Create Your Now with Kristianne Wargo 4204 Speak Your Spouse's Language
Most of us default to loving people the way we want to be loved. It makes sense. If words of encouragement fill your cup, you naturally pour words into your spouse. If you feel most connected through quality time, you assume sitting together on the couch is the ultimate act of devotion.
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But what if your spouse's cup has a completely different shape? What if the love you are pouring is spilling right over the edges because the container does not match?
This is not about doing more. It is about doing it differently.
Think about it this way. Imagine someone speaking to you passionately, urgently, with everything in them — but in a language you have never heard. You can see the effort. You can feel the emotion. But you cannot understand a single word. That is what happens in a marriage when two people are expressing love fluently — but in two completely different love languages.
Whether it is words of affirmation, quality time, acts of service, receiving gifts, or physical touch — every person has a primary way they receive love. And your spouse's way may look nothing like yours.
Here is where it gets uncomfortable. It is not your spouse's job to translate your love into something they can feel. It is your job to learn how they hear it — and then love them that way on purpose.
That does not mean your way of loving is wrong. It means it is yours. And marriage is not about loving for yourself. It is about loving for the person standing next to you. Philippians 2:3–4 puts it plainly: "Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others." That is the posture of a marriage that lasts. Not "here is what I need from you," but "tell me what love sounds like in your world, and I will learn to speak it."
Now, does that mean your needs do not matter? Absolutely not. This goes both ways. But someone has to go first. Someone has to be the one who stops assuming and starts asking. Why not let that someone be you?
And honestly? Most couples have never even had the conversation. You have been married for years — maybe decades — and you have never sat across from each other and said, "What makes you feel most loved by me?" We plan vacations. We talk about finances. We negotiate bedtimes and grocery lists. But we skip the one conversation that could change the temperature of our entire home.
"Love spoken in the wrong language still sounds like silence." ~ Kristianne Wargo
And silence in a marriage — especially an unintentional one — creates distance that nobody meant to build.
So how do we close that gap?
The K.I.S.S. ~ Learn to love fluentlyWhat do you do fluently now? What is working and what is not?
If you are willing to experiment with how to love your spouse, it will strengthen your marriage from the bottom up.
1. CONVERSE with your spouse.
Ask your spouse directly: "What makes you feel most loved by me?" Do not assume you already know. Their answer might surprise you — and it will certainly guide you. Sit with it. Write it down if you need to. This is not a quiz. It is an invitation to know them more deeply than you did yesterday.
2. IDENTIFY your own love language and share it.
Marriage is a two-way street. Let your spouse know what fills your cup so they are not guessing either. When you both have the words for what you need, you stop playing a guessing game that nobody wins.
3. PRACTICE one deliberate act in your spouse's love language every day this week.
If their language is acts of service, handle something on their list without being asked. If it is words of affirmation, leave a note where they will find it. If it is physical touch, reach for their hand before they reach for yours. Small and consistent beats grand and occasional every time.
Fluency does not happen overnight. You are going to fumble. You are going to default back to your own language because it is comfortable and it is what you know. That is okay. Love is patient, love is kind — and love is also a practice. 1 Corinthians 13 reminds us that love does not insist on its own way. It does not keep a record of who did what first or who got it right. It just keeps showing up.
And that is all this is. Showing up — not with what is easy for you, but with what matters to your spouse.
Rainer Maria Rilke once wrote, "The highest form of love is to be the protector of another person's solitude."
Think about that for a moment. The highest form of love is not filling every silence or fixing every problem. Sometimes it is simply knowing your person well enough to give them exactly what their soul needs — even when it looks nothing like what yours would ask for.
That is fluency. That is what it means to speak your spouse's language.
QUESTION: What language has your spouse been speaking that you might have been missing? And what would it look like to answer them back in the one they actually hear?
You do not need a perfect plan. You need a willing heart and an open mouth.
- Willing to ask
- Willing to listen
- Willing to love differently than you have been loved before
Until next time — keep falling in love all over again.
"Be present. Be incredible. Be YOU!!!"
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Cover Art by Jenny Hamson
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Music by Mandisa - Overcomer
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Song ID: 68209 Song Title: Overcomer Writer(s): Ben Glover, Chris Stevens, David Garcia Copyright © 2013 Meaux Mercy (BMI) Moody Producer Music (BMI) One Songs (ASCAP) Ariose Music (ASCAP) Universal Music - Brentwood Benson Publ. (ASCAP) D Soul Music (ASCAP) (adm. at CapitolCMGPublishing.com) All rights reserved. Used by permission.