Look at your spouse.
You are seeing the face of a person in need of receiving love. And already, well, it better be yours.
We all need to perceive that we are loved. All. From the moment of birth until we breathe our last breath.
We need it more than eating and drinking. I don’t mean it metaphorically.
Unfortunately, the need to receive affection is so pressing that many annul their dignity to receive not just some affection, but rather crude substitutes, such as likes, followers, or good words.
We also need to love. It is also more necessary to love than to eat and drink, but to love we must first have been loved.
Recently, I was listening to a young nurse who had just spent three months volunteering in Africa: “You learn to read by reading, to play soccer, you learn by playing, and to play the piano, you learn by playing it, but you don’t learn to love loving, but being loved.”
Your spouse may not know how to love. Or not as good as you would like or that you need. Well, you already know what to do. You learn to love by receiving love, so if you need to receive more doses of love, or better doses of love, you will have to be the one to start giving them. There is no other.
If you do not give your love every day to the person next to you, you are creating vital dissatisfaction in that person, over time you may even be hurting them emotionally. And you’ll probably end up feeling hurt, too – but you’ll blame him (or her).
And how love is delivered, there are basically three parameters: Time, touch and works.
To love, you have to dedicate time. If I don’t have time for you, it’s because I love other people more, and that may include myself hidden under the subterfuge of “needing” other activities: work – my professional career -; football – my little game -; the gym – I need to feel good about myself -; the series – I need to disconnect from problems -; The children “are small and need me more than you” ha! If you think that you haven’t learned anything.
Years ago I read – sorry for not remembering the author – that a marriage needs:
A look at the day, (I would say a caress),
one afternoon a week,
one weekend a month and
one week a year.
The caress (or look) a day seems the simplest, the most affordable, but make no mistake, it is essential. Without that caress, everything else may be more or less leafy oasis, but we really live in a desert.
The afternoon a week should be very simple (so it seems, in reality few put it into practice). It is enough to agree on an afternoon / evening in which we do not turn on the television, we turn off our cell phones and “simply” dedicate ourselves to each other. And if your children are already teenagers and go to bed later than you and therefore there is no way to have a moment or a place at home to rest with each other, it will be a matter of going to the cheapest and closest tavern possible or to the park bench with a couple of cans and a bag of chips and just talk.
Achieving one weekend a month alone seems difficult, and above all it may seem expensive, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be. The point is to pin the children on someone (that’s what godparents are for), tell them that we’re going to a nearby hotel and, in reality, we’re going back home. The only commitment is that we cannot take advantage of those days to change clothes, or to organize the closets, or for any of those other tedious things that we keep putting off for the same reason. That weekend is “for whatever you want”, not for what I think is necessary.
The week a year… I don’t know how to solve that one. But those lucky ones who have the chance, never let it pass them by.
Touch. Touch is the sense of affection. It is necessary to express our affection through touch, otherwise love ends up becoming stiff and unrecognizable.
Many believe that we no longer walk hand in hand on the street, or we no longer kiss when we get home because we no longer love each other.
It’s the opposite. We have stopped loving each other because we no longer walk hand in hand on the street or kiss when I get home.
If you want to keep the love burning, be sure to express your love through touch. Daily. At least a caress. At least.
“It just doesn’t come out, I don’t feel anything anymore.”
Allow me to answer that objection, entering into the third parameter to transmit love: works.
We cannot say that we love if we do not do something for the other. What to do? Anything: buy a dozen roses, put on a washing machine, iron, leave breakfast ready, listen to that story that’s really boring you, go to your mother’s house on Sunday…
Literally anything we do for others, as long as it pleases them, or so that they don’t have to do it, is enough – but necessary.
“It just doesn’t come out, I don’t feel anything anymore.”
Ah! So I understand that if you don’t get it, you’re not going to work. Or that if you don’t like a client, you don’t do anything to please them.
“It’s different, those things are obligations, but if I can’t caress my wife or leave breakfast on so she doesn’t have to put it on, I shouldn’t do it, because she would be pretending.”
Well yes. That’s what it’s about. If necessary, it is about “pretending”. It’s about doing what you know pleases your spouse, even if you don’t feel like anything or feel anything, and even knowing that no matter how much you do, he or she will never thank you, and maybe that will even hurt you.
Yes, I insist, if necessary, you have to pretend. Do the good that your spouse likes, even if you are convinced that you no longer feel anything, and you will see how you cannot help but love him or her.
Give your time.
Give your caresses.
Surrender yourself by doing (EVERYTHING) what he (or she) least wants to do, as long as he (or she) doesn’t have to do it.
That will (probably) make him or her feel loved.
You will be satisfying the first and most basic of all human needs, to be loved. And you will be fulfilling the second and most evolved of all needs: to love.
