Understanding your partner’s, co-workers’, friends and families love languages can make a powerful difference in how loved and connected they feel. Understanding your own love language can change how loved and welcomed you feel in your relationships.

Cathy Vartuli from http://www.TheIntimacyDojo.com and Reid Mihalko from http://www.ReidAboutSex.com share Gary Chapman’s 5 Love Languages and share how learning these can change your relationships for the better!

Cathy: Knowing love languages can make a huge difference in your relationship. Would you like to learn more?

Reid: Yeah. Let’s do it.

Cathy: I’m Cathy Vartuli from http://TheIntimacyDojo.com.

Reid: I’m Reid Mihalko from http://ReidAboutSex.com.

Cathy: Reid actually recommended this book to us and…

Reid: The 5 Love Languages by Gary Chapman

Cathy: Yes. It’s a great book. Really impactful. He’s very religious so if you’re not religious, read it anyway. It’s worth the information.

Reid: Yeah, and if you’re super spiritual and love the word “God” in your books, then you’ll be thrilled.

Cathy: Understanding the love languages is powerful because I was brought up to think that there really… I didn’t know anything about love languages. You kind of got what you got and you hope that made you feel good. Understanding that different people speak different languages can help you translate and actually help you ask for what you need to get back.

Reid: Have you been wondering why some people make you feel so cared for and other people whom you know love you a lot, just leave you kind of feeling bereft. It might be because they’re speaking different languages or a different dialect of showing how they care and you receiving, which is the whole basis for the book. The five love languages are broken down into five different categories.

Cathy: My favorite one is touch. It’s something that’s really important to me so if someone I like touches me, it makes me feel very accepted and loved. That…

Reid: See, look at that look of acceptance and love on her face. Mine’s words of affirmation. Tell me how good that made you feel.

Cathy: It was amazing, Reid, thank you.

Reid: I feel loved. Words of acknowledgement, words of affirmation.

Cathy: Some people really love quality time, so if quality time is your thing, you really want to spend one on one time usually with your partner and that can be in different ways. Some people may be sitting together watching TV, other people may want to just be really spending…

Reid:  There’s always a good… a good clue is to turn off your cell phones and your laptops and actually spend focused time with the people whom you think quality time might be working for. Another love language is acts of service. Some people show that they care by doing things for others and then the last one is gifts.

Cathy: Gifts, yes. So some people feel really loved getting a gift or… it could be a flower, it could be a pretty stone they found when they were out walking or it might be a diamond bracelet. Different people receive it different ways. The really cool thing is you get to translate, you get to find out what your partner’s love language or kids’ love language, finding out what my boss’ love language was was amazing.

Reid: Was it touch?

Cathy:  No, it was not. Because that would look really weird in the workplace.

Reid: I don’t know. You never know.

Cathy: He loves to be affirmed. He loves to be told he’s done…he’s helped us and he’s an amazing boss so being able to communicate that way to him in a way that really lands with him made a huge difference. It makes me feel like I’m able to share with him how much he does for us and I can tell that it lands and it makes him feel valued, so it’s really good.

Reid: So one thing to know about love languages is that people show that they care in these five basic languages and they also feel cared for in these five basic categories. But the categories are not always the same. Most people, by default, kind of lead with one or two languages always. Like when I’m trying to show that I care to somebody, it’s usually acts of service and then it’s either touch or words of affirmation. Like for me, quality time like, if we’re just hanging out, texting on our phones, as long as I’m near you, I’m kind of like a dog. Like, as long as I’m near my master, I feel fine. But that’s not always quality time for somebody else. So I usually lead with those two or three.

What’s interesting is what makes me feel cared for are not the same two or three. They can be in different orders. Not for everybody, but for some. So for what makes me feel cared for is words of affirmation, then touch, then acts of service and then gifts. Quality time and gifts are like tied for last. I don’t need to see somebody. I have good friends of mine I haven’t seen in 16 years and I still feel like when I see them, we’re best buddies because quality time for me has nothing to do with how close I feel with somebody.

Cathy: Right. And you may be finding a lot of conflict in a relationship just because you don’t understand your partner’s love language. I hear this all the time from clients. Say the woman in the relationship, one partner, is an act of service. She’s showing her love by washing the dishes and cleaning the car and doing all these things and her partner is someone who really values touch. The partner may be going, she’s always busy doing all that stuff and she’s never here touching me.

Reid: Yeah, we never cuddle, we never sit on the couch, and just snuggle.

Cathy: Yeah, so there’s all that conflict and resentment. Or someone who’s an act of service person might be really slaving away trying to earn money for the family and feeling like I’m really showing I’m doing a good job and if the partner doesn’t receive that or recognize that what they’re doing, they don’t ever see that as love, two people may love each other a lot.

Reid: And totally be speaking different languages. So things that you can do is try to figure out the languages that you lead with and that your partner leads with and receives with on both sides of the fence and then see which languages you can connect. If you’re an acts of service person and you’re partner’s touch, then you could think of cuddling them as an act of service or giving them a foot rub as an act of service and transform their experience of you greatly.

Cathy: Yeah, it can create so much love in your life. There’s an assessment tool on Gary’s http://5LoveLanguages.com. You can go and take the quiz, get your partner or your friends to take the quiz.

Reid: You got the link on your site?

Cathy: I do.

Reid:  And then leave your comments at the bottom of this video and let us know what else you want to hear about or what you even think about. What’s the love language that you lead with? Bye.

Cathy: Thanks.

 

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Why is Vulnerability Vital to Intimacy?

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