The 5 Love Languages Military Edition: The Secret to Love That Lasts (10 page)

I
was in Chicago when I studied anthropology. By means of detailed ethnographies (printed descriptions of a particular culture), I visited fascinating peoples all over the world. I went to Central America and studied the advanced cultures of the Mayans and the Aztecs. I crossed the Pacific and studied the tribal peoples of Melanesia and Polynesia. I studied the Eskimos of the northern tundra and the aboriginal Ainus of Japan. I examined the cultural patterns surrounding love and marriage and found that in every culture I studied, gift giving was a part of the love-marriage process.

Anthropologists are intrigued by cultural patterns that tend to pervade cultures, and so was I. Could it be that gift giving is a fundamental expression of love that transcends cultural barriers? Is the attitude of love always accompanied by the concept of giving? Those are academic and somewhat philosophical questions, but if the answer is yes, it has profound practical implications for North American couples.

I took an anthropology field trip to the island of Dominica. Our purpose was to study the culture of the Carib Indians, and on the trip I met Fred. Fred was not a Carib but a young black man of twenty-eight years. Fred had lost a hand in a fishing-by-dynamite accident. Since the accident, he could not continue his fishing career. He had plenty of available time, and I welcomed his companionship. We spent hours together talking about his culture.

Upon my first visit to Fred’s house, he said to me, “Mr. Gary, would you like to have some juice?” to which I responded enthusiastically. He turned to his younger brother and said, “Go get Mr. Gary some juice.” His brother turned, walked down the dirt path, climbed a coconut tree, and returned with a green coconut. “Open it,” Fred commanded. With three swift movements of the machete, his brother uncorked the coconut, leaving a triangular hole at the top. Fred handed me the coconut and said, “Juice for you.” It was green, but I drank it—all of it—because I knew it was a gift of love. I was his friend, and to friends you give juice.

At the end of our weeks together as I prepared to leave that small island, Fred gave me a final token of his love. It was a crooked stick fourteen inches in length that he had taken from the ocean. It was silky smooth from pounding upon the rocks. Fred said the stick had lived on the shores of Dominica for a long time, and he wanted me to have it as a reminder of the beautiful island. Even today when I look at that stick, I can almost hear the sound of the Caribbean waves, but it’s not as much a reminder of Dominica as it is a reminder of love.

A gift is something you can hold in your hand and say, “Look, he was thinking of me,” or, “She remembered me.” You must be thinking of someone to give him a gift. The gift itself is a symbol of that thought. It doesn’t matter whether it costs money. What is important is that you thought of him. And it’s not the thought implanted only in the mind that counts, but the thought expressed in actually securing the gift and giving it as the expression of love.

Mothers remember the days their children bring a flower from the yard as a gift. They feel loved, even if it was a flower they didn’t want picked. From early years, children are inclined to give gifts to their parents, which may be another indication that gift giving is fundamental to love.

Gifts are visual symbols of love. Most wedding ceremonies include the giving and receiving of rings. The person performing the ceremony says, “These rings are outward and visible signs of an inward and spiritual bond uniting your two hearts in love that has no end.” That is not meaningless rhetoric. It is verbalizing a significant truth—symbols have emotional value. Perhaps that is even more graphically displayed near the end of a disintegrating marriage when the husband or wife stops wearing the wedding ring. It’s a visual sign that the marriage is in serious trouble.

Visual symbols of love are more important to some people than to others. If receiving gifts is my primary love language, I will place great value on the ring you have given me and I will wear it with great pride. I will also be greatly moved emotionally by other gifts that you give through the years. I will see them as expressions of love. Without gifts as visual symbols, I may question your love.

When Davis and Anna married, they were so poor they used plain 10K gold rings Anna’s parents had bought them. Within ten years, they had paid off all their debt, had money in savings, and even were able to purchase a replacement class ring for Davis, which cost several thousand dollars. “But he didn’t splurge on a nice ring for me,” said Anna. “This was problematic. Every time I looked at my girlfriends’ left ring finger, I saw a diamond. But when I looked at my own, I saw a plain gold band.” For Anna, whose love language is receiving gifts, that seemed to shout that she just wasn’t worth a diamond.

“After five kids, ten years of marriage, and nine military moves, I felt I wanted that demonstration of love on my finger,” Anna recalled. Finally, she talked to Davis about it and tried to explain her love language without sounding materialistic.

Not long after that conversation, a set of Anna’s grandmother’s heirloom china dishes were stolen from their household goods during a move. When the settlement check came in, it provided some discretionary funds. For their tenth anniversary, Davis gave Anna a diamond anniversary band with ten stones to replace the plain gold band. “For the last fifteen years (we are celebrating our twenty-fifth anniversary this year), every time I look down at my ring finger, I feel loved by my military man,” Anna said.

Gifts come in all sizes, colors, and shapes. Some are expensive, and others are free. To the individual whose primary love language is receiving gifts, the cost of the gift will matter little, unless it is greatly out of line with what you can afford. If a millionaire gives only one-dollar gifts regularly, the spouse may question whether that is an expression of love, but when family finances are limited, a one-dollar gift may speak a million dollars worth of love.

Gifts may be purchased, found, or made. The husband who finds an interesting bird feather while out jogging and brings it home to his wife has found himself an expression of love, unless, of course, his wife is allergic to feathers. For the man who can afford it, you can purchase a beautiful card for less than five dollars. For the man who cannot, you can make one for free. Get the paper out of the trash can where you work, fold it in the middle, take scissors and cut out a heart, write “I love you,” and sign your name. Gifts need not be expensive.

But what of the person who says, “I’m not a gift giver. I didn’t receive many gifts growing up. I never learned how to select gifts. It doesn’t come naturally for me.” Congratulations, you have just made the first discovery in becoming a great lover. You and your spouse speak different love languages. Now that you have made that discovery, get on with the business of learning your second language. If your spouse’s primary love language is receiving gifts, you can become a proficient gift giver. In fact, it’s one of the easiest love languages to learn.

Where do you begin? Make a list of all the gifts your spouse has expressed excitement about receiving through the years. They may be gifts you have given or gifts given by other family members or friends. The list will give you an idea of the kind of gifts your spouse would enjoy receiving. If you have little or no knowledge about selecting the kinds of gifts on your list, recruit the help of family members who know your spouse. In the meantime, select gifts you feel comfortable purchasing, making, or finding, and give them to your spouse. Don’t wait for a special occasion. If receiving gifts is his/her primary love language, almost anything you give will be received as an expression of love. (If she has been critical of your gifts in the past and almost nothing you have given has been acceptable, then receiving gifts is almost certainly not her primary love language.)

If you are to become an effective gift giver, you may have to change your attitude about money. Each of us has an individualized perception of the purposes of money, and we have various emotions associated with spending it. Some of us have a spending orientation. We feel good about ourselves when we are spending money. Others have a saving and investing perspective. We feel good about ourselves when we are saving money and investing it wisely.

If you are a spender, you will have little difficulty purchasing gifts for your spouse; but if you are a saver, you will experience emotional resistance to the idea of spending money as an expression of love. You don’t purchase things for yourself. Why should you purchase things for your spouse? But that attitude fails to recognize that you are purchasing things for yourself. By saving and investing money, you are purchasing self-worth and emotional security. You are caring for your own emotional needs in the way you handle money. What you are not doing is meeting the emotional needs of your spouse.

Rachel was raised in a dysfunctional home. Instead of the hoped-for son, she was the second daughter. As such, she was often overlooked and neglected. Though she didn’t know it at the time, her love language was receiving gifts, which explains why it hurt so much when her parents gave her a combination birthday/Christmas gift (her birthday is December 28), and it ended up being the same gift her sister received for Christmas. When she graduated from high school, the only child of three to do so, her parents gave her a necklace. “They bragged that they bought the pearls at a garage sale for only one dollar and it turned out they were real,” said Rachel. “They weren’t. The cheap veneer wore off eventually to reveal the plastic beads beneath. Nothing was too cheap for me.”

When Rachel married her Air Force pilot, Trent, they read
The 5 Love Languages
in a base chapel Sunday school class, and it explained why gifts were so important to her. Trent, whose love language was words of affirmation, didn’t understand. “I felt that speaking a kind word was a lot easier than going out to buy a gift,” he said. So he didn’t speak Rachel’s language on a regular basis for years.

Finally, Rachel asked him, “What if I only said ‘thank you’ to you once every other month? Even after you’ve done a lot of work around the house, or ran an errand for me, I rarely said ‘thank you.’ How would that make you feel?” It seemed to really penetrate his fighter pilot brain as she continued, “Well, that’s how I feel when you don’t give me a simple card, or other small gift, except on holidays and my birthday. You only speak my love language about four times a year.”

A couple of days later, Trent went on a TDY to Red Flag at Nellis AFB in Las Vegas, and came back with a large pair of bright pink dice for hanging on a rearview car mirror. Across the front of the dice, it said, “I’m lucky to have you. I love you.”

It was a start. And though it didn’t come naturally for Trent, his simple efforts helped Rachel feel loved.

If you discover your spouse’s primary love language is receiving gifts, then perhaps you will understand that purchasing gifts for him or her is the best investment you can make. You are investing in your relationship and filling your spouse’s emotional love tank, and with a full love tank, he or she will likely reciprocate emotional love to you in a language you will understand. When both persons’ emotional needs are met, your marriage will take on a whole new dimension. Don’t worry about your savings. You will always be a saver, but to invest in loving your spouse is to invest in blue-chip stocks.