Join Dr. James Dobson and Dr. Gary Chapman in a heartfelt conversation about strengthening relationships through personalized love languages. Discover how listening and empathy can turn simple gestures into profound connections. Whether married or single, learn how to apply the principles of love languages to all meaningful relationships in your life.
You’re listening to Family Talk, the radio broadcasting division of the James Dobson Family Institute. I am that James Dobson, and I’m so pleased that you’ve joined us today. Well, welcome once again to Dr. James Dobson’s Family Talk, the broadcast division of the Dr. James Dobson Family Institute. I’m Roger Marsh, joined again for another conversation with Dr. Gary Chapman, author, speaker, pastor, and counselor, a man with a passion for people and for helping them form lasting relationships. Dr. Gary Chapman is a well-known marriage counselor and director of marriage seminars. He’s also been involved in practicing family counseling for more than three decades and his nationally syndicated radio programs air on the Moody Radio Network and their affiliates as well. Gary and his wife, Carolyn, reside in North Carolina when they’re not out on the road helping couples save their marriages. And he is the author of a brand new book that we’ve been talking about called The Love Language That Matters the Most, How to Personalize Love So They Really Feel It. And we have that link up at jdfi.net. Dr. Gary Chapman, welcome back to another edition of Dr. James Dobson’s Family Talk. It’s good to have you back for part two of this conversation.
SPEAKER 02 :
Well, thank you. I’m glad to be back with you.
SPEAKER 03 :
We’re talking about a brand new book that he has co-authored with Drs. Les and Leslie Parrott. The book is called The Love Language That Matters the Most, How to Personalize Love So They Really Feel It. We’ve got that link up at jdfi.net. In addition to the link for the book, you can also take a look at the assessment and the other resources. There are so many resources available. at fivelovelanguages.com, and that’s the number five, lovelanguages.com. Dr. Gary Chapman, I’ve got a quote here I’ll share from the book just to kind of ties a lot of this whole listening section in together. And it’s important because I think it really kind of typifies why listening is so important. Your quote is, “‘Listening is the thread that weaves all five love languages into meaningful connection.'” It turns acts of service into thoughtful gestures. It turns words of affirmation into genuine encouragement. It turns quality time into shared moments of presence. It helps you choose gifts that feel personal and offer physical touch that comforts and connects. That basically says it all in a nutshell. And then you go on to describe the difference between two words that I think a lot of people get confused in the culture today, and that is sympathy and empathy. understanding how somebody really feels. Help us understand the difference between the two and why empathy in particular is so important for not only expressing a love language, but just learning it.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yeah, I think if we don’t have empathy, then we really don’t know where the other person’s coming from because that’s what empathy is all about. It’s trying to put yourself in their world, look at the world through their eyes so you can understand what they’re thinking and some of why they’re thinking that, what they’re feeling and why they’re feeling that. Whereas sympathy just says, you know, I can see that that’s been very painful for you.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah.
SPEAKER 02 :
You know, and that’s how we say it.
SPEAKER 03 :
Kind of like you see somebody has a cast on their arm and say, oh, wow, you broke your arm up, but that hurts. That’s sympathy. But empathy is, oh, my gosh, I remember when I broke my arm, and wow, if you’re going through the kind of pain I did, then, you know, I can see that. That’s maybe just a horribly oversimplified version of what you’re talking about, but it sounds like it’s somewhat accurate.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yeah, absolutely. And that’s why, again, I say, for most of us, we are not good at listening. And some people aren’t good at talking either. They’re what I call dead seas and babbling brooks, personality-wise.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yes, yes, yes.
SPEAKER 02 :
But I think when the other person is really sharing something with us, I mean, if it’s a relationship like a marriage relationship, a meaningful relationship, we want to be listening to try to see where they’re coming from, what they’re thinking, what they’re feeling. Because that’s when we are really communicating to them. We care. I want to understand. I want to understand. If there’s anything I can do, I’m certainly willing to do it.
SPEAKER 03 :
This is a great dialogue to have for people who are, whether you’re married or single. I mean, I understand that there are a lot of people, especially this time of year, you know, we’re thinking about love and we’re thinking about marriage and some people are in marriages that are thriving and other people are in marriages that are surviving and other people might not be married at all, either having not been married yet. Or maybe they were married and it didn’t work so well. When you talk about these five love languages, it seems like there’s a pretty particular emphasis on husband and wife, two spouses learning how to communicate. But these are principles that also apply to people who are single. Is that a fair assessment as well?
SPEAKER 02 :
Yeah, I think for any meaningful relationship that a single has, for example, even a relationship with their parents or their siblings or their dating partners or even their close work associates, because in any close relationship, this whole concept of the love language applies in any close relationship.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah. This is a good concept. And this brand new book, I think, is going to help a lot of people because, as you mentioned in our previous conversation, you teamed up with Dr. Les and Leslie Parrott to create this love language that matters the most, how to personalize love so they really feel it. And we’ve got a link up at JDFI.net for the book and also the assessment that people can take. as you figure out not only what the love languages are, how to hear them, how to put them into practice, but then also how to speak them in such a way that you understand the dialects, as you described it yesterday, where someone who is a words of affirmation person, well, is that a words of encouragement? Is that a compliment person? Is that somebody who needs to be inspired and spurred on to greater works, as Scripture would tell us to do? That’s just one of the examples that we talked about yesterday. As we concluded our last conversation, we were discussing the difference between empathy and sympathy. And it’s tough as Christians in the culture that we’re living in right now because a lot of people see the kind of empathy that God has called us to live, you know, to weep with those who weep, mourn with those who mourn. And sometimes it kind of gets used against us, you know, to the point where it’s like, well, if you have empathy for women, then you should support abortion or something like, which is just, you know, way out of left field. You’re helping us hone those skills, though, so we can distinguish between empathy and sympathy. And you in the book talk about these four different areas, zones, if you will. that affect empathy and intentionality. And I appreciate your pastor’s heart for making them alliterative. They all start with the letter F. They are fluent, faltering, frustrated, and frozen. How do we get to those places? Which one do we want to be in? Which one do we want to stay away from?
SPEAKER 02 :
Well, we want to be fluent. Yes. That’s the goal.
SPEAKER 03 :
That’s what I figured, yes.
SPEAKER 02 :
And most of us are somewhere on the journey of becoming fluent at that. And that’s, again, the thing we emphasize throughout the whole book is we’re not talking about perfection. Sure. We’re just talking about making progress. Whatever aspect of the relationship we’re talking about, we’re talking about making progress. Because if we’re not making progress, if we’re just drifting— We’re going to drift apart. We don’t drift together. We drift apart. And so we’re just trying to say, let’s take some positive steps here. Let’s become more fluent in whether we’re talking about empathy and learning how to ask questions so we can really understand what our spouse is thinking and feeling. And they really feel like we know them. And so we can grow in this area, whatever our personality is.
SPEAKER 03 :
Mm-hmm. And when you describe the fluent part, I love that kind of we understand, you know, that there’s something to be said for what people are expressing. And I think about this too, having just gone through the holiday season and how many people were, you know, conflicted with, do I go home for the holidays? Do we try to have a big family gathering? Do we wind up, you know, not celebrating together? I mean, in our family with We’ve got six kids in our blended family. They’re all adults. And so sometimes we wind up doing just kind of a FaceTime or something because it’s just not practical for all of us. They’re in four different states and we can’t all get together. But we’re not avoiding each other. We literally just, you know, have life that’s happening. But there are other people who would look at this and say, Oh, darn, can’t see you for Easter because I, you know, something just came up. And if it didn’t come up, I’ll make something up so I don’t have to be with you. And understand that, you know, at that point, your empathy is, you know, well, it’s tough to be empathetic. Talk about why it is important for us to be able to identify, okay, I’m doing this fluent part right. Okay. Or, well, now wait a minute, we’re kind of faltering here. We’ve done better, but we’re not doing so great right now. Or the frustrated part, which I think is leading to frozen, which is just like, well, I just can’t with these people. You know, or what’s the vernacular that I can’t even anymore, but they won’t even finish the sentence. How do we move from identifying we’re in faltering and frustrated? How do we thaw out the frozen zone if we’re trying to be more empathetic with people that we’re trying to communicate love to?
SPEAKER 02 :
I think we have to recognize that every person we encounter, whether it’s extended family or whether it’s close family, is a person that’s created in the image of God, and they’re extremely valuable from God’s perspective. And we are God’s representatives. So if I want to follow the example of God and what he’s asked me to do, and that is to love people that even seem unlovely to me, because almost everybody has in their extended family an Uncle Claude or somebody that they just assume not have them around at Christmas or other times. But every one of us is made in the image of God. And if we begin to treat other people like they were important, like they were valuable, we may find that behind the aspects of their personality that kind of turn us off, there’s a real person there. And they may be very, very isolated because their personality may turn a lot of people off. And we have an opportunity to enter into their world. And if we will ask questions, we may find out some amazing things about that person that we would never even have conceived would have been possible. And so that’s why I say to people, don’t judge someone simply on how they come across normally in conversations and so forth. Get behind the scenes. Ask questions. And you may get to know them. And they really… Deep inside, they want to be known, even though many of those kind of people are lonely because nobody enters into their world. So I just think Christians have outside help when it comes to dealing with people that they don’t particularly feel attracted to. In fact, they may feel they’d rather not be around that kind of person. We have outside help because God loved us while we were sinners and sent Christ to die for us. So we can love people even when they’re not lovely with the help of God.
SPEAKER 03 :
And that’s such a needed message that the culture wants to hear and needs to hear in today’s society because there are so many people who are looking, Gary Chapman, at the fact that, well, I want to feel this way. I want to feel good all the time. I want people to be happy when I’m there. I want them to be interested in me and that type of stuff. And the first time I get any sort of resistance, then all of a sudden that’s traumatic. And I’m in a therapist’s office, you know, or I’m chat GPT trying to find a solution because I don’t know what to do with this. And yet you mentioned Uncle Claude, and I think we had a good chuckle about the fact that everybody has that kind of personality. But, you know, I think we understood it better, that sometimes there were people who were rather curmudgeonly Maybe they were a tough exterior, but they were actually very loving and very caring. And whatever they had been through, that’s just the way they expressed it. But they were always there for you. I mean, they weren’t trying to cast you aside. That’s just the way grandpa talks. You know, grandma’s seen things. You know, I mean, that’s the way we talk about it. And this is a place I think we’re using a resource like what you and the parents have written about. in the love language that matters most, is the idea that we can be instruments of love. And so rather than just sitting back and saying, I’m waiting for my spouse, I’m waiting for my friends, I’m waiting for my parents or significant others or whomever to understand me, we can be more fluent in this area of empathy and then be better listeners and watch relationships heal because we were the ones willing to take the first step.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yeah. And this is particularly true in a marriage where one individual does not feel loved by the other. I mean, they just don’t feel loved, you know, and they maybe have talked about the love languages and the other person’s not responding and all of that. In fact, I’ve often had one person come to my office. It could be the husband, could be the wife. The other one would not even come for counseling. And they’ve said to me, you know, they want to read the book or they want to discuss it or they won’t take the quiz or maybe they have done all those things, but they don’t in any way communicate love to me. And they won’t come for counseling. They won’t even talk about us anymore. They just say, I don’t want to talk about it. And they ask me, what can I do? Well, you are going to have an influence on them. The question is if it’s going to be a positive influence or a negative influence. Your behavior is going to have an influence on them. Why not make it a positive influence? And I believe the most positive thing you can do for a person who doesn’t love you is to love them in the right love language and with the right dialect over an extended period of time. In fact, Roger, what I’ve done many times is to ask the person, would you be willing to do a six month experiment with me? If you and I can sit here and try to figure out their love language and maybe some of the dialects as well, Would you be willing, with the help of God, to express their love language for six months, at least once a week? And if you will, then I’ll meet with you every three weeks and kind of walk with you through the journey. And I first say to them, I can understand how you’ve lost hope. If I were in your shoes, I probably wouldn’t have hope either. But would you be willing to go on my hope? Because I’ve been working with couples who’ve been in situations like yours or similar to yours, and I have hope for you. So if you’ll go on my hope and you’re willing with God’s help, and I remind them if they’re Christians, of course, I remind them. Scriptures say the love of God is poured in our hearts by the Holy Spirit. So you say to God, you know how I feel about my spouse. You know I don’t have any love feelings for them. But I am closer than anybody in the world to them in the house with them every day. I want to be your agent for expressing your love to them. So I’m opening my heart. Pour your love into me and give me the ability to communicate love in a meaningful way to them. I said, I can’t guarantee you that in six months or sometimes before that, they will begin to reciprocate. But I can tell you this, that is the most powerful influence you can ever have on that person is loving them in the right love language with the right dialect over an extended period of time. And if they don’t respond, you can still look yourself in the mirror and look God in the face and know that you’ve done the most powerful thing you can do. And, you know, that’s the place where sometimes I think there is a place for tough love where you can say to them, honey, I don’t know how you feel about us. I feel like that at least for the last six months, I have loved you in the most best way I knew how. And it appears to me that you really don’t care about our relationship. So I’m not going to desert you, but I am going to move out, and I’m going to move in with my mother for a while because I love you too much to just continue doing nothing and seeing nothing in response than you. Now, if you want to go for counseling, I am willing to go anytime you want to go because I genuinely love you. That kind of tough love is likely to be successful because after six months of being loved in a meaningful way, they’re about to lose something. But that’s not what happens in most marriages. Most marriages, two years, they’ve been criticizing the person. You just don’t love me. If you love me, you would do this. You know my love language. You don’t speak my love language. They’ve criticized them for two years, and then they take a tough love approach. And the other person thinks, good riddance. I’m tired of your criticism anyway. You see, we’re either having a negative influence or a positive influence on a spouse that’s not loving us. But love is the most powerful influence you can have.
SPEAKER 03 :
Amen. Amen. This is a wonderful resource that we highly recommend here at the Dr. James Dobson Family Institute. The book is called The Love Language That Matters the Most, How to Personalize Love So They Really Feel It. And that’s been the topic of conversation for the past couple of broadcasts here on Dr. James Dobson’s Family Talk. Dr. Gary Chapman’s been my guest. And Gary, we’re going to open up a whole other can of worms, and this might wind up being a whole new book for you. And if it is, I’ll be thrilled to see it. But I would be remiss if I didn’t ask. Now that we’ve been talking so much about this love language issue as it pertains to spouses primarily, there is something of an epidemic happening in our culture right now with adult children and their parents. And in some cases, there was a toxic relationship, there was abuse or whatever it was, and the kids had to kind of, you know— abandoned ship, if you will. But it seems like more and more there are a lot of parents who are kind of sitting there with their hands out shrugging their shoulders saying, what happened? I don’t fully understand what happened and now I’m either being limited as far as access or I’m being cut off. Is there a way that the resources in your book, The Love Language That Matters Most, could help a parent who’s saying, I really miss my kids. I mean, I want to see them or my daughter or my son. How do you, can you apply what you just talked about in the same direction that way?
SPEAKER 02 :
I think so. You know, I did write a book. I upgraded a book that I had written earlier. The new title is Your New Life with Your Adult Children. And it’s dealing with those kind of issues because I’ve run into that so much over the last 10 years.
SPEAKER 01 :
I’ll bet.
SPEAKER 02 :
Where they’re sitting in my office and say, you know, here’s what’s happened. And now they won’t even talk to me. If I call them, they don’t answer. If I send them a text, they don’t respond. And what can I do? And so I think, first of all, if it’s really that extreme, we first of all turn to God, because if you can’t talk to them and they won’t see you and they won’t respond to a text, You can’t very well have an influence on them, you know, because you don’t have any, you’re not interfacing with them. But we can pray that God will touch their hearts, that he will bring someone or some situation in their life that will, you know, begin to work in their hearts. But I think if we do have some contact with them, our attitude, biblical attitude, I think should be, honey, you know that what you’re doing is deeply hurting me. Because it’s against everything I’ve ever believed and everything I’ve ever taught you. But I want you to know that I love you. And I will always love you. I don’t care what you do. I will always love you. I just want you to know that. If we take that approach, if we still have some contact with them, we’re taking the best approach. Because many times, parents will cut off the adult child. And they’ll say, well, if that’s the lifestyle you’re going to live, then you’re no longer my son. It’s the worst thing you could ever do because now you have no opportunity to have an influence on them. But if you communicate that you’re going to love them no matter what they do, it doesn’t mean you’re approving of their lifestyle, but it means that you’re going to love them. And those words will ring in their heart. And many times God brings them like the prodigal son. God brings them to the hog pen. And when they’re thinking, boy, my parents love me. I’ve got to get back there and straighten this thing out. You know, and all the while you’re praying for them and God’s hand upon them. I talked to a man just recently. He said, Dr. Chapman, for four years, I’ve never had any conversation with my daughter. But the last thing I told her was I loved her no matter what. And he said, I’ve been praying. And he said, my small group has been praying for her now for several years. And then it was six months later, he said, Dr. Chapman, my daughter called me and said she wanted to come home and have a conversation.
SPEAKER 01 :
Wow.
SPEAKER 02 :
And she did come home, and they did have a conversation. And she said, ended up with, she’s saying, Dad, I wanna have a relationship with you, Dad, and I’m sorry for the way I’ve treated you all these years. So there’s always hope. As long as they’re alive, There’s still hope.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yes, yes. As long as there’s breath in your lungs, then we are all inspired to live another day or at least another heartbeat, another breath. And what an encouraging story that is from Dr. Gary Chapman. And I appreciate so much, and all of us here at JDFI do. I know Dr. Dobson did as well, how important it is to understand how to communicate with people most effectively. We’re doing this for the love of Christ. And sometimes we forget that we are the love of Christ and the light of Christ in the lives of people who may not recognize it right away. And if that’s the case, then we just have to keep being that way and understanding that we might get some rather snarling, vindictive, spiteful language coming back our way or cut off for a little while. But with God’s help and with prayer and the Holy Spirit’s power, we can see these miracles take place. Dr. Gary Chapman, the brand new book, along with Dr. Les Parrott and Dr. Leslie Parrott, it’s called The Love Language That Matters Most, How to Personalize Love So They Really Feel It. And we’ve got a link for the book and also the assessment, the fivelovelanguages.com website. Both of those are up at jdfi.net. Dr. Gary Chapman, Thank you for staying faithful to the call. Thank you for not finding the word retirement in the Bible or in any of your other notes. We are so grateful that God has continued to give you good health and a desire to continue to help people as you travel the country. Doing so, God’s richest blessings to you and to Carolyn and to your extended family as well. And as I said at the outset, I know that Dr. Dobson, he’s not jealous in heaven, that’s for sure. I mean, he’s in a much better place. But if he were still walking the halls of JDFI, he would have pushed me out of the way and said, I need to talk to Gary Chapman because he’s a good man.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yeah, you know, I and many, many others, of course, deeply appreciate his ministry through the years and appreciate what you guys are doing, you know, and following along and continuing to reach out to help people. So may God bless you. Keep up the good work and let’s all of us seek to be faithful to the end. You know, that’s my objective. I said, Lord, don’t let me get off track on a side road somewhere. Help me to be faithful to what you’ve called me to do. until the end. And Dr. Dobson certainly did that to be sure.
SPEAKER 03 :
Dr. Gary Chapman, thanks for being with us today here on Dr. James Dobson’s Family Talk.
SPEAKER 02 :
Thank you.
SPEAKER 03 :
You know, there’s something freeing about realizing that we don’t have to wait for someone else to make the first move in love. We can be the ones who step forward and keep showing up, even when it’s hard. You’ve been listening to a special edition of Dr. James Dobson’s Family Talk and my conversation with Dr. Gary Chapman about making love personal and practical. His insights remind us that real love is more than just a feeling. It’s a choice that we make every single day. Now, if you missed any portion of today’s broadcast or if you’d like to share it with someone you love, if you want to go back and listen to part one as well, you’ll find all that information and more when you visit jdfi.net. There you’ll find a link for Dr. Chapman’s brand new book called The Love Language That Matters Most. jdfi.net is where you’ll find all of that information. And if you’re looking to strengthen your marriage even further, I want to share with you about a free resource we’ve created just for couples. It’s called conflict in marriage. It’s a short email series based on Dr. Dobson’s timeless wisdom that addresses some of the most common and pressing questions about disagreement in marriage. This series is designed to guide you and your spouse toward a healthier, stronger relationship, and it’s absolutely free. So you can sign up today when you go to JDFI.net and search for that title, Conflict in Marriage. Again, you’ll find it at JDFI.net. Well, I’m Roger Marsh, and from all of us here at Family Talk and the Dr. James Dobson Family Institute, thanks so much for making us a part of your day. Be sure to join us again next time right here for another edition of Dr. James Dobson’s Family Talk, the voice you can still trust for the family you love. This has been a presentation of the Dr. James Dobson Family Institute.
