As I explained in Part 1, how you hear the words, "I love you," and how your spouse hears them may be as different as speaking Italian or Swedish.
No matter how hard you try to express love in "Italian", if your spouse only understands "Swedish", you will have many difficulties in your marriage.
I experienced this first hand in my marriage, because my husband and I hear "I love you" in completely different ways.
So, how do you hear, "I love you?" More than likely you instantly know how you hear "I love you" from your spouse.
For me, I know my husband loves me when he gives me gifts.
It broke my heart when my husband gave me an IOU for Christmas one year.
But when I sat down and thought about it, what's the one thing that I could NEVER live without? The answer to that question is physical touch.
While I absolutely adore receiving gifts, I would just wither and die if my husband would never touch me again.
And it's not the sexual type of touch, but having him hold my hand at the mall.
It's having him sit close to me on the couch, give me a hug, a back rub, or running his fingers through my hair.
Another thing to look at is what do you ask for most often from your spouse? I always ask my husband to pay attention to me.
Of course, since he hears love through words of affirmation, he in turn speaks love to me in the same way; telling me I'm beautiful, how great I am, how he can't live without me because I'm such a wonderful person.
I then roll my eyes, turn away and start to cry.
What I was asking for in my own way, was for him to hug me and kiss me, touch my face and look into my eyes, but he didn't HEAR that.
A third way you can discover how you hear, "I love you," is to notice how you express love to your spouse.
Initially for me, this was a toss up, because I feel gift giving is so important and I'm also always touching my husband.
When I sat down and thought about it, yet again, my answer was physical touch.
I'm always placing a hand on my husband.
I'll reach out and run my fingers through his hair, touch his cheek, give him a hug.
So take a moment and jot down your initial reaction to what you think your love language might be: quality time, words of affirmation, gifts, acts of service, or physical touch.
Then I encourage you to journal and think about if there might be a different way that you hear, "I love you.
" How does your spouse hear, "I love you?" You can go ahead and try to guess, which is probably what you've been doing all along up 'til now, or you can have a conversation with your spouse and ask them! What a great conversation starter -- "I hear, 'I love you,' when...
but I think you hear, 'I love you,' differently from me.
What do you think?" And then go on to discuss what you've learned about yourself.
Be sure and let your spouse come to their own conclusions.