Love. It’s a strong word that just about everyone wants to feel. When you’re in a committed relationship, you vow to love each other. But how do you show someone that you love them? That’s the hard part because the examples we were shown growing up were either large, over the top displays or non-existent. In reality, some people profess their love while others make it a point to show someone their love. But what happens when the way you love someone doesn’t align with how they want to be loved?
That’s where love languages come in. It sounds cheesy but understanding your partner’s love language can help you build – and maintain – a healthy relationship. If your relationship feels lonely, speaking your partner’s love language may help. So, how do you do that?
What are the 5 Love Languages?
Created by Dr. Gary Chapman, the five love languages are divided up into 5 simplistic categories:
Acts of Service
Words of Affirmation
Quality Time
Receiving Gifts
Physical Touch
At face value, they seem simple enough to understand – right? Keep this in mind: how you interpret their meaning may be different from your partner’s interpretation. We’ll get into examples of each of these soon but, first, let’s dig in to their meanings:
Acts of Service can be described as doing something for your partner that you know they would like, sometimes without being asked.
Words of Affirmation means positive spoken or written words that confirm, uplift, and empathize with your partner.
Quality Time means giving your partner your undivided attention without distractions and interruptions.
Receiving Gifts has more to do with thoughtfulness and less to do with the size or monetary value of the gift they are receiving.
Physical Touch creates and fosters a love connection through various gestures in physical intimacy.
Looking through this list, have you figured out which of the love languages you respond to? You can speak more than one love language but not everyone does. Understanding how you like to receive love is a great place to start in understanding how your partner receives and responds to love.
The Way You Love Me Says a Lot about You
Showing someone that you love them often starts as a reflection of how we receive love. More often than not, we showcase our love for our partner through the love language we respond to and speak. Example: You love cheesecake on a level that only the Golden Girls would understand and someone once showed their appreciation for you by making you a cheesecake. In turn, you decide to show your partner how much you love them by making donuts because it’s their favorite food. Your love language may be gift receiving but that might not be your partner’s love language. Let’s start unpacking some examples of each love language:
Acts of Service consist of doing something for your partner to show you love them like unloading the dishwasher, pouring them a drink, folding (and putting away!) laundry, filling up their car with gas, or taking the kids out of the house to give your partner alone time.
Words of Affirmation verbally help someone understand how you feel about them by telling them “I love you” and why you love them on a regular basis. It can also include compliments, unexpected notes or texts, and general praise and encouragement. Here are some ideas of what those sound like:
- “That color really makes your beautiful eyes pop!”
- “Just wanted to tell you I’m the luckiest person alive because I have you”
- “I know you knocked it out of the park in your presentation today – I’m proud of you!”
- “I really appreciated your help lugging all the stuff in from the store the other day”
Quality Time isn’t just date night; it could be going on a walk together after dinner, taking a drive together, playing a board game, or even getting tickets to the movie they really wanted to see and then seeing it with them. This time should be distraction free (read: leave your cell phone in the other room) and without too many interruptions.
Receiving Gifts takes “it’s the thought that counts” to heart because the gifts should be thoughtful – letting them know you were thinking about them which prompted the gift (like the donuts). This could be anything from building a Spotify playlist for them, picking up their favorite candy bar when you see it at the gas station, sending flowers for no reason at all, making them a gift, or buying them the thing they really wanted – and hinted at – but wouldn’t buy it for themselves.
Physical Touch involves the need for physical attention to ensure the connection isn’t lost but it doesn’t always mean sex. It can be:
- Holding hands
- Hugs
- Putting your arm around them
- A foot massage
- A kiss on the forehead
- Scratching their back when they sit next to you
- Dancing together
Let’s be realistic, there are probably items within each category that made you think “I really like doing that”, right? That’s because the love languages are a spectrum but there’s usually one primary love language you respond to the most. Curious about what it is? Take the quiz and ask your partner to do the same because it’s easier to communicate after you each have your results than it is to guess.
The Benefits of Understanding the Love Languages
Now you have a better understanding of what love languages are, what they mean, and how they are expressed. What do you do with that information? There are benefits to understanding your partner’s love language. They’ll feel more appreciated, it can help you communicate better, and it’ll also help you communicate your needs and feelings in an effective way.
Once you learn your partner’s love language, it makes it easier to devote time and energy to expressing your love in a way they’ll understand, which makes them feel more appreciated. Plus, it’ll also help you understand how they show their love to you when it’s shown outside of your love language.
But what about your needs? We all have those times where we wish our partner could read our mind and do something without us asking. And what happens when you ask? While asking your partner to help you is a normal part of a relationship, if Acts of Service is your love language, you don’t want the help you receive to feel forced. When you understand that they are doing something out of love for you because they appreciate you (and it’s outside of your love language) makes it a lot easier to communicate your love for them.
The biggest benefit to all of this is it can show both of you what you should do to help your partner feel appreciated without being asked to do so. All of this can help you build and maintain a healthy relationship with clearer communication.
Build a Healthy Relationship
All the love and respect between two people isn’t always enough to establish a lasting, healthy relationship. Understanding and identifying both your love language, as well as your partner’s love language may be exactly what your relationship needs in order to grow, thrive and last a lifetime.
