Hal Borland tells the story of a woman who had married an old-school country boy named John. A big, burly man’s man, John had never been much on communication. He had met his wife Louise at a coffee shop where she worked. Every day he would come by and have coffee, until he eventually proposed.

The two appeared to genuinely love each other, and John worked hard trying to create a home his wife could be happy in. Louise got sick often, but when the doctor was called out to their house, he couldn’t seem to find any physical cause for her illness. So the doctor “asked her if John was treating her right. Louise answered that John was the best husband any woman could ask for, only – well, he didn’t say much, and a woman wants to be talked to.” (Canfield et al., 1999, p. 35)

Things seemed to get better for a while, but then they eventually got worse again, until one day John showed up on the doctor’s doorstep with Louise in the car. She was awfully sick, and had almost fainted in pain. The doctor took her to his small 4 bed hospital and operated, finding that her appendix had burst. It appeared the worst was over, but by evening she had inexplicably gotten worse, and was knocking on death’s door.

The big burly John pleaded for the doctor make his wife well, crying like a baby as he did so. Meanwhile, on the other end, the doctor was hearing from Louise about how “John is so strong he doesn’t need me. If he did, he’d say so, wouldn’t he?”

John begged the doctor to give her some of his blood. The doctor tried to explain that he had already given her a plasma transfusion, and it hadn’t helped.

The doctor led him down the hall. “Do you love that girl, John?” he asked.

“Wouldn’t have married her if I didn’t,” John said.

“Have you ever told her so?”

Johns eyes were baffled. “Haven’t I given her everything I could? What more can a man do?”

“Talk to her,” Doc said.

“I’m not a talking man, Doc. Hell, she knows that!” He gripped Doc’s shoulders. “Give her some of my blood!” (ibid, pp. 36-37)

The doctor thought about it a moment, and did what many doctors might do in this situation: he arranged for a placebo treatment. He sat John next to his wife and drew some blood into some machinery that was behind a curtain, while the wife was given an IV on the other end. As the two lay there together, the man desperately trying to save his wife, they talked.

“Get a gallon of this blood in you,” John said, “and you’ll talk as loud as I do.”  Her pulse seemed to strengthen slightly.

“John,” she whispered.

“Yes?”

“I love you, John.”

There was a moment of silence. Then John said, “Louise! You got to get well!”  “Why?” she whispered.

“You’ve got to do it for me. I need you.” John hesitated, and his voice choked. “I love you.”

Her pulse almost surged. “You never told me,” she said.

He said, “I never thought I had to.” The pulse was steady now.

“John,” she said, “tell me again.” (ibid, pp. 37-38)

These would end up being the words that turned things around for Louise. She quickly recovered and went back home without the recurrent aches and pains she had been suffering through as of late. (Doctor’s refer to such ills as psychosomatic symptoms, or physical ailments brought about by psychological turmoil.) So was it John’s blood that saved her? Of course not. Not a single drop of it entered her body.

As the doctor explains, “John’s blood was the wrong type for her, probably would have killed her. What did it matter if she got another pint of plasma while his blood went into a glass jar? What that girl needed was John. And she got him.” (ibid, p. 39) Medical journals are full of stories like this one – cases where miracles are seemingly produced once some psychological or emotional blockade is lifted. What saved her life was hearing three little words: “I love you.”

Clearly, John and Louise were speaking through two different love scripts. John believed his actions should show his wife how much he loved her, but his inability to speak or express his emotions left her feeling inadequate, unvalued, and unneeded.

Like John, we often take for granted that our loved ones know how we feel about them, even if we never tell them. They may not. Some people, especially, just need to hear it. This story may be an extreme example of what can go wrong, but the principles apply in every marriage. A failure to say “I love you” may not put your spouse on their death bed, but it may put your marriage on the rocks and slowly degrade the vitality of the relationship.

It isn’t always easy. Some of us grew up in households where emotions were so suppressed and dependency so degraded that uttering those words is as difficult as confessing to a murder. But marriage is about meeting our partner’s needs. So if your spouse is the type that thrives on affirmation, you need to learn how to overcome this blockade.