Love is a choice

Love is a choice How can each of us speak the other's love language when he feels hurt, angry, or resentful as a result of past failures? The answer to this question lies in the essential nature of human beings; We are creatures with the ability to choose, and this means that we have the ability to make mistakes in choosing, and we have all done that; We have said critical words and done hurtful things, and we are not proud of those choices, even though they were justified at the time they were made. Making certain choices in the past does not mean that we should make them in the future. Instead, we can say: “I am sorry. I know I hurt you.” But I would like to make it different in the future, to love you in your language, and to meet your needs.” I know many marriages that were saved after being on the verge of divorce, when the spouses chose love. Love does not erase the past, but it makes the future different; When we choose effective expressions to express love in the primary language of love for our partner in life, we create an emotional atmosphere in which we can deal with the conflicts and failures of the past. At my request, his wife “Becky” had been sitting in the same chair for a week, and she was crying hard, and between her excitement and tears, she tried to tell me that “Brent” had told her: “He no longer loved her and that he would leave her,” and she was completely devastated. And after that, When she regained her composure, she said: “We have been working together for the past two or three years, and I know that we were not spending as much time together as we used to do in the past, but I thought we had a common goal. I cannot believe what he is saying.” He was always a caring and caring person, and he was a wonderful father to our children, so how could he do this to us?" I was listening while she told me about her marriage, which lasted twelve years, and it was a story that I had always heard before that. They lived a wonderful period during their engagement, and they got married at the height of the “experience of falling in love.” They made the same typical changes in the first days of their married life, and sought The American Dream, and in time, came down from the emotional high that accompanies the "experience of falling in love," but they had not sufficiently learned how to speak each other's love language. They lived with half-full love clouds for the next several years, receiving expressions of love Enough to make her think that everything was going the right way, while his own love tank was empty. So I told Becky that I would see if Brent would like to talk to me, and I said to Brent in a phone call: “You know... “Becky came to my office, and she told me her struggles with what is happening in your marital life, and I want to help her, but until I can do this, I want to know what she is thinking.” Brent agreed without hesitation, and now he is sitting in my office, His outward appearance was the complete opposite of Becky's; She was crying uncontrollably, while he was very calm. Despite this, I got the impression that his crying had occurred weeks or perhaps months ago, and it was clear crying, and the story he told Brent confirmed this guess. He said: “It's not just that I no longer love her now, but I stopped loving her a long time ago, and I didn't want to hurt her, but we were not close to each other; our relationship had become meaningless, and I no longer enjoyed being with her anymore, and I don't know.” "What happened? I wish it were different, but I no longer have any feelings for her." Brent was thinking and feeling what hundreds of thousands of couples think and feel throughout their years of life. It is the thought of "I don't love him anymore" that is ingrained in the mind. , which gives men the emotional freedom to seek love with someone else, and vice versa for women who use the same justification. I sympathized with Brent; Because I went through this situation, as thousands of husbands and wives went through. A state of emotional emptiness, in which a person wants to do the right thing and not hurt anyone, but is driven by his emotional needs to search for love outside the framework of married life. Fortunately, in the first years of my married life, I discovered the difference between “the experience of falling in love” The “emotional need” to feel loved; Most people in our society do not yet know this difference, and most romantic films, series, and magazines combined these two types of love, and thus our confusion increased, but in fact, there is a difference between them to some extent. The “experience of falling in love,” which we discussed in the third chapter in Instinct level; A person does not intentionally fall into it, but it simply occurs in the natural context of a man’s relationship with a woman, and it can be developed or suppressed, but it does not arise as a result of a conscious choice, and does not extend for a long period (often two years or less), and for humans it plays the same role that the mating call plays for geese. Al-Kindi. The “experience of falling in love” temporarily fulfills a person’s need for love, and gives us the feeling that there is someone who cares about us, respects us, and appreciates us. Our feelings soar when we think that someone considers us first in his life, and that he is ready to devote He devotes his time and effort specifically for our relationship, and for a short period, no matter how long it lasts, our need for love is met, and the love tank is filled, and then we can conquer the world, and nothing is impossible, and for many people this is the first time they live with a tank full of love, This causes a feeling of overwhelming happiness. At some point, we descend from this high flight into the world of reality. If our life partner learns our basic love language and speaks it, our need for love will remain in a state of satisfaction. On the contrary, if our life partner does not speak our special love language. With us, our love tank will gradually dry up, and we will no longer feel love. Satisfying that need for a life partner is a choice for us. If I learn the emotional love language of my life partner and speak it repeatedly, he will continue to feel loved, and when he wakes up from the imaginary state in which he lives. In the "experience of falling in love" it is difficult to lose this feeling; Because his love tank will remain full, and despite that, if I do not learn my partner’s basic love language or choose to speak it, when he wakes up from this wonderful emotional state, he will have a natural longing for this unsatisfied emotional need, and after a few years of living with a tank Empty love. Most likely, he will “fall in love” with someone else, and time goes on. Meeting my wife’s love desires is a choice I make every day. If I learn her basic language of love, and choose to speak it, this will satisfy her deep need for love, and make her feel safe in love. My love, if she also does the same for me, this will satisfy my emotional needs, and we will both live with a full flow of love, and in the case of emotional satisfaction, we will spend our creative energy on useful projects outside the scope of married life, while continuing to keep our married life in a state of excitement. And it developed. As all these thoughts ran through my mind, I looked again at Brent's expressionless face, and wondered if I could help him. Knowing in my gut that he was probably connected to another woman already in the "falling in love experience," I wondered if I could help him. Is he at the beginning of the experiment or has he reached the stage of imaginative flight, and the few men who suffer from an emptiness in their love tank abandon their married life until they find the possibility of meeting that need elsewhere? Brent was honest and made it clear that he is in a love relationship with a woman. He had another relationship several months ago, and he was hoping that these feelings would end and that he could solve his problems with his wife, but his problems at home had gotten worse, and his love for the other woman had increased, and he could not imagine life without his new lover. I sympathized with “Brent” in his tragedy, He did not want to hurt his wife or children, but at the same time, he felt that he deserved to live a happy life. I told him that the statistics regarding marriage for the second time (indicate that 60% of them end in divorce), and he was surprised to hear that, but he was I was sure that he would break the rule, and I also told him about the research that had been conducted on the impact of divorce on children, but he was convinced that he would remain a wonderful father to his children, and that they would be able to overcome the shock of divorce. I spoke with Brent about the issues that I raise in this book, and I explained to him the difference between The experience of falling in love, and the deep emotional need to feel loved, and I explained to him the five languages of love, and I began to motivate him to give his married life another chance, and at the same time I knew that my rational and logical method of talking about married life and comparing it to this imaginary feeling that he feels in that experience It was like standing with a (small) air pressure rifle in the face of an automatic weapon. He expressed his gratitude for my concern, and asked me to do what I could to help Becky. He assured me that he did not see any hope for his married life. A month later, I received a phone call. From "Brent", he explained to me that he wanted to talk to me again, and when he entered my office this time, he seemed clearly upset, and he was not the calm and stoic person that I had seen for the first time, and the woman he loved had begun to wake up from the imaginary emotional stage, She began to notice things that she did not like about Brent's personality, and she began to withdraw from their relationship. He was devastated, and tears appeared in his eyes when he told me how much she meant to him, and how he could not bear the experience of her turning away from him. I listened to him sympathetically for an hour before he asked. I offered advice, and I told him that I cared about his pain. I also explained to him that what he was going through was normal emotional grief as a result of his loss, and that this grief would not end between the blink of an eye and its attention. I also explained to him that it was inevitable that he would go through this experience, and I reminded him that it was in the nature of “the experience of falling.” In love, “it is temporary, and we must descend from this high emotional flight to the world of Nicaea, sooner or later. Some people feel the end of love before marriage, and others feel this after marriage, and he agreed with me in my opinion that it is better for it to happen now rather than later.” And after a while, I suggested to him that perhaps this crisis would be a good opportunity for him and his wife to go to a marriage counselor, and I reminded him of the truth that long-lasting passionate love is a choice, and that love can be reborn in his married life if he and his wife learn to They loved each other with the right love language, and agreed to go to a marriage counselor. Nine months later, they left my office and their marriage had revived. When I saw Brent three years later, he told me that he was living a wonderful married life, and he introduced me to He thanked me for his help during a difficult time in his life, and told me that his grief over the loss of the other woman he loved had ended more than two years ago. He smiled and told me: “My love tank has never been so full, and Becky is the happiest woman I could be.” To meet her one day.” Fortunately, Brent was the one who was credited with what I call the imbalance of “the experience of falling in love.” In other words, no two people fall in love in one day, and neither does this feeling end in one day. It takes you to be a sociologist to discover that fact; You can discover it simply by listening to folk songs and American western songs. The woman whom Brent loved might happen to feel that the love in their relationship was ending at the right time. During the nine months that Brent and Becky were attending counseling, we discussed There are many conflicts that they had not been able to resolve before, but the key to reviving their marital life again was through each party discovering the other party’s basic love language and choosing to speak it on a regular basis. Let me now return to the question I asked in Chapter Nine, which is, “What if Is your partner's love language something you don't naturally do? I always ask this question in my seminars on married life, and my answer is: “What?” My wife’s love language is “service work,” and one of the things I do regularly for her is to sweep the house. Do you think that sweeping the house is a natural thing? As for me? My mother used to make me sweep the house as well. During my middle and high school years, I was not allowed to go to play ball on Sundays until I had finished sweeping the entire house. On those days, I used to say to her: “When I leave this house, one of the things... What I will not do is sweep the house, and I will get married until my wife does this. But I sweep our house now, and I do this regularly, and there is one reason why I sweep the house, which is love. You cannot pay me to sweep the house, but I do this for love. When Doing something that is not your nature to do is a strong expression of love, and my wife knows that when I sweep the house, it means nothing but 100% pure and pure love, and I receive thanks for this thing! Do you have two hands? Can you put them next to each other? Now imagine that your partner in life is in your arms and you are holding him to you. I bet that if you hugged your partner in life three thousand times, he would start to feel comfortable, but in the end comfort is not the issue, but we are talking about love, and love is something you do for someone. Another, not something you do for yourself, and most of us do many things daily that are not in our nature, and for some of us, it is getting out of bed in the morning; We overcome our feelings when we get out of bed. Why? Because we believe that there is something valuable that we should do that day, and usually, before the day ends, we feel that it was good to get out of bed. Our actions precede our emotions. This applies to love. Also, we discover the basic love language of our life partner, and we choose to speak it regardless of whether it is in our nature or not. We do not demand warm and exciting feelings, but simply choose to do this thing for his comfort. We desire to meet the emotional needs of our life partner. We communicate in order to speak his love language, and in this way his love tank is filled, and he is likely to respond in kind, speaking our love language. When he does this, our feelings return again, and the love tank begins to fill. Love is a choice, and either party can make it. He begins this process today. From the book The Five Love Languages