It’s February, the month you either love or dread. The month where ‘true love’ is celebrated and adorns every shop window, every mug, every card, every TV advert. You walk through town on a busy Saturday afternoon and seemingly see loved up couples and families at your every glance. But then you look behind you, at your husband or partner who’s a little portly after the festive season, unshaven and furiously dragging your three year old up the hill sporting a face like thunder. You too don’t look like such a good advert for ‘true love’ – pushing the buggy with a screaming baby in tow, looking and feeling utterly exhausted on just the few hours sleep you’ve had for the last few nights, preempting (any becoming very apparently frustrated) that any second you’re going to hear “love, what’s the plan for tea tonight?” or “what do you think to staying in, lighting the fire and having an early night?” You ask yourself, is this it?
Love and relationships have the potential to be the most beautiful gift in life, whether between you and your partner, between you and your kids, between you and your family or simply between you and your friends, and yet so often it is the very thing people find themselves disappointed with.
Several years ago I read a book called “The Five Love Languages” by Gary Chapman. It’s an excellent book and has been an absolute God-send to my marriage and my relationships with others. It tackles head on the common reasons why we find ourselves disappointed, let-down and sometimes feeling unloved by those around us, especially our partners. Unsurprisingly the main reason is misunderstanding each other and the wonderful thing is, with just a few tweaks relationships can be and have been transformed.
Imagine you have inside you a big void, we’ll call it your ‘love tank’. We all feel loved in different ways, the main five being 1) words of affirmation 2) physical touch 3) gifts 4) acts of service and 5) quality time. As people extend their love to us in these ways our love tank gets filled up. However, because we are all different, we therefore respond to these expressions of love differently. For example, my husband loves it when I spend time with him intentionally, no mobile phone, no-one else, no distractions, just me and him watching a movie, going for a walk or just sitting having a chat on the sofa. This is his primary love language and this fills up his love tank and causes him to feel loved far more than if I slave away at the stove for the evening cooking him his favourite meal.
Me on the other hand am an ‘acts of service’ kinda gal. I love and feel loved especially when my husband tidies up the living room before coming to bed so that when I wake up in the morning it’s a clear, mess-free place without the cups or plates from the night before needing to be put away. I’m also a gifts person. To some they aren’t bothered by gifts, they’re not fussed about a present under the tree at christmas or a beautifully wrapped parcel on their birthday. I am and many others are too. It doesn’t have to be big pressies, the bag of freshly popped popcorn from the market my hubby goes out to get in his lunch break is a sure way to top up my love tank!
There’s two other ways people feel loved which aren’t mine or my husbands primary love languages – words of affirmation and physical touch. Take my mother in law for example, she’s the kind of person who treasures her favourite cards from her birthday, usually the ones with meaningful words written inside. A pretty little gift is kind but without a card is meaningless. A simple card with heart-felt words means far more. The person who’s love tank fills up with physical touch need to be greeted with a kiss, a hug or a stroke of affection. They require to be close, to cuddle and be affectionate often. A peck on the cheek simply would not do if physical touch was their primary love language.
Understanding how you primarily feel loved is so important but even more important and the key to experiencing ‘true love’ is understanding how the people closest to you in life feel loved and then choosing to speak their language. So often we find ourselves speaking our primary love language to our spouses instead of theirs; I find myself slaving away making the house look nice and then wondering why my husband doesn’t seem to appreciate my efforts when actually I’d be far better off stopping for a moment when he comes home from work and take five minutes just to look eye-to-eye and ask how his day has been.
So, this February I encourage you to google ‘five love languages’ and work out your primary love languages with your partner and then begin speaking them to each other. I guarantee that if you start filling up your partners love tank, you will find your relationships begin to thrive. The heart of the matter, is a matter of the heart so find out how your heart and their hearts needs to be loved.
Written by Lizi Long
