What’s Her Romance Language?

Have you ever done something that you thought was supremely romantic for your wife, only to have your great romantic act ignored or even refused? It’s probably happened to all of us at least once or twice. 

There might be a number of different reasons why that happened; anything from it being the wrong time of the month to you having done that particular act too many times in the last month. Regardless of the reason, it always bothers us; the rejection of our act of love makes us feel as if we’ve been rejected.

Don’t let yourself get caught up in that feeling of being rejected; it’s dangerous! It will kill your desire to continue being romantic faster than anything. When it happens, just realize that there’s probably something else which is causing her to act that way, something that has nothing to do with you.

However, if your wife regularly overlooks a particular type of romantic act, that should be a clue to you, telling you that you’re not speaking her language. It’s about as if you were writing her love poems, but she couldn’t read. That wouldn’t work out all that well. In the same way, speaking romance in a different language than she understands doesn’t work out all that well.

You see, each of us has our own romance language. It’s both the way that we express love and the way that we understand it. When others speak our romance language, it’s like the words have been underlined, made bold and highlighted in yellow. Finding out what her romance language is will give you a great boost up in being able to get the most impact out of your romantic acts.

When I’m talking about romance languages, what I’m really talking about is love languages. After all, isn’t romance all about expressing love? Gary Chapman’s book “The Five Love Languages” does a great job of explaining those five languages and showing us how to use them. In case you haven’t read the book yet (you should), here are the five languages:

• Words of affirmation
• Acts of service
• Gifts
• Physical touch
• Quality time

Now, if your love language is acts of service, you’ve probably been trying to be romantic to your wife by doing things for her. That’s great, acts of service is a great way to be romantic. But, if your wife’s love language is words of affirmation, you may not be reaching her as well as you want to. She probably appreciates your acts of service, but it doesn’t have the impact on her that words of affirmation will.

That doesn’t mean that you should stop doing acts of service. By all means, continue doing them. But, at the same time, add words of affirmation to your vocabulary of romance. Find ways to tell her that you love her. Even more, find ways to tell her what a great woman, wife, mother and all around person you think she is. That’s what she’s craving and that’s what’s going to do her the most good.

After all, being romantic towards your wife is all about her anyway, so you might as well make sure that you’re really focusing on her and on what works for her. You can still use the other ways of being romantic, but use them to round out the basic expression of love, which is done in her love language.

Doing this will make every romantic act you do have all that much more impact? Why? Because you’re satisfying her most basic need for love. That makes everything else look that much better in her eyes.