Episode #02 Learning About Love Languages

Do you ever feel like your partner isn’t appreciating your efforts or like your partner doesn’t do anything loving towards you? It is possible that you are speaking Greek to your partner and your partner is speaking Italian, so to speak. In this episode, we are going to explore how you can learn more about your partner and work towards speaking each other's love languages.

The 5 Love Languages background

Let’s go into a little of the background of the 5 Love Languages. There is research and a book and many other resources by Gary Chapman. I read it about 15 years ago, and I often recommend it to my clients. This book breaks down ways we show and receive love to our partners. They have also expanded it into other relationships, such as the 5 Love Languages of your Child. I highly recommend the 5 Love Languages in terms of romantic relationships!

The 5 Love Languages

Acts of Service - The partner who takes out the trash, cleaning, cooking dinner, oil change. Tasks, errands and chores.

Gifts - You receive a gift and are so excited about it! Not because you received a material possession but because they thought about you. This could also be how you show love, something that is pleasurable to you, you have taken the time to get to know them and were thinking of them. Things that you made for them.

Words of Affirmation - Verbal language of affirmation; praise and encouragement, kind words.

Physical Touch - Physical touch in many ways not just in the bedroom. Light tap on the shoulder, playing with their hair, holding hands, non-sexual light touch while passing one another.

Quality Time - Not just time spent together, but the actual quality of the time spent together. You may be in the same room together but on your phone, this isn’t QUALITY time spent together. Will discuss further on.

What is my love language?

So, one interesting thing about the 5 Love Languages, you may be thinking, which one am I?

How you feel the most hurt in a relationship, this usually will fall in under the opposite of these love languages. So if you are someone who is really hurt by the trash being overfilled and no one is taking it out, and feel that they don’t care about all the things that I do throughout the day.(Acts of Service)

Or maybe, Quality Time, you are someone who is hurt by your partner who is always working or on their phone.

Physical touch, absence of touch or physical abuse or sexual abuse (anyone would be hurt by this) but if you notice that in the absence of such, this may be your area.

Gifts, the absence of gifts or someone who gives you a gift card and that doesn’t feel personal or forgot your birthday or holiday.

Words of affirmation, the opposite of this if you feel criticized or cut down, verbally abused or name calling will hurt a lot.

These are some ways of helping you can narrow down what you think your love language is. I will encourage you to investigate what your partner's love language is.

Quality time from far away

My husband and I took the 5 Love Language quiz a long time ago. I am quality time and physical touch. My husband is acts of service and quality time.

So, about quality time, I will probably do this again in an upcoming show, when my husband and I first met, my husband used to work offshore. He would be gone for 2 months and come home for 2 months. His schedule changed so, for most of our dating and first part of our marriage he would be on 1 month and off 1 month. It is oil and gas.

After we were married, he no longer had that job and he did contract work. Then he got another job in another state. We discussed how we would work this out, and we decided that he would move to another state. At the time we thought he would transfer back, or I could move to where he is.

Interestingly enough, we are both strong on Quality Time, and we have spent a lot of time living apart or being apart. We have really had to learn how to make that time QUALITY. I am not a huge phone person, but with my husband being away I had to learn how to prioritize this as it is important to him. I learned to talk on the phone. We love traveling together. He is my best friend.

Immaculate garage

With acts of service, Jake can fix anything! Our garage is immaculate because of him. He enjoys projects, and he asks me for his “honey-do” lists. He is really focused on this. Not because he knows that I am expecting this, but because he really enjoys this. He is so big on acts of service and really shows his love to me through this.

I wanna hold your hand!

Physical touch I am someone who likes to go out and hold hands. We were in Houston for some time, and it is humid and 95 degrees out, he will still hold my hand. He is so sweet!

That “lightbulb” moment

I have had this conversation with many of my clients. It is like, Words of affirmation is Spanish, and your partner speaks Greek, then seriously this begins to be the light bulb moment where they can conceptualize this is where they feel unloved but it’s just because we don’t speak the same language. A client will be like “my husband never says anything nice to me but on Sunday nights he takes my car and fills it up before the work week.” The lightbulb moment that we are speaking different love languages.

Check it out!

Go to The 5 Love Languages and take their free quiz and see what your results are. See if your partner will do it as well. Have a conversation about it and discuss these for each of you and give examples of how you would feel loved, examples of things they do already. This will reinforce it. I am a big fan of telling a partner what you need instead of “please don’t do this”. There is a time and place for “don’t do this”.

If you don’t have a partner that is into this, see if you can figure out what their top two love languages are and start speaking it to them. See if you can start seeing some movement on their part.

This is just an introduction to the 5 Love Languages; I will come back to it every now and again.

Thanks for listening!