My Love Language

We all have a love language.  Things we need from our partner that demonstrate their love for us.  It's usually fairly easy to decipher the language of someone else because we tend to give love the way we want to receive it.  But, it can be tricky if you have different love languages.  Like me and my husband do.  It's like I need to learn how to speak a whole other language in order to love him.  And I'm not even particularly good at English.  And now I have to learn Mandarin or Swahili.  I don't know which because that's how foreign and unnatural his love language is to me.

They say there's five love languages.  The first is words of affirmation.  These people like to be showered in compliments.  Next is quality time, which is pretty self explanatory.  I can't even believe that receiving gifts is a love language, but yet apparently it is.  Acts of service totally makes sense to me.  Like fixing a leaky faucet.  And the last one, of course, is physical touch.  But, none of those is actually my love language.  Although, acts of service is a close second.

No, my love language is being heard.  Which is weird because I'm a soft spoken quiet person who isn't much of a talker.  Even with my husband.  But, when I do speak, it means I have something to say and you should STFU and listen because it's important to me.  Now, my husband is extremely aware that this is my love language and has been really good at lending me an ear when I need one.  At least until recently when things started to change.

I found myself repeating myself constantly.  Now, I already repeat myself all day long with my four kids.  So, it really pisses me off when I'm talking to my husband and he asks me a question that I just answered.  I knew he wasn't listening to me anymore.  It's been over a year now since he started to tune me out.  I don't understand it.  What's changed?  Because I haven't.

It was a little over a month ago that I found out the answer.  My husband told me he had a ringing in his ears.  He had tinnitus.  And there's nothing that can be done about it.  While I was losing my patience with my husband, he was losing his hearing.   What kind of a selfish jerk am I?  And what do we do now?  He's not at a point where he needs a hearing aid.  Yet anyway.  But, I do find myself making a conscious effort to talk a bit louder to him and to try not to get pissed at him when he asks me to repeat myself.  Which is harder than it sounds.  And, I did mention that leaky kitchen faucet to him several times and he still hasn't done anything about it yet.  Which can only mean one thing: he doesn't love me anymore.