MY THIRD YEAR OF MARRIAGE

This is going to be our third year of marriage. This time, Marcel and I are doing a project on "The Five Love Languages" by Gary Chapman.

Elisse and Ko Akiong introduced me to this book in mid 2008. I borrowed the book from the Church library couple months ago. The book covers 5 different ways someone will feel loved:

1) Words of Affirmation
2) Quality Time
3) Receiving Gifts
4) Acts of Service
5) Physical Touch

After reading the book, I knew right away that I'm a bilingual on Words of Affirmation and Quality Time. I just didn't know which one is my primary. I also took a guess that Marcel's primary love language is Quality Time.

Marcel's new project has been pretty demanding since they are going to launch the new product to the public on September 30, 2009. So Marcel hasn't had a chance to read the book yet. I felt really blessed from reading the book that I bought a copy to give to my sister and her husband. The book that I purchased for my sister is the latest edition of "The Five Love Languages." At the end of the book, there's 2 questionnaires to find out about our love language(s) -- one for the husband and the other for the wife.

There are 30 questions in each questionnaire. Our results were interesting:

• I was correct about being bilingual. My first is Words of Affirmation (10 out of 30). My second is Quality Time (9 out of 30).
• Marcel is also a bilingual. His first is Receiving Gifts (11 out of 30). His second is Quality Time (9 out of 30).

You see how we both share the Quality Time right? It's to no surprise because when we are vacationing together, we could really relax and enjoy each other company. We would really have a blast!

However, on a day to day basis, sometimes we do get irritated at each other. And I'm glad that we finally figured out why. Well, as I scored high on Words of Affirmation, Marcel scored zero on it. Words of Affirmation isn't something he needs to feel accomplished nor is this something he feels comfortable of doing. On the other hand, as Marcel scored high on Gifts, I scored 2 out of 30 only on Gifts. I am very careful with my spending. So naturally, gifts is the least thing I would think about to spoil someone.

We were stunned as we discovered our love languages. And we are committed to make the effort to speak the other's primary language. I just have to learn to be smart in getting gifts for Marcel. I know it doesn't have to always cost me $$$$ to get him a nice gift. KFC was proven to work well in the past :-). It might be a little harder for Marcel to affirm me verbally since this is not very tangible. But I'm sure, if there's a will, there's a way!!!

Stay tuned for our progress this year. How exciting!!!

May this be a blessing to you!

Click here to see what we did for our first year of marriage.
Click here to see what we did for our second year of marriage.