Laurie Wilson, LMFT

Making love last begins with understanding who we are as individuals. Healthy communication and shared responsibility in a relationship come from two healthy individuals.  Good communication is a large part of healthy relationships. I don’t just mean talking, but numerous ways we communicate our love to someone. Touching them, being alone with them, or spending time with their family.

Last year sometime, I read the “The 5 Love Languages” by Gary Chapman. If you aren’t familiar with them they are:

• Words of Affirmation
• Quality Time
• Receiving Gifts
• Acts of Service
• Physical Touch

The book charts how we communicate as people. It measures how, you, the individual, feels most loved during a relationship. The five love languages also gives you a road map to your partners’ happiness.

You can be drawn into the love language you were shown as a child, teenager, or from a previous relationship. That may not be the right language for you.  Take time to study what love language you speak and how to learn someone elses.

My first boyfriend always got me flowers, constantly, and sometimes even for my best friends. Everyone adored him, but despite all the gifts, we still couldn’t communicate. I know now that there was much more missing from our relationship. Gifts was his love language and he was imparting it on me.  We never effectively spoke each others love languages.

Remember these key ideas about the different ways we love:

• Don’t impose how you feel loved on someone else; take time to learn what is important for them to feel loved
• Evaluate how your parents expressed love and make sure it isn’t the love language you use out of habit
• Take the quiz every consecutively for a few months
• Evaluate what love languages were used in past relationships and your honest responses to them
• Evaluate how you receive love. (Just because you are not a touchy person, doesn’t mean physical touch isn’t your language, don’t let your past relationships dictate what your real love language is)

If you don’t have time to read the book you can take the assessment quiz at the link below:

http://www.5lovelanguages.com/assessments/love/

* Remember, relationships are not clear-cut.  Men and women will spend the rest of their lives learning about one another, and that is part of the beauty.