FULFILLING MY CHILDREN'S EMOTIONAL NEED, FOR BEING LOVED - Part 1

One thing I can truly say, is that my wife and I thank God for our three children.  We love them for who they are, and not just for what they have accomplished.  Even though we love all of them equally, each one of our children feels emotional love differently.  I believe we need to love our children unconditionally because it will help them to develop emotionally, which will prepare them for adulthood.  In the book “The Five Love Languages Of Children” written by Dr. Gary Chapman and Ross Campbell, M.D., they wrote about how children develop emotionally when they feel loved through their primary love languages.  The book reveals five ways children can express and experience emotional love which are: physical touch, words of affirmation, quality time, receiving gifts, and acts of service.  As parents it is important for us to love our children unconditionally, so they can have their emotional need for being loved fulfilled.  In this blog we want to explore the question “Why is it important for us as parents to unconditionally love our children, so they can feel loved?”   

Dr. Chapman and Ross Campbell shared that inside every child is like an “emotional tank”.  When you effectively love your child by their love language, it is like their “emotional tank” is being filled up with love.  All parents love their children, but the reality is that not all children feel loved.  The book states “Every child has an emotional tank, a place of emotional strength that can fuel him through the challenging days of childhood and adolescence.  Just as cars are powered by reserves in the gas tank, our children are fueled from their emotional tanks.  We must fill our children’s emotional tanks in order for them to operate as they should and reach their potential.”  We need to love our children unconditionally, which mean loving them with no strings attached.  Unconditional love fully accepts and affirms children for who they are, and not for what they have done.   Conditional love is based on performance and is often associated with giving or offering children gifts, rewards, and privileges due to them behaving or performing a desired way.  When we love our children with unconditional love it will fill their emotional tank.

Looking at the question, “Why it is important for us as parents to unconditionally love our children, so they can feel loved?”, the answer should meet three needs in their lives.  The three needs are: a healthy self-worth, a sense of feeling secure and safe, and developing good relational skills.  When parents lovingly develop their children to have a healthy self-worth about themselves, it can prepare them for success when they enter the real world.  Our children also need to know that we love them enough to be in present in their lives physically and emotionally, giving them a sense of safety and security in the home.  As parents how we love and treat one another in the home as a family, will help our children to mature in order to have good relational skills with others as they build friendships. 

As parents we must love our children according to the way they feel love through their love languages.  This is really inline to what the Bible says in Proverbs 22:6 “Train up a child in the way he should go, And when he is old he will not depart from it.”  This is talking about training up our children according to their bent, which means according to their emotional make up.  We are called to love our children according to their emotional make up and need for love.  If we have more than one child, then we must love all of them equally, but differently according to their emotional bent.  When we love our children unconditionally, we can fulfill their needs for self-worth, security, and good relational skills for life. I remembered my son David as a teenager, telling me how he appreciated me being present in his sisters and his life.  He expressed how he felt loved and secured in our family.  Learning your children’s primary love language, and loving them the way they feel loved will help them to grow and mature as adults.  In next week’s blog we will talk more about discovering our children’s love language.  I encourage all of us parents to love our children unconditionally with no strings attached, and not by their performance.

Would love to hear your thoughts, questions, or feedback.

FULFILLING MY SPOUSE'S EMOTIONAL NEED, FOR BEING LOVED - Part 3

Today’s blog is the final part of the topic that we have been covering for three weeks called, “Fulfilling My Spouse’s Emotional Need, For Being Loved”.  Last week we looked at “The Five Love Languages” in detail, in order for us to know and understand our spouse’s primary love language.  We used Dr. Gary Chapman’s book “The Five Love Languages”.  In the book he said there are five ways that we can express and experience emotional love from our spouse, which are: words of affirmation, quality time, receiving gifts, acts of service, and physical touch.  Today we will look at how we can effectively meet our spouse’s emotional need for being loved, through “The Five Love Languages”.  It is also a good idea for us to know and understand our own love language, in order to communicate to our spouse how we feel loved.  As married couples, the goal is for us is to love each other unselfishly the way our spouse desires to be loved.  Having honest and authentic dialogue with them can help us discover their love language. 

If you were like me maybe you didn’t even know anything about someone having a primary love language, all you knew is that you were enjoying the company of your future mate.  We did certain things with our spouse that showed we loved them, but it wasn’t with the sole purpose of meeting their love language.    Later we get married to our spouse only to begin working on our careers, having children, and raising a family.  We get so busy with life that we tend to stop focusing on one another, doing the things we did to build up our relationship when we were dating them.  As a result of being preoccupied with life, if our emotional need to be loved isn’t being fulfilled, we will begin to complain and wonder, “What happened to all the love before the marriage?”  We will start isolating ourselves from our spouse being engrossed with work, children, hobbies, and other things.  Eventually that will lead to drifting apart emotionally and relationally, which will lead to separation and divorce. 

It is important that we focus on our spouse’s need for being loved, because God intended for a husband and wife to be one in marriage, fulfilling their mate’s need for unconditional love.  There’s a biblical principle in 1 Corinthians 13:4 that says, “Love is patient, and kind.”  One way of fulfilling our mates need for being loved is by discovering their love language.  Here are some ways of discovering your spouse’s primary love language:

·         What does your spouse do or fail to do that hurts you most deeply?  The opposite of what hurts you most is probably your love language.  For example if your spouse always criticizes you without saying how they appreciate you, and every time that happens you feel unloved, then maybe your primary love language is “words of affirmation”.   

·         What have you most often requested of your spouse? The thing you have most often requested is likely the thing that would make you feel loved.  If you are always asking your spouse to do things around the house, maybe your love language is “acts of service”.  If you are always suggesting to your spouse about doing something together, it could be that your love language is “quality time”.

·         In what way do you regularly express love to your spouse?  Your method of expressing love may be an indication that it would also make you feel loved.  If you are always expressing love to your spouse by buying little gifts to show your love to them, then maybe your love language is “receiving gifts” unless that’s their love language.

Once we know our spouse’s love language, we can look for different opportunities and ways to love them the way they desire to be loved.  The aim is to love our spouse by their primary love language, but that doesn’t mean we can’t express our love to them through all of the love languages.  I know for my wife and I, we try to please one another by practicing each other’s love language.  Sometimes we succeed and sometimes we don’t, but our goal is we try to do what we can to fulfill each other’s way for being loved.  Married couples let’s make the effort of knowing our spouse’s love language, then doing what we can to meet their primary way of being loved.  Maybe you’re a couple at the point where both of you have drifted off into isolation in your marriage, and you are asking the question “What happened to all the love before the marriage?”  Here is when you need to know that love isn’t just a feeling, it is a choice you make of being committed to your spouse.  The good news is God is a restorer of marriages.  If you and your spouse are willing to forgive one another, and begin to practice these love languages together, He can put your marriage back together if you allow Him too.  Remember the goal is to fulfill our spouse’s need for being loved, and it is possible today.  

Would love to hear your thoughts, questions, or feedback.

FULFILLING MY SPOUSE'S EMOTIONAL NEED, FOR BEING LOVED - Part 2

                                

In today’s blog we are continuing the topic we started last week, “Fulfilling My Spouse’s Emotional Need, For Being Loved”.  Today looking at the book “The Five Love Languages” written by Dr. Gary Chapman, we want to understand and know our spouse’s primary love language.  He says when our emotional need for love is satisfied, it is like an invisible love tank is full causing us to be fulfilled in our marriage.  Here is a brief break down of what Dr. Gary Chapman defines as the “Love Languages”:

·         Words of Affirmation - One way to express love emotionally is to use words that build someone up.  Verbal compliments, or words of appreciation, are powerful communicators of love.  Saying such things as “You look sharp in that suit,” or, “I really appreciate you washing the dishes tonight”, shows appreciation.  Another way we can express love to our spouse is through words of encouragement.  Encouraging words to our spouse can be the motivation to help us achieve things, and cause us to feel loved.   Kind words speak love to us.  Sometimes it isn’t what we say, but how we say it that speaks love to our mate. Words of affirmation can positively change the emotional climate of your marriage.

·         Quality Time – Another way to express love emotionally is through spending quality time together as a married couple.  This communicates love to our spouse, and fulfills their need for love.  Quality time means giving someone your undivided attention.  This means when you are sitting on the sofa talking with your spouse, you are focusing on what they are saying to you, and not on the T.V.  It means sitting in the restaurant, focusing your attention on listening to your spouse, and not texting or doing things on your cell phone.  Quality time is being together and having quality conversation with someone.  Quality conversation is having dialogue where two individuals are sharing their experience, thoughts, feelings, and desires with each other in a friendly context.  If your spouse’s love language is quality time, taking time out for quality conversation can fill their emotional love tank.

·         Receiving Gifts – A gift is something you can hold in your hand and say, “Look, my spouse was thinking of me,” or, “She remembered me.”  When a gift is given to someone, it sends a message that he or she was thinking of me.  The gift becomes a visual symbol of an expression of love, which says you are important to me.  People hear the word gifts and they assume we must spend a lot of money on the gift, but it shouldn’t matter because it is the thought behind the gift that counts.  The cost of the gift might depend on the occasion, which will determine how much to spend.   The gift can be as simple as card that says “I love you” for no special occasion, and can fulfill your spouse’s need for being loved.

·         Acts of Service – When I talk about acts of service, I am referring to doing things we know our spouse would like for us to do.  We seek to please our mates by serving them, to express our love for them by doing some service for them.  Acts of service are such things as cooking a meal, washing dishes, cleaning the house, taking out the garbage, washing and cleaning the car, walking the dog, keeping the grass cut, etc.  These things require thought, planning, time, effort, and energy.  If these services are done in the right attitude, they can be expressions of love that will serve your spouse.

·         Physical Touch – Normally when we hear the words “physical touch”, usually we think of sex.  Here “physical touch” pertaining to the “love languages” isn’t limited only to sex.  Dr. Chapman says in his book “Physical Touch is also a powerful vehicle for communicating marital love.  Holding hands, kissing, embracing, and sexual intercourse are all ways of communicating emotional love to one’s spouse.  For some individuals, physical touch is their primary love language.  Without it, they feel unloved.  With it, their emotional tank is filled, and they feel secure in the love of their spouse.”  A special note, if our wife’s primary love language is physical touch, we must realize that every time they respond to our physical touch, it doesn’t mean they want sex.  It is important for us as husbands, to know that practicing physical touch can put our wife in the mood for sex, because of emotionally feeling loved. 

It is good for us to understand our own love language, in order to communicate with our spouse how we feel loved.  The goal for us is to love our mate the way they desire to be loved, and talking to them can help us discover their primary love language.  I would even suggest to you as a married couple to purchase the book “The Five Love Languages”, and go through it together with your spouse.  Next week we will see how we can effectively meet our spouse’s emotional need for being loved through these “Love Languages”. 

Would love to hear your thoughts, questions, or feedback.

FULFILLING MY SPOUSE'S EMOTIONAL NEED, FOR BEING LOVED - Part 1

Today we are starting a new blog series entitled “Fulfilling My Spouse’s Emotional Need For Being Loved”.  I believe everyone has an emotional need to be loved by someone, especially in a marriage when it comes to married couples feeling loved by their mates.  A husband and a wife want to know that they are loved by their spouse, because it helps them to feel emotionally fulfilled and secure in their love.  Love starts with our emotions, but it isn’t just based on our emotions.  Love is a feeling that we experience when someone expresses it to us.  Love also is an unconditional commitment that, we have with someone like our spouse, who we are in a relationship with.  God made it possible for us to be able to fulfill our spouse’s emotional need for being loved, but it is something that as married couples will take hard work to accomplish in marriage. We can achieve the goal of loving our mate.  

In the book titled “The Five Love Languages” written by Dr. Gary Chapman, he writes about how people express and experience emotional love.  He says emotionally people have the need to receive love and uses the metaphor of a ‘love tank’ to explain peoples’ need to be loved.  When our spouse’s emotional need for being loved is fulfilled, it is like their invisible love tank is full.  Dr. Chapman through his research determined that there are basically five ways that people express, and experience emotional love that he calls “love languages”: words of affirmation, quality time, receiving gifts, acts of service, and physical touch.  When we understand these “love languages” and how they work, then we can effectively love our spouse the way they need to be loved, and not the way we want them to be loved. 

When we dated our husband or wife, we tried to love them the way we felt or thought they wanted to be loved.  We put our best foot forward in trying to win our spouse’s heart, not in a deceiving way.  We went through our dating relationship doing such things as buying them gifts, opening the car door for them, and doing several other things for them.  We always spent time with them, called them on the phone, and went out on dates.  We felt a certain way emotionally in our dating relationship, and we expressed our love to them, even though it might not have been the primary way they felt love.  We were “in love” and caught up in feelings of “infatuation”, with the person we were dating.  Once we get married, if our emotional need for being loved still isn’t fulfilled we will begin to complain and wonder “what happened to all the love?”  I believe nothing happened to the love, we just start noticing our emotional need for love wasn’t being fulfilled.

Even the Bible in Ephesians 5:25 tell us as husbands we are to love our wives, and I believe as men, if we do that our wives will respond with love toward us.  We are to love our spouse emotionally the way they desire to be love, and when we do we will all have our need for loved fulfilled.  When we look at the “The Five Love Languages” it reveals that people feel love five different ways.  As a spouse in order to be able to meet our mate’s need to be loved, we must talk to and study them to find out their desired way to be loved.  As a married couple, my wife and I had to sit down and express our love language with each other, so we could know how to effectively love one another.  The goal was to meet each other’s emotional need for being loved.

Fulfilling our spouse’s emotional need for love, first starts with identifying their primary love language that meets their need for being loved.  Dr. Chapman says everybody has a primary and secondary love language.  When we experience love shown to us through our primary love language, we feel loved and emotionally fulfilled with our spouse.  Remember the goal is to love our mate the way they want to be loved, and not by the way we desire them to be loved.  Next week we will look at “The Five Love Languages” in detail, so we will be able to know our spouse’s primary love language, and effectively meet their emotional need for being loved. 

Would love to hear your thoughts, questions, or feedback.