The Love Languages of Stomach Flu
Last Tuesday, I awoke at 11 p.m. and thought I might be sick. Swinging my legs over the bed was all the movement I needed to confirm the truth. I clamped a hand over my mouth and tried to run for the bathroom. I made it two steps. All over the carpet. I tried running again. Again, all over the carpet. My seven-year-old did a better job reaching the toilet.
I hadn’t been so violently ill since childhood. My husband, hearing that tell-tale sound, had thrown a towel down for me amid my retching, and then he’d darted for the door so quickly, I’m sure it almost whacked him on the way out.
Afterward, I grabbed two more towels, threw them over the mess, and climbed back into bed. Sweat dripped down my forehead, but my teeth chattered so badly, my jaw hurt for days.
I will be the first to admit that I pity myself when I’m sick. I want my feet rubbed and a sippy cup of ginger ale poured over ice. My husband, on the other hand, doesn’t even want eye contact. When he’s sick, he prefers to be in a dark room by his lonesome while he waits it out.
I’ve known, since the summer we started dating, that my husband and I have different reactions to illness. But thirteen years haven’t made me any less feisty about it.
The next morning, I railed, “Why did you just leave me back there? What if I’d asphyxiated on my own vomit?”
My husband, washing dishes, said, “You have no idea how toxic it smelled.”
Around noon, he came back to the apartment with his mom’s carpet cleaner. I was still very ill. But not quite as ill as I’d been the night before. He filled the bucket with water, did a squirt each of detergent and disinfectant, and pushed the cleaner back the hall. He cleaned the girls’ carpet and then said, “You want me to show you how this works?”
I barely glanced at him. Did he really think I looked up to cleaning carpet?
But when I heard him back there in the sick room, I went back, too. I got down on my hands and knees, in the same bathrobe I’d been wearing all night, and began using the towel I’d used to cover the mess.
He cried, “Don’t do it like that!”
I snapped, “Don’t tell me how to do it! I am still sick!”
Grabbing up the towels, I stumbled down the hallway to shake them outside. Then I decided to lay in the warm spring sun. Inside, I heard the carpet cleaner start up.
My husband was cleaning my puke up off the carpet.
I’d wanted foot rubs and Sprite cups with little umbrellas but scrubbing carpet and washing dishes was his love language to me. I needed to hear him. I needed to see how he loved me, and I needed to love him in return.
Illness isn’t the only area where my husband and I don’t always speak each other’s love languages. But if we remain aware of the areas where our communication wires get crossed, it’s easier to keep them from getting tangled.
Then, even on the days when he’s cleaning carpet or I’m trying to rub his feet, it’s easier to see that the other person is just trying to convey their love.
How do you and your spouse keep your communication wires from getting crossed?
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