The 5 Love Languages Military Edition: The Secret to Love That Lasts (16 page)
Read The 5 Love Languages Military Edition: The Secret to Love That Lasts Online
Authors: Gary Chapman,Jocelyn Green
Tags: #Religion, #Christian Life, #Love & Marriage
If a piano player stops playing music for an extended period of time, chances are, when he finally does sit at the piano again, his music may be a bit rusty. His mind will tell his fingers what to do, but they’ve been out of practice and are bound to hit a few wrong notes. He may need to drill a passage a few times before it feels natural and sounds beautiful again.
In the same way, deployments interrupt a marriage’s natural rhythm. When you and your spouse are together again, you may find some skills need to be relearned.
For months, Meredith and Austin looked forward to his home coming from his first deployment. But the extended honeymoon feeling they had expected did not match reality. “Reintegration was tough,” said Austin. “I remember walking in the door and being overwhelmed by all the people who wanted my one-on-one attention; three little ones at my ankles, and my beautiful wife face-to-face. Being apart for so long, and not having so much attention directed at me, I struggled to give her the attention I wanted to give her.”
A given amount of time spent together after deployment may not be enough for the spouse who craves quality time, and a suffocating amount for someone else. Patience and grace are key ingredients for easing the transition. “We had to relearn how to speak our love languages in the flesh,” said Meredith. “The quality time and physical touch switches we had turned off were a bit harder to just turn back on. But after lots of tears and communication, we arrived at an even better place than before.”
If you’ve had to put your love language on hold for an extended time, you may feel anxious for your empty love tank to be filled, while at the same time, your spouse may also have a depleted love tank and their energy level may be low. The greater the need and expectation, the greater the potential for disappointments, hurts, and offense during reintegration. I encourage couples to give each other permission to ease into things and be as patient with each other as possible during this time. You may both hit a few wrong notes as you switch from playing a solo to playing a duet, but keep at it! Harmony takes practice.
Communicating love for each other during reintegration is absolutely critical. During times apart, both spouses change as individuals. Now it’s time to grow as a couple again.
People whose love languages are words of affirmation and receiving gifts tend to experience more conflict during reintegration, likely because these two languages were well-developed during separation through emails, letters, phone calls, and care packages or gifts. During reintegration, these expressions of love usually drop off—but they don’t have to. If you continue to send emails and write letters to each other, or share small gifts, if that’s your spouse’s love language, both of you will benefit. Those who have gone to support groups during deployment will find continued encouragement from the group valuable during reintegration, as well.
If your spouse’s love language is acts of service, use discernment during reintegration as to how to express this. Organizing the service member’s gear may not be welcome. Taking over the family schedule may cause resentment to the spouse at home if he or she feels it’s an indication of disapproval. I suggest you ask, “Would it be helpful to you if I … ?” Spend your energy in something that is meaningful to your spouse.
Janet, an active duty soldier herself, shared: “The hardest thing was my husband and I realizing that if I had to, I could ‘do it’ on my own. I can work, go to school, raise four children, and take care of a house without him. That’s not how we
want
to live, but realizing that someone you love doesn’t need you is a hard pill to swallow. We struggled adjusting because my husband felt he missed so much, he wanted to take over everything, which of course made me upset because he was uprooting the schedule that gave me and the children stability and a means of emotional survival. We had to sit down at the drawing board and come up with a new routine that was comfortable for all of us.”
When Ted was deployed to the Middle East, he found that, while driving, his mind drifted to missing his wife and children. “Then I thought, that’s going to distract me,” he recalled. “I might get ambushed. It might get me killed.” So he pushed the memories away and used emotional compartmentalization as a survival technique.
Nine months later, he expected a blissful reunion with his wife. “But when I looked at her, I just felt numb. I didn’t feel any love. I had stuffed those emotions so deep inside myself, I did not permit myself to bring them back up. It was an unconscious process.”
Three months later, Ted once again felt the love he had for his wife. For others, it may take longer for those feelings to return. The absence of romantic feelings does not mean your love has died or your marriage is doomed. Regardless of what one feels, speaking the right love language can and should still be done. (More on this in chapter 11.)
Emotional withdrawal is common for both spouses. The person who once loved quality conversation and focused attention may now have a difficult time sharing his or her heart. For the service member, part of this is an effort to protect his or her family from the experiences and memories. Bekah felt emotionally single while her husband was engulfed in his own battle with PTSD. “It’s simply self-protection,” she said. “Learning to live in a two-way marriage again has challenged me in so many ways, even now, seven years after he returned from Iraq. Still today I went back to what I learned about love languages when we ‘missed’ each other again during ‘date day’ (we no longer do date nights due to crowds). He still has a wounded heart that needs affirmation more than ever. We are growing, learning to communicate again, and, as always, it’s a process. We are imperfect in so many ways, but our heart is for the other to know they are loved.”
When Hunter’s post-traumatic stress was at its worst, physical touch became the most important thing to him. “It was his only connection to someone, and the only one he would connect with for physical touch was me,” said his wife, Kara. Hunter experienced other bodily injuries, as well, which forced him to scale back on the acts of service he could do for Kara. With her primary love language not being spoken, Kara grew resentful and burned out. She learned to receive love from Hunter in different ways, but also looked for resources for caregivers for much-needed support.
Gail’s husband, whose love language had been acts of service, needed something else upon redeployment. “After his deployment he had nightmares. We live on a large training base in Europe, so we hear a lot of loud ‘booms’ throughout the night and those really got to him for a while. I had to wake him up a lot. I could tell he was embarrassed about it, so I had to repeatedly tell him it didn’t make him weak. I had to tell him all the time how amazing he is for going through what he did. At that time, he needed words of affirmation from me more than anything.”
Rick saw three of his team killed on the same day. At the time of the event, Rick gutted through his pain and continued his job. However, two months later he started having flashbacks and nightmares. When he arrived home from deployment, his wife, Debbie, knew he was not functioning normally. She insisted he see a medical doctor. He was diagnosed with PTSD. Medication and counseling was the preferred treatment. Six months later, Rick was greatly improved.
He said, “These were the hardest months of my life. I’m sure I confused Debbie. My moods changed so quickly. One day I wanted her to hug me, but the next day I pushed her away. (My love language is physical touch.) I’m just glad she did not give up but kept speaking my love language. I love her more for putting up with my erratic behavior.”
When PTSD or traumatic brain injury is present, the love languages may shift or require adaptations, such as Bekah and her husband avoiding crowds when they spend quality time together. PTSD is a topic worthy of more space than we have here in this chapter. There are many resources for veterans and spouses dealing with combat trauma. I recommend my favorites at
5lovelanguages.com/militaryedition
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Primary Love Language
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iscovering the primary love language of your spouse is essential if you are to keep their emotional love tank full. But first, let’s make sure you know your own love language. Having heard the five emotional love languages,
Words of Affirmation
Quality Time
Receiving Gifts
Acts of Service
Physical Touch,
some individuals will know instantaneously their own primary love language and that of their spouse. For others, it will not be that easy. Some are like Marcus, whom I met at Ft. Bragg. After hearing the five emotional love languages, he said to me, “I don’t know. Two of those are just about equal for me.”
“Which two?” I inquired.
“‘Physical Touch’ and ‘Words of Affirmation,’” he responded.
“By ‘Physical Touch,’ what do you mean?”
“Well, mainly sex,” Marcus replied.
I probed a little further, asking, “Do you enjoy your wife running her hands through your hair, or giving you a back rub, or holding hands, or kissing and hugging you at times when you are not having sexual intercourse?”
“Those things are fine,” said Marcus. “I’m not going to turn them down, but the main thing is sexual intercourse. That’s when I know that she really loves me.”
Leaving the subject of physical touch for a moment, I turned to affirming words and asked, “When you say that ‘Words of Affirmation’ are also important, what kinds of statements do you find most helpful?”
“Almost anything if it’s positive,” Marcus replied. “When she tells me how good I look, how smart I am, what a hard worker I am, when she expresses appreciation for the things I do around the house, when she makes positive comments about my taking time with the children, when she tells me she loves me—all of those things really mean a lot to me.”
“Let me ask you this. If you were having quality sexual intercourse as often as you desire, but Alicia was giving you negative words, making critical remarks, sometimes putting you down in front of others, do you think you would feel loved by her?”
“I don’t think so,” he replied. “I would feel betrayed and deeply hurt. I think I would be depressed.”
“Marcus,” I said, “I think we have just discovered your primary love language is ‘Words of Affirmation.’ Sexual intercourse is extremely important to you and to your sense of intimacy with Alicia, but her words of affirmation are more important to you emotionally. If she were verbally critical of you all the time and put you down in front of other people, the time may come when you would no longer desire to have sexual intercourse with her because she would be a source of deep pain to you.”
Marcus had made the mistake common to many men: assuming “Physical Touch” is their primary love language because they desire sexual intercourse so intensely. For the male, sexual desire is physically based. That is, the desire for sexual intercourse is stimulated by the buildup of sperm cells and seminal fluid in the seminal vesicles. When the seminal vesicles are full, there is a physical push for release. Thus, the male’s desire for sexual intercourse has a physical root.
For the female, sexual desire is far more influenced by her emotions. If she feels loved and admired and appreciated by her husband, then she has a desire to be physically intimate with him. But without the emotional closeness, she may have little physical desire. Her biological sexual drive is closely tied to her emotional need for love.
Because the male is physically pushed to have sexual release on a somewhat regular basis, he may automatically assume that is his primary love language. But if he does not enjoy physical touch at other times and in nonsexual ways, it may not be his love language at all. Sexual desire is quite different from his emotional need to feel loved. That doesn’t mean sexual intercourse is unimportant to him—it’s extremely important—but sexual intercourse alone will not meet his need to feel loved. His wife must speak his primary emotional love language as well.
When, in fact, his wife speaks his primary love language and his emotional love tank is full, and he speaks her primary love language and her emotional tank is full, the sexual aspect of their relationship will take care of itself. Most sexual problems in marriage have little to do with physical technique but everything to do with meeting emotional needs.
After further conversation and reflection, Marcus said, “You know, I think you’re right. ‘Words of Affirmation’ is definitely my primary love language. When she has been cutting and critical of me verbally, I tend to withdraw from her sexually and fantasize about other women. But when she tells me how much she appreciates me and admires me, my natural sexual desires are turned toward her.” Marcus had made a significant discovery in our brief conversation.