Love makes a difference

Love is not our only emotional need; Psychologists have noted that among our basic needs are our need to; Security, self-confidence, and a sense of importance; But love connects all these things. When I feel loved by my life partner, I can feel comfortable; Because I know that no harm will come to me from the person I love, and I feel safe in his presence. I may face some dangers in my profession, or have enemies in any other part of my life, but I feel safe with my partner in life. My sense of self-confidence increases when I realize the truth. That my partner in life loves me, and above all, if he loves me then I must be worthy of that love. My parents may have given me negative or mixed messages about my worth, but my partner in life knows me as an adult and loves me, and his love for me builds my self-esteem and the need to feel important. It is the emotional force that drives much of our behavior, and the need for success is what gives life; We want our lives to have meaning, and each of us has his own concept of how he feels important, and works hard to achieve his goals, and our feeling that we are loved by our partner in life enhances our feeling of importance, and our logic in this is: If there is someone who loves me, then he must I am important. I am important; Because I occupy the top of the order of creatures, and I can think about abstract things, and I communicate my thoughts through words, and I make decisions, and through printed or recorded words, I can benefit from the ideas of those who came before me, and I can also benefit from the experiences of others, even though they lived in ancient times. different cultures, and the experience of the death of a family member or friend; So I know that there is an existence after this material world, and I discover that in all cultures, people believe in the existence of a spiritual world, and my heart feels that this is true, even though my mind, which has been trained in scientific observation, asks precise questions. I am important, and that life has value. There is a higher goal that I want to believe in, but I may not feel this importance until someone expresses it to me, and when my partner in life spends his time, energy, and effort for me with all love, I am filled with confidence that I am important, and without love, I may spend my whole life searching for... Importance, sense of self, and security. When I experience love, it impacts all of those needs positively. I have the freedom now to develop my strength, feel more secure in my sense of self-worth, and I can now show my strength instead of being preoccupied with my own needs. True love is always a person. With regard to married life, if we do not actually feel that we are loved, our differences will grow, and we reach the point where we see the other party as a source of threat to our happiness, so we fight for our self-worth and importance, and thus married life becomes a battlefield instead of a refuge of safety. It is not love. The solution to everything, but it creates an atmosphere of safety in which we can search for solutions to those things that trouble us, and in the safety of love, the spouses can discuss differences without condemning each other, and thus the conflicts end, and the two people who have differences can learn to live together in harmony. And we learn how each of us achieves the best thing for the other, and these are the benefits and gifts of love. The decision to love your partner in life requires an enormous will from you, but by learning his love language, it makes this will a reality, and love actually leads to a feeling “The world revolves around you,” or at least it did for Gene and Norm. They drove three hours to my office, and it was clear that Norm didn't want to come here, but Gene... She forced him by threatening to leave him (I don't recommend this method, but people don't know my recommendations until they come to see me). They had been married for thirty-five years, and they had never gone to a marriage counselor before. It was "Jane" who started the conversation, when She said: “I want you to know two things first, Dr. Chapman: First of all, we are not in any financial trouble; I was reading in a magazine that money is the biggest problem in marriage, and this is not true for us. We have worked together throughout our years, paid for the house and the car, and we do not have any financial problems. The second thing I want to tell you is that we do not argue. I heard my friends talking about their arguments with their husbands all the time, but we never argued. I cannot remember the last time. We argued about it, it is time, we agree that arguing is useless; Therefore, we do not argue.” As a consultant, I was impressed by Jane’s clarification of the matter, and I knew that she wanted to get directly to the heart of the matter. It was clear that she had thought carefully about her explanation of the matter, and she wanted to make sure that we would not fall into the problem of not having a problem, and to take advantage of it. She spoke intelligently and went on to say: “The problem is that I do not feel any love from Norm.” Life has become a routine for us. We wake up in the morning and go to work. During the afternoon, he does some of his own things, and I do some of my things. We usually have dinner together, but we don’t talk. He watches TV while we eat dinner, and after eating... Dinner, he spends some time doing some trivial things on the ground floor, then he sleeps in front of the TV, until I tell him that it is time to sleep. This is the daily program that we do five days a week, and on Saturday, he plays golf in the morning, He works in the garden in the afternoon, and we go out to dinner with another couple on Saturday night, and he talks to them, but as soon as we get in the car, it's over, and as soon as we get home, he sleeps in front of the TV until we go to bed, and on Sunday morning, we go to the house of worship." She confirmed this by saying: “We always go to the house of worship on Sunday morning, and after that, we go out to lunch with some friends, and when we get home, he sleeps in front of the TV on Sunday, and we often return to the house of worship on Sunday night, and then we return home, We eat popcorn, and then we go to bed. This is our weekly schedule. This is all about him. We are like two roommates living in the same house. All afternoon nothing happens between us at all, and I do not feel any love from him; There is no warmth and there are no feelings, there is only emptiness and death, and I don't think I can go on like this any longer." In time, "Jane" began to cry, so I handed her a tissue and looked at "Norm." His first comment was: " I don't understand her." And after a short period of silence, he went on to say, "I've done everything I know how to show my love for her, especially over the last two or three years when she's been complaining a lot about it, and nothing seems to work, and despite everything I've been doing... I do. She kept complaining that she felt unloved, and I didn't know what to do anymore. I could tell that Norm was frustrated and angry, so I asked him, "What were you doing to show your love for Jane?" He said: “Well, one thing is that I used to get home from work earlier than her; So I'm the one who prepares dinner every night, and in fact, if you're being honest, dinner is often ready when you get home four nights a week, and the other night, we go out to dinner, and after dinner, I wash the dishes three nights a week, and the other night it's... I have a meeting, but I wash the dishes three nights a week after dinner, and do all the sweeping; Because she suffers from back pain, and I do all the garden work; Because she hates dust, and I organize the clothes when they come out of the dryer.” He started telling me other things he was doing for Jane, and when he finished, I wondered: “What is this woman doing? She has almost nothing left.” So he continued. "Norm," he said, "I do all these things; To show her that I love her, and yet she sits there and tells you what she has been telling me for the past two or three years; She feels that I do not love her, and I do not know what else to do for her. When she turned again to Jane, she said: “All these things are nice, Dr. Chapman, but I want him to sit on the sofa and talk to me.” We don't talk at all. We haven't talked for thirty years. He's always washing the dishes, sweeping the house, mowing the grass, or doing anything else. I want him to sit on the couch with me and give me some of his time, look at me, and talk to me about us and our lives. Jane was crying again, and it was very clear to me that her love language was “devoting time,” and that she was in desperate need of attention; She wanted to be treated as a person and not as a thing, and Norm's preoccupation did not meet her emotional needs. While the conversation was continuing between me and Norm, I discovered that he did not feel loved either, but he was not talking about this matter, and he explained this by saying: “If you've been married for five years, your bills are paid, and you and your spouse don't argue, what more do you want?” This was his opinion, but when I said to him: “What does the ideal wife mean to you? If you could have an ideal wife, what are her characteristics?” At first he looked directly into my eyes, then said: “Do you really want to know?” I said to him: “Yes.” He sat on the couch and crossed his arms over his chest, and a big smile spread across his face. He said: “I’ve been dreaming about this. The ideal wife for me is the wife who comes home in the afternoon and prepares dinner, while I work at work.” She goes to the garden, so she calls me to have dinner, and after dinner, she washes the dishes, and I may help her with this, but she is responsible for this, and she sews the buttons that fall off my shirt.” Jane could not help herself any longer, so she turned to him and said: “I don’t “I believe you. You told me that you love to cook.” Norm replied, “I don’t mind cooking, but the man here is asking me about the ideal wife.” I learned that Norm’s basic language of love is undoubtedly “service work.” Why? Do you think Norm did all these things for Jane? Because this is his love language, and he believes this is the way to show love to others; By doing some things for them, but the problem was that this was not the primary love language for “Jane.” These things did not mean to her emotionally what they meant to him if she did them for him. And here the truth was revealed to “Norm.” The first thing he said was: “Why didn’t anyone tell me this in thirty years? I could have sat with her on the couch and talked to her for fifteen minutes every night instead of doing all these things.” He turned to Jane and said to her: “For once.” For the first time in my life, I finally understood what you meant when you said, “We don’t talk.” I couldn’t begin to understand it. I thought we were always talking. I used to ask you, “Did you sleep well?” I thought we were talking, but I understand now; you wanted us to sit on the couch for fifteen minutes every night, looking at each other and talking, and now I understand what you meant, and I understand why it is so important to you; this is your basic love language, and I will start from tonight, and I will sit with you for five days. “Ten minutes on the couch for the rest of my years, and you can trust me.” Jane turned to Norm and said, “That would be very nice, and I wouldn’t mind making you dinner, but it should be a little later than usual; Because I come back from work later than you, but I don't mind making dinner, and I'd love to sew on your shirt buttons. You wouldn't leave them on long enough for me to sew them on, and I'll wash dishes for the rest of my life if that makes you feel like it. And Gene and Norm came back. They returned home, and each of them began to love each other with the correct language of love, and within less than two months, they were living their second honeymoon, and they called me by phone from the Bahamas to tell me that their married life had changed radically. Can passionate love be revived? Married life again? Guess what, the key to this is learning your partner's primary love language and choosing to speak it. From the book The Five Love Languages