Make sure the two holes of love are full
The word love is always the most important word in the language, and it is also the most confusing word. Both religious thinkers and secular thinkers have agreed that love has an important role in life, and it has been said that: “Love is the highest meaning of beauty.” It was also said: “Love makes the world develop.” Thousands of books, songs, magazines, as well as films have dealt with this word, and many philosophical systems have placed love in a distinguished position, and the messengers and prophets wanted love to be the distinguishing feature of their followers. . Psychologists have concluded that the human need to feel loved is a basic human emotional necessity. For the sake of love, we climb mountains, cross rivers, cross deserts, and endure many hardships; But without love, mountains become difficult to climb, seas are impossible to cross, deserts are unbearable, and difficulties become our problem in life. The ancients exalted the importance of love when they made it clear that anything humans achieve that does not have love as its primary motivation is worth nothing in life. In fact, they concluded that in the last scene of the human drama, only three characters will remain: “Faith, Hope, and Love, but the greatest thing in it is love.” If we agree that the word love has spread throughout human society, ancient and modern, we must also agree that it is one of the most confusing words. We use it in a thousand ways. We say: “I love sausage sandwiches,” and we also say: “I love my mother,” and we talk. About some types of sports with the word love, such as: I like swimming, skiing, or fishing. As well as things like food, car, and house; And also animals such as: dogs, cats, and even snails. We use the word love with nature, such as: trees, grass, flowers, and the atmosphere. We also use it with people such as: mother, father, son, daughter, husband, wife, and friends; Rather, we fall in love with love itself. If all that wasn't confusing enough, we use this word; To explain behavior, for example, we say: “I did that because I love it,” and this is an explanation given to all the actions that we do. Where a person gets involved in a forbidden relationship and calls it love, and in contrast the cleric calls it a sin, and the wife of a drink addict collects broken pieces of glass after he finishes his drink, and calls it love, while psychologists call it exaggerated affection, and the father and mother interfere in all of their child’s desires, and they call it love. This is love, and the family doctor calls it irresponsible parenting. So what behavior can be called love? The purpose of this book is not to remove the ambiguity surrounding the word love, but rather its purpose is to focus on the type of love required for our psychological health. Psychologists specializing in the field of children confirm that every child has basic emotional needs that must be met if we want him to be emotionally stable. The most important of these needs is love and affection. A sense of belonging and desire is what a child needs. By giving him the love he needs, he will grow to be a responsible adult, but without love, he will be a backward person in both ways: emotionally and socially. I've loved this metaphor ever since I first heard it from Dr. Ross Campbell, a psychiatrist who specializes in treating children and adolescents. She says, "Within every child is an 'emotion reservoir' waiting to be filled with love. When a child feels loved, he or she will develop naturally." But when the tank of love is empty, the child will behave in an inappropriate way, and most of the bad behavior that children produce is due to the urgent desire to fill this tank.” As I listened to Dr. Ross, I thought about the thousands of parents who were reviewing their children's misbehavior in my office. I saw absolutely no empty reservoirs of love within these children, but I certainly saw the results of it. Their bad behavior was a failed search for the love they did not feel. They were looking for love in all the wrong places, in all the wrong ways. I remember Ashley, who was undergoing treatment for a sexually transmitted disease, when she was still thirteen years old. Her parents were shocked and quarreled with her. They were angry with the school and those in it, and they held her responsible. Because she was the one who taught their daughter about sex and they were wondering: “Why would you do something like this?” During my conversation with “Ashley,” she told me that her parents divorced when she was six years old and said: “I thought that my father left us because he did not love me, and when my mother married when I was ten years old, I felt that she had found someone who loved her, and at that time I did not find anyone.” He loves me, so I wanted so badly to feel loved. Then I met this boy at school. He was older than me, but I liked him. I couldn’t believe it. He was nice to me, and for a while I felt like he loved me. I didn’t want to have a relationship. “I was intimate with him, but I wanted to feel that someone loved me.” Ashley's "love tank" remained empty for many years. Her mother and stepfather provided her with all her physical needs, but they did not realize that there was a bitter emotional conflict burning inside her. They absolutely loved Ashley, and they believed that she was feeling this way. Love, but they didn't discover that they weren't speaking Ashley's basic language of love until it was too late. Despite this, the need to feel loved is not a phenomenon specific to children. It remains with us until adulthood and during marriage as well. The experience of “falling in love” fulfills this need temporarily, but it is a “quick fix,” as we will know later, and the duration What he is expected to live is limited, and after we wake up from the imaginary world of the experience of “falling in love,” the emotional need for love reappears again, as it is considered an essential thing in our lives. It is a priority for our emotional desires. We need love before we pass. The experience of "falling in love", and we will continue to need it as long as we are alive. A person's need to feel loved by his partner in life comes at the forefront of marital desires. Someone said to me a short time ago: "What is the use of a house, or a car, or resort, or anything else; If one of us's wife doesn't love him? "Do you understand what he is really getting at? He means to say: 'My desire to feel love from my wife exceeds anything else.' Material things cannot replace human and emotional love. One wife said to me: 'He ignores me all the time.' Today, then he comes after this and wants to have an intimate relationship with me. I hate that.” She does not hate an intimate relationship, but she needs love greatly. Something inside us longs to be loved. Isolation is something destructive to the human soul. Therefore, solitary confinement is considered the harshest. Types of punishment, where the desire for intimacy and the feeling of love for others lies within the heart of human existence. The marriage system was established to meet the need for intimacy and love. This is why we find that the ancients say that husband and wife become “one body” after marriage, and this does not mean that one of them will lose his identity. But it means that each of them will live the life of the other in a deep and intimate way, and they urged both spouses to love each other. Writers, from Plato to Beck, have emphasized the importance of love in married life. Although love is important, it is confusing; it has I listened to many husbands and wives who shared their inner pain with me; Some of them came because they could no longer bear the internal pain, others came because they realized that their behaviors or the bad behaviors of their life partner were destroying their marriage, and some came as well; To tell me that he simply no longer wanted to be married. Their dreams of “a happy married life that would last forever” collided with the bitter reality. And over and over again I heard someone saying: “The love between us has ended, the relationship that bound us has died. We always felt that we were both close to each other.” “But we no longer enjoy being together, and we no longer satisfy each other’s desires.” These stories prove that adults have “reservoirs of love,” just like children. Could it be that within these wounded couples there are “reservoirs of emotional love” that are invisible and completely empty? It could be bad behaviours, withdrawal, harsh words and criticism; Because this tank is empty? If we find a way to fill it, can the marriage continue again? With such a full tank, can the couple create an emotional environment that enables them to discuss their differences and resolve their conflicts? Could this reservoir be the secret to the success of married life? All of these questions took me on a far journey, during which I discovered the simple yet powerful ideas contained in this book. This journey not only took me thirty years of working as a marital relations counselor, but it also required me to navigate the hearts and minds of hundreds of husbands and wives around the world. All over the United States, many couples from Seattle to Miami have asked me to enter their private marital rooms, to be completely honest. The stories contained in this book are taken from real life, and we have only changed the names and places to protect the personal lives of these people who spoke very frankly. We talked, and I am completely convinced that keeping the love tank full is as important for the marital relationship as it is for the fuel to be at the right level for the car. Entering into marriage while the love tank is empty could be more costly to the person than trying to start his car without fuel, and what you are offering. Reading it now can save hundreds of marriages, and it can also improve the emotional environment for a good married life. Whatever the quality of your married life is now, it can always be better. Warning: Understanding the five languages of love, and learning how to speak the basic language of love to your life partner, can greatly affect the behavior of your husband or wife. People act differently when their love tank is full. Before we present the five languages of love, we must discuss another important and puzzling problem: the feeling of overwhelming happiness when going through the experience of “falling in love.”
From the book The Five Love Languages