We all function and appreciate receiving all five of these expressions of love and affection, but we are super charged and excited when we receive one or two of them, and it fills our love tank when our partner does these things for us. Love languages are how you prefer to be loved and you have a preferred way of receiving love, which if not received, can make you feel deprived, unimportant or unloved by your partner.
If you don’t know what your partner’s love language is, you may try to express love in the way you prefer to receive it, which may not be received or resonate with your partner often leading to frustration in the effort win his affection. and get no recognition. We often learn how we would like to be loved by the families we grow up in, and we learn how to express ourselves through these early modeled relationships, which we often apply to our adult relationships. However, if your partner’s love language is different from yours, they may not feel loved the way you intended. For a healthy and fulfilling relationship, knowing each other’s love language can be a huge factor and yet an easy way to learn how to effectively connect and share love and affection.
Here’s the breakdown of how you can understand and apply each of the love languages:
Touch: This can be as simple as caressing your partner’s cheek, playing with their hair, giving them a tender hug, light massage, shoulder rub, holding hands, kissing, comforting when your partner he is under pressure and hold him, intimate touch and sensual caress during sex.
Acts of service: Volunteer to do things for your partner, whether it’s washing their car, doing laundry, or taking out the trash. This doesn’t have to be chore related as it can be responding with kindness, trying to help, helping your partner with an activity and trying to show the importance of doing things together in partnership.
Words of Affirmation: Take time to appreciate your partner in words about his actions or qualities, by giving compliments, by exchanging letters. It can be as easy as expressing your love on a post-it note and placing it where your partner is likely to find it. You can also easily exchange any of these confirmation words via text, message or email.
Gifts: This can be similar to words of affirmation as you can share a written note of appreciation on special occasions, pick up a rock or shell on the beach that reminded them of you, bring home small tokens from travels, this can also include monetary gifts or any price, shape or size. The importance of this love language is that it is exchanged at any time and is not reserved for special occasions only. You might be giving a homemade card or an item that meant something to you.
Quality time: Giving your undivided attention and emphasizing your time and presence with your partner. This means putting aside technology, as difficult as it may be, and sitting down to chat or even be present with each other. Importance is given to carving out time between them for the purpose of bonding.
Usually, we tend to speak our own love language and assume that our partner can receive love the same way we do. After all, partners often look for similarities, however you want to be mindful of how your partner prefers to receive their love. You may often have more than one love language, but it usually ends up being more important to you to have the first one or two than the others.
When you want to do something for your partner and purposefully want them to subscribe, talking to or doing something for them using their love language can be beneficial and you can also talk to them in your love language if it’s important . to do something for yourself that is in the service of your partner. You can’t go wrong trying to express affection to your partner, however some ways of expressing affection can be more powerful than others, so don’t be discouraged if your partner isn’t as receptive when you use your love language rather than his. Having fun and developing a connected, healthy and fulfilling partnership is the ultimate goal, and using love languages as a guide can help you understand your partner’s desires and connect in a way that says “I love you deeply and I want you to know that you’re special to me’ without having to say the words (unless your love language is words of affirmation of course – in which case it helps to express it explicitly).
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