This tears me apart to read this. I think it is so hard to communicate to each other in different love languages. I was not a LDW, for most of our marriage the sex was good and for a lot of it the sex was the only good bit. It was only the last three or four years that even that went. My H really struggled to give me the quality time I craved, and I struggled with giving him the acts of service he needed. I guess I can really understand why your W says she feels her soul is being ripped apart. I guess if I had really thought about it and we had talked it through to the same level you guys have then if my H had said "I can't feel loved unless you keep the house spotless and iron my shirts" then I would have needed to vomit. It would have had me in tears. Because to me doing stuff like that is BORING and SOUL DESTROYING so doing it even to please the man I (at one time) loved was very difficult and very hard not to keep score over what he was doing in return. No doubt to him it felt like he was asking for very little and why wouldn't you do these kindnesses for the one you love?
I guess every time he would come home from work and the house wasn't in apple pie order he felt unloved. Just as I felt unloved when he would spend evening after evening in front of the computer barely exchanging a word with me.
The very worst thing in the world to me was when our marriage was becoming SSM and it felt like the only time he would become amorous was when I was doing the dishes.
I think marriage preparation classes should check which love languages you speak and if you don't speak the same ones then you should nix the M.
if we can be sufficient to ourselves, we need fear no entangling webs Erica Jong
