Our love language is how we like to give and receive affection. Most people are “bilingual” and can appreciate multiple love languages, but we all have a “first language” that we prefer more than others.
Here’s a quick 101 on the five love languages:
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Physical touch: Showing love with physical contact, such as hugging, cuddling, massaging and touching.
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Gifts: Showing love by providing gifts.
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Words of affirmation: Showing love by saying uplifting things such as compliments, “I love you,” telling someone you hope they have an amazing day.
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Quality time: Showing love by making time to hang out with the person or go on a date.
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Acts of service: Showing love by going out of your way to do someone a favour.
Your relationship won’t go up in flames if the two of you have different love languages. Things are more likely to go downhill if you and your partner simply don’t make the effort to understand each other’s language.
Here are a couple reasons why it’s important for you to educate yourself:
Helps You Make Each Other Feel More Loved
If you know your partner’s love language, you know exactly how to make them feel as loved as possible! If you only show love by using your own language, you might feel like you’re loving your partner as best you can, but they may feel differently. Learning each other’s language will help the two of you stay in sync.
You Know Yourself Better
It’s essential to know your likes, wants and needs, especially when in a relationship. Knowing yourself and your language makes it way easier to feel better about yourself and it can help you communicate your needs to your partner. Furthermore, it helps your self-esteem in relationships. If your partner isn’t speaking your love language but you aren’t aware of what your love language is, you won’t feel cared for and then wonder why. But if you know your language, you recognize your partner simply isn’t speaking it, which doesn’t mean they don’t love you.
Love languages aren’t the be-all-end-all. You can probably get by without them, but if you want to reduce misunderstandings, know each other better and have a relationship where the love never dies, you might want to figure out each other’s language. Worst case scenario is that your relationship strengthens. In other words, there are no disadvantages at all.