Marriage and Intimacy Tips for Christian Couples: Secrets of Happily Ever After
Have you ever wondered what makes the difference between those couples who absolutely LOVE to be together and the ones who merely tolorate each other in their old age? I always want to run up to the cute old couples who still hold hands while walking down the street and ask them all their secrets to relationship success. This podcast gives me the opportunity to do just that!
I'm Monica Tanner, wife to a super hunky man, mom to 4 kids, weekly podcaster and relationship and intimacy expert/enthusiast. I help couples ditch the resentment and roommate syndrome and increase communication, connection and commitment, so they can write and live out their happily ever after love story. If that sounds like something you want, this podcast is absolutely for YOU!
Each week, I'm teasing out the principles that keep couples hopelessly devoted and intoxicatingly in love with each other for a lifetime and beyond. I'm searching high and low for the secrets of happily ever after and sharing those secrets with you right here. Sound marriage advice for couples who want to live happily ever after and achieve a truly intimate friendship, because an awesome marriage makes life so much sweeter. Let's get to it!
Marriage and Intimacy Tips for Christian Couples: Secrets of Happily Ever After
Are The 5 Love Languages Stunting Your Intimacy and Connection?
Can understanding love languages actually harm your relationship? Nate shares a remarkable personal experiment with his wife that uncovers some surprising insights into how we express and perceive love. While the idea of identifying your partner's love language is popular, we discuss the potential pitfalls of using it as a benchmark or a tool for assigning blame. When expectations aren't met, relationships can suffer from resentment and even infidelity.
The 5 Love Language framework, while initially helpful, should not become a rigid scorecard for evaluating success. We caution against forming covert contracts based on these principles, which can lead to unfulfilled expectations and relationship breakdowns. Instead, we encourage embracing love languages as a starting block for personal growth and genuine connection.
Our discussion challenges the popular notion of the Five Love Languages, exploring how they can inadvertently harm relationships instead of fostering genuine connection. We talk about the dangers of covert contracts and high expectations, urging listeners to adopt a more empathetic understanding of their partner's needs.
• Examining the widespread influence of the Five Love Languages
• Personal experiences illustrating the concept's potential pitfalls
• The emergence of covert contracts in relationships
• The detrimental effects of scorekeeping in love language expressions
• Advocating empathy and deeper understanding through relational complexity
• Encouraging listeners to thoughtfully use love languages for growth
• Promoting love as a dynamic exchange rather than fixed expectations
Hello and welcome to the Secrets of Happily Ever After podcast. I'm your host, monica Tanner, my co-host, nate Bagley, and we loved this last week just letting Nate take away the topic and I just kind of spun off of whatever he started. So I barely know what he's talking about on this one, so I'm going to let him introduce what we're talking about today.
Speaker 2:Awesome. I like throwing the curveballs, I like coming up with an idea just to see what pops up for you. I have a theory. I'm pretty confident that the most popular relationship book ever written and some people will be like the Bible the Bible non-religious text. Do you know what I mean? It's a book specifically written for marriage. I think that it does more harm than good and the book is the five love languages and there are going to be people who hear me say this. That will be like they're going to.
Speaker 1:If you can't handle it, shut it off.
Speaker 2:But if you're curious cause I'm curious- I'm not going to knock, I don't think. My hope is that this is curveball enough that it helps people understand how the five love languages might be hurting their relationship and what they can actually do about it. Because the idea itself. So let's start at the top.
Speaker 1:I love this idea because we talk about the five languages. Five love languages all the time and I don't necessarily love them. But, I do refer to them quite often.
Speaker 2:I love the idea of understanding that different people give and receive love differently. Yes, I love the concept that I actually did an experiment early on in my marriage where I was like, okay, for one week I'm going to get my wife flowers, so I'm going to give her a gift. I'm going to clean the house every day and take care of her least favorite chores, which was dishes. She hates doing dishes, so I just did the dishes without her asking every single day and just made sure that the kitchen was always clean. And then I wrote her little love notes for words of affirmation, just to make her feel good. And then every day when I got home from work, I would like pin her up against the wall and give her a passionate kiss, and that was like my physical touch thing and I wanted to see at the end of the week what she responded best to. So at the end of the week it was Sunday, we were talking and I was like, hey, did you notice anything different this week? And she goes oh my gosh, that kiss like every day. I don't know where that came from, but you come home from work and pin me up against the wall and give me this really passionate kiss oh my gosh, I love that so much, thank you. And I was like, yeah, no problem. And she's like, and I also noticed you've like really been helping around the house a lot more too, like it's been so nice to just not have to worry about the dishes. That's been great. I'm like, yeah, no problem.
Speaker 2:And then I said, did you, did you notice the flowers? And she goes the what? And I'm like the flowers on the kitchen table, she goes, oh my gosh, how long have those been there? And I'm like two or three days. And she's like are you serious? I completely missed them. And I realized in that moment that my wife really craved and loved and appreciated physical touch and she also really appreciated getting help, especially with acts of service, things that she hated doing, but gifts not a big thing for her. And it was cool. I put the five love language to the test to see if my wife would respond differently to different things and she absolutely did. So that concept I love.
Speaker 1:So you're using five love languages right now.
Speaker 2:I love. But here's the thing I think the way that most people implement the five love languages in their marriage actually does more harm than good. The idea and the principles themselves are great, but I think what happens is you read the book and then you go. You identify your love languages. You go oh my gosh, my love language is words of affirmation and acts of service. That's all I need. I just need my partner to appreciate me more and help me out more, and then I'll be happy. And then I'll be happy, and then we, and then, like, once we learn this concept and learn this thing about ourselves, learn what really sets us off in a good way, not sets us off in a bad way, but learn what really like, gets us, gets us going and makes us feel loved, then we weaponize it. Then, every time something goes wrong in the relationship or your partner lets you down, you use your own love language as a cudgel to beat your partner over the head with. Like you just never perform. My love language is acts of service and you're not serving enough. My love language is words of appreciation and you never tell me anything Like. You never tell me how much you love me or how much good I'm doing in the relationship. And the love language has become an expectation, it's a, it's a, it's a covert contract that if, if, now that my partner knows these things about me, if they truly love me, they'll do these things, and if they're not doing those things it's because they don't love me, they don't care.
Speaker 2:And I think that that those ideas, when the five love languages are implemented in that way or with that attitude, can really be damaging. And I see it happen a lot. I see the five love languages become the source of a lot of resentment in marriage. I see it become the source of a lot of jealousy. I've seen it become the source of infidelity, like, oh, I met this coworker, this other somebody from my past has rekindled this relationship and started talking to me and all they do is tell me how incredible I am and how amazing I am.
Speaker 2:And I never get that from my partner and it just feels so good to feel appreciated the way I want to be appreciated. Maybe I chose the wrong person. Then these doubts start to creep in. I'm feeling all these positive emotions from this other person. So the five love languages if you believe that the only way you can feel love or the only way your partner can correctly express love is if they do it in accordance to what matters most to you. I think that can be a really dangerous belief to adopt. What do you think? What do you think about this premise?
Speaker 1:I'm kind of working it around in my mind. So you're saying that it's fair to say that Gary Chapman nailed like five different ways in which people express love and he probably got pretty close to the five ways.
Speaker 2:Yeah, developing relational to realizing that the way you experience love and or just the world in general is not the same the way that your, that your partner does. And, yeah, I think the five love languages that he came up with are like a really great entry point into considering how other people might feel expression of love and connection.
Speaker 1:Okay. So I just had like a light bulb, like okay, because, yeah, I think it's interesting, because I think the five love languages is kind of like like a personality test, like it's true that there are different people who experience and give love in different ways, which are what the five love languages are, but it's just information about your partner. But I think what happens is what you're. I think what you're kind of trying to say is like if we put too much stock in it, then it's really, it can be really crippling Because like, for example, like a disc assessment or like a Myers-Briggs like a.
Speaker 1:Myers-Briggs Right, and you're like well, I can't do that because I'm a blue, or you know like.
Speaker 2:I'm a Pisces, whatever. Whatever, however, you might define yourself.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like you know, I can't be in a relationship with a gift giver.
Speaker 2:Like I'm a physical touch person right.
Speaker 1:or or you know, like you, you can't expect me to do that. That's not my love language. I don't know what to do there, right? Or something like that. Or you, you can't expect me to function without this thing because that's my love language, right? So it's just like yeah, I think you can put a lot of just unfair limitations on that, like you could. Yeah, you can use the information for good, like, oh, I know my my partner is a words of affirmation, so I can give compliments freely. That is something I can do to really like support my partner, right? But at the same time, you can also pigeonhole, like that's the only way to show love to them. Or, you know, if I want to hurt them, I'm definitely not going to do that thing?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it can be a punishing thing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, withholding, ooh.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I see a lot of people who will um, this is a frequent occurrence where they'll learn.
Speaker 2:They learn each other's love language and one partner goes out and goes okay, you're a physical affection person, I'm just going to give you lots of affection, lots of affection, and they just they go out of their way to do that and that's really awesome of them.
Speaker 2:But they expect their partner to reciprocate with the same level of energy and enthusiasm for their love language, which might be acts of service. And it's like well, I've, you know, I keep giving you affection and I initiated sex a couple of times and I keep kissing, I kiss you and I've been holding your hand and I've given you back scratches and I snuggle with you every night and you're still not picking up your laundry. And it becomes kind of a covert contract of like, well, I'm doing this, why aren't you doing this? Am I the only one who cares about the relationship? Because there's this expectation that, now that you have the information, now that you know how I feel loved, now that you know what my love language is, you are going to dedicate yourself to speaking that language and that's the only language that you will use to speak to me, and if you don't, I'm going to interpret that as you do not care.
Speaker 1:Yeah. You do not love me there's also like setting the kind of the limitations on it that, like my primary love language is words of affirmation, but that's not to say that and probably my lowest is gifts. Like I am terrible. I'm a terrible gift giver and I don't super recognize like really great gifts, unless it's what.
Speaker 2:A vacation, but that's meaningful.
Speaker 1:I do love vacations, but that's more quality time and I, a quality time is up there for me. But yeah, like that doesn't mean that if my husband brought home flowers I wouldn't be like super stoked, like, oh my gosh, like thank you for thinking of me. That's amazing, like I I can get all of the validation of words of affirmation from him. Bringing me home flowers means just as much as if it cause. It's just like him saying you are such an amazing wife and I was thinking about you today and I wanted to show you how much I love you.
Speaker 2:So, monica, my whole argument for this is that not everybody can do that. Not everybody can do that. My whole argument is there are people out there and this is how it can ruin your relationship. There are people out there who get the flowers and all they see is you don't get me, you just don't get me. I don't care about the flowers, don't you get it? I do not care about the flowers, I just want you to put your clothes in the hamper.
Speaker 2:I just want you to kiss me when you see me. I just want you to say thank you for doing the thing that I did yesterday to make your life a little bit better. But all you're doing is just like you just give me flowers and think that that's going to, that's going to scratch the itch and it just doesn't do it for me and they become resentful and angry. So I think it's awesome that people I think it's aspirational for people to get to the place that you're at, where you can get the gift of flowers and be like I feel loved and this is wonderful.
Speaker 2:Even though it's not my primary love language. My argument is that there are a lot of people who read the five love languages and they think, ah, I've unlocked the key to a happy marriage. If my partner does X, y and Z, if my partner has lots of sex with me and helps me clean the house every day, or if my partner spends a lot of time watching my shows with me and rubs my feet, if my partner gives me these, whatever the recipe is for them, if my partner does that, then I'm going to be happy, and if I do that for them, then they're going to be happy. So it all requires us for both of us to do that thing for each other and we'll be happy. And then, when that doesn't happen the way that they envision it happening, they become resentful and angry and it becomes more of a wedge than it, than what it was intended to be, which is like an insight to help you more than anything, I think, help you love your partner more.
Speaker 2:But I think what most people experience it as is this is how I want to be loved. They experience a. This is what I can get out of it and not not so much. This is what I can put into it. It's more. It's. It's less about hey, I'm discovering something about my partner and how I can be a better partner to them. It's more a wow, I finally understood why I don't feel loved by my partner. If they just do this, then I'll be happy in my relationship.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think that's it's.
Speaker 2:It's kind of small have you seen anything like this though? Like am I on? Do you think I'm on track here?
Speaker 1:Um, yeah, no, I mean I think I think you have a very valid argument. And what if I brought this into the discussion, because you hear a lot of times like a love language, like yeah, knowing someone's love language is like cool, but like, have you ever heard the saying like love is not enough, like it's not enough just to love somebody? So if all you're doing is speaking in their love language, maybe that's not enough to really have a healthy, dynamic, passionate, intimate relationship.
Speaker 2:I agree. I agree, I'm a firm believer that. Have you ever heard the phrase milk before meat?
Speaker 1:Hmm, yeah, sort of.
Speaker 2:I think what it goes back. Let me actually look at the origins of that.
Speaker 1:Milk before meat. That makes me think of my Jewish ancestry and keeping things kosher.
Speaker 2:The phrase milk before meat comes from the Bible. It refers to the idea that some people are not yet ready for meat and instead need milk or other nourishment. So, like babies, you can't feed them meat. You have to. You have to give them milk first, and then they grow into it and then they can have meat.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:The idea is like we start with like simple, simple foods that can be broken down easily, and then we get to the more complex ones, and the same thing goes with like information and knowledge, and and the idea here is that I believe, is that the love languages is a good milk principle.
Speaker 2:It's like a good entry level into having empathy and getting more understanding and more profound understanding of your partner. But it is not meat Like. This is not. This is not everything. And a lot of people read that book because I think part of the reason it is so approachable is it's an easy to grasp concept. It's like oh, there's these five things and we don't share all five and I might care about one more than the other and vice versa, and it's an introduction to this kind of this world of we are complex beings, we have different needs and desires, and I think that's really beautiful. But I think it's a starting point and I think a lot of people read that book and then they stop and they're like it's all about love languages.
Speaker 2:If we can just speak each other's love language, we're going to be okay.
Speaker 1:It's like I mean no, and I think you nailed it when you said complex, because I think people love putting things into categories and simplifying things in that way, but the reality is, as humans, we are so much more complex. Yeah, when you're in a relationship with another human, you've got to grow and learn more than just their love language.
Speaker 2:Yep, yep, so yeah. So that's kind of what I was thinking. So if you're a person who is all about the love languages, awesome, my invitation to you like, read the book. Absolutely. If you haven't read the book, read the book.
Speaker 2:If you have read the book, revisit it, but revisit it with the context of how does this inform how I show up for my partner, how does this inform how I can be a better partner, how I can elevate my game, and not, in what ways is this demonstrating to me how I am deprived or how my partner is weak or how they're deficient and how they're not showing up the way that I need them to? How does this show to me the ways that they're withholding or they're not good enough and letting it be a source of resentment? So it's a difficult thing to do. When there is an imbalance of thoughtfulness or an imbalance of intentionality in your relationship and you're the one investing, maybe over over-functioning a little bit and putting in more effort and energy and thoughtfulness into the relationship, it can be really difficult to be like, oh, like I'm not getting anything back.
Speaker 1:I think what a lot of people use the five life love languages. It's. It's an okay, so it's a simple concept to understand and it's a good like jumping off point. But I think what you're like referring to is people can use it as a scorecard, and keeping score is never going to get you more of what you want in your relationship.
Speaker 1:And so it's, while it's easy to like, an easy thing to understand of like this is how I can do awesome things for my partner, even my kids. They have five love language for kids, but it's also a very easy way to fall into scorekeeping.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So if if that sounds like you and you're kind of a scorekeeper, a good episode to go back and listen to is a recent episode that we did. About what did we title it? But it was about the what Shamu taught me about life, love and marriage. And think about what behaviors that you're incentivizing, instead of keeping score of who does what. Yes, I cannot remember that episode, do you remember?
Speaker 1:I cannot remember the name of the episode, but I know that it's number 309.
Speaker 2:No, no, we talked about acknowledging even the slightest progress.
Speaker 1:Yes, it hasn't come out yet, right? I think it's episode three. Well, in the moment that we're recording this, it hasn't come out yet, right? I think it's episode three.
Speaker 2:Well, in the moment that we're recording this, it hasn't come out but by the time you listen to this, it will.
Speaker 1:We're getting very confused. Yes, we'll link to it in the show notes, but definitely it's about recognizing progress and incentivizing the right things with your partner. So yes, so yes, keeping score of who's speaking more proficiently each other's love language is definitely going to have some negative consequences.
Speaker 2:A lot of them, yeah, I've seen it happen. So five love languages just to kind of encapsulate everything. Great principle in theory it's a great introduction to. We all experience life a little bit differently and relationships a little bit differently. Card if you make it an expectation or if you create this covert contract in your head that if my partner loves me, then they will treat me this way, they will give me this thing and then anything that they do to the contrary is proof that they don't love you or they don't care about you. That can be a very toxic recipe for relationship failure, breakdown.
Speaker 1:So good, yeah. So I think you proved it really well that the five love languages, while useful, can also be very dangerous. So let's make sure that we examine how we're using these pieces of information about each other, and there's lots of actual principles that we can talk about that that can be really really dangerous if we kind of hang our relationship health hat on it. So so, yeah, I think the five love languages you know just maybe take inventory of what you know about your partner and how you're using that information. Maybe take inventory of what you know about your partner and how you're using that information. Is it blessing your relationship or is it causing resentment? And however you answer, that question is kind of where you need to do some exploration.
Speaker 2:Bam Love it. We'll see you next week.
Speaker 1:All right, thanks for tuning in.