Learn to Speak Your Partner’s Love Languages

There are five ways to “speak” and understand emotional love. But many couples don’t know about love languages and are often surprised when they learn about them.

Those five love languages as:

1.    Words of Affirmation - saying I love you, complimenting or praising your partner

2.    Quality Time -  time spent together, even if you're doing nothing

3.    Receiving Gifts - tokens of appreciation and affection

4.    Acts of Service - doing something for the other person

5.    Physical Touch - hand holding, kissing, sex

As a child, you probably learned to receive and give love in specific ways. Perhaps your parents regularly hugged you and told you how much they love you (Physical Touch, Words of Affirmation). Or, instead, they showed their love by always driving you to and from basketball games and cheering you on (Acts of Service, Quality Time), even if they weren’t the hugging types.

Simply put, that’s how your parents expressed their love for you, and you may have adopted those love languages as your own.

But, later in life, you began a relationship and perhaps got married, and eventually the message you are trying to express to your partner is not received or acknowledged as an expression of love, even if that is your intent.

The reason for that disconnect is that both of you probably show and express love in different ways, or have different love languages. You might question the depth and strength of your love, or you may feel uncared for, which can cause tension. Unfortunately, this can lead to emotional and physical disconnection between you both.

But the best way to find and examine your love languages is to look closely at how you express your love to each other.

It’s essentially how you prefer to receive love, which highly influences how you give love, too. When you and your partner speak different love languages it can literally be as much of a block as speaking a different language and can definitely (but not always) lead to a breakup.

Picture this: I only speak English and my partner only speaks Spanish. We don’t understand each other’s words but we can understand each other in other ways. Sounds crazy that we'd be able to love each other, right? Well, we do. A lot. Only, I hate the way Spanish sounds and he can’t stand English. So instead, I start speaking to him in Chinese and he starts speaking to me in French. Doesn’t make any sense, right? We may be able to pick out bits and pieces, but we won’t fully understand it. If I’m not willing to learn Spanish and he’s not willing to learn English, it’s just not going work. We will never be able to communicate our love for each other.

There is hope, though. You absolutely can learn to speak another love language, but they must learn to speak yours as well.

So what do you do when you and your partner are speaking different love languages? Communication is the key -- here's what I've learned about communicating with your partner:

1) Figure out which language you speak and which language your partner speaks.

2) Start showing your partner love in a way they understand.

3) Communicate your needs to your partner -- as much as we think our partner should know us well enough to figure out what we want, they don't. Your partner is not a mind reader -- trust me on this one. You have to be specific about what you need to feel loved. But do so without denigrating your partner's love language or making him or her feel bad. So instead of saying, "You don't love me the way I want to be loved!" you could say something like, "I love that you are so expressive with your love for me. I like to show my love for you by doing little things for you, like making you your favorite dinner. (Fill in the blank with how you show love -- again your partner is not a mind reader. Walk them over the bridge here.) What I really would like more of is to just spend time with you -- not doing anything in particular, just enjoying each other's company. (Again fill in the blank with what you need.) Do you think we might be able to spend an evening together this coming week because I that would really make me feel loved?"

4) Rinse and repeat -- I wish I could wave my magic wand and fix all of your relationship communication problems overnight, but this takes practice. When you find yourself wishing your partner had done or said something different, redo this exercise. He or she was likely operating out of their love language and forgot that you don't speak the same language they do all the time. Truth be told, if that's the case, you might want to examine your own behaviors as well. Have you been communicating with them in their love language lately or have you fallen back into your own?