The Language Of Love

By now you have figured out the song is “Love and Marriage” and it was first recorded by Frank Sinatra in 1955. But that wasn’t the only time it was recorded. Sinatra recorded it again on a different label and it has been covered by Peggy Lee, Dinah Shore, Bing Crosby and in 2010 it was recorded by the Ska Band “Less than Jake”.

And of course the song opens with words, “Love and marriage, love and marriage

They go together like a horse and carriage

This I tell you, brother

You can't have one without the other”

This is week 3 of our Love and Marriage Series. In week one we looked at what defines a Biblical marriage along with what a Biblical Marriage isn’t. Last week we looked at God’s wedding Gift. . . Sex and the purposes of sex within marriage and the problems with sex outside of marriage.

And if you missed either of those messages you can find them on our website or our Facebook page.

This week we are looking at “The Language of Love”.

Communication is so important in marriage, but not just saying something, but saying the right something.

In one show of Married with Children Peg told Al, “Al, when I married you for richer or poorer, I thought we'd try one and then the other and then choose. I think we've gone just about as far as we can go with the first one.” I’m not sure that those were the words that Al wanted to hear or that built up his self-esteem.”

Friedrich Nietzsche once commented “It is not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages.” Most couples start off as friends, but as they stop communicating that friendship begins to fail and then the marriage begins to fail.

Through the years I’ve read various books on marriage and communication, and there are two that I wished that I had found when I was beginning my ministry, to recommended to couples who were getting married.

And it would have been super helpful if I had of discovered them when we were first getting married 36 years ago.

And understand, these books aren’t scripture, they aren’t infallible, and you might not even agree with them, but I found them helpful and maybe you will.

The first is “Men are like Waffles Women are like spaghetti” by Bill and Pam Farrel.

This Helped me Understand the Language of Gender

The premise of the book, and again it is a generalization, is that with men, we tend to be compartmentalized, like waffles. We put all of our life in boxes with walls around them.

So, this is my work box, and this is my family box, and this is my watching TV box, or in my case my reading a novel box. And this is my . . . nothing box.

This is the most amazing thing and women have a hard time understanding it, and that is that men can think about . . . nothing, and relish in it.

And it often gets us in trouble because your wife will look at you as you gaze into space and ask, “What are you thinking about?” and you honestly and innocently say “Nothing”

And their eyes cross and they get confused looking and they say “Well you can’t be thinking about nothing. What are you thinking about that you don’t want to tell me?” Seriously, ladies, the nothing box is one of my favourite places.

And while it seems that as men get older that their boxes begin to merge the reality is that we are just getting faster at jumping from one box to another.

On the other hand, In the minds of women, everything connects. Just like spaghetti where one noodle touches every other noodle on the plate. Where this really comes into play is in communication. And all of those connections are powered by emotions.

So when a man says “Hey babe, what are you thinking about?” He thinks she will just open the box and tell him what the problem is, and then he will reach into his answer box and tell her what the solution is. Nope. She says, “I’m just thinking about work.”

And he thinks that she’s thinking about work, but she’s thinking about work and how things are changing, and when the cotton mill was invented it put all kinds of people out of work, and what if technology changes and puts her out of work. And they were kind of counting on her salary to help put the kids through college, and if that doesn’t happen than the kids might not go to college and instead end up hanging around with the wrong crowd and get in trouble and rebel against the church wind up pregnant or in jail, and she says “Let’s go pray over the kids” And he’s confused because he’s still looking in the work box and they don’t even have kids yet.