A real story from Gary Chapman himself. The Five Love Languages
My wife’s love language is “Acts of Service.” One of the things I do for her regularly as an act of love is to vacuum the floors. Do you think that vacuuming floors comes naturally for me? My mother used to make me vacuum. All through junior high and high school, I couldn’t go play ball on Saturday until I finished vacuuming the entire house. In those days, I said to myself, “When I get out of here, one thing I am not going to do: I am not going to vacuum houses. I’ll get myself a wife to do that.”

But I vacuum our house now, and I vacuum it regularly. And there is only one reason I vacuum our house: love. You couldn’t pay me enough to vacuum a house, but I do it for love. You see, when an action doesn’t come naturally to you, it is a greater expression of love. My wife knows that when I vacuum the house, it’s nothing but 100 percent pure, unadulterated love, and I get credit for the whole thing!

From The Five Love Languages of Children
Julie told how the five love languages were helping her to better understand her two daughters—Mallory, six, and Meredith, eight. “My husband and I often go on business trips and the girls stay with their grandmother. While we are away, I buy something for the girls. Meredith is always much more excited about the gifts than Mallory is, talking about them as soon as we get home. She jumps up and down in excitement as we take out the presents and oohs and aahs as she opens her gift. Then she finds a special nook in her room for it and wants us to see where she put it. When her friends come over, she always shows them the latest gift.”

In contrast, while Mallory is polite and appreciates the gifts from her parents, she is more excited to learn about the trip. Mallory “comes to us to hear every detail of our trip,” Julie reported. “She talks with us separately and then together, and seems to drink up everything we tell her. Meredith, on the other hand, asks few questions about where we have been and what we have seen.”

When someone asked Julie what she was going to do with her insight, she said, “Well, I am going to keep on buying gifts for the girls, because I want to. But now I don’t feel hurt when Mallory doesn’t act as excited as Meredith. It used to bother me because I thought Mallory wasn’t being appreciative. Now I understand that our conversation means to Mallory what the gift means to Meredith. Both my husband and I are making more effort to give Mallory more quality time after a trip and all the rest of the year, as well. And, we want to teach Mallory the language of gifts just as we hope to teach Meredith to speak the language of quality time.”

From The Other Side of Love
Much of our anger grows out of internal emotional and thinking patterns that have developed through the years.

Jill is highly perfectionistic. Open the drawer of her dresser and you find all of her clothes neatly stacked and color-coordinated. Her closet is no less organized. This pattern for neatness and perfection appears in every aspect of her life. She is married to Jeff, who is highly creative, but neatness and organization are not even in his vocabulary. Jill often becomes angry when she observes Jeff’s dirty clothes stuffed in a closet corner; when she sees him looking for a report he completed two weeks ago but has misplaced; and when she gets inside his car, which hasn’t been cleaned since the day he brought it home from the dealer. I wish to suggest that Jill’s anger is distorted.

Jeff has committed no wrong. Jeff is being the person Jeff has learned to be. He has no inner compulsion toward neatness or organization such as Jill has. I am not suggesting that Jill’s anger is not real. It has the same emotional, physical, and cognitive aspects as definitive anger. She really is upset; she really believes that Jeff is wrong not to be neat. But if she is open to the facts, she will discover that thousands of people have Jeff’s personality traits and that these traits are not evil. Jill’s anger still needs to be processed in a positive way, but it will help if she can see it for what it is. Her anger is not born out of Jeff’s wrongdoing but out of her own compulsion for neatness and organization. If she can see it as distorted anger, she is far more likely to process it in a positive way.

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Have you participated in one of Dr. Chapman’s seminars or read one of his books and want to share how his ministry has influenced your life? If so, email us at stories@garychapman.org

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