I have signed up and get a weekly email from Dr. Gary Chapman and his Love Language Minutes.   They have really given me some good ideas for me to use while I learn to speak my husband’s love language (you think after 16 years, I would have it down…lol)

Recently, I got one entitled “Making Mr. Right”.   It came to me in two parts, but it had some really great information!  Some of this I use already, but some of it I know I need work on.

Ladies, we can’t change the man we married, but we can have a tremendous impact on them.  There are 4 ways that we can positively influence our husbands to be the husbands that God intended them to be.

First off, men thrive on praise.  Give him praise as much as humanly possible.  Since my son has Aspergers, I find that over the years I have had to plan what I say to him, so he wouldn’t get offended or misunderstand me.   I try to do the same when I am coming up to my honey … I don’t want him to feel criticized, but I want him to feel important to me at home, respected.   My DH amazes me at all he can say or do.   He can fix a Tuba with a blow torch (okay, it was only a small butane torch, but it looked like a blow torch to me), he can take apart a car and put it back together again (saving us TONS of money on car repairs), he can fix my washing machine, he can build a desk top computer, he can cook and bake (man, can he cook!), he can play bass guitar, he can mix with a 24 channel mixing board/sound tech, he can produce his own videos for church…. now when I married him, I didn’t know he could do ANY of these as WELL as he does.   Seriously, the man is a genius….he can do anything.  Give him the internet or an operators manual, and he will learn how to do it like he’s known how all his life.  I make sure I THANK HIM for being able to fix our cars…. I THANK HIM and PRAISE him as often as I think to.  I know how it feels to get a compliment.  According to Dr. Chapman, “the fastest way to influence a husband is to give him praise.”

Next, there is a difference between DEMANDS and REQUESTS.  If your husband DEMANDED that you make his dinner, you might be ready to throw the pan at him and say make it yourself.  BUT if he REQUESTS something from you, you are more likely to readily want to do it for him.   The same is true of our husbands.   “If you don’t cut the grass, then I will”…well, you better be prepared to mow the lawn for a very long time.  If you form what you would like him to do in the form of a request (or in a way that he puffs his chest out really big), I bet you get MUCH more success in getting a task accomplished.  Did you see the header on my Guidelines page?  My hubby did that for me.  Once I added it here to the blog page, I made sure that I told him, “Honey, I added your graphic to the header of my Guidelines page.  It looks really good.  Thank you so much for doing that for me.”    I know, to him, it makes him feel more respected than me demanding that he use his graphics talent to make me a headline…. lol  Plus, he likes the rewards he reaps for his help 😉

Defensiveness…. it comes up in our men when they think something we’ve said means that they are failing to do their job.  It hurts his sense of worth….”I work so much on other things and now it’s the garbage?”  I am very lucky to have what I call a Renaissance man … he does everything!  But I know there are probably times in which I ask him (at least I feel I am asking him) to do that “one more thing”.  I hope he doesn’t get exasperated at me.   When our hubbies get defensive, make a mental note (or if you are like me, you need sticky notes!) about what you said or did and how he reacted.   It may help us learn how to not touch those nerves the wrong way.

Have you figured your hubby’s love language?  There are times when I think words of affirmation….other times, physical touch….. I know that his biggest need is to feel desired.   I need to work hard on that.    I mentioned above that our son has Aspergers…. I think I do, also, to some extent.  Sometimes it is hard for me to show affection and desire.  I am working on this, though.  I have to find some way to change myself so that he feels wanted and needed, not just for what he can do, but for who he is to me.  My better half, my best friend, my lover…..

When I first read The Power of a Praying Wife by Stormie Omartian, her first chapter said that I needed to pray to be the wife God intended for my husband.   I will be starting that prayer over again this year, since somewhere along the way, I stopped being the wife God intended for him.  Not intentionally, by any means, but life has a way of creeping in and making your forget what you truly need to do and who you truly need to be.  For me, this is a priority in 2012.  To become, once again, the wife that God intended for my husband.    God already gave me Mr. Right.  I just need to treat him like it.