The 5 Love Languages Military Edition: The Secret to Love That Lasts (8 page)

It isn’t enough to just be in the same room with someone. A key ingredient in giving your spouse quality time is giving them focused attention, especially in this era of many distractions. When a father is sitting on the floor, rolling a ball to his two-year-old, his attention is not focused on the ball but on his child. For that brief moment, however long it lasts, they are together. If, however, the father is talking on the phone while he rolls the ball, his attention is diluted. Some husbands and wives think they are spending time together when, in reality, they are only living in close proximity. They are in the same house at the same time, but they are not together. A wife who is texting while her husband tries to talk to her is not giving him quality time, because he does not have her full attention.

Quality time does not mean we have to spend our together moments gazing into each other’s eyes. It means we are doing something together and we are giving our full attention to the other person. The activity in which we are both engaged is incidental. The important thing emotionally is that we are spending focused time with each other. The activity is a vehicle that creates the sense of togetherness. The important thing about the father rolling the ball to the two-year-old is not the activity itself but the emotions that are created between the father and his child.

Similarly, a husband and wife playing tennis together, if it’s genuine quality time, will focus not on the game but on the fact that they are spending time together. What happens on the emotional level is what matters. Our spending time together in a common pursuit communicates that we care about each other, that we enjoy being with each other, that we like to do things together.

For those whose primary love language is quality time, the military lifestyle presents special challenges. Demanding schedules require intentionality. Timing is key. Service members, be aware that with each PCS, the fresh absence of friends from your last station will further deplete the love tanks of those whose love language is quality time. Investing in one-on-one time with your spouse during these times will reassure him or her of your love, and help ease the transition.

While the need for quality time may be felt more keenly in new environments, this is not a love language you can ever put on hold without risking harm to your relationship. Obviously, deployments are difficult (tips for coping with them are at the end of this chapter). But even while stateside, job pressures can threaten to squeeze out quality time with one’s spouse. During the Gulf War in 1991, Ted was a battalion chaplain, responsible for processing soldiers headed to Iraq. “This was during a time when they projected that thirty thousand of our soldiers would be killed in the first month of the war,” said Ted. “There was a lot of fear about down range, and I was trying to be a super chaplain.” While Ted took calls and met with soldiers at all hours of the day and night, his wife, Penny, was earning a master’s degree and raising two small children. They both worked hard, but had little time for each other.

In January, Ted began to make plans for Valentine’s Day to make up for months of long hours. So he arranged for child care, made reservations at a nice restaurant and hotel, and purchased lingerie at Victoria’s Secret for Penny. Valentine’s Day arrived, and the date went well—until Penny opened the gift.

As she lifted the lingerie out of the tissue paper, her face fell. “Oh. Thank you,” was all she said.

“That reaction reached into my chest, pulled my heart out and threw it on the floor and stomped on it,” Ted said. “I thought, ‘She doesn’t love me.’”

For three weeks, Ted and Penny felt cold and distant to each other, until finally, Ted decided to address what was bothering him. Her explanation shocked him. “When I opened your gift, I thought the only thing you liked about me was sex,” she told him. The evening had felt like quality time to Penny only until she guessed it was only a way to meet Ted’s desire for physical touch.

“That was a totally foreign concept to me, but I had enough wisdom to realize it didn’t matter what I thought,” Ted said. “It mattered what she thought. I realized I had better figure out how to show her I love her in a way that she understands.”

Since then, Ted and Penny have carved out time for regular dates, rather than waiting for the right moment and then splurging on a more expensive night out. “There’s far less tension between us now,” said Ted. “In fact, if Penny and I started fighting, the kids would tell us to go on a date!” Even the children knew Penny’s love language was quality time. When Penny’s love tank is full, she’s far more willing to speak Ted’s love language, as well.

Ted and Penny’s relationship demonstrates the connection between love and sex. Without love, the sexual relationship may be extremely empty. Keeping your spouse’s love tank full will also enhance your sexual relationship.

In their first year of marriage, Maria understood that her need for quality time with her husband, Jorge, took a backseat to Jorge’s responsibilities to the military. For weeks, she looked forward to being together again. But when Jorge came home from sea and immediately began making plans to visit friends, she was crushed—and angry.

“I’m an extrovert,” said Jorge. “And when I come home from being underway, I relax by getting together with friends. Maria is always welcome to be part of the group, but sometimes she chooses not to. If she wants to be with me so much, why would she stay home?”

Maria didn’t want to be part of a group. She wanted his focused attention to reassure her of his love. “If we could have some quality time together first, just us, I’d be much happier for him to see his friends. But when he asks to do something with them right away, I wonder if he even missed me while he was gone.”

Maria is clearly revealing that her love language is quality time. That is why she finds Jorge’s desire to spend time with his friends as an act of rejection. If Jorge is wise, he will fill Maria’s love tank before he dashes off to see his friends.

Quality time is critical and should be carefully timed—but unfortunately, it cannot be stored up like water in a camel’s hump, ready to be used on a journey through the desert. Connor was already gone from home on a TDY when he learned of an upcoming deployment with the National Guard. So he flew home every weekend to spend quality time with his wife, Susan. Each weekend was to be spent without distractions of the Internet, email, texting, webcam, or TV.

“It was a tall order for anyone to fill, especially under such difficult circumstances, but he longed to spend quality time with me, to have my undivided attention,” remembered Susan, who contributes to an online support group for military wives. “So each weekend, we read together, prayed together, listened to the Gary and Barb Rosberg predeployment DVDs, completed a barrage of home repairs, and spent time preparing our four children, as best we could, for our next assignment. He even went out of his way to sit next to me, as I wrote blogs and devotionals, like he used to do before his TDY.”

But the fact that Susan spent any time on the blogs for military wives hurt Connor. “His heart was crushed by my inability to give him the undivided attention he needed,” she said. “Through his eyes, my priorities were displaced. He no longer affirmed my writing, and he struggled to find the encouraging words I so desperately longed to hear. As a result, I struggled to express my heart, physically, verbally, and in writing. To make matters worse, there was no time to process the feelings and emotions that surfaced before he had to leave again on his yearlong deployment.”

Connor is demonstrating a common source of conflict. He was making great efforts to meet his own emotional need for love, probably assuming he was also meeting Susan’s need for love. When he did not get the quality time he thought he deserved, he became critical of Susan. Her love language was words of affirmation, so she felt deeply hurt by his negative words. So, another couple starts a long deployment with a fractured relationship.

Connor’s expectations were unrealistic. He was trying to “load up” on enough quality time to see him through deployment. The truth is that quality time cannot be stored up. However, we can speak quality time while deployed. (See suggestions at the end of this chapter.)

Like words of affirmation, the language of quality time also has many dialects. One of the most common dialects is that of
quality conversation
. By quality conversation, I mean sympathetic dialogue where two individuals are sharing their experiences, thoughts, feelings, and desires in a friendly, uninterrupted context. Most individuals who complain that their spouse does not talk do not mean literally that he or she never says a word. They mean that he or she seldom takes part in sympathetic dialogue. If your spouse’s primary love language is quality time, such dialogue is crucial to his or her emotional sense of being loved.

Quality conversation is quite different from the first love language. Words of affirmation focus on what we are saying, whereas quality conversation focuses on what we are hearing. If I am sharing my love for you by means of quality time and we are going to spend that time in conversation, it means I will focus on drawing you out, listening sympathetically to what you have to say. I will ask questions, not in a badgering manner but with a genuine desire to understand your thoughts, feelings, and desires.

I met Patrick when he was forty-three and had been married for seventeen years. He sat in the leather chair in my office, and after briefly introducing himself, he leaned forward and said with great emotion, “Dr. Chapman, I have been a fool, a real fool.”

“What has led you to that conclusion?” I asked.

“I’ve been married for seventeen years,” he said, “and my wife has left me. Now I realize what a fool I’ve been.”

I repeated my original question, “In what way have you been a fool?”

“My wife would come home from work and tell me about the problems in her office. I’d listen to her and then tell her what I thought she should do. I advised her to confront the problem. ‘Problems don’t go away. You have to talk with the people involved or your supervisor.’ The next day she would come home from work and tell me about the same problems. I would ask her if she did what I had suggested the day before. She hadn’t. So I’d repeat my advice. She would come home the next day and tell me about the same problems. Again I would ask her if she had done what I had suggested. She would shake her head and say no.

“After three or four nights of that, I got angry. I told her not to expect any sympathy from me if she wasn’t willing to take my advice. It hurt me to see her living under such stress because I knew she didn’t have to. The next time she’d bring up the problem, I said, ‘If you’re not going to listen to my advice, I don’t want to hear it.’

“What a fool I was,” he said, “what a fool! Now I realize she didn’t want advice when she told me about her struggles at work. She wanted sympathy. She wanted me to listen, to give her attention, to let her know I could understand the hurt, the stress, the pressure. She wanted to know I loved her and I was with her. She didn’t want advice; she just wanted to know I understood. But I never tried to understand. I was too busy giving advice. What a fool. And now she is gone.”

Patrick’s wife had been pleading for quality conversation. Emotionally, she longed for him to focus attention on her by listening to her pain and frustration. Patrick was not focusing on listening but on speaking. He listened only long enough to hear the problem and formulate a solution. He didn’t listen long enough or well enough to hear her cry for support and understanding.

Many of us are like Patrick. We are trained to analyze problems and create solutions. We forget that marriage is a relationship, not a project to be completed or a problem to solve. A relationship calls for sympathetic listening with a view to understanding the other person’s thoughts, feelings, and desires. We must be willing to give advice but only when it’s requested and never in a condescending manner. Most of us have little training in listening. We are far more efficient in thinking and speaking. Learning to listen may be as difficult as learning a foreign language, but learn we must, if we want to communicate love. That is especially true if your spouse’s primary love language is quality time and his or her dialect is quality conversation. Fortunately, numerous books and articles have been written on developing the art of listening. I will not seek to repeat what is written elsewhere but suggest the following summary of practical tips.

1. Maintain eye contact when your spouse is talking. That keeps your mind from wandering and communicates that he/she has your full attention.

2. Don’t listen to your spouse and do something else at the same time. Remember, quality time is giving someone your undivided attention. If you are doing something you cannot turn from immediately, tell your spouse the truth. A positive approach might be, “I know you are trying to talk to me and I’m interested, but I want to give you my full attention. I can’t do that right now, but if you will give me ten minutes to finish this, I’ll sit down and listen to you.” Most spouses will respect such a request.

3. Listen for feelings. Ask yourself, “What emotion is my spouse experiencing?” When you think you have the answer, confirm it. For example, “It sounds to me like you are feeling disappointed because I forgot __________.” That gives him the chance to clarify his feelings. It also communicates you are listening intently to what he is saying.

4. Observe body language. Clenched fists, trembling hands, tears, furrowed brows, and eye movement may give you clues as to what the other is feeling. Sometimes body language speaks one message while words speak another. Ask for clarification to make sure you know what she is really thinking and feeling.

5. Refuse to interrupt. Recent research has indicated that the average individual listens for only seventeen seconds before interrupting and interjecting his own ideas. If I give you my undivided attention while you are talking, I will refrain from defending myself or hurling accusations at you or dogmatically stating my position. My goal is to discover your thoughts and feelings. My objective is not to defend myself or to set you straight. It is to understand you.