” You can watch a short video clip that we have online at haventoday.org and you can also read about this brand new book “Love is a Verb” by just going to h.a.v.e.n.t.o.d.a.y, haventoday.org. With her song “Love is the More Excellent Way” Babbie Mason opens this Haven Today.
Song: Love is the More Excellent Way
Performed by: Babbie Mason
Haven Today and I’m Charles Morris and on the line with me again after an absence of a little more than a year is my brother in Christ Dr. Gary Chapman. Gary welcome back to the program.
GC: Well thank you Charles. It’s great to be with you again.
CM: We are talking about “Love is a Verb” but you are a Christian counselor and I still love you anyway. But the fact is, there are a lot of Christians out there who need some counseling and you’re the one to do it. We had you on the air in the month of May and this is that time of year when people fall in love, spring time. Many weddings are being planned for June or some other month through the summer but then I’m also thinking of the economy that we’re going through right now, this great recession. People are losing jobs – a lot of people in certain parts of the country. And we’re hearing from them at our ministry. Love is a verb, but before we talk about how we love we should go back to what kind of made you famous and we’ve had you on the air before about. You kind of pulled love and broke it out into 5 areas based, I guess, on your own practice in counseling. You want to run us through those again and then we’ll kind of talk about marriages today or future marriages?
GC: Yes Charles, as you know I discovered years and years ago in my counseling, and I’ve been doing marriage and family counseling for about 35 year, that what makes one person feel love doesn’t make another person feel loved. So they’ve been in my office over and over again and she would say, “I feel like he doesn’t love me anymore.” And he would say, “I don’t understand her. You know, I do this and this and this and she says she doesn’t feel loved? I mean, what am I supposed to do?” Well, what I did, I went through 12 years of the notes that I had made when I was counseling people. I always make notes so that the next time we meet I’ll remember what we did last time. And I’ll ask myself the question, “When someone says to me, ‘I feel like my spouse doesn’t love me,’ what did they want? What were they complaining about?” And their answers fell into 5 categories. I later called them the “Five Love Languages”. It’s essentially 5 ways that people express emotional love to each other in a marriage. One of them is words of affirmation, using words to affirm the other person. “You look nice in that outfit.” “I really appreciate what you did.” “One of the things I like about your personality is that you’re always steady.” But using words to describe things about the person that you affirm. A second love language is gifts. It’s universal to give gifts as an expression of love. The gift says, “She was thinking about me!” “HE was thinking about me!” “Look what they’ve got for me!” And it doesn’t have to be expensive. We’ve always said it’s the thought that counts.
CM: Yes
GC: But I remind people Charles it’s not the thought left in your head that counts. It’s the gift that came out of the thought in your head, OK? And number 3 is the acts of service, doing something for the other person. In a family it would be cooking meals, doing dishes, vacuuming floors, walking the dog, changing the baby’s diaper – whoo! BIG act of service!
Cm: Yes, yes
GC: Doing something for the other person you know they would like for you to do. Number 4 is quality time. You give that person your undivided attention. The TV is off, magazine is down, the two of you are looking at each other and talking. Or you could take a walk down the road so long as you’re talking to each other. Number 5 is physical touch. We’ve all known the power of physical touch so in a marriage we’re talking about holding hands, embracing, kissing, the whole sexual part of the marriage. And the message of the original book “The Five Love Languages” was that each of us has a primary love language. Out of these 5, one speaks more deeply to us than the other 4 and seldom does a husband and wife have the same love language. So –
CM: Usually it would be different then.
GC: Usually they would be different.
Cm: OK
GC: So, he speaks his language, she speaks her language. You know maybe his language is words of affirmation. Maybe that’s what makes him feel loved. So what does he do to her? “Honey, I love you so much. You are so beautiful. I really appreciate what you do.” He’s giving her words of affirmation. He’s speaking his own language to her. But maybe her language is acts of service. What makes her feel loved is when someone does something to help her. So after a while she’s saying to him, when he’s saying, “I love you,” she’s saying, “You know, ‘I love you, I love you, I love you,’ I am sick of those words! If you love me why don’t you get off the couch and do something to help me!” And the poor guy is blown out of the sack. You know, he thought everything was fine. The reality was, you know, he was loving her but he was not speaking the right language so she didn’t feel loved. He wasn’t getting through to her.
Cm: He was loving her in his language and not necessarily her language and I’m clarifying that because I’m speaking to myself and my wife is speaking to me through you right now Gary. I, we blow it though, don’t we. We really blow it.
GC: Absolutely.
CM: Let’s see, it was Valentine’s Day? No it was my wedding anniversary. I fretted and fretted and fretted, what could I get my wife and gifts is, well it would be her primary love language. And I fretted so much about it I didn’t get something ordered. Now I made up for it with the time out and everything but she was expecting a gift and I blew it again, you know. And thank goodness for grace and forgiveness and thank goodness my wife does forgive. But the fact is, I need to think more about how she thinks and appreciates my love in a way she loves. And –
GC: Yeah, and you know if we just do what comes natural Charles, we do speak our own language. And that happens all the time, so we have to learn what the other person’s love language is and then we have to choose to speak it on a regular basis. And if we do they feel loved and if we don’t they don’t feel loved.
CM: Wow, OK. You have a new book out, that’s what we’re calling today’s program, “Love is a Verb”. How does love work its way out then for a couple getting ready to get married perhaps in the next few weeks or months this summer? Or marriages that are having problems right now perhaps related to the economic downturn we’re in right now. How can my love be a verb?
GC: Well, you know Charles, one of the points I made in that original book and I flesh out in this book “Love is a Verb” is that love really doesn’t begin with a feeling. It begins with an attitude. And then it has appropriate behavior.
CM: Attitude and then action.
GC: Right. The attitude is, how may I help you? How can I make your life easier? How can I be a better husband to you or a better wife to you? See, love is looking out for the interest of the other person. It’s thinking, ‘What can I do that will enhance the other person’s life?’ It’s an attitude. Then it has appropriate behavior. We learn how to express love in a way that’s meaningful to them. And that’s when the verb thing comes in. Love is not a feeling. Love is an action but it starts with an attitude, a way of thinking and then it rolls over into behavior. Now, let’s be honest. There is an emotional aspect to love and when we fall into love we have deep emotional feelings, euphoric feelings. I mean it’s just wonderful when we’re in love. But the reality is, we’ve studied that. That experience lasts an average of 2 years. We come down off the high. We don’t stay obsessed forever. Thank God! You know Charles if we stayed obsessed forever you‘d have to close down business, industry, church. You can’t get anything done when you’re “in love”. Being in love is next door to being insane. People do crazy things when they’re in love.
CM: Yes
GC: You know, they buy gifts they can never afford, they drive 500 miles to spend 30 minutes with each other, I mean we, you know. We’ve all been through that. I mean that, that’s, and most people think that’s the foundation for marriage. We’ve got these strong feelings for each other. We’re in love with each other and we’re going to be happy forever. Look, the couples who get married always think they’re going to be happy forever, they’re going to feel these feelings forever. Many of them are not aware that it has a 2 year lifespan so when they come down off that high they really get frustrated because they say to themselves, “Oo. I’ve lost the feelings. I don’t have those feelings anymore.” And if they haven’t learned the concept that love is a verb and that there are love languages and you have to learn how to speak the other person’s language, it’s not a feeling that just carries you on forever, you have to now learn how to express love and choose to express love in a language that’s meaningful to the other person. And if you do that you can keep emotional warmth alive in the marriage. It won’t be the euphoric state of being “in love” but it will be the warm, secure feelings of being loved by the other person. So you know, what I’m saying in the original book and what I’m now fleshing out in this book by means of stories, real life stories is that love is a verb. Love is action. Yes it may have begun in the romantic stage as feeling but that’s temporary. Now we have to choose to speak love and when we do, yes it does stimulate feelings. But the feelings come after the actions. You see, when the feelings die, when you lose the “in love” experience, if you haven’t learned how to love then what happens is your differences emerge and you find yourselves arguing with each other.
CM: So they become more pronounced then.
GC: That’s right, that’s right. And after a while you’re saying, “Why did we even get married? We don’t even like each other! How did we get together?” You know the euphoria’s gone, the differences are there and we’ve been putting each other down and arguing over these things and we’ve lost all emotional warmth in the relationship. So what I’m saying is, that warmth can be reborn. You won’t go back to the euphoric state but that emotional warmth can be reborn but you have to learn how to speak the other person’s language and you have to choose to do it and that’s the action part, choosing to do it.
CM: If you just joined us you’re listening to Haven Today, yes. You’re also listening to Dr. Gary Chapman and the program’s called “Love is a Verb” which is the title of his new book that is just released. It’s just making its way into Christian bookstores and other places. Amazon.com would have it but I’ll tell you how to get it from us and also help Haven Today in just a few more minutes here. Gary, let’s move aside for a moment the euphoria of the couple who is in love and getting ready to get married and let’s drill a little deeper into the couple who is, well, the love is gone as you were saying a moment ago. It’s just gone and that, at the same time in the recession we’re going through right now the birth rate is going up. The fact is I’ve got a hunch in another year the divorce rate will have gone up as well or at least problems over finances will have created more tension in marriages. Give us some advice. How can we preserve our marriages as Christian believers and maybe one spouse is a Christian and the other one isn’t?
GC: Yeah. Well you know I think a big issue is learning how to find answers to our differences. I have a story in this book, “Love is a Verb” about a lady who wrote about her own experience with her husband. She says, “You know, before we got married we were in love and it was euphoric. And I would go into the mountains with him and just watch him fish in the streams and he would go to the beach with me and you know, we just had a wonderful time.” But she said, “After we got married we were at the beach on a vacation and one day he said to me, ‘You know, I don’t guess I’ve ever told you this but I hate the beach. I cannot stand the sand. I mean I can’t stand – it’s sand between my toes, it’s sand in the house, it’s sand in the bed. It’s sand! I can’t stand sand!’” And she said, “I was just shocked because before we got married he went to the beach and he seemed to have a great time.” And she said, “So here we are and I realize that we’re married. He doesn’t like the beach. I don’t really like to go to the mountains and watch him fish so what are we going to do, take separate vacations the rest of our life?”
CM: I’ve heard of that. Some couples do that.
GC: Yeah, people do that. You could do that but there’s a little word called “compromise” that if it’s coupled with love can make for much greater intimacy in the marriage so what you do is you think in terms of, “Look, let’s find ways that we can help each other here, we can enjoy each other. Why don’t we find a meeting place? Maybe we’ll spend part of our vacation week, if we only have a week, we’ll spend part of it in the mountains. He can go fishing. We’ll spend part of it at the beach and he can go there as a happy camper, not begrudgingly but he can go there and just put up with the sand for 3 days you know.” And so, but you do it with love. If you simply do it you know, doing something you hate, well then you haven’t accomplished anything. But if you do it as an act of love, honey, I want to be with you. I want to do things you enjoy. So it’s not my favorite but I’m going to choose to do it. Let’s do it this way. So you find a meeting place. And if you make it an act of love, that is doing something for the benefit of the other person, you both feel appreciated, you both feel loved and you’ve found a way, even with your differences, to have a good marriage. And I think every couple has to discover that reality otherwise you could spend a lifetime fighting each other.
CM: And in the end you actually would enjoy the beach more, after having gone to the mountains and just the interaction of loving your spouse to do what you know would please your spouse. I get your point Gary and my wife is going to be listening to this interview after it’s on the air so, I thank you so much for your good advice. Gary Chapman is on with us and Gary, I would like to ask you to pray, lead us in prayer. And please pray for future marriages that are maybe about to happen but also would you pray that the Lord would save some marriages that are just falling apart right now?
GC: Yeah, yeah, sure.
Our Father, you know our hearts. You know the ministry you’ve given Charles, the ministry you’ve given me. We know what’s on your heart because you told us the greatest thing in all the world is to love you with everything we have and to love each other as we love ourselves. And we remember the words of our Lord when he said, “You love others like I have loved you.” And we know we’re not capable of that without your help and so I pray for the couples who may be listening today, those who are struggling, I pray that they will hear, first of all your voice calling them to love. And then I pray that they’ll open their hearts to you and let you pour their love into their lives so they can be a channel of loving their spouse even if their spouse at the moment happens to be unlovely because you loved us when we were unlovely. And then I pray for those couples Father who are contemplating marriage. Many of them have already set the date, this is going to be the summer they get married and right now they’re in euphoria and they’re enjoying it. It’s just absolutely wonderful but I pray that you will help them understand the nature of emotional love and to know that when they come down off the high they haven’t lost love if they have the heart to reach out to each other. And so I pray you’d prepare them for going in that transition from euphoria to the more intentional love that reaches out to do things for the other person. I pray Father for the marriages in this country, you know where we are, and around the world who are struggling and may this be a day in which they discover the secret, the power in loving others in the power of the Holy Spirit. I pray this for your glory. I pray this for our good in the name of Christ our Lord, amen.
Song: Oh Love That Will Not Let Me Go
Performed by: Chris Rice
We haven’t heard that song in a while. I really like it by Chris Rice, “Oh Love That Will Not Let Me Go” here with Dr. Gary Chapman here on a Haven Today called “Love is a Verb”. You know maybe something touched you in this program that you just heard. Gary’s always a wonderful person to have on. He loves the Lord so much and he wants to help you love other people. Perhaps you know someone who could benefit from these last few minutes. You can just go to our website, haventoday.org and you can type in your friend’s email address along with a little note of encouragement from yourself and send this program on to them. Gary’s going to be back on the program with us tomorrow as we talk about love as a verb. Now if you are interested in getting his brand new book, it’s just released, the ink is almost still wet in our warehouse, or perhaps you’ve never read the New York Times bestseller that this Christian brother has written, “How to express heartfelt commitment to your mate” and it also includes the “Five Love Languages Personal Assessment Tool” at the end, well we have both for you. Either or both there on our website as a thank you for your gift to this listener supported ministry as we head into the end of the month. You can call us if you’d like. Our toll free number in North America is 1-800-654-2836. That’s 1-800-654-2836. Or you can go online at h.a.v.e.n.t.o.d.a.y, haventoday.org and you can read about either “Love is a Verb” or “The Five Love Languages”. And when you do go to our website be sure and check out the little video that we’ve posted with Gary Chapman. We recorded this program the end of last week and Gary right now with his church in Winston-Salem, North Carolina is going to Israel, they’re in Israel now so you might want to pray for their travels there and for safety and also opportunities to share Jesus with people who need to know the Lord. Well, when you get in touch with us please let us know the station you’re listening to.
I’m Charles Morris. Thanks for being with me and Gary Chapman. Would you come back again tomorrow when again we’ll be talking about love as a verb but also love in Christ and we’ll do it together here on Haven Today.
