Through his work with unhappy couples, Chapman noticed that complaints fell into five areas. “Many couples love each other in their mind, but one may not feel loved by their partner because the partner is expressing love in a language the other person doesn’t understand or want, which creates issues,” Chapman says. In essence, the book identifies how you give and receive love. In 1992, marriage and family counselor Gary Chapman, Ph.D., wrote a groundbreaking book titled The 5 Love Languagesthat arose from his years of counseling married couples. “The book addresses the deep emotional need to feel loved and communicate that love with others,” he says. The good news, though, is there may be a solution, even if it sounds a bit corny: Learn your partner’s love language. “This middle stage of marriage (after the happy high and followed by contentment) happens to the best of us, and we all struggle with it, even experts,” says Jennie Rosier, Ph.D., associate professor of communication studies at James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Va., director of The Relationships, Love & Happiness Project, and author of Make Love, Not Scrapbooks. As if that’s not bad enough, your job, your kids, your parents, even your dog, are stressing you beyond belief. Instead, you’ve become mildly perturbed to seriously angry about character flaws in your partner that not only bother you, but you’re not able to change. At best, you were only mildly annoyed by your differences.įast forward 10, 20, even 30 years, and that happy high has long vanished. Remember when you fell in love with your partner? You were euphoric, living on a high in which your partner could do no wrong.
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