The 5 Love Languages

Reviving a Marriage’s Dynamic

Links to My 3 Published Books

Quick note: I have three books out now, a suspense novel, a YA coming-of-age novel, and a fictional memoir about living in NYC during the pandemic. CLICK HERE to see the books with links. Also, I am finishing up a collection of my most controversial essays covering politics, culture and literature culled from my other stack, Sincere American Writing, since 2022. Look for that soon. (I’m looking for a book designer for the cover for that and some readers pre-pub to give blurbs/quotes, if you know anyone or might be interested; hoping to get writers on the platform with 5-10K subscribers and beyond.)

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My wife and I have only been together for 2.4 years, since August of 2022. We’ve been married for only 1.2 years. (October, 2023.) This feels inaccurate when I write it (or say it out loud) because so much has happened in that short amount of time: COVID, my father passing away, our dog passing, Britney’s son leaving home and graduating from high school, us leaving Lompoc for Portland, Oregon, me selling my Bay Area house, getting married, traveling in Africa and Asia, etc.

But here we are, as the clock claims 2.4 years in.

Lately—and I won’t get into too much detail here—we’ve been having some issues. Truth is, from the early months of our relationship it’s never been exactly smooth. To some degree that’s due to me: I’m an only-child, difficult, stubborn, and the kind of guy who’s always been described as “intense.” A dedicated writer, an “artist.” You know: That guy. I may be 14-plus years sober, but that doesn’t mean I don’t sometimes still act like an asshole, a child, a narcissistic prick.

On the flip side, Britney, too is an only-child. She has her own version of intensity. She also struggles with ADD. She has a drinking “thing.” We come from different socioeconomic backgrounds: Me from the upper middleclass, she from the working-class. (Sort of. There’s some complexity there on her end.) She sees, thinks about and interacts with money very differently from me. I’ve always come from the privileged, anti-bourgeoise perspective of money isn’t real. I mean, of course I know that money very much IS real, but in a symbolic, metaphorical way, in my mind, it’s just a means to an end, the end being what I/we want to do in life, which for me is mostly travel. Britney, on the other hand, is a saver, a woman who checks our bank account scrupulously every single morning, who literally knows when I buy a cup of tea. She monitors, she observes, she gets extra money by using points and multiple cards, etc. She’s a whiz when it comes to our finances.

When it comes to the Big Things—travel, cats, routine, moving, politics, life values in general—we’re more or less on the same page. But, when it comes to the little day-to-day bullshit; that, actually, is where we struggle and clash. We travel very well together. But during the regular, monotonous work week we get tangled up during our sensitive morning routines.

For example, she wakes up at 5, 6am and is ready to rock. She can open her eyes and start yammering about news, politics, you name it. Me? Don’t talk to me until after my tenth cup of Irish Breakfast Tea. Seriously. Ok, not tenth, but say third.

Also, she has a tendency to sometimes give me attitude when I ask her something, especially if she’s cleaning the house or it’s the morning, and really especially if she has her sacred Air Pods in. (When I interrupt her she sometimes throws me a Death Stare.)

Anyway, suffice to say that, over the course of the last month or two, we’ve had a series of Big Fights wherein we both felt like we were standing on the edge, leaning over the precipice of our marriage. We both agree now that, probably nothing truly serious (aka divorce) would have actually happened…but the point is we were starting to feel out of control and powerless.

Enter therapy.

We got a therapist (we had one before for a while a year ago as well, which did help) and did one session with her. She was good: Practical, basic, down-to-Earth. She didn’t try to rope us in financially to a 1-2 times weekly thing. We could call her whenever we needed her. This was through Better Health. Anyway, she mentioned the book The 5 Love Languages, the famous slim volume by Gary Chapman. I’d heard of this book many times over the decades and I’d always been curious. This time, I found it right after the session, on Audible, and, while dog-walking the next day, I listened.

And it changed my whole perspective on our marriage.

I realized immediately that we’d been speaking in different tongues; we didn’t understand each other’s languages. It seemed so clear, so obvious, so ridiculously easy. I couldn’t believe it. We listened to sections together. We ordered the paperback version so we could highlight and comment on the physical pages. Clearly, my love language is Words of Affirmation. Clearly Britney’s love language is Acts of Service. (The therapist says this is the most common combination.) In other words: I want verbal affirmation that she loves me and she believes in me and thinks I’m good, talented and smart. She wants me, on the other hand, to clean the cat litter boxes without being asked, take the trash and recycling out, get groceries while she cooks, etc.

It. Made. So. Much. Sense.

I was expecting her to understand my love language, but, because it isn’t her love language, she struggled. And so did I. It was hard for me at first to understand that “superficial” things like cleaning out the cat litter could make her feel loved. Similarly, she had a hard time grasping why her saying things out loud to me would make me feel loved. Wasn’t she married to me? Weren’t we moving to Spain together? Didn’t she make us dinner all the time? What else did I need?

But then we understood.

So the past week-and-a-half we’ve been practicing, and, wow, what a different world. Suddenly we’re talking to each other in a much softer way. We’re being kinder, lighter, smiling more, kissing more. Her second love language (mine is quality time) is Receiving Gifts, but not expensive jewelry or things like that, just small, sentimental things. So, I left her a few brief “love letters” on little yellow Post-It notes around the house. She loved these.

It’s made me realize, too, how often I’ve come to her requesting something but I’ve said it with a negative or judgmental tone, which, of course, only pushes her to react badly. That’s where her attitude was coming from. She wasn’t just giving me attitude out of nowhere; she was reacting to the negativity I’d been putting out there. And I realized that—and this is 100% obvious but evidently I needed a reminder—marriage is work, and not only that but constant growth, change, upkeep. Meaning we couldn’t rest on our laurels and do the same ole thing expecting the same results (the definition of “insanity” in AA, by the way); rather, I had to do my part to keep the hot orange-red flames of our passion alive. We love each other deeply—that’s never been the problem—but the way we were talking to each other and interacting was often disrespectful and tone-deaf.

I grasped that a lot of that stemmed from me.

While I know all marriages involve hardships, arguments, conflict, disagreement, and I know this is not a panacea, I do feel excited. It feels like, for the first time, I have a practical understanding of how to speak my wife’s language and open a new door which has always felt locked. We’ve always been deep with each other; we share almost everything. It wasn’t emotional intimacy that was the problem. And it wasn’t our Big Values. It was just that daily crushing rumble of being humans together in a small space sharing a bathroom and with three cats. It was how we spoke to one another. It was how much work we were willing to put into the relationship. Being married—even without kids—can sometimes be taken for granted. We think they’re not going anywhere, so we don’t put in the effort to change as much as we should.

But I’m learning that’s dangerous territory. You have to work hard at it. You have to put in the effort. You have to learn how to speak each other’s unique language.