Does
communication depend on the lover’s capacity to ‘send’ his message of love? Does
it depend on the loved one’s capacity to ‘receive’? Is it the message of love, itself,
that determines the quality of mutual ‘communion’ in their communication? Is it
the code, .. the ‘decoding’, or the ‘channel’ ? It is clear that all are
important: the lover, as sender; his message, coded to his ´loved ones’
understanding; the channel used to transmit it with fidelity; and the
willingness of the ‘loved one’s’ open reception to accept the message of Love.
Much of
loving is about communication. Hence, the importance of analyzing all the
elements involved, to try to solve the difficulties in the relationship between
‘lover’ and ‘loved one’.
We were talking about
it the other day, while catching up on family gossip. We debated over Dr. Gary
Chapman’s five codes used in close communication between loved ones:
·
-Use
of kind words
·
-Touch
·
-Gifts
·
-Quality
time and
·
-Service
These five
codes were identified, after studying the problems of thousands of couples who
reported these as their main dissatisfactions.
“The gist
is..” we all agreed, “..that both, the lover and the loved one, should speak
the same language, for fluent communication in a good relationship”. We came to this conclusion, when we each
admitted that our problems communicating with our respective partners, stem
from differences in the codes we used; one
partner, trying to show love in a language, misunderstood and rejected by the
other. I, for example, show love as my mother did, through ‘service’. However,
my ex-husband ( who is still part of our extended family), joined in admitting that
the ‘service’ given as love, made him
feel it was ‘duty’, tending, rather to
reject it, because it made him feel guilty.
However,
later, while my ex-husband and I walked on the beach, alone, we both agreed that
it was not enough for the sender to try to code his message with fine fidelity to
his inner authenticity; nor was it enough for the partner to ‘receive’ the
message with open acceptance…both had to share their mutual perceptions, distinctly
identifying subjective differences, in the exchange. This ‘feedback’ allows for
the ‘thesis’ and ‘antithesis’ of their interactive discourse, to re-create
synergy in a ‘synthesis’, both can identify and share.
I don´t
think this is the only emotional alphabet, in love. Maybe these 5 languages are
really ‘channels’ used to transmit our personal ‘coding’ .
Everyone develops their own alphabet in love,
as they each assign personal ‘meaning’ to different ways of transmitting it
(channels): the way we touch, the emotions we express, the words we transmit or
the gifts we give. What is important is
that love cease to be the abstraction of our mere intention, to become ‘real’
with our manifest ‘actions’, in the present’.