We share a lot of parenting advice on World Moms Blog. However, how happy we are at home can have a great effect on our children. If you have a partner, today I’m focusing on how we can strengthen those relationships!
Love is an emotion that we need and seek since our first minute on earth. Children have basic emotional needs that must be met if they are to be emotionally stable. They feel their value and self esteem when they are loved and appreciated.
Even adults need to feel loved to continue their lives normally and to feel happy and fulfilled. The book “The 5 Love languages: The Secret to Love That Lasts” by Garry Chapman is about how to express our love in relationships and I would like to share some ideas of the book with you. This book has totally changed the lives of many couples who were struggling in their relationships.
The author is a marriage counselor and from his 30 years experience in the field of marriage counseling he noticed that there are 5 common ways of expressing love – which he named “love languages”. As people speaking different languages cannot interconnect and build strong relationships, individuals who are not aware of their love language or their partner’s love language will not be able to have a healthy and fulfilling relationship. So people who are in relationships need to know their partner’s love language to meet their need of love.
Everyone of us has an emotional tank that needs to be filled with love. When someone falls in love, their emotional tank is filled; but when they fall out of love (what usually happens after marriage or after some time) this tank needs to be refilled…otherwise the couple may think that their marriage is over and they may look to fall in love again just to meet their need for love and get their emotional tank filled. That is why many wonder where the love they had has gone. We may have more than one love language but there is one primary love language which is the most important for us. In some occasions we may appreciate a certain language, even if it’s not our primary language. This is similar to appreciating physical touch while grieving,even if that isn’t your primary love language.
These 5 Love Languages are:
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Words of affirmations: Verbal compliments, or words of appreciation, are powerful communicators of love. They are best expressed in simple, straightforward statements of affirmation.
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Gifts: A gift is something you can hold in your hand and say, “Look, he was thinking of me,” or “She remembered me.” You must be thinking of someone to give them a gift. The gift itself is a symbol of that thought. Even being present for your partner during special occasions can be a great gift.
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Acts of services: Acts of services can be as simple as giving your partner a hand with the housework: helping out in the kitchen, doing the laundry, gardening, baby sitting, or paying the bills.
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Physical touch: Physical touch can make or break a relationship. It can communicate hate or love. To the person whose primary love language is physical touch, the message will be far louder than the words “I hate you” or “I love you.” Not all touches will be equal. Some will bring more pleasure to your partner than others. Your best instructor is your your partner.
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Quality time: If your partner’s love language is quality time, this means that he/she needs a period of time of your full attention. This time could be for talking, listening to each other, and having fun together. (So find out which activities can you do together to fill his/her emotional tank!)
Finding your or your partner’s love language is the real challenge and the author has suggested different strategies for doing this.
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One of these strategies is to remember what your partner is always complaining that you are not doing. If they are complaining that you are not talking to them, or you don’t have time for them, that indicates that their primary love language is quality time. If your partner complains you are not helping out enough in the house, they may appreciate acts of service.
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Another strategy is to notice how your partner is trying to show their love to you, most probably, that is their love language.
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The last strategy is to try each love language with your partner for a whole week. Notice how it affects them and how they respond to your acts of expressing love to find out which one had the best effect.
So what if you don’t speak your partner’s love language? What can you do if you are not used to words of affirmations or touching others physically? You simply need to learn to speak their love language as you would learn to speak a foreign language. The author has suggested a simple game, which is to ask your partner weekly, “On a scale of 1 to 10 how do you feel your emotional tank is filled and what can I do to make it reach 10 (if it’s less)?”. Loving your spouse or partner is a choice that you can make. Learning your spouse’s or partner’s love language and expressing your love using this language can extremely change your relationship and your life.
Do you know what makes your partner feel loved? After reading this post can you identify your primary love language and that of your partner’s? Could this post help make a difference in how you connect with your partner?
This is an original post for World Moms Blog by Nihad from Alexandria, Egypt. Nihad blogs at Aurora Beams Life Coaching.
Plumeria flowers heart image courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net.
Nihad, thank you for writing about such an important topic on a mom’s blog! It’s so easy to forget the husband and focus on the kids. And this makes me realize that, even though I have a wonderful and happy marriage, I’m not entirely sure what my husband’s love language is. So I’ll be checking on that later.
Thanks and glad you liked it 🙂
I discovered the book 5 Love Languages several years ago and it definitely helped make my relationship with my husband even better than it already was! 🙂
The same author also wrote the book 5 Love Languages for Children. Often, as parents, we feel that we need to treat our children EQUALLY … for example when we buy a present for one, we need to buy something of equal value for the other. What these books taught me is that we must must actually treat our children DIFFERENTLY (according to their individual love languages) to have the happiest and most harmonious home life!
I completely endorse everything that Nihad has written in her post. I feel that the great relationship I have with my husband (after 21 years of marriage) and with my 19 year old son & 16 year old daughter are proof that the “love language theory” really works! 🙂
Glad you already applied what’s in the book in your own life and relationship and yes I have the other 2 books the 5 love languages for children and for adolescents and I intended to write about them in my next post as they are more related to WMB objective. I think they will be of great value for many of WMB contributors and moms.
Thank you 🙂
I enjoyed reading this post Nihad. I just realized that lately, my language of love is “acts of services”. This may sound silly, but it lifts my spirits when my oldest daughter and my husband pitch in to help out around the house 🙂
Now I want to check this book out – thanks for sharing!
Thank you 🙂 and enjoy reading the book, I found is so valuable.
I have to admit — I had a few epiphanies when reading this post! Thanks, Nihad. You are a star for always looking to make people’s lives better and more fulfilled!
Jen 🙂
My main focus is to make women’s lives happier and more fulfilled. I believe that if deep inside she is really happy she will change the life of her family and her community. Happiness of a man is for himself but happiness of a woman affects lives of all her surroundings. I want to see women live a better life and I want to contribute to that.
Thank you Jen and you are the star to me 🙂
Cheers to that Nihad!
Thanks Eva 🙂
This is fascinating Nihad! Thanks for introducing us to the 5 love languages. Without knowing about the book, I had a feeling, or instinct really, about this. So this def puts into words what I have been thinking. Thank you!
Thank you for taking the time to read the post and commenting and glad it resonated with what you felt. Me too I believed that we differ in expressing and liking to receive love but I never knew they are 5, or that we have a primary language that is the most important to every one of us. Glad you liked the post 🙂
I love this book and have even bought it as part of a wedding gift for a young couple. Couples that don’t read English usually get the synopsis of the book in lecture form from me lol.
One point I wanted to clarify a bit is that according to the book is that we all need to receive all 5 of the love languages. We all have one primary language that we need the most but we do need them all.
The book also has a great quiz at the end for trying to figure out your love language.
Great post.
Hi Suzie,
Yes I know there is a quiz at the end of the book, may be I had to mention that but as on my post I can’t publish the test I mentioned how we can do it without the test and even the author mentioned that sometimes the test doesn’t give the accurate result so he suggested to use the other ideas for help. Concerning that we all need to receive 5 love language, I think yes we all need it but the best results I think is when we receive it in our primary language because most of the stories in the book one of the partner was expressing his/her love in some language and there were still a problem but when it was expressed in the primary language the relationship was saved and there was a great change in the couple’s life.
Receiving love in the 5 languages is a plus but in the primary is a need.
Thanks for sharing your ideas 🙂