“By acts of service, I mean doing things you know your spouse would like you to do.” (P.87) The caveat is: ”No one likes to be forced to do anything, in fact, love is always freely given. Love cannot be demanded. We can request things from each other, but we must never demand anything. Requests give direction to love, but demands stop the flow of love.” (p. 93) “Each of us must decide daily to love or not to love our spouses. If we choose to love, then expressing it in the way in which our spouse requests will make our love most effective emotionally.” (P. 97)
Acts of Service: The Different Dialects
Like the other love languages. Acts of service have their own dialects as well. He gives the example of a couple who were doing things for each other, but not the most important things. What is important to one person might not be for the other. It is important to find out what fills up your partner’s love tank. An interesting insight Chapman comes up with is that often your partner’s criticisms of your behaviour provide a clear clue to your partner’s primary love language.
Learning the Language
One of the problems around learning the love language of acts of service is that there is no longer a common stereotype of the male and female roles in today’s society. What worked for your parents may no longer work for you in today’s world. Chapman is hinting at this 30 years ago and sociological change hasn’t lessened in that time.
We all are influenced by the patterns of our parents around acts of service, but we also can learn new patterns. Alfred Adler’s great insight years ago was: “It is not what you possess but how you use it.” I always use the example of Terry Fox, the young Canadian who lost a leg to cancer and decided to run across Canada to raise money for cancer research. Another young lad could suffer the same affliction but sit there and complain that life is not fair. They both possess the same thing but use it quite differently. The same with all of us. We can’t change how we were brought up and what was modeled for us around acts of service, but we can also choose to do things differently. “Learning the primary love langue of your spouse and choosing to speak it makes a tremendous difference in the emotional climate of a marriage.” (p.100)
Next week we will examine the last of the love languages #5 Physical Touch.
