Tonight was the first part of the marriage conference. The speaker was Dr. Gary Chapman, and the topics were the books 'The Five Love Languages' and 'The Five Languages of Apology'.
I know what your thinking, what is wrong with our marriage that we would need to go to a marriage conference. Well believe it or not, our marriage is stronger than it ever has been and continues to get stronger. But we can all learn new things about ourselves, our spouse, our marriage and God. So, as a couple, we take full advantage of marriage conferences and/or marriage classes.
The first topic of the night was based on 'The Five Love Languages'. The idea with the languages is that we all love in different ways. We mostly learn how to love from our parents. We would watch how they would talk to each other, do things for each other and just spend time together. When we finally find the love of our life, we have to learn the love language of our partner. Now, the first couple years may go great because of our young love. But after that time passes, we need to start to really learn about each other. We need to learn our spouses love language. The languages are these: Words of Affirmation, Gifts, Quality Time, Acts of Service and Physical Touch. Discover which of these languages speaks most to your spouse and watch the transformation take place. Gary Chapman did a great job explaining these categories at the conference tonight, and goes into even more detail in the love languages book.
The other topic was 'The Five Languages of Apology'. Just as we grew up into a type of love language, we also grew up learning how to apologize. Apologizing is not the easiest thing to do, but is essential for our marriage to grow. Men must understand this even more as we tend to see apologizing as a sign of weakness. Most men grew up this way watching their Father, or have adjusted to the culture or male stereotype. What we don't realize is that apology is powerful and affective. As a couple we both have say sorry or admit we were wrong sometimes. None of us are perfect and we need to get this apology subject figured out for when we screw up. Notice I did not say 'if' you screw up, but 'when'. Gary Chapman has a book dedicated to learning these apology languages. I enjoyed hearing him speak about them and look forward to reading the book.
Tomorrow is day two of the conference. Check out these books when you get a chance. If you have read one or both of them, leave a comment and your thoughts. Thanks!
More information! http://www.5lovelanguages.com/
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