This post explores how to express love to your partner to make them feel appreciated. It is especially targeted at people who have intimacy issues or difficulty expressing emotions.
Expressing emotions is something that is taught to many as children, with further development occurring as one age. However, there are a variety of reasons why this process could be delayed or hindered. If you find yourself many years past childhood and still unable to healthily express emotions to your partner, discovering their love language could assist with forging stronger intimacy bonds.
It’s critical in any healthy relationship to let the other party know that they are loved and valued. But expressing these sentiments isn’t always easy. Love language defines how romantic partners experience and express their love. The term was coined by author Gary Chapman in his 1992 book about the topic. He outlines five distinct love languages that partners frequently express to show they care. These include affirmative words, quality time, acts of service, gift-receiving, and physical touch. Chapman believes that each person has a primary and secondary love language, with love languages varying from person to person.
Chapman finds that to discover your partner’s love language, one must observe how their partner expresses their love and analyze what they determine to be lacking. It is critical to see the other person’s needs and not project your own needs onto them. Chapman believes that many people naturally give love the way they prefer to receive it. However, this doesn’t always align with the partner’s love language. Therefore, one can be exhibiting behaviors that they perceive to be acts of love that will not resonate the same way with their partner. To fulfill the other person’s needs, one must instead seek behaviors that align with their love language.
There are different steps one can take to respond to their partner’s love language. People who require words of affirmation rely heavily on what they hear. That means it’s necessary to communicate clearly and be as positive as possible. Words have a lasting impact on these types of people, so negativity can cause lingering damage. For people who value quality time, one can take measures to give them extra attention. Try putting down the phone when they are around and engage with them one on one. Those who seek acts of service require extra effort that goes beyond doing what is asked. You can help them with chores and find ways to make their life easier through small acts.
The remaining two love languages, gifts and touch, are relatively straight-forward. Giving gifts doesn’t have to be financially taxing, as it can involve sentimental trinkets as simple as picking a flower. Purchasing a gift not on a special occasion will hold extra significance. Lastly, people who rely on touch for affection are very easy to satisfy. Small acts such as holding hands or squeezing their arm can make them feel loved and appreciated. Since people express love in different ways, it’s necessary to discover what behaviors will allow your partner to feel fulfilled.
Understanding both your love language and your partner’s love language is significant for multiple reasons. How can we expect our relationships to be fulfilling if we cannot define our wants and needs? Knowing what behavior makes you feel loved and secure will enable you to express your needs to your partner. Likewise, it’s important to understand what behaviors your partner requires to feel loved and supported. By understanding each other’s love languages, you can express and offer what is needed to meet both each other’s emotional needs and your own.
This process can be more difficult for some people. The road to overcoming intimacy issues is not often easy, nor is it linear. When moving away from traumas to forge close bonds with someone, people often regress in the process of moving forward. However, that doesn’t mean that intimacy issues can’t be overcome. Often, professional intervention such as Cognitive Behavioral Theory is needed if trauma is the source of intimacy issues. People who have experienced trauma and had it affect their development have a certain mindset hardwired into their brains. Through therapy, they can learn how to rewrite that mindset to be more accepting and trusting of love.
To fully love someone, we have to look outside of ourselves. That doesn’t mean abandoning our own wants and needs; it means taking into consideration what our partner desires and requires. It’s easy to project our feelings onto someone else, but to make your partner truly fulfilled, it’s essential to discover how they express and experience love. By catering to their love language, you can allow your partner to feel appreciated, loved, and heard.