Acts of Service

A colleague recently recommended a book to me entitled “The Five Love Languages” by Dr. Gary Chapman.

In one of these chapters, “Acts of Service,” he gives some great advice on expressing love and devotion to an intimate partner. He says doing humbling household chores such as taking out the trash or doing the laundry can be a very powerful expression of love.

It’s important to learn your mate’s dialect for acts of service. For instance, if your partner spent the day having the car fixed and shopping for food, you may still feel unloved even though your partner worked all day. If, in your partner’s acts of service dialect, doing the dishes and doing the laundry are a superior necessity, they may feel unloved if these chores are not done.
Something like this may sound very simple, but I see his point - and it really comes down to communication. If your mate relates to the language of acts of service, you have to know what acts are important to him or her. Furthermore, he says these acts of service must come from love, not obligation. That’s a whole other subject that I’ll be writing on for my next article – to give out of love, not obligation.

Finally, he says that performing these acts out of heartfelt kindness will ensure a happy relationship. While I think he’s got some interesting points, the more that people write about happy relationships, the more trouble we get into.

Seeking a happy relationship creates an incredible pressure to maintain the happiness. No one is ever happy all the time. Within the span of 5 minutes, we can be happy and we can be sad. We can be up, we can be down. I believe we can start to have relationships that are more satisfying by getting away from the happy / sad obsession. A fulfilling relationship is one that includes the ever shifting changes of mood when we are with our partners or alone