Taylor Mays
The 5 Lover Languages are:
- Words of Affirmation
- Quality Time
- Receiving Gifts
- Acts of Service
- Physical Touch
The 5 Love Languages have created a buzz in the relationship education world over the past several years. Why? There is probably no concept you will ever learn that can help you build stronger relationships with all the closest people in your life, like an in depth awareness of their love language.
This concept is very important, not just for the romantic relationships you have, but every important relationship in your life.
Hi my name is Taylor and I’m a wife and mother from Chattanooga, Tennessee, and since at the time of this writing, Valentine’s Day is right around the corner, and everyone’s thinking about love and their relationships and maybe a date night, I wanted to share an article with the AttractLove.com readers about the five love languages. I’d mentioned these in a previous article and you guys ask for more, so here it is. The 5 love languages have been game-changing for my marriage, our relationship, and really all of my relationships.
So, in this article I’ll tell you why it’s so important for you and your partner to know each other’s love languages. I’ll go into more details of the five love languages, how you can speak that language and what not to do that could really damage your relationship. And all this information is in a book by Gary Chapman called “The Five Love Languages”, and I’m not an expert in this I’ll leave that to Gary Chapman who wrote the book.
Understanding these 5 Love Languages for my husband Andrew and I , has really changed our relationship. The 5 Love languages has allowed us to really step back and realize what we can do, the actions we can take to ensure that one another feels the most loved. So, what are the five love languages?
- Words of Affirmation
- Quality Time
- Receiving Gifts
- Acts of Service
- Physical Touch
I’ll get into all five of these love languages in more detail, but first I just want to address why it’s so important for you and your partner to know each other’s love languages and how to speak their language.
As I mentioned this has been a game changer for our relationship since we first learned about these five love languages and our pre marriage classes at our church. So, whenever we’ve had a rocky point in our marriage it’s so easy for me to put my finger on why and it’s because we weren’t speaking each other’s love languages. Here’s what I mean by that.
Every person has a dominant love language for how they receive love. Some people might have a secondary form. The quiz we took did show us our dominant and then our secondary love language. All of us can appreciate love through all five of the languages but everyone has a dominant form for how they receive love the best.
I personally feel like they’re grounded in a little bit of the way your parents showed you love as a child, but that’s my own personal theory I don’t know if that’s proven or not. But for me, words of affirmation is my dominant love language and physical touch is my secondary, and for my husband his dominant love language is quality time and his secondary is acts of service.
So, since we don’t even have one in common you can tell we are not speaking the same language regarding the way that we as individuals, receive love.
So, if we only ever showed our love in the way we prefer to receive it, we would never actually be speaking one another’s love languages. I’ll put a link below so you can determine your love language but I’m going to go into some details with them, so, as you read this article it might become pretty apparent to you what your love language is or what’s your partner’s love language is and I would love for you to comment , or if you already know it comment that too. so here are the different ways that you can speak these five love languages and the deal-breakers.
The 5 Love Languages & Deal Breakers
- Words of affirmation this could be spoken, written, a text, an email, a love letter, compliments, and if you ever cursed, calls someone a name or verbally abusive, sent a slew of really mean text messages to your partner this could really damage your relationship.
- So, for quality time this is spending time together. Date nights, focused one-on-one time with that person. Maybe it’s traveling, maybe it’s learning something new, taking a course together, doing something fun.
But it’s spending that focused one-on-one time with that person so that you can bond and stay connected. So, if you ever ignored this person, avoided this person, didn’t prioritize that one-on-one time with them, they would take that as a serious insult. - The receiving gifts love language is probably pretty obvious. It can be things like chocolates, flowers, clothing, or maybe just paying attention to a person’s likes or dislikes and making them feel special on certain occasions like birthdays, big life events, making sure that they feel valued and that you give them a token of appreciation.
If you forgot their birthday or didn’t put any effort into your anniversary that would be huge deal-breaker for them. - Acts of service: Doing the laundry, going to the grocery store, scrubbing the toilets, putting the dishes away, making the bed. And this one is where my theory comes in that, if you had a parent who did all these things for you, acts of service could be your love language.
But at the end of the day this person feels loved when you go out of your way to do things for that person that they really appreciate. So, if you don’t help out, don’t pitch in and do the chores; this person would feel extremely unloved and uncared for.
5. The final love language physical touch. This is not just intimacy but that’s a big part of it. It could be as simple as giving a hug, snuggling a pat on the back, holding a hand, caressing someone’s hair.
If you’re watching this season of The Bachelor, I would bet money that Arya’s love language is physical touch. He is always touching everyone that around; brushing people’s hair back, and poking fingers through Becca’s hoop earrings, kind of bizarre, but I would bet money physical touch is his love language.
So, if this is your partner’s love language; avoiding intimacy or very, very damaging would be any sort of discomfort, inappropriate touching, physical abuse would be irreparable. So, going back to my personal experience here’s where the wires can really get crossed.
Since I’m words of affirmation, in my head I think I’m going to write Andrew a really nice email, a little love letter if you will, about all of the reasons why I appreciate him, why I love him, why I care so much about him.
He can receive that email and even though you might think it’s nice, I could actually make him feel so much more valued by spending one-on-one time with him.
He knows that I’m going to set aside all that work on my to do list to focus on him, watch a TV show, listen to music, connect with him, have that space where we can bond that means so much more to him than any email I could ever write even if it was the best written email in the world, and vice versa, since he values acts of service he might go outside, cut the grass, pull weeds, put a ton of effort into making sure our house looks great; whereas, I’m inside haven’t been talked to all day, haven’t been paid a compliment, nobody asked me how my day is going, I haven’t gotten a hug, whereas if he just took five minutes to do something so much simpler than all of that work he did outside in the yard, I would feel a thousand times more loved, and have so much better of a day.
Are you starting to get this? This is a simple idea that you cannot take for granted, it must be studied and internalized. Imagine if you were 100% of the dominant love language of the people in every important relationship in your life.
So that’s what you have to be really cognizant of. Even though you might prefer something or speak a certain love language, your partner might appreciate it but it’s not the number one way to get to their heart and ensure that they feel loved and valued in your relationship.
YOU’RE PERSONAL DOMINANT LOVE LANGUAGES IN NOT NECESSARILY THEIRS, AND IT PROBABLY ISN’T !!
And what I think is really interesting is, I’ve seen these come out in all of my relationships. My relationships with my friends, my relationships with my kids, and my parents, even co-workers; and there are books along these topics as well.
So, if it’s something that interests you, how these love languages play out in relationships with your kids, or your parents, or your co-workers let me know in the comments. If you’d like to read more articles along this topic, because I’d definitely seen this happen if your love language is different than even your co-workers, how they can put some strain on your relationship or things you think you’re doing to be really helpful that actually isn’t received in the best way, if they have a different love language style than your own.
Understanding this concept helps us communicate better with all people in all relationships we have even in our business and professional life.
And it’s really clear to me with my kiddos; Devon is definitely physical touch. He’s always asking for an extra hug before he goes down to bed, and in the mornings when I say goodbye to them, he makes sure that he and Presley both get a hug and a kiss.
He makes sure mommy and daddy give each other a hug and a kiss. It’s very clear that, that’s how he perceived love or what his love language is, it’s through getting that hug and a kiss from his family members that he really cares about. It’s just so cute.
We call him like the hug and kiss police. That is the fast rundown of the five love languages. I hope that you found this information helpful to you and your relationships and maybe a little bit insightful on things that you can do to improve you and your partner’s relationship. I appreciate Mary at Attract Love asking me to share it with you.