After many years of being in a relationship, you might find yourself not fully understanding and communicating well with your partner. You might wonder what is wrong with the two of you and feel confused. You think you speak the same language, but you really are not. Well, hold on for a second, there is nothing wrong with you and your partner. Maybe you’ve heard of the Five Love Languages? No? Well, here you go. You might just be speaking a foreign love language to your partner.
There are five ways to speak and understand emotional love. Many couples don’t know about the five love languages and are surprised when they actually learn about them. The love languages are 1) Words of affirmation 2) Quality time 3) Receiving gifts 4) Acts of service and 5) Physical touch.
As you grow up in your family of origin, you learn to receive and give love. This becomes your primary love language. You move on, get married or are in a relationship, and all of sudden you feel that the message your are trying to express to your partner does not go through. The reason behind that is most probably that both of you have a different love language. You speak in one language and your partner in another one and you don’t understand each other. What ever you are trying to tell your partner might come across as nagging and complaining. Things such as you don’t love me, you don’t care about me, might be on your daily list of complaining and arguing with each other. This can lead to emotional and physical disconnection between you two.
The best thing to find and examine your love languages is to look at how you express your love to each other. Maybe you like to be physically touched and need to hear words of affirmation such as I love you, you are beautiful, you look great and so on, but you don’t get that from your partner. Maybe you asked in the past for a nice massage, but your partner does not want to give you one and is ignoring your request. It made you feel upset, sad, angry and over time you simply gave up and stopped asking. Maybe your partner is expressing his love by acts of service, such as doing little things for you here and there, but you don’t recognize it and do not acknowledge it. But this is your partner’s love language and your partner expects the same expressions from you. When you start exploring your love languages with your partner, you will experience the “aha moment” and think…wow, why didn’t I know this before?
If you will learn each other’s love languages, you will both feel loved and secure in your relationship. Now, the question is, what if my partner does not know how to naturally express my love language when (for example) I need to hear words of affirmation from him/her? The answer is very simple. Your learn and practice. If you truly love someone, if you truly care about your partner and your relationship, you will do anything you can to make it happen.
Originally published at www.katerinafager.com
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