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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Gary Chapman
Read between
June 4 - June 5, 2019
Love is the most important word in the English language—
Psychologists have concluded that the need to feel loved is a primary human emotional need.
“What good is the house, the cars, the place at the beach, or any of the rest of it if your wife doesn’t love you?”
At the heart of humankind’s existence is the desire to be intimate and to be loved by another.
The object of love is not getting something you want but doing something for the well-being of the one you love.
“I felt disappointed and hurt that you didn’t offer to help me this evening,” said with gentle directness, can be an expression of love. The person speaking wants to be known by her spouse. She is taking steps to build intimacy by sharing her feelings. She is asking for an opportunity to discuss a hurt in order to find healing.
An ancient sage once said, “A soft answer turns away anger.”
You will seek understanding and reconciliation, and not to prove
your own perception as the only logical way to interpret what has happened.
Love doesn’t keep a score of wrongs.
Love doesn’t bring up past failures.
None of us is ...
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We have sometimes done and said hurtful things to our spouses. We cannot erase the past. We can only confess it and agree that it was wrong. We can ask for forgiven...
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forgiveness. If I choose justice and seek to pay her back or make her pay for her wrongdoing, I am making myself the judge and she the felon. Intimacy becomes impossible. If, however, I choose to forgive, intimacy can be restored. Forgiveness is the way of love.
mess up every new day with yesterday.
They insist on bringing into today the failures of yesterday, and in so doing, they pollute a po...
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We cannot erase the past, but we can accept it as history. We can choose to live today free from the failures of yesterday. Forgiveness is not a feeling; it is a commitment. It is a choice to show mercy, not to hold the offense up against the offender. Forgiveness is an expression of love. “I love you. I care about you, and I choose to forgive you. Even though my feelings of hurt may linger, I will not allow what has happened to come between us. I hope that we can learn from this experience. You are not a failure because you have failed. You are my spouse, and together we will go on from
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love is always a choice.
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.
The essential ingredients in a quality activity are: (1) at least one of you wants to do it, (2) the other is willing to do it, (3) both of you know why you are doing it—to express love by being together.
Each of us must decide daily to love or not to love our spouses.
Allowing oneself to be used or manipulated by another is not an act of love. It is, in fact, an act of treason.
Touching your spouse as you walk through the room where he is sitting takes only a moment. Touching each other when you leave the house and again when you return may involve only a brief kiss or hug but will speak volumes to your spouse.
Once you have shared that information, I suggest that you play the following game three times a week for three weeks. The game is called “Tank Check,” and it is played like this. When you come home, one of you says to the other, “On a scale of zero to ten, how is your love tank tonight?” Zero means empty, and 10 means “I am full of love and can’t handle any more.” You give a reading on your emotional love tank—10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, or 0, indicating how full it is. Your spouse says, “What could I do to help fill it?”
Love Is a Choice
How can we speak each other’s love language when we are full of hurt, anger, and resentment over past failures?
“I’m sorry. I know I have hurt you, but I would like to make the future different. I would like to love you in your language. I would like to meet your needs.”
Love doesn’t erase the past, but it makes the future different.
Meeting my wife’s need for love is a choice I make each day.
true, long-lasting emotional love is a choice and that emotional love could be reborn in his marriage if he and his wife learned to love each other in the right love languages.
THE POWER OF CHOOSING TO LOVE
Love is a choice. And either partner can start the process today.
Love is not our only emotional need. Psychologists have observed that among our basic needs are the need for security, self-worth, and significance. Love, however, interfaces with all of those.
If I feel loved by my spouse, I can relax, knowing that my lover will do me no ill. I feel secure in her presence. I may face many uncertainties in my vocation. I may have enemies in other areas of my life, but with my spouse I feel secure.
My sense of self-worth is fed by the fact that my spouse loves me. After all, if she loves ...
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Her love builds my self-esteem.
Love is not the answer to everything, but it creates a climate of security in which we can seek answers to those things that bother us.
Our choice to love was made in the midst of negative feelings toward each other.
