Are Love Languages Helpful or just a Hype?

The five love language system created by Gary Chapman are helpful to understand in relationships particularly when it comes to approaching each other and appreciating your partner. Communication is a big tool in relationships and figuring out the types of behaviors your partner resonates more with relative to feeling loved can help you understand how to easily appreciate one another. Appreciation is often the first thing we forget to do or often take for granted the longer we are in our relationships, so bringing it to the forefront can reinvigorate your connection and shake things up a bit.

We all function off of and appreciate receiving all five of these expressions of love and affection, but we are highly charged and elated when receiving one or two of them, and it fills our love tank when our partner does these things for us. Love languages are how you prefer to be loved, and you have your preferred way of receiving love, which if not received, can leave you feeling deprived, unimportant, or unloved by your partner.

If you don't know what your partner's love language is, you may try to express love in the way you prefer to receive it, which may not be received or as resonant for your partner often leading to disappointment in trying to earn their affection, and not getting acknowledgment. We often learn how we would like to be loved by the families we grow up in and learn how to express ourselves through those early modeled relationships, which we often apply in our adult relationships as well. However, if your partner's love language is different from yours, they may not feel loved as you intended. For a healthy and satisfying relationship, knowing each other's love language can be a huge factor and yet an easy way in learning how to effectively connect and share love and affection.

Here's the breakdown of how you might be able to understand and implement each of the love languages:

Touch: This can be as simple as stroking your partner's cheek, playing with their hair, giving them a tender hug, light massages, rubbing of shoulders, holding hands, kissing, comforting when your partner is under duress, and holding them, intimate touch and sensual caress during sex.

Acts of Service: Voluntarily doing things for your partner, whether it be washing their car, doing the laundry, or taking out the trash. This doesn't have to be chore-related, as it can be responding with kindness, trying to be helpful, assisting your partner in an activity, and trying to demonstrate the importance of doing things together in the partnership.

Words of Affirmation: Taking the time to appreciate your partner with words about their actions or their qualities, Giving compliments, exchanging letters. It can be as easy as expressing love on a post-it note and placing it somewhere your partner is likely to find it. You can also easily exchange any of these words of affirmation through text, messaging, or emails.

Gifts: This can be similar to words of affirmation, as you can share a written note of appreciation on special occasions, pick up a stone or shell on the beach that reminded them of you, bring home small tokens from trips, this also can include monetary gifts or any price, shape, or size. The importance of this love language is that the exchange is done at any given time, and is not only reserved for special occasions. It can be giving a homemade card or item that meant something to you.

Quality Time: Giving your undivided attention and placing your focus on spending time and presence with your partner. This means putting away the technology, as hard as that is, and sitting down to have a conversation or even just being present with one another. The importance is placed on carving out time with one another for the purpose of connection.

Usually, we have a tendency to speak our own love language, and we draw an assumption that our partner may receive love in the same way we do. After all, partners often look for similarities, yet you want to be mindful of how your partner prefers to receive their love. You often can have more than one love language, but it usually ends up being more important for you to have the top one or two than the others.

When you would like to do something for your partner and you would intentionally like it to register, speaking to them or doing something for them using their love language can be advantageous, and you can also speak to them in your love language if the importance is in doing something for yourself that is in service of your partner. You cannot go wrong in trying to express affection towards your partner, however some ways of expressing affection may have more potency than others, so don't get disheartened if your partner isn't as receptive when you use your love language rather than theirs. Having fun and developing a connected, healthy and satisfying partnership is the ultimate goal, and utilizing the love languages as a guide can help you to understand your partner's desires and to connect in a way that states "I love you deeply and want to you to know you're special to me" without having to say the words (unless your love language is words of affirmation of course - and then it helps to express that explicitly).

Relationships Redefined specializes in helping couples and individuals find fulfillment, connection, trust, and healthy communication in their relationships and offers online counseling focused in couples therapy & marriage counseling, individual therapy, premarital counseling, and intimacy and sex therapy in San Diego and all of California. Book a free 15-minute online consultation with us here! Make Intimacy Your Reality!