Are you flying with low visibility, or do you really understand why your partner does something?

Host: Are you flying with low visibility or do you really understand why your partner does something?

Gloria MacDonald: There are lots of ways in which we can try to understand our partner and one of them is through their love language and Gary Chapman wrote an incredible book which I highly recommend to anyone who hasn't read it called the 'Five Love Languages.

' In the 'Five Love Languages' he talks about our words of affirmation, quality time, receiving of gifts, acts of service and physical touch. So, we all have different ways in which we express love and different ways in which we accept love. So, perfect example again, is using my husband. When we were just dating I was spending a fair amount of time at his condo but we were not living together yet and one evening I went down to see him in his condo and he had my golf clubs and he was putting name and address labels on my golf clubs and my initial reaction was, "What on earth!

" it was probably, a little bit stronger than that but what on earth was he doing and then I found out not only was he putting name and address labels on my golf clubs which I didn't ask him to do and he didn't ask if he could do for me, but he was putting his name and address label on my golf clubs.

Now, my reaction was to be pretty darn ticked off, but fortunately we were at the beginning stages of that romantic time in the dating relationship and I bit my tongue and then I thought, "Okay, this is fine.

" Well now, I can tell you we have been together for years and I totally understand now that there is a huge message in that. His love language is acts of service. So, he was doing something for me that he felt was a good thing. He was providing a service. He was taking care of something that needed to be taken care of. In his mind, I could have lost one of golf clubs if I had laid a pitching wedge or something along side the green and forgotten it. I could have lost it and no one would have ever been able to return it to me if it didn't have a name and address label on it. So, I find that makes sense, but why his name and address label on my gold clubs?

This took me a long time to figure out and to tell you the truth it only hit me in the last year. I was telling somebody this story and as I was telling them I realized, "Wow, there was a much deeper message here than just that I care about you. You are important to me because I am doing an act of service for you. I am taking care of your glob clubs.

" When he put his name and address on my golf clubs it was a very strong message that we were together that if someone else found my golf club they would call him and there was no doubt in his mind that he would know exactly where I was because we were together. We were a couple. So, if you are not familiar with your partner's love language you can totally misinterpret something like an act of service as 'What on earth is he doing? Why is he being so possessive? What is he doing taking my things?

' But when you understand that that's their love language and the more you understand about how they express that love language the more you can say, "Wow, there was a really strong message in that. He was really telling me he loved me in a very, very substantial way without using the words.

"