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Why You Need to Communicate Your Love Language

Phil with flower and hammerWe are now open for guest posting! We want to encourage all of you to send us your theme appropriate posts on relationships and conflict-free peaceful relating. Click here for our submissions guidelines. To start out this new series, we would like to offer this very personal and inspiring guest post. The author requested anonymity.

Dear Phil and Maude,
I felt moved to write about some recent insights into my relationship that I’ve had. I have learned a lot from your blog and aspire to the kind of connectedness that you two co-create.

My partner and I haven’t had much time to talk lately. So when we were finally connecting in conversation, too many things came up and resulted in what seemed like an emotional stew. Later I realized that the argument could be distilled down to me having a meltdown, crying “You don’t care about my feelings!” and him responding with “Don’t you see everything I DO for you?” and me saying “We’re not talking about that right now”.

It seems to be the basis of a lot of arguments. Women are feeling-oriented. Men are action-oriented. What matters most to women is feelings. What matters most to men is actions.

In fact, though I think we need to learn a lot about feelings (which are in the spiritual realm) from women, I think we can learn from men who are more visual and action-oriented, more focused on things than feelings. Visuals are “matter” focused, things we can see. Action is dealing usually with moving around “matter”.

This material realm matters. This earth matters. Our bodies matter. We need to take action to take care of these things.

Women deal with matter also just by virtue of being alive, but especially through being very connected to the earth through our bodies; carrying babies inside us, birthing, breastfeeding, menstruating, keeping the babies alive through caring for our environments, house-cleaning and cooking for the family traditionally. Women are often healthier, taking better care of their health than men in general.

Women have been called the “Spiritual Standard Bearers” in that we keep love alive, we focus on how people in our family and community are feeling and we tend to their inner well-being. Many men do this also, just as many women are involved in the material affairs of humankind. We all have a dual nature, our yin and yang sides, the anima and animus. But I think this feeling/action difference is still a generality that plays a part in most relationships. Sometimes the roles are reversed, with the man being the more sensitive partner and the woman the more pragmatic. We live in more gender-fluid times and I think that’s a good thing. We can all explore the masculine and feminine sides of ourselves and thereby be more in tune with the opposite sex.

But we will never fully understand each other, men and women in general. The older I get, the more I realize how absolutely different we are. It is making me able to cut people more slack. It isn’t possible to fully understand childbirth or love or God until you’ve had the experience of those things. Similarly, we can’t fully understand a man if we’ve never been one. But through seeking to understand, through listening, through softening into compassion, we can understand a little more, enough for peace.

My therapist said “Your man seems like action is his love language. That’s how he shows you love. So that’s how he wants to be loved. You need to do things for him to make him feel loved. What things could you do to make him feel loved?” That was such a great question, shifting my perspective from seeking ways to get him to speak my love language to instead thinking about how I can speak his.

And I know the actions that make him feel loved, and I started doing those more often, and very quickly I started to feel more loved too. I believe this must be because as soon as he felt loved, he was moved to express his love to me in ways he knows by now that are most meaningful to me. (Here I was thinking for two years that speaking my love language to him was going to spark him).

Relationships can be such a rich opportunity for growth. Growth together as a couple and as two individuals. And as we learn to relate better to ourselves and each other, we are also learning to be better in every relationship we have; with God, our spirit, our friends, our community, and our family of humankind.

That’s what Phil and Maude’s teachings are all about. A peaceful world, one relationship at a time!
Love,
Anon

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BookshelfIn our blog this week, our guest blogger wrote about why you need to communicate your love language. Here are some good articles about clear couples communication, and an amusing video, too.

5 Ways Men & Women Communicate Differently "Men and women are different in many ways. They see the world through completely different perspectives. The key to understanding their differences is in the way that men and women communicate."

I'm a psychologist, and I've found one of the biggest relationship problems people have always boils down to the same thing " love languages are a thing (there are 5 of them) and understanding what your primary love language is can be as helpful as the name is cheesy. The best part of discovering your love language style? The more you understand the different ways people show love, the more likely you are to notice those gestures and feel loved. When you start to give and receive love in a way that's more personalized, it engenders an even deeper connection between you and your boo."

Sex Talk: Knowing How Males and Females Communicate Can Save Your Relationship "There are reasons men and women communicate the way they do. Understanding how and why our communications differ can go a long way to helping us become better listeners and better speakers. What’s at stake? Just the survival of our relationships.  We know that approximately 50% of first marriages end in divorce and later marriages do even worse. Even in marriages that remain intact, communication often is miserable and can lead to irritability and anger, as well as depression and despair."

Here's a cute video: It's Not About The Nail "'Don't try to fix it. I just need you to listen.' Every man has heard these words. And they are the law of the land. No matter what."

 

Spreading peace one relationship at a time
Phil and Maude
 
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