The Five Love Languages

Today I’m going to spend some time talking about a book I’ve been reading, The Five Love Languages: How to Express Heartfelt Commitment to Your Mate. I’m fascinated about human interaction and what makes us tick. I’m also fascinated by the course taken by many relationships. How people so much in love in the beginning can wind up being the worst enemy’s in the end. You may have read books like “Men are From Mars, and Women are from Venus” which talks about the fundamental differences between men and women and how these differences are not understood by the other, leading to major communication issues.

Well this book, The Five Love Languages: How to Express Heartfelt Commitment to Your Mate comes at it from a different direction. The premise is that each of us speaks a different “love language” and when someone “speaks” to us in our “love language” we feel loved and satisfied. Unfortunately, many times our mate speaks a different love language than we do, not wrong just different. This problem tends to leave one feeling unsatisfied and unloved and obviously leading to relationship problems! So how do we fix this problem.

1. Find out what your mate’s “love language” is
2. Learn how to “speak” it

The five love languages are:

1. Words of Affirmation
2. Quality Time
3. Receiving Gifts
4. Acts of Service
5. Physical Touch

According to the book, we tend to show affection to others through our own language. So if your love language is receiving gifts, then not only does receiving gifts from your mate make you feel loved, you will tend to give gifts to express your love. But if your mate’s love language is words of affirmation, he will feel much more loved if you compliment his looks, his intelligence, etc, than if you bought him a gift.

Personally I believe I’m bi-lingual, I enjoy both quality time and receiving gifts, while my husband is definitely a words of affirmation type of guy. So my job is to become tri-lingual and learn that in order to keep my husband satisfied I need to show affection to him through words of affirmation.

So why am I talking about this now to my audience of in love people preparing for their wedding? Because, this is just the beginning and I want all of you to have long and happy marriages! So if you want to see more of my thoughts on how to have a long and happy marriage, check out my guest blog post over at Masterpiece Weddings, and see “What Happens After the Honeymoon !”