How to master your partner’s love language

A few days ago, we talked about a woman’s role in supporting the vision and dreams of her man. Today we take this further by discussing the need to study your partner to understand them better.

This includes finding out their dominant love and life language.

Here’s Rob and Stella’s story:

Rob is physical. He believes that one way to deepen his connection with his partner is through physical touch. He likes to hold hands, touch the other person constantly and give hugs.

Stella doesn’t understand this. She prefers to compliment him and offers to help him out, especially with cooking. She believes these things are more meaningful.

And honestly, she feels like Rob’s actions are about him wanting sex, even after they had agreed to abstain until marriage.

How can this couple navigate this?

The Five Love Languages

When Gary Chapman published ‘The Five Love Languages,’ it was a game-changer. For many, he had finally found the right words to articulate something they had always struggled to express. He gave meaning to these feelings and how we want to be known and seen.

Dr Chapman espoused 5 love languages (LAs):

1. Physical Touch – these are for people who feel loved when they are touched, hugged, and kissed.
2. Words of affirmation – these are verbal acknowledgements, compliments, words of encouragement and appreciation.
3. Gifts – this is where a person feels loved and seen when they receive “visual symbols of love” as Dr Chapman calls it.
4. Acts of Service – Acts done to lessen the burden or responsibility on your partner to make their lives easier or make them happy.
5. Quality time – for those who value spending time with their loved ones. They feel seen and loved when their partner is willing to make time for them.

Here are a few interesting notes about love languages:

• Most of us exhibit or need all the love languages though there are usually one or two dominant ones.
• Our dominant love language can change with time based on the season of life we are in.
• These love languages are not restricted to romantic relationships. We each exhibit these needs and marriage is just one place to fill and fulfil them. For instance, children also have different love languages, and we are better equipped to parent them when we recognise this and connect with them based on their dominant LA.

In the above story, we see that Rob had a dominant LA – physical touch, while Stella was more of an act of service and words of affirmation kinda girl. One obvious challenge for the couple was that they had not recognised their different LAs, so they kept expecting the other partner to respond to their own LA.

Stella’s reticence may also stem from a wrongful conclusion that physical touch equates to sex, which is not the case. Yes, it can lead to that, but like the other love languages, it is about connection and emotional intimacy.

Other ways to communicate

In addition to love languages is the notion of life languages and temperament. Life languages are a type of communication style and are usually divided into 7 languages. – shaper, mover, contemplator, producer, doer, responder, and influencer.

You may be reading about this for the first time and that’s to be expected, you can read up about life languages here.

 

Conclusion

The crucial point of today’s relationship tip is to recognise that we are all different and the things that move us are unique to each of us.

More so, as Christians, we have a distinctive advantage in this area – the Holy Spirit – who God has gifted us to be our guide and helper.

So, when looking to connect with your partner, ask the Holy Spirit for the wisdom and insight to know how to communicate with them in a manner that recognises and celebrates their uniqueness. Amen

PS: Do you know your love language or need to better understand your partner’s? You can take the love language quiz here. 

For other posts in this relationship series, go here.