Have you ever been in a situation where you say something along the lines of – “I know what you’re talking about. I’ve been there and this (dash dash) is what I have learnt” – and invariably, almost inevitably the following day, you face an issue where what you thought you had learnt has gone flying out the window and you seem to be back at square one?

This generally happens very often to me. Just when I think I’ve crossed a milestone of sorts in personal growth, God usually uses situations / circumstances / people to hold up a mirror to my own self-delusion. It’s never a comfortable process and I end up feeling rather annoyed and foolish – annoyed with myself for making the same mistakes again after all these years, and foolish, for having presumed to pontificate on a subject like I was an authority (when clearly I am not!).

This happened rather recently when a friend and I were talking about our respective husbands and discussing the subject of love languages. We compared notes on how each person “speaks” a different language and how difficult it is to learn your spouse’s language when it is so vastly different from your own. According to this theory, there are basically five love languages (or ways one expresses love or feels loved) – words of affirmation, acts of service (devotion), receiving gifts, quality time, and physical touch. I am not endorsing this book or theory, but I do know that in the initial years of my marriage, understanding our love languages helped MD and I resolve a lot of disagreements and hurts. This was almost a decade ago.

The conversation with my friend suddenly took a turn towards preachiness (on my part) where I told her that MD and I have different primary love languages but over these ten years of marriage, we’ve learnt to speak each others’ fluently. I’m sure someone was laughing uproariously somewhere when I made that smug statement! It was ridiculous how quickly MD and I got into a fight the following day – I don’t even remember what it was about now but I know that it was something silly.

Later as I wondered what on earth had happened to make us squabble like little children, I realised I had completely ignored MD’s emotional needs. His primary love language is acts of service (something that does not come naturally to me!) and I had been rather remiss in that area. Instead, foolishly, I had been speaking my own primary language a lot (for me its words of affirmation) and expecting him to be happy and content. Rookie mistake – which one would think after ten years of marriage, one would not make. Ha!

Anyway, long story short, I’m realising that wisdom does not naturally come with age. Sigh. If only it were so simple.

Photo by David Solce on Unsplash