How Understanding Your Love Language Can Help You Connect With Your
How Understanding Your Love Language Can Help You Connect With Your Partner(s)
Human connection is something that we all strive for. We want to feel validated and loved by our partners, and we want to do everything we can to show them that we care. Learning what love language you speak and what you need to feel that validation can not only be helpful in your own journey, but it can aid your connection with your partner(s).
What Are Love Languages?
The five love languages were developed by Dr. Gary Chapman in 1992 in his best-selling book that described each of these languages and why they are important. These five languages are:
Words of Affirmation
Quality Time
Physical Touch
Acts of Service
Receiving Gifts
These languages were created to help show individuals and couples that there is not a one-size-fits-all approach to what love looks like.
Why Are Love Languages Important?
Oftentimes we can get lost in communication with our partner(s) about what love feels like for ourselves and for them. For example, let’s say that it’s Valentine’s Day. You wake up to an impeccably clean house and a delicious homemade breakfast waiting for you at the kitchen table. You are certainly happy and grateful that your partner has done this for you, but you feel like something is missing. While the house and the breakfast are certainly sweet gestures, all you wanted was a meaningful card where your partner expressed how much they love you.
These thoughts can then lead to a snowball of several different feelings. Why am I being like this? Can’t I just appreciate the nice thing my partner did for me? I feel so guilty and sad that I can’t enjoy this as much as I am supposed to.
Now, you might be spending the rest of Valentine’s Day in your head because you are feeling all of these things that you’re not “supposed” to feel. Or, maybe you expressed to your partner(s) how you’ve been feeling and they get extremely upset and defensive and do not understand what else they could have done to make you happy. The bottom line here is that there is clear miscommunication going on between you and your partner(s), but you’re not exactly sure how to fix it without hurting them.
This is where love languages come in.
Love Languages And Miscommunication
In the scenario above, one partner’s love language is an act of service. Cleaning of the house and a tasty breakfast demonstrated that this person shows their love through grand gestures and acts of kindness. However, the other person in the couple’s main love language is words of affirmation. They would have felt more loved through something like a handwritten note, or being told through words how much they are loved. What the partner did through cleaning the house and making breakfast is what so many individuals tend to do for their partners: they show love in the way that they want to receive love.
While this action is certainly understandable, it creates confusion between partners of what one’s needs really are. Of course they didn’t see why the house and the breakfast weren’t good enough, because that’s exactly what they would have wanted! Creating an open space for partners to be able to clearly articulate what they need can help strengthen that connection in relationships..
Creating The Space For Connection
It can be incredibly overwhelming to try and think about what you need to do in order to care for your partner. You want to show them how much you love them in the best way possible, and that can come with a great amount of pressure. Together, through therapy, we can create a space of safety and honesty in order to effectively communicate with your partner(s) about what your needs are and the love languages you speak.
Learning what love language you most identify with will not only help the way in which you communicate with your partner, but it will also create a level of self-awareness in your mind and your body that may have not been there before. It can help open up an entirely new world where you feel like your needs can finally be met without feeling like you’re going to hurt your partner(s). The mutual understanding of your love languages can connect couples’ in a way that nurtures and strengthens your relationship.
Love is overwhelming. It’s beautiful, difficult, exhilarating, exhausting, and incredibly unique. Having the strength and self-awareness to navigate the challenges that come with love is something to be incredibly proud of. Through therapy, we can navigate the complexity of these challenges together, coming out on the other side with a deep level of appreciation and understanding for the love in your life. If you're interested in individual therapy or couples therapy, click here to schedule a 15-minute consultation with our client concierge to learn about our offerings.
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