All About Relationships

How to maintain a Healthy Relationship?

Hi, my name is Dr. Armaan Pandey. I’m a consultant psychiatrist and today I’m going to tell you something that maybe very helpful to your relationship. Now, we all know that we have one of our very basic emotional needs is to feel loved. When we are children this need is usually fulfilled by our parents and as we grow older various people make us feel loved and especially when we get into a relationship it is either our spouse or partner who fulfills this basic emotional need.

Often I get couples who have some marital issues and when I speak with them individually I feel that both the partners love each other but either of the partners don’t feel that the other one loves them. According to Dr. Gary Chapman who is a marriage counselor and who has authored several books on marriage. He introduces a concept called as ‘A love tank’. We all have a love tank which needs to be filled by our partners.
Now the problem is that this love tank gets filled by a particular way, which he calls as a love language. He elaborates that we basically have five different love languages. The first language is that of assertion; that is verbally expressing your love for your spouse. For example saying things like “I love you”, “I miss you” or “I like a certain thing about you” or simply texting them and saying that “I’ve been thinking about you” with a smile. This may make your partner feel loved.

The second way that we express love or we understand love is through physical intimacy. So, acts like kissing, hugging, holding hands or sex may make a person feel loved and wanted by their partner. The third type of love language is by giving gifts. So, when you surprise your partner with something like a bunch of flowers or a gift which may not be very expensive or expensive in certain cases your partner may feel that you think about making them happy and this makes them feel loved. The fourth love language that Dr. Gary Chapman elaborates is called as quality time. Spending quality time with your partner as in going for a movie together, doing some activity together like cooking in the house together or learning a new hobby together. So, this may make people feel like they love and care for each other and this brings people closer.

The fifth and final type of love language is acts of service; that means doing something for your partner. For example, holding the door open for them, bringing them a glass of water or doing some chore with them. That may make your partner feel loved and cared for by you. Often this happens in couples that we speak or understand two different love languages. So a woman does not feel loved by her husband when he says nice things to her but she feels extremely loved and cared for when he gives her expensive gifts. But the husband, on the other hand, may feel that she needs to understand that he loves her when he says nice things about her. So, these two individuals speak and understand two different love languages.

Now, how can this concept be useful to you? I’ll give you a little exercise that you can do with your partner which will make use of this concept and probably help you in your relationship no matter at what stage your relationship is. The first step is to make a list of the love languages your partner listens to or understands. You should take the help of your partner to make this list. Usually, there would be two or three items on this list. Now the second step involves writing down eight ways in which you can speak these love languages. So, the exercise to help you speak your partners love language. Not to make them understand your love language because it is easy to learn a new language yourself than to teach another language to someone else.

So, after you’ve made these eight items on the list, comes the third part which is the most interesting. You practice one of these items every week. So, for eight consecutive weeks, you will be speaking your partners love language in one way or the other. After eight weeks I’m sure your partner is going to feel way more loved by you than before. And even if you’re not doing this together, at the end of eight weeks if your partner feels loved and happy they are sure to return the favor.

I hope that this is very, very helpful to your relationship. For any kind of marital advice or for consultation, you can contact me through lybrate.com