New Driver & Learning Love Languages

Hurrah! Esther flew through her driver's testing in 15 minutes, the day after Memorial Day. She was even complimented on her parking skills by the examiner! So Esther is proudly driving herself to Basketball Camp this week, Volleyball Camp next week..and hopefully to a summer job once her two camps are over. I'm watching to see how long her extreme carefulness and love affair with her 2000 red Pontiac Grand Am will last. Speaking about love affairs, in our counseling & reading for each session, Louis and I have found that we speak entirely different love languages. He is essentially trilingual in "Physical Touch", "Words of Affirmation", & "Quality Time". I rate conversant mainly in "Acts of Service" and don't appear to value the "Physical Touch" much at all. His other two languages I value moderately, but no where near the top as he does in expressing and receiving emotional love. No wonder we were struggling at showing each other the love we really felt & thought it wasn't returned very well. We spoke different languages which automatically created confusion and misunderstanding in our marriage. Have you read about these love languages, as Gary Chapman defined them in his 1990's book, "The Five Love Languages"? Louis would tell me as he gave me a hug, "Honey, you look great today." "I love you sooo much!" "It's wonderful that we can share this time together!" I would have taken time to make a delicious & healthy picnic lunch, driven the car since his back has been giving him sciatica and checked out the times the event was starting or lasting, etc. We are each using our primary love language and are assuming the other person is fully appreciating how much we love him/her. Multiply this by 33 years. I am wondering why Louis never "backs up" those hugs and words with completion of little tasks around the house that I asked if he could do months or years ago. I wonder if those hugs and words are meaningless since that is how they feel to me. He is wondering why he is always the initiator in holding hands or hugging, suggesting an event we can attend together, or saying those affirming words. I often catch on and respond, but never seem to think to express my love that way. We both end up feeling like the other is not really that loving of a spouse. You never speak different languages with your spouse, do you? Maybe "giving gifts" is one of your languages. That is not high on either Louis or my expression list. Anyway, we are learning these things now and starting to attempt speaking each other's languages. Stay tuned.