Knowing your love language

Feeling loved and appreciated is an incredible feeling. We’re all humans who have different ways of giving and receiving love – so discovering your ‘love language’ is a fantastic opportunity to enhance your experience of love. 

So what am I going on about? Well, there are basically five key ‘love languages’ which represent five different ways of expressing and receiving love. They are: words of affirmation, quality time, receiving gifts, physical touch and acts of service.

Understanding your own love language and your partner’s is an effective way to strengthen your connection. Sometimes we over-complicate things and communication with our significant other might not be the best. I believe open and reflective communication is integral for happy relationships so knowing each other’s love languages helps us understand how to show appreciation and love.  

You may be somebody who loves receiving gifts because you appreciate the thoughtfulness, or perhaps you appreciate when someone sends you a text or card expressing their love. Maybe you're somebody who appreciates acts of service, like if someone cooked your favourite meal?

There are online love language tests out there which are like personality quizzes. They can show you the percentages of each of the five love languages so you can determine your top love languages. Here is a quiz you could take,or perhaps this one.

I’d appreciate any type of love language (don't we all?), but of course we all have love languages we’d prefer over others. My preferred love languages are quality time and words of affirmation. I feel appreciated when special memories are made one-on-one! I also like active listening and uplifting dialogue. I’m huge on quality conversations so I appreciate long conversations that are interesting, wholesome and thoughtful.  

Do you know your love language? Or (if you have a significant other) do you know theirs?