Love Objects

Objects of love and affection. They are various things, projects, people or places that evoke love, admiration, affection and conviction in people. It is these things that create excitement in their hearts. It is what develops their interests and their appetite. It is what they secretly desire to be or have. It is what consumes much of their time and attention.

It is the idol of the heart.

But once you touch this object of their love, you have touched them at a soft spot. If you attack that thing, they themselves become violently defensive: if you are a fan to that thing, you immediately woo them over.

Friendships are easily struck with those who hold that thing as their own love as well.

The above excerpt is taken from the book No More Two – God’s Principles for Marriage by Gbile Akanni. We are currently studying it as part of our couples time and have found it to be a real blessing to our marriage. Ironically both of us had read the book before we got married and now reading it again we are discovering things we didn’t see the first time round.

We are presently reading the chapter on the joining of mind and soul and Uncle Gbile says that in order to be successful in this area, we (husband and wife) need to know what our spouse love objects are. This is important because this is the thing which excites your spouse and where they will spend a fair amount of time.

For example, my husband loves watching football, I love to blog. In themselves they are separate activities, things we did before we got married and things we still enjoy. When we got married we had to learn to embrace each others love object, so that these activities could be part of each other’s world.

How is this done practically?

Well every now and then I will sit and watch a game with him. I also swear allegiance to the same football team and follow their ups and downs throughout the season. But sometimes I will let him watch a game and do something else and then catch up with afterwards, enquiring about what happened.

For me, my husband sometimes reads my blog posts before I hit the publish button and gives me his view. He also reads a lot of your comments and helps me when I draft responses to reader emails. This doesn’t happen all the time but he has a window into my world, as I to his.

Ultimately for our souls to join we need to find things we love together, so that we can spend quality time as a couple.

Clearly there are times when a person does not acknowledge the love object of their spouse and this could potentially lead the spouse to find someone who DOES share that same love object (but that is another post entirely).

Ultimately our primary love object is GOD and as Christians we are called to set our affections on things above and not things on the earth. By doing so this will drive the activities and pursuits that are of interest to you both of you.

Have you identified the love objects of your spouse?

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