You know the Five Love Languages, right?
The idea is that we each give and receive love in different ways and that relationships can be improved when we know what works best for us and for our partners.
The Five Love Languages:
Acts of Service
Words of Affirmation
Physical Touch
Quality Time
Gifts
But, it’s not so simple.
One of the challenges is that you have to be in tune enough with yourself to know your own needs. And then you have to express them! Not the easiest task for anyone slightly on the codependent spectrum, where it's difficult or foreign to have ... "needs."
The other tricky part is figuring out what your loved ones actually want. Our habitual ways of showing up may not actually do much for them.
You may be leaving them special love notes and feeling all snazzy about yourself and surely your partner enjoys them, but does that realllly make them feel super-duper-loved?
Perhaps you noticed them ogling a little gift shop on your evening walk. If you go back and get them a little trinket from there, they may be extremely touched that you noticed and remembered their interest in the shop.
Part of the fun of being a good partner or friend is to know the other person well enough to help read the subtext of their desires, without them needing to say.
Because it can be hard to ask for what we need.
It’s not our job to read each other’s minds.
But in every conversation there is text and subtext.
And the most skillful communicators understand that not everything is said out loud.
Image: Hilma af Klint: "Possible Worlds"
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