What’s your love language? Is it acts of service, gifts or quality time? Or is it words of affirmation or physical touch? Although love languages may seem like a silly topic that you would talk about at a sleepover, it’s important to understand what your needs are and how you will express them in a relationship. Likewise, knowing your partner’s love language can help you find out how they express their love and how you can make them feel more loved.
First, let me briefly define each love language. Acts of service is when you go out of your way to help or support the other person. For example, someone with this as their primary love language would feel especially loved when their significant other helps them with homework. People whose love language is gifts may tend to bombard their loved ones with presents and expect a lot of presents in return. Quality time is when you save up your time and focus to devote to someone. If you express your love by turning your phone off and focusing on your partner during dates, quality time might be your love language! Words of affirmation and physical touch are straightforward. If you feel loved when your partner says “I love you,” your love language is probably words of affirmation. If you prefer hugs, your main love language might be physical touch.
It’s common for couples to have different love languages, which can make it difficult to communicate love to each other. My love language is gifts, and my partner’s is quality time. Because of this difference, my partner often feels that I’m not spending enough time with him while I often feel like I’m giving too much and not receiving enough gifts in return. But, identifying this difference helped me learn to spend less on gifts and spend more time with him instead.
One way to identify your partner’s love language is to directly ask them: What love language is most important to you? If that feels too awkward, or your partner is not aware of their love language, you can try presenting different love languages to them and observing their reactions to each. For example, you can shower them with gifts and with words of affirmation to see which they react more happily to. You can also try holding their hand more often or help them with their homework to compare between physical touch and acts or service.
Either way, understanding your partner’s love language can greatly improve your relationship because you know how to make each other feel deeply loved. Remember—relationships should be two-way streets, and you need to work together to make both people happy! Communicating with each other’s love languages can be the first step in building that kind of healthy, mutual relationship.