Secrets of Happily Ever After: Marriage and Intimacy Tips for Couples
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 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 and passionate partnership, because an awesome marriage makes life so much sweeter. Let's get to it!
Secrets of Happily Ever After: Marriage and Intimacy Tips for Couples
Dr. Gary Chapman On The Love Language That Matters Most
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Today I welcome Dr Gary Chapman to explore why love languages still matter and how dialects and personality shape whether love actually lands. We share a simple love tank ritual, a practical daily connection plan, and ways to listen without fixing so both partners feel seen.
• why dialects within the five love languages change impact
• the attitude of love versus manipulation
• the 0–10 love tank question and follow‑up
• listening as posture, not problem‑solving
• tailoring love to introvert and extrovert needs
• the 20‑minute daily check‑in, weekly dates, annual getaway
• seasons of marriage and updating dialects over time
• stories showing sincerity missing without fluency
• practicing a language you never received growing up
Go to www.5lovelanguages.com to take the free quiz or the premium assessment and to purchase Love Languages That Matter Most
Meet Gary Chapman And The New Book
SPEAKER_02Hello and welcome to the Secrets of Happily Ever After podcast. I'm your host, Monica Tanner, and I am so giddy about my guest today. He needs no introduction. Dr. Gary Chapman is an author, speaker, pastor, and counselor. He has a passion for people and for helping them form lasting relationships. He is the author of the five love languages and has just partnered with Les and Leslie Perot on a new book called Love Languages That Matter Most. So I am so excited to have you here on the podcast today to discuss your new book. Welcome to the podcast, Gary. How are you?
SPEAKER_00Well, thank you, Anica. I'm glad to be here.
SPEAKER_02I just learned that you're going to be in Boise really soon, and I can't believe I'm going to miss that.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I'm very excited. And uh with Les and Leslie to be able to join me as well. So it's gonna be a good evening on Friday evening, the 13th.
SPEAKER_02That's gonna be so fun. Well, for those of you listening, I'm certain you have heard of the five love languages. You
Why Dialects And Personality Matter
SPEAKER_02are familiar with the five love languages. I talk about them all the time. And I know that I've always talked about the five love languages as a simple kind of starting point for understanding how your partner recognizes love. So can you talk about how your new book, The Love Language That Matters Most, kind of sheds more light or gives us more insight into those five love languages?
SPEAKER_00Uh yes. What happened was, you know, the book's been out. The original book's been out now a little over 30 years. It keeps on selling more every year. It sold over 20 million copies and been published in 50 languages around the world, which really kind of blows my mind. But through the years, people have asked me two questions. One is, they said, in your book, the original book, you uh you mentioned that these languages have dialects, but you don't list any specific dialects. And you also mentioned that person's personality interfaces with their love language, but you don't really explain that very well. So this book is following up with those two questions, among other things, talking about some of the dialects in each of these languages, because we do have dialects, and just as in a spoken language, I speak English with a southern accent. But if you but if you go to Boston, it's gonna be different. It's the same language but different dialect. And so uh yeah, we're dealing with those two issues uh among other things, uh, common things as to why people might be trying to speak each other's language and doesn't seem to be connecting, and you know, what are some of those elements? So yeah, so I'm I'm excited about the new book. And I wrote it, uh, as I said, you said with uh Les and Leslie Parrott. Les is a psychologist and uh Leslie is a marriage and family life counselor. They've written a lot of books on marriage, and uh their their best known book is Saving Your Marriage Before It Starts. But uh yeah, I'm excited about this one. I think this is gonna help a lot of people who've read the original book. It's gonna help them to be even more effective in communicating love in a meaningful way.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I think that's so fun. And you've been working with couples and families for over 30 years. I wonder, do you have some stories about some couples who are familiar with the five love languages? They're trying to show love to their partner in one of those five love languages, and it just wasn't landing, like because maybe they were speaking the wrong dialect.
Manipulation Versus The Attitude Of Love
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I think one lady said to me, Dr. Chatman, we read your book and we took that quiz you have on online, and so I got my husband's love language down, and I've been speaking it, you know, I've been speaking it, but he's not speaking, he's not speaking mine. I said, Let me understand this now. You're saying to me that you are speaking his language so that he will speak your language. That's manipulation. You're just trying to manipulate him to speak your language. I don't know. And that that's why the title of this new book is The Most Important Love Language. And the answer to that is the love language of your partner. Let's focus on them, not on us. You know, we you know, we're all self-centered by nature, and that there's a good part to that. We take care of ourselves, you know. But love is it doesn't begin with a feeling, it begins with an attitude. And the attitude is, I choose to look out for your interest. I want to do whatever I can to enrich your life. That's the attitude of love. That's why love can be commanded in the Bible. You know, Jesus said, love your neighbors, you love yourself. It's not a feeling. We we don't choose our feelings. We choose how we respond to our feelings. But love is the attitude. Once you have that attitude, then it's important to know if you want to meet your spouse's emotional need for love, and almost everyone agrees that's one of our deepest emotional needs on the human level, is to feel love by the significant people in our lives, then you have to have the attitude of love and the love languages, and then now the dialects will give you specifics on how to meet that particular need. And uh so I think that's uh that's a super, super important uh aspect of the love languages.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I agree. What do you say to the listener who is like, I'm not trying to manipulate my partner? Like, I I genuinely want to show
Asking For Love Without Keeping Score
SPEAKER_02love and care and in my partner's love language, but I also want to feel it as well. Like, how can somebody bring up, talk about, or encourage their partner to also learn how to speak their love language?
SPEAKER_00Well, there's no question about it. We do need to be loved and we want to be loved by our spouse. And you know, if it's a healthy marriage, you can discuss it together openly. It's ideal if the couple reads the book together so that both of them have the concept, both of them now have the uh dial, some of the dialects, and they can also take the quiz. We now have a premium quiz, goes much deeper than the original, you know, uh quiz. And uh this one, of course, you have to pay for this one, it's it's the premium quiz. You're gonna get a 15-page printout. It's gonna show you not only the percentage that each one of those love languages uh is to you, but it's gonna help you determine what the love language dialect is that's most important to you. So I think if they've both been exposed to the content, it's pretty easy to discuss it together. Then, but here's
The Premium Quiz And Love Tank Check‑In
SPEAKER_00the little thing that I encourage couples to do in a kind of a friendly way. About every three weeks or so you say to your spouse, assuming that they know the concept and all of that. Honey, on a scale of zero to ten, how full is your love tank this week? And they give you a reading. If they say anything less than ten, you say, What could I do this week that would be most important to you? And what they say may not be their primary love language and their primary dialect. It's just that today, in this circumstance, what's going on in my life right now, this would be the most important thing you could do. Well, now you know exactly what would be important for them that particular day. It's a fun way of surfacing the concept, you know, rather than uh trying to bring it up and say, honey, I I don't know how you feel, but I think I've been trying to speak your language, but I don't think you're speaking my language. And well, that can be kind of a put down to them, you know. But this is kind of a fun way because you're initiating it. And chances are if you initiate it by saying zero to ten, they'll probably come back and say, okay, well now tell me about you, you know, zero to ten. So it's it's an easy way and kind of a fun way, but I think you can bring it up and uh and kind of focus on it.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. And I love that concept of uh of a love tank. I mean, most marriage educators talk about it in some sort of way, this idea of the love tank and that it needs to be filled. What do you say about, because this is something that I talk about a lot, is that we can't expect our partners to fill our love tank. We need to know how to fill our own, but we can ask for support. So, do you how how do you feel about that particular concept?
SPEAKER_00Well, I think I think our self-worth comes from knowing who we are, children of God. Yes, and we have a relationship with a God who loves us. I mean, this is where the self-worth comes. I wrote a book some years ago called God Speaks Your Love Language. People
Self‑Worth, Faith, And Feeling Loved
SPEAKER_00kept asking me, what's God's love language? I went through the Bible again, He speaks all five fluently, you know. And so, yeah, you're right. I think we have to be responsible for our own sense of self-worth. But in a marriage relationship, even self-worth doesn't necessarily give you the sense that you feel loved by your spouse, you know. And that's why the under understanding of these concepts will help you as each each of you as you try to it, you know, most many couples would say, Oh, we love each other. Yeah, we love each other. I remember the husband that said, Well, his wife said that she didn't feel loved. And he said, I don't understand that. I do everything I can to show her that I love her.
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_00I said, What do you do? He said, Well, I get home from work before she does. I start the evening meal, and sometimes I have it ready when she gets home. If not, she'll help me. And then he said, Then afterwards I wash the dishes every night. On Thursday, I vacuum the floors. On Saturday, I wash the car, I mow the grass, I help her with the laundry.
SPEAKER_02He went on and sounds like an access of service guy.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, oh yeah. And I was beginning to wonder, what does this woman do? I mean, like he was doing it all. And uh and I realized here was a sincere husband who was expressing love to his wife in the best way he knew how, but it wasn't her love language. When I look back to her, she said, he's right. He is a hard-working man, and I appreciate all those things. But we don't ever talk. We haven't talked in 20 years. He's always mowing the grass, washing the dishes, vacuuming the floor. So it's not enough to be sincere. We have to learn that what makes me feel loved doesn't necessarily make the other person feel loved.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, that's so important. And I did get that from reading the book. I felt like you talked a lot about the importance of listening and curiosity. In fact, I want to read a quote from the book that I absolutely loved because this year I am focusing so much in all of my content on this phrase, learning to be compassionately curious
Sincerity Is Not Enough: A Case Study
SPEAKER_02about your partner's subjective reality. And so when I read this in the book, I thought, yes, this is what you're touching on. True listening requires more than being fully present, it requires curiosity. Listening is more than a skill, it's a posture, a way of being wholly interested in the other person. It means setting aside your own agendas momentarily to fully engage. When you adopt this posture, listening becomes more than something you do. It becomes part of who you are in the relationship. I thought that was really powerful.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, no question about it. And many times we're not good listeners. You know, our spouse brings up something, maybe a problem they're having at work, or something happened today that they found stressful, and uh, and we just automatically say, Well, now what you ought to do is da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da, you know, and you haven't even heard them yet. You don't even really know you you think you know what what's going on. But you need to ask questions. Honey, tell me more about that. It sounds like that was pretty serious to you. And you just ask two or three questions, and eventually you can say, You well, honey, I can I I I can understand why you'd be upset about that. That makes sense. I I'd I'd be upset too if I were you. And then it you know, it it's okay. So then then they may ask you, What do you think I ought to do about that? Well, now you can give them advice. But you give them advice before you've really listened to them. You don't really know what they're saying and what they're thinking, you just assume you know. So listening is a huge issue uh in human relationships.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it's so important. And I had a a couple recently in my office, and he couldn't figure out why his wife got so upset with him when they had these types of conversations, just like you were describing. She'd tell him about something that happened during the date, and he would immediately go into solve it, fix it mode. And after a little while of listening, of really listening, we uncovered this idea that she felt like he didn't trust her to know what to do. And that felt really degrading to her.
Listening As Posture And Practice
SPEAKER_02She felt like a child. He just didn't feel like she was competent enough to handle her own issue.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that's i i if her love language would have been words of affirmation, it may or may not have been, but if it had been words of affirmation, what he was doing was speaking the dialect of encouragement. That is, he was telling her, Yeah, here's something that you could you could do that would be helpful. He's he's encouraging her in his mind.
SPEAKER_01Yes.
SPEAKER_00But to her, that's not her dialect.
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_00Her dialect is appreciation. Yeah. So she's not feeling love by those those words, even though he thinks he's speaking her love language, or he may have that idea. So, yeah, that again, just another illustration of how understanding the dialect of the person is is important, not just their language, but the dialect. I remember to give you another example, a lady, her husband was uh going to be speaking the next day at his father's funeral. And so she was saying to him, Honey, you're gonna knock it out of the ballpark tomorrow. You are so wonderful. This is gonna be so good. People are gonna be so proud of you speaking at your father's funeral. Well, later on he told her, he said, Honey, I know you probably were trying to encourage me, but to be honest with you, I felt pressure and I it created anxiety because I it's like what what's gonna happen if I'm not if I don't hit it out of the ballpark, you know? So he that was not his language. But she said, Oh honey, no, no, that I was just trying to encourage you. He said, I know you, I know you were, you know, but but that's the way it came across to me. Again, an illustration of why you have to know not only the language, but the dialect of that person. Otherwise, you can be sincerely speaking it and speaking one of the dialects, but it's not the one that communicates to them in a positive way.
SPEAKER_02Yes, I noticed I am a words of affirmation, so I paid particular attention to the dialects in the words of affirmation section. And I noticed that all of the examples you gave, the the partner who was on the receiving end of not getting the right dialect, they were very generous. And I thought those are nice examples. The people that land in my office typically are not so generous, they're usually much more upset by the fact that their partner isn't speaking the right language or the right
When Help Feels Like Pressure
SPEAKER_02dialect.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, you're right. You're absolutely right. It's the healthy marriage that is more respectful of a misunderstanding. Yes.
SPEAKER_02And I thought about especially in that quote that I read from the book, and you go on to say, I'll just read, I really love this one too. It says, When we set aside our own agendas to truly see, hear, and feel another, we create a space in our soul for love. Empathy is love in action, it lifts us outside of ourselves, it helps us see beyond the normal range of human vision and over walls of resentment and barriers of betrayal. Love rises above petty demands and conflicts of life and inspires our spirit to give without getting. And what I loved so much about that is going back to this idea of curiosity. If you think about those early stages of getting to know somebody, you're so curious, right? You want to know everything they're thinking about, every topic, and you're just hanging on their every word. And you see these couples who have been married for a long time in the restaurant and they're not really talking to each other. And I always want to say that's not because they've talked about everything or they've run out of things to talk about. It's because when they start talking about certain topics, it doesn't typically go well, mostly because they've lost the art of curiosity. And if you will nurture that skill, the skill of curiosity, of being able to ask questions, you will never, ever, ever run out of things to talk about.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, absolutely. And and you know, here's another issue. Most of the time, husbands and wives are apart during eight or eight hours or so every day, unless they're working together, you know, which is which does happen, but not not all that common. And you can you take off the time we sleep, and we spend more times apart than we do together. So even the simple things of saying, honey, what what was uh what was something you really enjoyed today? Or what what is uh what is uh what what was a hard point in your life?
Daily Curiosity To Stay Connected
SPEAKER_00And I I've I've sometimes encouraged couples every day have a sit-down time to listen and ask questions of each other just about your day. You know, tell me tell me something that happened today and how you felt about it. They don't have to be profound things. Um you know maybe he says, Well, honey, I stopped on the way home and got gas for the car. And she says, How'd you feel about that? He said, Well, to be honest, I felt angry. I looked up at the take and realized how much I was paying for it. I just felt angry.
SPEAKER_02It was like a conversation I would definitely have with my husband. But yes, I agree with you. I talk about the importance of 20 minutes of daily connection and how you know, and and and when you think about these topics that we're talking about in the book, a great question for your spouse in those 20 minutes of connection is how's your love tank? What can I do to help fill that tank for you today or tomorrow? Or, you know, uh this question, it characterizes my father-in-law, who I never met. He passed away before I met my husband, but I see like this legacy in my husband that I appreciate so much. And on his gravestone, my father-in-law, it says, What do we live for if not to make life easier for one another? And I think by speaking each other's love language and really learning the dialect of each other's love language, like over time, because it might change a little bit, right? We might have different seasons of needing different things, but by always staying curious and open and asking those types of questions, we are making each other's life easier.
SPEAKER_00Absolutely. You know, it's that attitude again, the attitude of love of I choose to enrich your life. And we really choose an attitude of love or we choose an attitude of selfishness. I'm in this relationship for you to make me happy. And how many times have you, and I've seen it in our office, they get to the point of divorce, and what they're saying is, I haven't felt loved by you in 14 years. You're not making me happy, and I'm out of here. Selfishness. I'm in this marriage for you to make me happy. Well, somebody's got to have the attitude of love. And all of us by nature are self-centered, you know. But I I just think if we can get the concept that our best interest in life and our best life is going to be if we choose an attitude of love toward our spouse and everybody else that we encounter and have any time with at all. An attitude of I want to enrich
The 20‑Minute, 3‑Hour, 1‑Week Rule
SPEAKER_00the lives of the people I encounter. These are the people who really enjoy life, and these are the people who make a positive impact on the lives of other people. And so in a marriage, if both of you have an attitude of love, then you get the information on how to meet each other's emotional need for love. Your love tank's gonna be full, you know. And and yes, you'll have to refill it. It doesn't say full, you know, get it full and you don't have to worry about it for three years. No. Entropy, right? Yes.
SPEAKER_02Yes. What do you think about because a lot of times I get people in my office and they have a hard time with the posture of love or with the attitude of love because it's so vulnerable. And they've learned over time and in their early relationships that it's too vulnerable, it's painful to put yourself out there like that. And so they have these protections up. And so I find myself a lot of time working with clients on like, is it worth it or not to let my guard down enough to love another person?
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Well, we are all influenced by our past life, whatever it was. We were growing up and we didn't feel loved by our parents, or they put us down if we said something, you know, or our maybe our father said you shouldn't feel angry, or you shouldn't feel this or the other thing, or come on now, you be a boy, strong boy, you know, all this kind of stuff. Or are in a relationship where they've had an where they did open up, they did share their hearts, and the other person crushed crushed their hearts. We're all influenced by that. But here's the reality uh we don't have to be controlled by those memories, and we don't have to be controlled by the things that jump into our mind when we remember all of that. It's another day, and this is another relationship, a different relationship, or maybe it's the same relationship. We've grown some that way. But if one of us chooses
Personality Clashes And Public Praise
SPEAKER_00to have an attitude of love in spite of whatever we might be feeling, and we reach out to do that, we're having a positive influence on the other person. We we either have a positive or a negative influence on each other in a marriage every single day. We can give them words that are critical and we have a negative influence on them, we're emptying their love take. Or we can give them their love language and we're filling their love tape. But we are influencing each other. Marriage is uh you know, I don't normally talk about a perfect marriage, I talk about a growing marriage. Marriages are either growing or they're regressing, they're not standing still. And if you don't give any attention to your marriage, you're drifting apart. We don't drift together, we drift apart, but we've got to spend time. I like your idea of a 20-minute sit-down and listen time to each other every day. That's a good start. Yeah, great.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I love that. I treasure our time. My husband and I walk, we have a loop, and we'll find a time every day to walk the loop, even if it's cold.
SPEAKER_01That's good. That's good.
SPEAKER_02Oh, yeah, yeah. I teach it a 3% rule. I'll uh get your opinion on this. So if you spend 20 minutes a day, three hours a week, date night, do something fun, enjoyable, making memories together, and then one week out of the year, just the two of you, you carve it out, your spouse gets all of your attention. So 20 minutes a day, three hours a week, and one week a year. And that's only three percent. It's not even three percent of your time.
SPEAKER_00Yep. I like that. I like that. Absolutely. Chances are you're gonna have to start with the 20 minutes a day. If you get that going, then you can you'll you'll probably move on to the others.
SPEAKER_02Yes. Well, I feel like I could talk to you forever. You have so much experience in this area. Is there anything that we haven't talked about that you feel like is important for people who are listening? They're probably listening because they they are, you know, wanting to create that happily ever after love story that that we all wish for. Is there anything else you think is really important?
SPEAKER_00Well, I think I would say also the the other thing we deal with in the book is understanding their personality and how that interfaces. For example, just take uh the the extrovert and
Seasons Change: Updating Dialects
SPEAKER_00the introvert. If you know, uh let's say she knows her husband's love language is words of affirmation. So what she does on his thirtieth birthday is have is surprise him with a birthday party.
SPEAKER_02I've so done that just then.
SPEAKER_00And first of all, when she surprises him, because he thought they were going out to eat and they end up with a party of 30 people, he's gonna he's gonna be nice, he's gonna smile, he's gonna he's gonna do okay. But really in his heart he would much have preferred that you had a time together just at home at night, you know. But if she at that party starts telling everybody at some juncture how wonderful he is, she starts bragging on him in front of people. Inside he's feeling, oh honey, honey, please, please, please, honey, honey, honey. I like words, yeah, I like words, but but in private, not in front of all these people, you know. So again, personality is important, and that's why I think these two issues that we deal with in this book are gonna be really, really helpful to people. You understand both of these issues, you're less likely to make a mistake like that, you know.
SPEAKER_02Yes, I agree. It's so funny because when you were telling that story, I'm like, oh my gosh, I made the book. Like that literally happened to me. That is my husband, and that I told because I am very words of affirmation. My personality is very extroverted. So I mean, throw me a party with all the people and give me all the compliments, you know, and I will just be in heaven. And my husband is like, oh my gosh, I've gotten that more wrong.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that's true, very true. Yes.
SPEAKER_02I do love that. I do think it's so important to be curious, and I do think, you know, we change over time. I know for me as a young mother, acts of service was awesome. It like just if you could change a diaper, hold the baby, or you know, like let me get some extra sleep. Like acts of service were so important to be. But as I grew out of that phase and stage of life, I returned to my roots,
Learning A Language You Never Heard
SPEAKER_02which is words of affirmation. And I realize that my husband is very fluent in the language of acts of service. That's his love language. But I so I have to remind him all the time. I, you know, when he asks, and and he will, he'll say, you know, how can I show you more love? Or, you know, how are we doing, or you know, what are a couple of things that you'd love for me to do? And I'm like, write me a note, send me a text, tell me how much you love me, you know. It's not that I don't know. It's just I love to hear it. Like that, it just fills my love tank.
SPEAKER_00Absolutely. And you appreciate the acts of service he does. It's just that that's not the thing that really makes you feel love. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02That's right. That's right. I notice that he does the dishes every night. I am very appreciative, but that doesn't show me love like this little orange post-it that he left on my on my desk.
SPEAKER_00That is right, absolutely. You know, my my wife's language is acts of service. You know, so I do wash the dishes, you know, I'd vacuum the floors and take out the trash and all that. Mine is words of affirmation. She tells me I am the greatest husband in the world. And I know that's a hyperbole. Feels good to me.
SPEAKER_01Right?
SPEAKER_00I know, yeah.
SPEAKER_02I can so relate. I can so relate. So, yeah, so I I think just in closing, you know, final words, like it's worth it. It's worth it to to ask, to show some curiosity, to listen, to really learn your partner's dialect. Like learning a new language is not an easy thing to do. And so it's it's worth it to learn your partner's love language. It and also as the partner who's on the receiving end of that, show appreciation. I mean, recognize how difficult it is to learn a new language.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it is difficult. And especially if you did not receive that language growing up. If you didn't receive words of affirmation growing up, then it's hard. But you the good
Where To Find The Book And Assessment
SPEAKER_00news is you can learn to speak this language. You know, I sometimes suggest just write down two or three positive sentences that you could say, get in a room by yourself and read them out loud till you hear yourself saying these things, you know, and then just pick out one one day and then say it, you know. Yeah, it's worth it. You can learn, you can learn all of, and it is worth it. Absolutely. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Well, thank you so much for your time today. Can you tell the listeners where they can find the book, where they can get that premium assessment, how they can get started learning the different dialects of the five.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, they can go to the website fivelovelanguages.com, the number five, fivelovelanguages.com. Uh, and there they will uh they'll see the free quiz that we've had up there for years. 160 million people have taken that free quiz, and you'll see this premium assessment, which is going to give you a lot more information. And you can also purchase the book there, or you can purchase the book at Amazon as well.
SPEAKER_02Well, awesome. Well, thank you again so much for being here and good luck spreading this message. And next time you come to Boise,
Thriving In The Second Half Of Marriage
SPEAKER_02I can't wait to meet you.
SPEAKER_00All right, all right, very good. Well, you keep up the good work.
SPEAKER_02God bless you. Thank you so much.
SPEAKER_00But I know one of the things we do in there is we're trying to describe the difference between couples that that really thrive in the second half and those that just survive in the second half.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And I remember one of the things is they have come not only to accept some of the things that irritated them in the early years, but they've come to laugh about them. And and and and and it really fits with my uh my me because my wife loads the dishwasher like she's playing frisbee. I am an organized person. I load it and it's always right. But on the and I we we had a big hassle about that early on in our marriage. And finally she said, Honey, if it's so important to you, why don't you load the dishwasher? So I did. I I didn't know anything about love languages, but I started loading the dishwasher. But when she loaded it, you know, it just irritated me in those early years. But now I laugh about it. I look in there and I think, it's just it's it's just funny that anybody could load it like that, you know. And and then and then not only did did it did what did I come to laugh about it, but twelve years ago she had uh uterine cancer and uh went through a chemo, lost her hair, all that stuff, you know. She calls it her lost ear. But she's doing fine now, not any problem with that. But now when she when she happens to load it when I'm awake, I look in there and I not only laugh, I say, God thank you that she's still around the message. Oh, what a sweet story. So anyway, uh I know that a lot of what you do is encourage older couples and so and I'm trying to learn from them. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02All right.
SPEAKER_00Well, God bless. Good chatting with you.
SPEAKER_02Oh, thank you. It was so wonderful to meet you. I I hope we get more chances to interact in the future.
SPEAKER_00Oh, good. I'd love to. Thank you.
SPEAKER_02Thank you. Bye bye.