Burr Oak, Iowa-Happy Valentine’s Day! In honor of this day, I thought I would give some advice on something that we all need to understand in order to make relationships work: love languages.
Understanding your spouse’s love language is key to making your marriage strong. Just take my marriage, for example. Caroline understands my love language, and my love language is uprooting my family in response to problems–real or perceived.
Every time I run into an issue, moving my family is how I express my love. Caroline knows that and she allows me to make drastic changes to our family life in response. Relationships are all about give and take, you see. When I thought there were too many people in the Big Woods, Caroline understood that I had to move our family to the middle of nowhere in Kansas. I know she was hoping to visit Independence and a little crushed that I didn’t allow it, but the key to a successful marriage is meeting your partner where they are at, and where I was at was in the middle of uprooting my family to a land devoid of any social aspects whatsoever (aside from Mr. Edwards, but he helped me build my house, so that’s fine).
After we had to leave Kansas and settled down in Walnut Grove, things went well—sort of well, anyway–for a couple years. Sure, I stuck it out through some lost crops and things, but when it rained for a few weeks, I just had to take my family hunting for gold. Did we encounter tragedies? Sure did. So what did we do? Give it all up and move back, of course.
The next year or so went well enough, but once Mary went blind and things took a downturn, the answer was obvious: we all needed to move to the city. Now I know what you’re thinking, and Caroline mentioned it too: I hate the city. Well, that’s the thing about uprooting your family as your love language: it doesn’t need to be rational. It just needs to be rash.
After a few months in Winoka–just long enough to bond with Albert and bring him home–we decided to give it up and move back to Walnut Grove. Now, I know what you’re thinking here: if it was so tough getting things going when we moved back and getting the mill started again and all, couldn’t we have just stuck it out and made it work instead of moving? And I know what else you’re thinking: remember when you didn’t even want to be around people at all? But like I said, it doesn’t need to be rational. Love isn’t rational.
Then of course after staying in Walnut Grove for a few more years, encountering some tragedies and adopting several kids, I decided I couldn’t make a living there any longer. I know what you’re thinking now: haven’t you always had a tough time making ends meet? What about this is different? Well, a rash decision had to be made, so we moved back to the city. Hey, I get it–I’m not a city guy, and the city has never worked out before, but I just thought that doing the opposite of what I was doing now would be the ultimate uprooting.
Now, I’ve been going on a lot about my love language, and Caroline has always been great about understanding it. But like I said, relationships are about give and take. And just to show that I understand that too and our marriage isn’t only about my love language, I did decide to return back to the city even after Albert developed that morphine problem. Even though my love language told me I should be uprooting my family in response, I realized the many times Caroline has catered to my love language and decided to stay put for a bit longer as a favor to her. Give and take, see?
