About a month and a half to two months ago, I read and re-read the Five Languages of Love and it all clicked in my head. I realized that I had been telling my wife how much I loved her by use of sex/touching and by words of affirmation toward her. She on the other hand had been telling me how much she loved me by acts of service/devotion and by spending quality time talking to me each day. I was shocked to think that the woman I loved so much and who I felt didn't love me, had been telling me all along that she loved me, but in a way that I couldn't understand. I felt so dumb and stupid!
Yes I did figure it out and made a point to do various acts of devotion for her, like fill her car with gas when it go low, do a few more chores around the house that she doesn't like, put the cloth grocery bags in the car after she goes shopping so she doesn't forget them. I also made a point of giving her quality time by asking about her day and her week in the morning and then asking questions at dinner and listening to what she felt. I also made a point to try to empathize with her and not constantly give her suggestions.
She has commented on how much she has liked the change in the way I treat her and that my changes have caused her to have feelings for me she hasn't had in a long time.
In your permanent post you talk about the four stages of SSM recover: (1) fix/heal yourself, (2) figure out what your partner needs and give them what they need, (3) get your partner on board, and (4) work together on the recovery. I started the heal myself about August of this year. I figured out what my wife needed and started to provide that in late October or early November.
I thought that my wife telling me that "she wanted to read the books I had been reading and talk about them" was sign that she was "on board." I now realize that I read a lot into that and, as you pointed out, have been pushing pretty hard. I now see getting her on board as not yet being complete, but I do think that we (as a couple) are working on the recovery.
You and others have cautioned me that it will take time. I am coming to understand that as well.
You indicate that people still want to speak in their own primary language of love. I agree with that and have thought about it even prior to your bringing it up.
My feeling is that if touch/sex are my primary language of love, I need to understand that it may not be my wife's primary language of love, but maybe if we both work at it, we can package our statements of love to each other in a way that allows us to deliver the statement of love in our language and allows our spouse to accept the statement of love in their language.
For example, if the LD partner is an act of service speaker and the HD partner is a touch/sex speaker, can't couples massage be packaged in a way that both can speak and hear love? My hope that I am going to try to experiment with is that I provide my wife with a non-sexual relaxing massage that she views as an act of service to her and yet I am allowed to deliver it as a statement of love through touching. Similarly, she can give me a back/shoulder massage as an act of devotion and I can receive it as touching.
I am looking for non-sexual ways that may be sex-like or touching that can be packaged such that my LD wife whose primary language of love is acts of service and whose secondary language of love is spending quality time will feel loved from her sex/touching primary love language husband whose secondary love language is words of affirmation.
If we can find these, then I think we can be true to ourselves and make sure that we each get the love that our partner needs. In saying this I want to be clear that I also think that I and she will need to do other things specifically in the languages of love that our partner uses that augments these "packaged" interchanges. I am committed to making my wife feel loved. I would just like to find a few ways in which we can both say I love you in a way that feels best and that is accepted as a true statement of love.
>43 years of marriage--My wife and I are now closer than we have been in decades. I believe that my SSM is over.
