In the early years of our marriage my husband and I went through Gary Chapman’s 5 Love Languages study. We watched the videos, read the book, and took the test. We discovered that his love languages were small gifts and quality time and mine were words of affirmation and physical touch. Then several years ago we took the online Myers-Briggs personality tests just for fun and we learned that I’m an introvert and he’s an extrovert. I’m also ADD and he’s more OCD. Our love languages and personalities are complete opposite. This makes for an interesting life together.
Over the last seventeen years we have learned a few things that were a cause of tension in our marriage and we have learned some simple solutions that have helped tremendously. My husbands extrovert self comes into a gathering immediately connecting. Then when his extrovert cup runneth over, he is ready to leave the gathering and go decompress from it all. My introvert self takes a while to get comfortable enough in a gathering to start connecting.
Before we realized this about ourselves we would end up in a “discussion” over the time to leave a gathering. The issue being that by the time I was actually comfortable enough to stay, he had done had all he could stand and was ready to leave. After seventeen years we have discovered that the best way to handle this is to drive separately or if that is not possible we now better understand the “Are you ready to go?” question.
Marriage is such an unraveling of mystery… and not just of the person you are married to, but of yourself as well.
“Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.
Ephesians 5:31-33
Sometimes in the unraveling of this mystery love languages and personalities collide. We have a joke between us on the hard days, my husband will look at me and say, “my OCD and your ADD are not playing well together today.” On those days we know we need to add a little personal space and grace and the day goes much better. Usually these days come as a result of added stresses and lack of sleep… they are not caused by a lack of love for one another.
When love languages collide it can FEEL worse. We are very involved in life. We actually had to get a family calendar app so that we all could keep up with what was going on where and when. When life gets busy the quality time and small gifts love tank starts to get empty. This can lead to a lack of affirming words that cause the words of affirmation love tank to get empty or even feel attacked which causes a withdrawal which leads to lack of physical touch which causes an even emptier tank. This collision can lead to a downward spiral of doubt and despair.
This spiral will continue until someone is willing to make a deposit in the others tank even though they do not FEEL like it.
My husband and I were in a funk a few weeks ago. Then out of the blue he sends me a text with words of affirmation. DEPOSIT! Then a few days later I brought home a few small gifts for him. DEPOSIT! Then I got the grand idea to skip Wednesday night church and have a date night. I took the kids to youth group and came home and we went out alone. Quality time (check). Physical Touch (check). DOUBLE DEPOSIT!
Sometimes life’s circumstances makes these deposits hard. My words of affirmation and physical touch tank lost three depositors this past year and so did my husband’s quality time and small gifts. You see these tanks are not just filled by each other. Our parents, grandparents, siblings, and children also make deposits into our tanks. One of the things of marriage is that we are so close in proximity and bond we experience the most “reality” of the love tank emptiness. However, we are also the most easily available to refill the supply.
Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.”
Genesis 2:18
When our tanks start to get empty it’s like they become an empty well that echoes back to you. What happens so often is that the enemy of our souls recognizes when they are getting empty and he begins speaking his lies into that emptiness and his lies echo back to us and we think they are our own thoughts. He knows what lies to use to have the most effect in the shortest amount of time. He knows what your struggles and weaknesses are and he is just waiting for an opportunity to exploit them. This is why a relationship with Christ is vital.
Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”
John 4:13-14
Apart from Christ people will never be able to keep our love tanks filled, no matter how hard they try. When our well begins to run dry, it is the Living Water that springs up. It is the Word of our Creator God and the presence of His Holy Spirit that will fill us so that the lies of the enemy can do no more than just echo for a brief moment. It His love being poured out on us and springing up within us that will fill us to the level that we can step out in obedience of faith and make a deposit in another’s tank even when and especially when we don’t feel like it.
So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.
1 John 4:16
The enemy of our souls wants our love tanks empty so that his lies will echo all the louder. He wants it so void that he echoes so loudly that he drowns out our own thoughts and replaces them with his own. He wants us completely dependent on people to keep our tank filled because he knows people will fail us. The love of God however will not… It is in fact the love of God that gives us the strength to love others.
God wants to use us to be His vessels to pour His love into others. I believe that He wants that pouring to start at home. It only takes one person who is willing to drop their bucket into the well of Living Water and allow the love of God within to stop the downward spiral.
Do you need to be that one today?
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Discover your love language: Love Language Test
Take the personality test: MBTI online