What is Your Love Language?
What is Your Love Language?
And why is it important? Because it can help you in ALL of your relationships - for married or dating couples, for children and teenagers, for friends and coworkers, for long-distance relationships, for those brand-new loves and for the romances that are older than the hills. Take the free quiz now to find out your love language! CLICK HERE FOR THE 5 LOVE LANGUAGES QUIZ.
Speaking the Same Language
Think about two people - one speaking English, the other speaking Chinese. Both have really important things they want to say to each other. But as much as they try, they can't get the other to understand.
So they get aggravated, feel disconnected, and eventually give up. It is just too difficult.
This is how the book The 5 Love Languages by Gary Chapman describes it. We want to give and receive love so badly, but if we aren't speaking the same language as the other person, neither person is going to get it.
And worse yet, it is going to cause frustration, annoyance, and eventual disconnection.
Per Dr. Chapman (who has spent his life researching love and relationships, and has the science and studies to back his conclusions), there are 5 love languages:
Receiving Gifts
Words of Affirmation
Acts of Service
Quality Time
Physical Touch
We may have multiple languages, but one usually pulls ahead as the dominant love language.
By figuring out your own love language, you can verbalize what you need most from your partner (or other person in the relationship). By having your partner take the quiz, you can learn theirs.
I found the book The 5 Love Languages to be so helpful in my relationships. It helped me realize what is actually most important to me. I can now express it and build it into my relationships with my husband, colleagues, friends, and children.
My love language is Quality Time.
After I took the quiz and found this out, it made so much sense. I am not impressed by a bouquet of flowers or fancy jewelry. I want my husband's undivided attention, and to spend quality time together on vacations or doing something fun.
And since this is MY love language, this is also how I express love. I love planning getaways, lunches, trips, and having special alone time with my husband, friends, and each of my children.
My husband, however, has a love language of Acts of Service.
He continuously does things for me and our family. He shows love by doing laundry and things around the house. Meanwhile, I get annoyed because I just want to sit down and have a meaningful conversation and spend quality time together.
This caused us so many issues earlier on in our marriage. I felt disconnected and annoyed. I felt ignored. I felt like he didn't get me. I felt like maybe he didn't love me. And it hurt.
After figuring out our differences in love languages, I can now see his way of showing love. And now that I know it, I can recognize it and I see it all over, everyday.
I still need quality time, but now I can ask for it explicitly. I can also see he shows his love and appreciation through his actions. I have to remind myself to speak his language sometimes and do things for him as well.
In my group of girlfriends, I have a few who are so good at sending gifts and cards - all of the time! I never do this. It literally doesn't cross my mind to do this type of thing.
Receiving Gifts is clearly their love language. I would much rather plan a girls weekend then find the perfect necklace for them. But that is because I am focused on MY love language. I have to remind myself with these friends that sending a card or gift is important to THEM.
And that is what relationships are about - feeding each other's needs as well as our own.
We spend so many hours of our life working, and while we don't necessarily equate love - especially romantic love - with work, I believe love languages can help you decipher why you may feel underappreciated at work, or why others may feel frustrated by you.
Getting clear on how someone wants/needs to be talked to or recognized will improve your working relationship. Having the courage to ask for what you need can make a huge improvement to your fulfillment. There is no guarantee your ask will be honored - but you have zero chance if you don't speak up.
I cannot stress this enough: In order to connect, you need to be speaking the same language. And it is a lot easier to start learning another language when you know which language to focus on.
So take 3 minutes, take the online quiz (it is free, I am not affiliated with the site at all, I just love the book so much), and see how you can take your relationships from ok to FULLY FLUENT and FULFILLING!
Since I've taken the quiz, they've added more to determine your apology language and appreciation language, which I am sure are really insightful as well.
CLICK HERE TO TAKE THE 5 LOVE LANGUAGES QUIZ
Fill your life with LOVE.
Of course - the most important love of all is still self-love.
I believe a big part of self-love is getting to know ourselves better. To raise our own awareness of what we want and need, and then have the courage to ask for it as an act of self-respect and self-love.
LOVE YOURSELF SO YOU CAN LOVE OTHERS.
In whatever language that happens to be.
Cheers to loving yourself and others,
Sharon
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