A marriage strategy made popular by The Five Love Languages book and others like it is that if you love your spouse, they will love you back.
Many a client has walked into a marriage counselor’s office and asked what they can do to get their spouse to show them love. They’ve tried and tried to be a good husband or wife, but the reciprocation just isn’t there. The heartache and pain of this sort of rejection leaves a person raw, desperate, and unable to take much more. If only a marriage counselor could solve this riddle for them.
After seeing enough clients like this walk into their office, patterns begin to emerge: patterns in the way people are wired to give and receive love. Many times the unloving spouse isn’t actually unloving, their efforts to give love back just aren’t seen and/or the efforts to show them love never found their mark. After seeing these sorts of patterns hundreds of times, the experienced marriage counselor can diagnose that these two spouses just aren’t speaking one another’s love languages.
Through some assessments of what makes that person feel good, a love language is discovered and now the husband or wife has the magic key to unlock their mate’s heart. As long as they show love in that language (in the way the other person wants), their spouse will receive it and will show them love in return. Marriage crisis solved.
This type of strategy has helped many couples and it has sold lots of books, but there are foundational flaws to it that have set spouses back much further than when they began.
Flaw #1: Love Is Not Self-Seeking
What happens when the underlying premise of a marriage counseling strategy is to get your spouse to do for you what you want? What happens is we undermine the very definition of what love is, which is a catastrophic problem.
Trying to get my spouse to do what I want might seem innocent, but we’d agree it is the very definition of “self-seeking.”
The problem here is that 1 Corinthians 13:5 clearly tells us, love is not self-seeking.
Jesus then models sacrificial (the opposite of self-seeking) love for us and tells us to do likewise:
Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God’s wrath through him! For if, while we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life! (Romans 5:9-10)
But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you…If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? (Matthew 5:44, 46)
I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. (John 15:11-13)
The irony of modern marriage is we include these sorts of things in our marriage vows, that I will “love, honor and cherish you…for better or worse…’til death do us part,” yet the rubber hits the road what we really mean is, “I will only love you if you love me back.”
This is called kickback love, which according to the Bible, isn’t love at all.
Instead of diving deep into the gospel to allow our hearts to be transformed to love sacrificially, we run to a marriage counseling strategy that is meant to transform our spouse.
This is backwards.
Flaw #2: Connected to the Wrong Power Source
Is it easy to love someone who doesn’t love you back? Not at all. Especially when this person made a vow to you that they would indeed love you back.
This hits pretty close to home for God. On his wedding day with His people, they proclaim to him:
Then he took the Book of the Covenant and read it to the people. They responded, “We will do everything the LORD has said; we will obey.” (Exodus 24:7)
Centuries later, God even reminisces about this day:
This is what the LORD says: “‘I remember the devotion of your youth, how as a bride you loved me. (Jeremiah 2:1)
This reminiscing only prefaced the pain God felt toward his unfaithful and unloving bride:
Long ago you broke off your yoke and tore off your bonds; you said, ‘I will not serve you!’ Indeed, on every high hill and under every spreading tree you lay down as a prostitute. You are a swift she-camel running here and there, a wild donkey accustomed to the desert, sniffing the wind in her craving—in her heat who can restrain her? Any males that pursue her need not tire themselves; at mating time they will find her. (Jeremiah 2:20, 23-24)
God knows what it feels like to be unloved by a spouse. He knows your pain and he longs to hold you and comfort you. But more than just comfort you, God also modeled to us a path of freedom through the pain.
We are, after all, God’s spouse. The same rebellious and unfaithful spouse written about in Jeremiah is the one Jesus came and died for in Romans 5:9-10. The path of freedom to love an unloving spouse is the same one God himself traveled.
This path begins with taking our eyes off our spouse and on to Jesus as the power source for our love. The reason a “love language” strategy won’t sustain a marriage for the long haul is because it requires that we look to another human being as our motivator and source for love.
This is like plugging one end of an extension cord into its other end. What happens?
Nothing happens. You just have a dead wire.
For an extension cord to work and to be full of life, it must be plugged into a power outlet. This power outlet in your marriage is God’s unconditional love for you. It is knowing you are God’s child (Romans 8:14), an heir to his kingdom (Romans 8:17), beautifully and wonderfully made by him (Psalm 139:1-18), and that He is sovereign and knows what He’s doing (Romans 8:28, 31).
I’m not saying you shouldn’t go to marriage counseling or read marriage books, but you need to understand that they aren’t a silver bullet and the ultimate solution will not be found in these things. These often bring short-term solutions and sometimes will give you long lasting tools that can help your marriage, and sometimes they don’t help at all because your spouse simply isn’t going to change right now.
The key to finding the path of freedom in your marriage isn’t that God will change your spouse, it’s that God will change you. Not necessary to change you into a “better spouse” but to change your heart and perspective to find your sustenance in God’s love for you, not in your spouse’s love.
It’s removing marriage and your spouse as idols in your life and putting the person of God and the sufficiency of his love front and center as your life-source.
It’s removing the scoreboard that love languages create (“I’m doing my part, why isn’t my spouse doing theirs?”) and soaking in the grace and mercy of God; focusing on what he’s given us that we don’t deserve rather than feeling entitled to and idolizing the marital carrot on a stick that is always just out of reach.
It’s going to the Father, the way Jesus did (Matthew 3:17; Luke 23:46), to know He accepts us and approves of us (Colossians 1:22; Romans 8:4), when no one else in our lives is giving us that message.
Two beauties come from this divine power connection. One is that your spouse will be shown the supernatural love of Jesus in spite of how they are treating you. Even more profound than this though is that you, the extension cord, will be full of vibrant life at all times, regardless of how your spouse is treating you. How else could Jesus tell you that your joy will be complete when you lay down your life in love for another in John 15:11-13? These two things don’t seem to go together.
Laying down one’s life can only equate to complete joy when a power source is involved who transcends both the one giving and the one receiving.
No wonder so many of us are starved for a love that satisfies. We are looking for it everywhere except from the Source itself.
Honestly I think some of this is damaging advice staying in a physical, emotionally abusive relationship is wild.
Was in one for 14 years and she never changed no matter how much unconditional love was shown.
Jesus said divorce is permit-able for adultery and if anyone lusts with their eyes they have committed adultery.
Also a lot of these people have clear mental illnesses such as borderline, narcissism, sometimes they might have clear chemical imbalances.
But you’re told to “love” them, it’s like saying love you’re broken arm to health. Lastly, from personal experience if my spouse was causing me to sin by robbing me my joy, my faithfulness, causing bitter resentment. Making you stumble in your walk with god….
Then staying in these relationships is what idol worship becomes, you’re choosing your spouse over god.
And all these articles make it seem like the natural easy way is to run away. I doubt how much personal suffering or even research they’ve ever done. As staying in these unhealthy relationships they become highly addictive worst then a drug.
And the hardest thing to do is LEAVE! Again when the idol addiction becomes your broken spouse that you are trying to love and help, you’ve neglected god.
Plenty of stories in the Bible where people send their spouses away because they were becoming hinderances to gods work.
Unless god came to you in a dream or directly spoke to you and told you stay with someone like Gomer. I would highly rethink your relationship.
Has the dysfunctional relationship become your idol? Are we enabling sin in both ourselves and our spouses?
Of course try to stick it out, and try to make it work, but if you see no meaningful change, probably for the best to leave.
And research backs it up majority of people never change. The issue is your “Christian” spouse just like mine were never born again. Never read the Bible, just said all the right Christian words…. there is a difference between struggling with even a life long sin like pornography, then someone who watches it without remorse or conviction of the Holy Spirit.
Seems like majority are concerned with divorce statistics for Christians to try to keep those numbers low then about their fellow brothers and sisters lives.
And Jesus served, guess who he served his sheep who loved him, and people who followed him…. did he serve unloving, hateful people…. nope he rebuked them, and dusted off his feet. Even withheld from the Scribes.
Outside of his death for all humanity including the evil, he never really entertained or served people who showed no love towards him during his ministry, outside of his death.
I have been in a legal marriage for 22 years. During that time I have tried over 10,000 times to draw close to my wife. I have performed her love language to no avail. I have tried to get emotionally close to her to be consistently rejected. I have tried to get physically close to her to be generally rejected. I have tried to get intellectually close to her to be consistently rejected. I have tried to get spiritually close to her to be generally rejected. I have tried to join her in her recreations to no avail. I have tried to have her involved in my recreations to little effect. I have fails to become close to my wife.
Since God is changing me, he has lead me to a Christian psychologist. She says that I need to become emotionally close to people in order to heal, and to learn love. She has recommended that I find a NAMI group to gain some level of closeness with other human beings. My wife rejects my attempts at closeness, so it will have to be other people if I am to learn how to be close to another person.
I have some questions:
– I have never felt love for anyone. This is because my mother was unable to teach me that emotion. Is empty love (love without emotion) OK?
– Is it possible to understand the Bible if I have never felt love? The Bible uses the word love a lot, but the passages that use it make little sense to me because I do not understand the word ‘love’. How can I understand those passages?
– If marriage is a type of our relationship with God does that mean God rejects me consistently and hurts me daily and does not want to be clsoe to me, and does not meet my needs?
– If my wife practices kickback love and demands things, and then usually rejects me anyway, does that mean I God wants me to live in anguish?
– What is God’s definition of marriage? Is is possible that I am not actually married to my wife? Has my wife ended our marriage by failing to live up to our covenant?
– Is it self-seeking to want to have my emotional, physical, intellectual, and spiritual needs met? Since I should not be self-seeking, are my needs evil and to be avoided? If my needs are not met is it OK to live in such deep anguish that I eventually kill myself? If my other needs are self-seeking, is the need to remain alive also self-seeking?
– My wife does not respond to her love language. She continues to reject me whether I perform it or not. After 20 years of trying to service her love language is there any point in bothering to continue?
– One reason I married was Paul’s advice that it is better to marry than burn with passion. Now that I have married I find that I still burn with passion because I find women attractive, and my wife does not engage in sex. Does God have any advice for a husband who still burns with passion after having gotten married?
– Is it adultery to find emotional closeness with someone other than my wife?
– The first Christian marriage counselor we went to advised us to divorce. Did we make a huge mistake by not divorcing, since I can not meet my wife’s needs and she rejects my needs?
Going on 27 years of marriage, after dating 4 years. I feel so empty and unloved. I’m married to a covert narcissist, who regularly throws me under the bus, bails out on accountability (coward), and has abandoned me in times of family crisis and emotional distress. He and his parents constantly hating, bashing and ridiculing me and my family behind my back. (His parents always saying inappropriate things to the kids, to try to make my family and myself look bad). And he did tell me one day he no longer loved me, said he expected my doctors would have killed me off by now, wanted me dead so he could get out of the marriage financially free. He said he only stayed because he wasn’t giving up his money,( which is his God.) He has lied and backpedaled all along, lies about money while hundreds of thousands are hidden in banks under his mother’s name, and the kids and I go without. He frequently lied about things going on between him and other women. When I was able to work, I worked many long hours, 12-16 hour shifts, as a nurse. His parents constantly hated on me, complaining I wasn’t working enough, never enough money being made, but more importantly, I wasn’t handing it over. Hubby always flirting and having emotional affairs, although I don’t buy into the claims they never became physical affairs. Now he says he never meant any of these cruel things he said. Too late. Damage done and no I do NOT believe he didn’t mean it. I made a big mistake marrying him. I stay primarily because I have health issues and can’t work anymore, which my husband made clear that I became useless to him once I couldn’t work anymore. I was just an object meant to make him richer. He swears he’s trying to “fix this”. We’ve been to ministers, counselors, Marriage Encounter, none of which ever helped. Yes I love him, but this is torture. I do not believe a Christian should be expected to endure such cruelty, as it’s obviously not of God. But I feel trapped here, for ever hoping a light will shine and I’ll see that he does love me, but the reality is clearly saying otherwise. Truth is I wish I could support myself financially because I absolutely would divorce him. I don’t believe the Bible requires a person stay under such circumstances. Moses permitted divorced because of hardness of hearts, no reconciliation to be had. Though God hates divorce, when reconciliation is unattainable, staying in miserable situation isn’t justifiable scripturally. It’s insanity.
The Bible says that God hates divorce BECAUSE during the time of the Bible’s writing, divorce was a means of cruelty to women, as women who went through a divorce had no means of supporting themselves and would be homeless, indigent, very likely starving to death. Divorce was a form of abuse against women at that time.
It’s horribly ironic that these days, that “God hates divorce,” rather than protecting women as the Bible intended, is used to sustain abuse against women by forcing them to stay in abusive marriages. Ministers, counselors, Marriage Encounter–many of these are not aimed justice, at understanding abuse and supporting women to be free of that suffering, but rather are aimed at preserving the marriage no matter what.
Many women tell the same story that you’re relating here: they have endured years of abuse which has taken a terrible toll on their health and ability to function well in life, and they are trapped because they don’t have the means to support themselves.
Our sisters have endured the same for centuries.
God hates the abuse of women.
May your words be a light to women who are in a situation like yours.
Peace,
Kay
I needed every bit of this article. My husband hasn’t loved me for years. Looking back, I honestly don’t know if he ever did or if he just loved the image of what he imagined I am and the longing for a personal maid/cook. I realize over the years I have just come to resent him for not loving me and that’s not unconditional love at all. I’ve been too co-dependent and have just been wanting to be loved for so long it has just turned me in to pure bitterness. That’s not what I want for myself, my marriage or my kids.
I have been married for over 25 years. We suffered a catastrophic loss 13 years ago when our son was killed in an automobile accident. We made it through the first year ok but her affection for me drifted. I eventually had an affair. I confessed it to her and we worked through it. A year or so later she had an affair and wanted a divorce. Instead of granting her a divorce I fought (on my knees). Eventually the affair ended and my wife wanted to reconcile. We have struggled with trust issues for the last 7 or so years but have worked hard to keep our relationship together. She told me last week she didn’t love me anymore and is sure that we need to divorce now. We are both believers but she says she doesn’t want to put in any more work on our relationship and that she is still young enough to enjoy life and doesn’t want me around. I am crushed. I have been honorable and faithful and bent to her desires in every way I could to accommodate her. Now I am 50 and on the way to divorce but I want to keep fighting. Should I just give in?
I read Mary’s comments,concerning a husband that critical and unkind to her . I feel like i don’t know what to do. My first husband if 43 years died. We had a wonderful marriage. Both Christians. I was so lonely after he died but I remembered what Paul said about remarriage for widows. So, i waited and prayed. Knew i could only consider a Christian ,i met this man in Church,he treated me really nice, never tried to get me to go to bed with him. Kind,polite,only drawl back was he was a divorced . He told me she had left him years ago and had remarried 3 times since then. I married him and he has treated me terrible.Critical, abusive with his mouth, I gained 10 lbs,so i am fat, I am getting thinning hair, remarks ,do something with your hair. I am 5’5 weight 143 lbs. .I am a real Christian and this is killing me. I have stayed 19 yrs.I don’t believe he will change, and I hate the hurt and pain that he puts me through. I am praying for wisdom, and a Godly way to handle this.
God does not require you to be abused, in any way, ever. A person who abuses their spouse has broken the marriage covenant, exactly as if he had committed adultery. A Godly way to handle this is to handle this is to value yourself as God values you. If your husband can’t do that, allow God to deal with him for his sin. You are under no obligation to protect him from the consequences of his abuse. Here’s an article that may be helpful to you: A High View of Marriage Includes Divorce. Peace to you, Kay
_Wavecure Reading most of these posts saddens me to know the many souls Male & female hurting and striving to keep and be true to their Vowl and Commitment to God’s covenant. But also refreshing to know that Prayer can be made to YAHWEH in Jesus for His mercy n grace fall in each of you, your spouses, and me. I’m in same boat: married 7 yrs; struggled porn (fighting it now for a long while); fell out of love for my wife; verbally abused her and have a bad temper; we have one son of 2yrs of age; 2018-Xmas day, Wife tells me is leaving me. It’s been four months since she said. I hurt her n let her down. In God’s Word I learn that marriage is more than a “feeling” is keeping to our vowels our word in marrying our spouse. Listen, we’re already in this boat. Our responsibility is to thrive and stay committed to our spouses, even if, they want out. Why? Because YAHWEH did so to with Israel. God remain committed with the “on-n-offs” Israel was with Him. God still remained committed during and after the fact. Let’s keep fighting in silent, in verbal statements, let your voice known to your spouse and let’s remain tuned-in with God in our secret closet place. God is Good! Even if silence n observational facts are real n hurt us from our spouses, God will make a way! For nothing is impossible for Him! Remember, we hurt and rejected our spouses by our selfish ways, we must remain true once more if we want our marriages to see light again. And for those spouses that did not cause a spousal-wreckage, you too hang tight with following God’s example with Israel, His bride. In overall, until “they” decide to make the move n walk away. It hurts, yes. But, if we have hurt our spouse, is the best response we can give to our marriage n spouses that r hurting n Pray for them to regain faith in our marriage. Satan wants to claim victory over marriages. However, Jesus has resurrected and His victory is our gain and God loves us because of His Son’s love for us. If they walk out, at least, you n I know we tried all possible way in recognizing our wrong n tried and committed to the end.
AGREE TO DISAGREE…I AGREE that love is not self-seeking and to connect to God’s power source instead of seeking loving validation by your spouse.
Yet, I DISAGREE if the spouse discontinues/decreases the loving gestures you fell in love with them over. That love should be ever so increasing just like God’s love; especially if you have brought loving awareness repeatedly to your spouse (how you miss their gestures and desire to hear them express their feelings to you; so you know how much you mean to them); they should make an effort to continue to love you in the area you desire. Marriage isn’t a one-sided coin; you should be in a marriage to GIVE the love God puts on your heart for your spouse to receive; not just to receive all the perks.
This is a wonderful article and filled with so much Godly truth. I love the sweet reminder of how God is our source of love and Gods word tells us “a part from Him we can’t do anything”. I am gleaning from this article and I want nothing more than to love as Christ loved. I will be honest though and say I struggle with being a doormat. God created a helpmate for Adam. He designed us to desire the love to be reciprocated. Is it really possible to love..love..love and love some more, with no love in return, or even need to feel love in return. That is an honest question.
Hi Jennifer,
Well, when you love-love-love and get nothing in return, then you have to question what sort of relationship you are in, and whether it’s really a healthy place to be. I totally agree with you that we are designed for mutual, healthy relationship. We are not here to be used and abused. It sounds like you’re asking about boundaries. Here and here are a couple of articles that might be helpful as you think this through. Also, here’s an article called A High View of Marriage Includes Divorce. A good therapist should be able to help you think about your boundaries, a what’s healthy for you. And check out the online resources at Bloom for Women.
Hello my heart hurts as i read the different issues many are facing, i experience many of the different problems
in my marriage, of 30 year and by the grace of God I am stronger. Understanding (Revelation) of what Christ did for me at
the cross and knowing who I am in Him and how He see me in Christ…..changed my life. God’s Love, Acceptance,
and Forgiveness for me when I don’t deserve it. the really is He made us righteous and justified me by is blood.
I will say turn to Jesus fully trust Him with your life, let Him love you….surrender all to Him Roman 12: 1-2
and he will meet you where you are. Depend on Him and Him Alone He Love you and will never leave you nor abandon you. I am Praying for all