Quotes from Gary Chapman

Togetherness has to do with focused attention. It is giving someone your undivided attention. As humans, we have a fundamental desire to connect with others. We may be in the presence of people all day long, but we do not always feel connected.

The object of love is not getting something you want but doing something for the well-being of the one you love.

The choice to do or say something for the other person's benefit, that would help make them a better person, something that would enrich their lives and make their lives more meaningful for them.

We need not agree on everything, but we must find a way to handle our differences so that they do not become divisive.

Anger held inside becomes hate.

People who are in love lose interest in other pursuits. That is why we call it obsession.

Love doesn't keep a score of wrongs. Love doesn't bring up past failures. (1 Cor 13:5)

When we express appreciation, it means that we recognize the value of the other person's contribution to our relationship/ Each of us expends our energy and abilities in ways that benefit our relationship.

Make time every day to share with each other some of the events of the day. When you spend more time on Facebook than you do listening to each other, you can end up more concerned about your hundred "friends" than about your spouse.

Can emotional love be reborn? You bet! The key is to learn the primary love language of your spouse and choose to speak it.

life's deepest meaning is not found in accomplishments but in relationships.

If acts of service do not come naturally for you, it is still a love language worth acquiring. It is a way of expressing a sense of responsibility for the well-being of others. Albert Schweitzer said repeatedly As long as there is a man in the world who is hungry, sick, lonely or living in fear, he is my responsibility. Helping others is universally accepted as an expression of love.

The choice to love is the choice to take initiative. It is the choice to do or say something for the other person's benefit, something that would help make them a better person, something that would enrich their lives or make life more meaningful for them.

Our spouse will usually interpret our message based on our tone of voice, not the words we use.

There is a third truth, which only the mature lover will be able to hear. My spouse's criticisms about my behavior provide me with the clearest clue to her primary love language.

Many people mess up every new day with what happened yesterday. They insist on bringing into today the failures of yesterday, and in so doing pollute a potentially wonderful day. When bitterness, resentment, and revenge are allowed to live in the human heart, words of affirmation will be impossible to speak. The best thing we can do with past failures is to let them be history.

Our most basic emotional need is not to fall in love but to be genuinely loved by another, to know a love that grows out of reason and choice, not instinct.

Expressing love in the right language. We tend to speak our own love language, to express love to others in a language that would make us feel loved. But if it is not his/her primary love language, it will not mean to them what it would mean to us.

A soft answer turns away anger.

But if, once we return to the real world of human choice, we choose to be kind and generous, that is real love.

Welcome to the real world of marriage, where hairs are always on the sink and little white spots cover the mirror, where arguments center on which way the toilet paper comes off and whether the lid should be up or down. It is a world where shoes do not walk to the closet and drawers do not close themselves, where coats do not like hangers and socks go AWOL during laundry. In this world, a look can hurt and a word can crush. Intimate lovers can become enemies, and marriage a battlefield.

Our most basic emotional need is not to fall in love but to be genuinely loved by another, to know a love that grows out of reason and choice, not instinct. I need to be loved by someone who chooses to love me, who sees in me something worth loving.

Good marriages are built upon a combination of emotional love and a common commitment to a core of beliefs about what is important in life and what we wish to do with our lives. Speaking each other's primary love language creates the emotional climate where these beliefs can be fleshed out in daily life.

Lack of courage often hinders us from accomplishing the positive things that we would like to do.