7. Readers of this illustration should observe that this not only demonstrates the importance of “love currency” or “love language.” It also demonstrates the importance of what we covered in chapter 4, of “leaving and cleaving.” Each marriage is a new community, and we must not insist on imposing patterns from the family you grew up in on your spouse. Kathy and I were failing to examine how our previous family’s patterns of life were influencing us. Each of us was unconsciously assuming that our marriage had to operate on the same bases our former families had. We had to make a deliberate, consensual decision about how to live out our lives together. That was one very significant way in which we “left” our families to better “cleave” to one another.