A New Way to Use The Five Love Languages 

Do Your Clients Ask You About The Five Love Languages?

Mine certainly do! The problem is, they usually get it wrong. They expect their partner to change so that they can be loved in the way they prefer.

Sure, it’s a good idea for your clients to tell their partner that they like to be hugged or told “I love you,” but this is not actually the thrust of the popular theory proposed by Gary Chapman in The Five Love Languages.

What Does the Book Tell Us to Do?

Chapman posits that people show and receive love in these five different ways:

• Quality time
• Physical touch
• Acts of service
• Giving and receiving gifts
• Words of affirmation

As a recent article, in The Atlantic points out, Chapman wrote the book in order to help people identify their partner’s love languages, so that they could make their partner feel loved.

Here’s what I tell my clients:

“If you have been trying and trying to show your partner how much you love them, but they have not been responding to your efforts, it can be extremely helpful to take a minute to ask them about their love language.

If your partner’s love language is physical touch—which perhaps you yourself couldn’t care less about—and you’ve been knocking yourself out giving them acts of service, then nobody is happy. Your partner doesn’t feel particularly loved, and you are not getting any credit for all the effort you’ve been putting in!

If you know their love language you can tailor your actions to their needs, so that you will get credit for all you do—That’s a win-win!!”

Your clients will love to have all their efforts finally be appreciated!

But I would take this idea a step further.

A New Way to Use The 5 Love Languages

Many of my clients come to me because they feel unloved in their relationship. It helps considerably to identify how their partner is already showing that they care.

For instance, your client’s partner shows up on their birthday without flowers, (which of course they were expecting!) and it bums them out.

Their disappointment keeps them from noticing that their partner got all dressed up for them, because they know your client hates their normal “uniform” of jeans and a T-shirt. They even made reservations at a special restaurant, but your client is already too upset to notice or care.

What you want your clients to understand is that:

Knowing your partner’s love language means you have a much better chance of feeling loved!

Often we tell our partner our love language, but because it’s not their love language, they struggle to show us love in that way. They try, but fall short. They’re human; they forget. Their efforts are sporadic, and it can leave us feeling like we aren’t important enough. That sucks. We all want to feel like we are important to our partner!

But . . . If you know your partner’s love language, you can notice when they “speak” it to you!

Once your client learns to identify the ways that their partner has already been showing they care, their anxiety will be considerably reduced, and they will begin to feel loved and valued.

The Bonus:

When your client’s partner starts to get credit for all that they are already doing to show their love, they care a whole lot more about learning the love language of your client! It starts a cycle of increasing willingness and ability on both sides of the equation to give and receive love in many different ways!

Resistant Clients

When my clients insist that it is their partner who should change, I remind them,

“The purpose of noticing what your partner does to show you they love you, is not to give them credit for every little thing they do, so that they don’t have to try to meet you in your love language.

Rather—The purpose of noticing what your partner does, is to give YOU that warm fuzzy feeling of being loved—you deserve it!”

As much as my clients want their partners to learn to speak their love language, they are always much happier when they learn to translate their partner’s actions as loving and caring.

Some of my clients swear they don’t do this—that their partner simply doesn’t ever show them how much they care.

When they are certain their latest love interest does not return their feelings, I say:

“Have you ever obsessed about why they didn’t text you right back? Or right before bed? Or as soon as they landed at LAX?”

Translating the absence of text responses is probably the most common miscommunication I see in my practice. If your clients spend time worrying about that next text, it can ruin their day, their evening, and their peace of mind. Eventually it can ruin their relationship.

The texting app on an iPhone is actually engineered to drive you crazy, because those three little dots that show you someone is composing a response make texting all the more addicting. You can read all about those 3 dots of doom right here . . .

In Conclusion

Although most of my clients are successful but anxious young women who are learning to build healthy relationships, I have also seen this dynamic in gay and lesbian relationships, and in anxious young men who are worried about the woman they care for. Anxiety in relationships is equal opportunity!

At the end of the day there are a million wrong ways for your clients to translate their partner’s words and actions, but only one right way—the way they were meant by their partner! When your clients can learn to translate their partner’s love language, they will feel happier, less anxious, and more loved—without having to change their partner at all!

This article was previously published in Voices, December 2019.

Amy McManus, LMFT, helps anxious young adults build healthy new relationships with themselves and others after a breakup. Amy’s blog, “Life Hacks,” offers practical tips for thriving in today’s crazy plugged-in world. Learn more about Amy from her website www.thrivetherapyla.com.