When The Love Languages Fail (And Love And Respect Isn't Helping)
Many a spouse, desperately seeking ways to improve their relationship, have turned to books like The Five Love Languages, Love & Respect, and His Needs Her Needs (among many other similar “relationship help” books). You learn from the books that, in order to have a good relationship, you have to satisfy your partner’s needs so that your partner feels filled up. Then, when you are meeting your partner’s needs, your partner will be better able to meet your needs, and you will have a better relationship.
They are great books for people who want to understand their partner better and be able to lean in to their partner’s preferences. And those books can take a relationship from good to great.
But many people, desperate to improve their relationship, pick up a book like these not realizing that they are the only one in their relationship with the goal of understanding their partner. They know that the ability to understand their partner better will make it easier to get along with them, enjoy life with them, and experience unity. And they want that. And I’d bet you do, too.
Not only do you want to understand your partner, but you also have a goal for your partner to understand you better. You know that if your partner could just see where you’re coming from and what is missing in the relationship, that you would have a better relationship. And you believe that that’s what you both want.
The problem
The problem is that, although you might believe that your partner wants a better relationship, if they aren’t doing anything about it themselves, if you are doing all the work and just trying to drag them along, then their actions are telling you that they aren’t interested. You are the only one with the goal of understanding your partner and improving the relationship. And no matter how much you want your significant other to partner with you in that goal, you can’t set goals for someone else or impose yours on them. Others aren’t likely to reach the goals that you set for them. People tend to pursue their own goals, not someone else’s.
So you have one person with goals - you. You want to understand your partner better, you want to be understood, and you want your relationship to get better. And you buy the books, tell your partner that you should read the book together, and you start working on all the advice in the books.
And, after months (or years!) of trying… your partner isn’t implementing what they learned in the books.
How can you make your partner get it?
Here’s what you don’t know about those books: The authors assume that both people in the relationship have the capacity for emotional health. That means that both people in the couple want to learn about the other and learn how to love the other better. It means that both people are seeking, independently of the other and of their own volition, ways to be better.
If you have to beg, threaten, or bribe your partner to read the book, that is not the same as them having a desire to learn. That’s YOU having a desire for your partner to learn - and while you might be able to lead a horse to water, you can’t make it drink.
But isn’t there’s value in just leading that horse to the water? Maybe the horse will realize its need for the water and start to drink it. Or maybe the horse will put its lips to the water and drink a little in even though it doesn’t want to, and that will help a little.
Here’s the thing: Even if your partner looks at the words on the page, and it looks like they’re drinking it in, that doesn’t mean they are. Looking at the water is not the same as drinking it in. Your partner has to see their need for it in order to get anything out of it. And you telling them that they need it is not likely to convince them that they do. It might convince them to look at it and act like they’re drinking it in, but they won’t actually drink it in unless they want it. [Read my article on how to get them to want it]
What’s the worst that could happen?
Now it wouldn’t be the worst thing if all that your prompting does is result in them sort of reading it - but it’s much worse than that. Your partner’s lack of desire to read it and implement it may indicate a much bigger problem - a problem with their character, a problem with their capacity for emotional health, and a problem with their ability to do their part in the relationship.
And when your partner has those problems and the two of you read the books, rather than getting you both on the same page and improving the relationship, the relationship becomes more imbalanced. You are trying harder and your partner is just reaping the benefits without putting in the same effort, and your relationship doesn’t feel like it’s 50/50 (or even 100%/100%) at all. You, having the capacity for emotional health, are drinking it in and implementing what you’ve learned, and your partner just doesn’t seem to get it. Maybe they’re sort of trying, but it still feels like there’s a disconnect.
The Love Languages as a weapon
Not only have the books not helped your partner, but they have given them ammunition to use against you. They now know that you are reading about the importance of loving them and respecting them and speaking their love language and meeting their needs - and they are using those expectations against you. They are letting you know that you aren’t doing what you’re supposed to be doing, and that’s why things aren’t better.
When you try to use the books to help them understand you, they turn it back on you and let you know that you should just focus on your part. Or they say that they are trying and accuse you of just not seeing it. Or they complain that, no matter what they do, it’s never enough. Or they say that you need counseling. The book has become a weapon.
The Love Languages as an excuse
The other problem with these books is that they provide excuses for why your partner is the way he/she is. They can reinforce stereotypes that make you believe that you have to just accept certain behavior because that’s just who your partner is - even if that behavior feels wrong.
Concepts like “men need sex” and “men are like waffles and women are like spaghetti” can start to be used as excuses for why you just need to accommodate who they are and work on communicating differently when communication isn’t the problem. It causes you to let go of reasonable expectations and can lead you to sacrificing more of yourself and the things that are important to you in order to accommodate your partner - while you are left feeling unknown and invalidated.
The truth is that everyone that God created is unique, and there are no blanket character traits that hold true for the majority of people in any category. And when you lump people into stereotypes, as these books tend to do, it puts limits in your mind and in theirs as to what they are capable of. It allows behavior to be excused that shouldn’t be excused. And it prohibits them from moving toward who they could be because they are limited by the stereotype.
We are all people - and the only category we are to fit ourselves into is the category of people designed to be transformed into the image of Christ. We aren’t to be limited by our male or female roles, but are to reach for righteousness in Christ - men and women alike. That leaves no excuses but puts everyone in a position to “press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called us heavenward in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 3:14)
When the Love Languages don’t work
It can be so confusing and frustrating and exhausting at this point, because the solution seems so simple to you: Just do what the book says. But with your partner, it is becoming apparent that nothing is simple.
That’s the real danger in reading those books when your partner does not have the capacity for emotional health. Rather than making things better, it makes things worse, giving your partner even more power (and ammunition) while leading you to feel more and more responsible for “doing your part” while at the same time powerless to make any real difference.
What to do when the Love Languages fail
What’s the solution? When you’ve done everything that the books have told you to do and things haven’t gotten better, what’s next?
Accept the reality that your partner is indicating to you that they do not have any personal interest in understanding you or learning how to love you better. I know it’s hard to fathom because you don’t live like that - you live to be better. Not everyone does. Accept that.
Shift your thinking from “What can I do to get them to understand?” to “They don’t get it, so how am I going to deal with that?”
Stop trying to make your fantasies come true about what your relationship should look like and start living in the reality of what it is - and adapt to that. Healthy people accept and adapt to reality. Unhealthy people expect reality to adapt to them.
Understand that you don’t have to keep trying harder if it isn’t working. The definition of insanity is doing the same things over and over and expecting different results. Don’t try harder - try something different.
Start listening to yourself. Your body (breathing, heart rate, brain fog, tense muscles, headaches, fatigue, etc) is trying to tell you that something is wrong. Your emotions (perhaps especially the ones that you are trying to push down, like anger, despair, or disappointment) are trying to give you information about what’s really happening. Start paying attention and asking yourself “Why do I feel this way?” And “What do I need to do with this information?” [Get my resource that will guide you through figuring out how to sort that out]
Find out what Jesus would do (you might be surprised) and follow his example. God handles relationships much differently than the way you have been. Get closer to him so you can know his will better and be transformed more and more into the image of Christ.
Read Scripture. God has a lot more to say about how to do relationships than what those books would have you believe. For example, the book Love and Respect, working from Ephesians 5: 33, will tell you that men are commanded to love their wives because they don’t need to be commanded to respect because respect comes naturally for men but love doesn’t. And vice versa for women and love: women aren’t commanded to love their husbands because love comes naturally - instead they are commanded to respect. However, look at 1 Peter 3: 7 “Husbands, in the same way be considerate as you live with your wives, and treat them with respect.” And now look at Titus 2: 4 “urge the younger women to love their husbands.” Here we see two passages that are commanding husbands to respect and commanding wives to love - exactly what the book says isn’t necessary to command. So we have to be careful not to build an entire theology of relationships around one passage of Scripture.
The Lesson
When you read books or hear sermons or obtain other resources on relationships, don’t take someone else’s word for how it should work at face value. Everyone who teaches is working within their own context, and it might not be what you need. Do what it says in Acts and be a good Berean - the Bereans “examined the Scriptures every day to see if what was being said was true.” You should do that, too. Allow God to speak to you through his Word, understand that not all relationships benefit from the same approach (so we should use God’s relationship with us as a model), and it’s then that you will discover that…
hope isn’t found in our situation changing; it’s found in our situation…
If the Love Languages (or other books) have failed you, and you’d like to learn a different approach, Schedule a Breakthrough Session.
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