• The Five Love Languages; Start to Repair your Relationship

    The Five Love Languages; Start to Repair your Relationship

    By: Nicole Yoder

    Do you ever wonder how you can start to repair your relationship with your spouse or other family members? Has it been a few rough days, weeks, years for you and this person?

    When we experience extensive times of negative interactions and experiences, we turn away from strengths, positivity, and connection. We often hear the love languages brought up in couples or individual counseling. The five love languages were created by Gary Chapman, Ph.D (Chapman, 2022). Dr. Chapman has written many best sellers including the book The Five Love Languages (Chapman, 2022). This book was written in 1992 and has been on the bestseller list since 2007 (Chapman, 2022).

    The five love languages are
    -Words of Affirmation
    -Physical Touch
    -Acts of Service
    -Quality time
    -Gift giving
    A love language is how we like to receive love and what gestures mean the most to us. For example, when my husband says thank you to me after making dinner it means a lot to me. For my husband, if he made dinner it would mean a lot to him if I hugged and gave him a kiss to show my appreciation.

    It is not uncommon that your love language is different from your partners. This is actually very common and happens for most couples. But what is the true importance of love languages and how could these change your relationship? People feel the immense need to be loved. We all want it and sometimes struggle to give it to other people. Everyone is different, sometimes one perspective sits and affects you differently than others. We all receive and interpret things differently.

    Try taking the love languages quiz online, it is brief and easy. Have your partner, or other family member take the quiz. Learn their love language!

    Here are some examples for each love language on what to do to show them love.

    Words of affirmation:
    -”I appreciate it when you”
    -”Thank you for ..”
    “I love you and you are so special to me”
    -Write them a letter or write a kind thing on a post it
    -Using active listening and validating when your partner is describing an event and say “I am here and I hear you, that must have been so hard!”

    Acts of service:
    -Clean up a room in your house or do some laundry
    -Put on their favorite show or movie
    -Book a nice dinner or date night
    -Take out the trash
    -Grab their coat or shoes for them before leaving the house

    Physical touch:
    -Kiss them often
    -Give a quick massage
    -Hold their hand or rub their arm while they are talking to you
    -Snuggle during a movie
    -Lay together in bed talking

    Quality time:
    -Watch a new show or movie together
    -Cook dinner together and eat without your phones
    -Run errands together
    -Finding a hobby or house project to work on
    -Scheduling date nights

    Gift Giving:
    -A card with a kind message inside
    -A single flower you picked
    -a hand made gift
    -love coupons they can redeem
    -tickets to a show

    These examples are just a few that may be helpful in showing your partner love. Check out more ideas on google.
    If you make an effort to show the other person gestures of love through their love language you will start to build positive connection and attachment.
    If you are thinking, “that is hard!”, you are not alone. It makes sense that your first instinct is to show love to someone in the way that you feel love the greatest. It makes sense that it would take time and practice to show love in a different way to your partner than how you like to receive it. It takes practice, it is not second nature. You can only control yourself and you can only control what you do. It takes two to build back a relationship, but this could be your first step if both are committed.

    This is something that you can continue to learn in couples or individual therapy. In therapy, you are able to process contributing factors and learn more about yourself and others. A therapist at Everlasting Wellness will help to create a warm accepting environment to gain skills to better all aspects of your relationships.

    Everlasting Wellness and the amazing therapists can be reached at (484) 706-9465 or email everlastingwellness.counseling@gmail.com to get started and book a session.

    Visit us at https://everlastingwellnesscounseling.com/ to learn more about our practice and the individual therapists.
    We hope to see you soon!

    Linked below is the quiz to know your love language.
    https://5lovelanguages.com/quizzes

    Chapman, G. (2022). What are the 5 love languages? Discover Your Love Language –
    The 5 Love Languages®. Retrieved September 15, 2022, from
    https://5lovelanguages.com/learn

    Leave a reply:

    Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked*