Hello, I Love You, Won't You Tell Me Your Name?

These are some psychotically busy days in the Jones family household. We've got two graduations this year - 6F from 8th grade, and 4M from high school (have I told you that before now? I can't remember). With all of the attendant awards ceremonies, class trips, graduation open-houses, etc. If we only went to half of the open-houses for kids in our community, and gave each of them $10, that would run well over $100. But 4M is an honor student (so he's been invited to something like five different awards ceremonies, all of which have entailed me getting out of work early and driving at least an hour to be there), and some kind of 'Mr. Popularity' (how did this kid come from me?), with kids from his own school, and also the Catholic high school, which he didn't even attend. So we've got at least double the normal number of open-house invitations. If we wanted to, we could be getting free food for a month's worth of weekends (Friday evening thru Sunday evening), starting last week. Well, not exactly free; I still have enough of a conscience that I feel like I ought to give a gift, if I go to a kid's open-house.

And, the graduation festivities mean that relatives are visiting from out-of-town. My birth-mother arrived last night, and since she's on California-body-time, we stayed up WAY too late for me needing to be up for work this morning. She's here for commencement this weekend; we'll have other relatives coming for 4M's open-house next weekend.

And the other three kids who still live at home have got their own end-of-school stuff - parties, special outfits, etc, etc. 7M signed up for two baseball teams this year - a spring league and a summer league - and of course, this week is the last week for the spring league, but also the first week for the summer league (you might think that the two leagues might talk to each other about their schedules, especially since a lot of the same people are running both leagues; but you would be wrong). Yesterday was 1F's birthday; 2F's is in a week-and-a-half. Molly is in charge of a day-camp for K-2 kids, which runs the last week of June. No problem, though, because we're also signed on for a four-day retreat the weekend just before the day-camp. And 4M leaves for a 2-week mission trip that same week (with all the prepatory churning that goes along with that).

Molly and I also signed up to be discussion-leaders for a Theology of the Body class at church, for Friday evenings in May. Looking back, we probably should've passed on that one, but it was just too appealing to let it drop.

Our family is having a family vacation this year, for the first time in a few years - a friend of ours offered us his cabin Up North. But that could only fit in the week immediately after Molly's day-camp, so we'll be packing and getting stuff together for vacation the same time as Molly is running her day-camp.

Crazy, no? But, I don't know if I've mentioned before or not, that, with the iffiness of my ongoing employment status, and all the kids finally being in school all day, Molly has taken on a couple part-time jobs this year. So, even before all the craziness hit, she was struggling with the adjustment phase of how to get her regular stuff - laundry, cooking, shopping - done, with 12-15 less available hours in the week. I've tried to help with some of the shopping, but my long commute doesn't afford me a lot of time. So, my poor wife has been pretty overwhelmed, even before the June looniness hit.

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One of the nice things about having been married for almost 29 years, is that we can sort-of 'see coming' the stresses of our schedule, and make a few allowances for it. We try to have a weekly husband-wife meeting, where we touch base on the calendar stuff, but also just spend some time in each other's presence. When life gets crazy like this, the weekly meetings can easily fall by the wayside, and we know from experience that shortfalls in communication lead to stress, as the 'left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing', so to speak. So, we know that times are gonna be stressful, and we just try to account for that, and be extra patient with each other. And make use of the little 10-15-minute snatches of time we do get with each other. It ain't great, but in times like this, sometimes it's the best you can do. . .

Love Languages

Emily posted recently about Love Languages, specifically referencing Gary Chapman’s book. In recent years, I’ve had numerous conversations with Molly on that topic, and also several e-mail conversations, with FTN among others, in recent months.

Molly and I were discussing it the other night, and we came to an interesting conclusion, I think. As with all communication, there is both the sending and the receiving of messages in our ‘love-languages’. Thus, the wise lover needs to know his spouse’s love-language in both its sending and receiving modes.

That is, he needs to know what his spouse’s love-language is, (a) so he can speak it to her, but also (b) so that, when she speaks it to him, he can recognize and understand what she’s ‘saying’ to him. If I speak English, say, and Molly speaks Chinese (a not-entirely-inapt comparison), I need to understand Chinese so I can speak it to Molly, but also so that, when she speaks Chinese to me, I can understand what she’s saying. If I can speak Chinese to her, but can't understand when she speaks it to me, my understanding of Chinese is incomplete, at best.

Many years ago, there was a joint space mission between the US and the Soviet Union; in order to solve the 'communications problem', whenever the two crews were together, the Americans spoke Russian, and the Soviets spoke English. That kept things on a simple enough level; by placing the burden on the 'speakers', the strategy biased things in favor of the 'hearers' of the message. And, I suppose, that is similar to what we want to be doing with 'love-languages' - sending our love-messages in a language that we ourselves might speak imperfectly, but which the 'receivers' of our messages will easily understand. .
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Alas, egocentric creatures that we are, we all tend to operate out of our own love-languages in both the sending and receiving modes. My love-language is ‘physical touch’; Molly’s is ‘acts of service’. Thus, my tendency is to express my love for Molly in lots of physical affection, but she’s inclined to receive love more easily if I give it to her by, say, sweeping the kitchen floor. Likewise, she shows her love for me by cooking for me and doing my laundry, whereas I would most easily recognize her love if she would initiate some steamy sex. So both of us have a ‘double-challenge’ – I need to learn how to give her ‘acts of service’, realizing that that’s how she’ll most easily receive the message, “I love you” from me, but it’s also extremely helpful if I understand that the cooking, cleaning, etc, that she does for me is directly expressing her love for me. Conversely, Molly needs to learn to give me the ‘physical’ messages that I easily understand, but it’s also helpful for her to recognize that the ‘physical’ messages I send her are a way that I show my love to her. We need to be sort of ‘bi-directionally bilingual’.

We can fail to communicate love in either way – by failing (or refusing) to ‘send’ messages to our spouse in the language they understand, or by failing to understand the messages our spouse sends us in their own language.

We have two friend-couples who illustrate the two sides of this. In Couple A, the husband’s ‘love-language’ is ‘words of affirmation’, but his wife is a fairly reticent woman, who, when she and her husband went through the book and he told her how he’d like her to treat him, said, “I can’t do that; it’s not natural for me.” So, she fails (refuses, really) to send her love-messages to her husband, because she won’t learn to speak his ‘language’. In Couple B, the husband loves to give his wife gifts – throw her elaborate parties, take her on exotic vacations, etc – but his wife wants no part of it, and is vocally critical of the waste of time, money, etc. So, while he is sending out love-messages in his own ‘love-language’, he might as well be speaking Swahili, because she doesn’t ‘get it’. (Now, I’m not meaning to imply here that these ‘failures to communicate’ are always the wife’s fault; those are just the two examples that came up in our conversation. I’m sure that the failures are sufficiently reciprocal; or, if anything, that men are more clueless than women – that would hardly be surprising, would it?)

So, at the end of the day, my point is this: when we learn about the concept of ‘love-languages’, it’s easy to complain that “my spouse can’t/won’t speak my love-language”; but we can mitigate the problem, at least to some extent, by recognizing our spouse’s love-language when they speak it to us. Even if it’s not the ‘language’ we prefer to hear. It’s nice to hear “I love you” in Italian or French, but if our spouse says it to us in German or Russian, it helps if we can understand what she’s saying.

And even Germans and Russians can figure out how to be happily married, can't they?

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And, in a couple days, I'm sure I'll be able to step back and appreciate the wonderful season my Tigers had. But, for cryin' out loud - HOW FREAKIN' HARD IS IT TO THROW THE DAMN BALL TO THIRD BASE?!?

OK, I'm better now. . . I think. . .check back with me in a couple days. . .

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