What Love Language do You Speak?

Do you know how you prefer to express & receive love?                  Do you know how your partner prefers to express & receive love?

In this post you’ll learn about how you prefer to express and receive love. Today’s post is based on Dr. Gary Chapman’s brilliant book, The Five Love Languages.

The concept of the Five Love Languages is so powerful because it helps give us perspective outside of ourselves, which is usually very hard to get. After all, we see the world the way we see it, AND we assume almost by default that everyone else sees it that way too. Or at least that they should!

The same is true with love. Each person has a preferred way to give and receive love, and we assume that how we like our love is also how everyone else to prefers it! And we are usually wrong…

Couples can run into trouble when the way they prefer to receive love isn’t the way that their partner naturally gives love. A good relationship can stop feeling good because while both people are still expressing a lot of love, it’s not being expressed in a way that their partner easily receives.

They are speaking different languages!

When you go to discover your own love languages or your partner’s love languages, it can be helpful to look at three things:

1. What makes you feel very loved when someone else does it for you?
2. How do you most naturally express your own love?
3. What kind of things really hurt?

Now, let’s get into the Five Love Languages! 

1) Words of affirmation

For words of affirmation people, they love to hear positive encouragement and praise.

Any kind of vocal expression of affirmation, validation or appreciation that’s expressed to them will really make them feel connected and loved.

This is my primary love language – I want someone to tell me that they love me 100 times a day, tell me why they love me, and to verbally appreciate me when I show my love to them. What can I say? I love praise and acknowledgement, that’s what has me feel the most love!

2) Acts of Service

For acts of service people – actions speak louder than words.

Your love language might be acts of service if you really enjoy doing the little things for your partner like laundry or vacuuming or making dinner, or you might enjoy doing something less common, like planning a special day out or going to that obscure market at the far end of town to get the one kind of artisinal cheese that your man really likes because you know that that will make him really happy.

One of my husband’s love languages is acts of service, but for myself, service falls way to the bottom of the list. It’s a bit of a mismatch, but knowing about these love languages has helped us handle it and keep the love flowing between us.

Here’s one of the ways I used the understanding of the love languages to improve our relationship:

Early on, I noticed that when my husband cooked dinner for us (which as I mentioned in a previous episode, he does almost every night) and I wasn’t ready to eat when it was done (usually working on one thing or another), he would feel hurt by that.

I realized that while I saw it simply as making food for fuel and nutrition, he saw it as an act of love for me, so when I neglected to receive the love he was showing, he felt rejected and unappreciated.

Now, I always drop what I am doing as soon as he says dinner is ready. That one small change has made a big difference!

3) Receiving Gifts 

This one is pretty straightforward, gifts people are people who feel very loved when they receive a gift!

It might be because they link receiving the gift to knowing that the person was thinking about them; they appreciate the intentionality that often comes with gift giving.

Or it may be simply that they straight up just love gifts.

These people are likely to purchase gifts for other people as a sign of their love.

There can also be a huge variation in the kind of gifts you want to receive. For some people they might prefer small homemade gifts as a sign of their partner’s true undying love, while someone else might prefer really luxurious or expensive guess that they would never buy for themselves.

You might prefer gifts that are incredibly thoughtful and unique to them that show they are really being listened to. What’s most important is to recognize if this is a language that really speaks to you and, if so, to embrace it.

Sometimes people resist acknowledging that this is one of their love languages because they don’t want to be seen as materialistic or shallow, but if you love receiving gifts and that makes you feel really special and important and cared for, then I strongly suggest you own it!

There’s nothing inherently wrong with receiving gifts, I myself quite enjoy it, but if you resist receiving and feeling that love, all you are doing is decreasing your own satisfaction with your relationship.

Don’t cut off one of your love languages because of what others may think. This isn’t about them!

4) Physical Touch

The physical touch person really values physical affection and appropriate touches from their partner.

There’s a wide range of ways that someone who speaks physical touch as their love language might express and want to receive their love. For example they might love to get there head scratched or always want to be holding hands.

Some people are really into public displays of affection whereas another person who also speaks physical touch wants to never be affectionate in public.

Once in private though, they can’t keep their hands off you and they just want to hold you and snuggle and cuddle and kiss.

5) Quality Time.

Quality time people are all about spending time with their significant other. This could be going for a hike with each other, going out to dinner, or staying home and cooking up a delicious meal on a Friday night.

One thing that is important to understand about these love languages is that each language actually has multiple dialects, so to speak! It’s not so broad and two different people who speak the same language might actually speak it in a different dialect and thus have totally different preferences.

For one of my clients, both her and her husband’s love language is quality time. However, when she says quality time what she really means is special dated that the plan together planned together where they go do something new and exciting, but her husband thinks of quality time as any time they are alone together, whether they are sitting on the couch relaxing or going out to eat as long they are one-on-one he feels the love of quality time.

Now, if they had never distinguished these different dialects of quality time, you can see where they would run into problems. They are trying to express love, but it gets lost in translation!

Understanding your love language is a great start, but you will probably need to get even more specific and discover what it is within the language is it that really makes you feel loved.

So what is your primary love language?

If you want more help sorting out your love language head on over to www.5lovelanguages.comto take a short quiz.

Let us know in the comments. What is your love language?

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In the next episode, I’ll teach you what to do you and your partner speak different love languages.