Bonus: Understanding the 5 Love Languages

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In this special BONUS episode, and in preparation for the coming announcement of Tony's upcoming Magnetic Marriage communication course, he tackles the frequently referenced but rarely understood 5 Love Languages. Back in 1995, Ph.D. and Marriage Therapist Gary Chapman released a book called "The Five Love Languages: How to Express Heartfelt Commitment to Your Mate." In the book, Chapman outlines five ways to express and experience love. These 5 love languages are: receiving gifts, quality time, words of affirmation, acts of service (devotion), and physical touch. For many couples, reading about, and discovering their partner's love language (and their own) is one of the first steps toward trying to repair a damaged relationship. For newlyweds, this can be a very important foundational principle for a healthy marriage. In this episode, Tony explores each one of the love languages as well as how understanding them can benefit you and your partner.

Please subscribe to The Virtual Couch YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/c/TheVirtualCouchPodcast/ and sign up at http://tonyoverbay.comto learn more about Tony’s upcoming “Magnetic Marriage” program!

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This episode of The Virtual Couch is sponsored by http://betterhelp.com/virtualcouch With the continuing “sheltering” rules that are spreading across the country PLEASE do not think that you can’t continue or begin therapy now. http://betterhelp.com/virtualcouch can put you quickly in touch with licensed mental health professionals who can meet through text, email, or videoconference often as soon as 24-48 hours. And if you use the link http://betterhelp.com/virtualcouch you will receive 10% off your first month of services. Please make your own mental health a priority, http://betterhelp.com/virtualcouch offers affordable counseling, and they even have sliding scale options if your budget is tight.

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Bonus- 5 love languages-2020-10-02
[00:00:00] Coming up on today's episode of the special bonus edition of The Virtual Couch, we're talking about love languages, the five languages of love. What are you, physical touch, words of affirmation, quality time, gifts, acts of service. And more importantly, do you know how that affects you as the way you receive love or how you share love or how you show love? And do you and your spouse have an agreement on what that looks like? That and so much more coming up on this bonus episode of The Virtual Couch.

[00:00:38] Hey, everybody, welcome to Episode two hundred and twenty six, a special bonus episode of The Virtual Couch. I'm your host, Tony Overbay. I'm a licensed marriage and family therapist, certified mine Vilaboa, Cowriter Sweetgrass and father for ultramarathon runner and creator of the Path Back and Online Pornography Recovery Program that is helping people reclaim their lives from the harmful effects of turning to pornography as a coping mechanism. If you or anybody that you know is trying to put pornography behind them once and for all, and trust me, it can be done in a strength based, hold the shame, become the person you always wanted to be kind of way, then please head over to path back recovery dotcom. And there you will find a short ebook that describes five common mistakes that people make when trying to remove pornography from their lives. Again, that's path back recovery dotcom. And please head over to virtual couch on Instagram, Tony Overbay, licensed marriage and family therapist on Facebook and Tony Overbay dot com and sign up to find out more about the magnetic marriage program that is about to be announced, launched, talked about. And if you want to improve the connection, the communication in your marriage or even just a relationship, then this is the course for you.

[00:01:47] So go to Tony Overbay, dot com, sign up, find out, be the first to know about when the magnetic marriage course is available. And actually, that has a little bit of why I wanted to record this bonus episode of the Five Love Languages. This is an episode I believe it was episode forty one or forty five or something like that initially. And that was probably two years ago or more. And this is one of those episodes that just continues to get downloaded. I know the Five Languages of Love, something that was introduced by Dr. Gary Chapman has been widely talked about and I feel like a lot of people are somewhat familiar with the five languages of love. But I feel like there is a lot of confusion around what you even do with that information is, you know, there are five languages of love and this is all talked about coming up here in the episode. But there's quality time, there's physical touch, there's acts of service, there's words of affirmation, there's gift giving.

[00:02:45] And so often we're able to identify our love language or maybe our top two love languages. And we definitely know one that we maybe don't necessarily connect with. And so we will present that to our spouse, handed to them on a silver platter and say, here are my love languages, and then we get frustrated. Why isn't this person doing everything that I've told them that I want from my love languages? And so I think there's a lot of confusion of what you do with the love language information. That's how you express love. That's how you receive love. How do we talk about love languages? How do we integrate those into our relationship? And just the little sneak preview, the the love language test. And we have a module where we kind of talk about some of these ideas around love languages coming up in this magnetic marriage course. So I just wanted to get the idea of love languages just fresh in people's minds. So I do highly recommend that you go look up Gary Chapman's Love Languages quiz. I recently took it once again and just have this have this data, this information fresh and listen to this episode, maybe listen to it with your spouse and just start getting the vibe going of what it's going to look like to have a magnetic marriage. And so much more information is coming up on that soon. So without any further ado, let's get to this special bonus episode of The Five Languages of Love.

[00:04:19] Come on, take a seat, Carl.

[00:04:25] So today I want to talk a little bit about the five love languages, what they are, the significance. And sometimes I do view this almost as like kind of the fundamentals of marriage therapy, that this is a nice place to build some connection. So the book and so the five love language was developed by a good marriage therapist, Gary Chapman. And the book came out in his first book, The Five Love Languages How to Express Heartfelt Commitment to Your Mate, came out in nineteen ninety five. And in the book has it's been around. So it's been around for a long time. And I was looking at some of the stats on the book. It's been on the New York Times bestseller list since August of 2009 and there was a revised edition. The Five Love Languages was released in January one of twenty fifteen and it's still remained on this New York Times bestseller list. So here's the cons of the book. Chapman claims that in his work in Working with Couples Marriage as a marriage therapist, he says that he he outlines five ways to express and experience love that Chapman calls the love languages. These are we're going to go into a little bit of detail in these. They are receiving gifts, quality time, words of affirmation, acts of service and physical touch. And again, he drew these from his counseling practice. And I don't think it's bad to express that. The more digging I did, there's not necessarily as much evidence based around the five love languages.

[00:05:43] But I really find that couples connect with this concept. And in the primary, what Chapman suggests is that everyone has one primary and one secondary love language. And so these love languages are in essence, how you express love. And you may not even know that this is how you express love. If you find that you are someone who is overly complimentary, if you want to just I want to make somebody feel happy. I want to compliment them how they look, the things they do, the just the person that they are, then that's one in that column of perhaps words of affirmation, you providing these words of affirmation. These compliments are your love language. If you're somebody who says, man, I just I don't get enough hugs. If it's I love a back rub. If you're in a couples if a relationship where you feel like your partner doesn't care about you because maybe there's a lack of intimacy or you feel like you're the one that always needs to initiate intimacy, that's a pretty fair sign. That physical touch is one of your it might be your primary love language. If you are someone in a relationship and your spouse travels a lot and you're disappointed when they don't come back with a gift or what I see in my practice a lot is people that make a lot of I was just a big deal around anniversaries and man, they didn't go all out for my anniversary or this is all they got me for my birthday.

[00:07:02] So that person and it's funny is that be qualify. There's the qualifier in those statements a lot of times where people will say, I know it sounds like I'm materialistic or I know that this might not sound right, but I just I really like when someone gets me a gift. So if that's the case, gifts, gift giving would obviously be one of your or maybe your primary love language. And so let me jump in here and tell a little bit of a story, and then we're going to get to the rest of this. When I was first learning about the five love languages, again, I was a shiny new therapist. And and at that time I might see one or two couples a week. And when I would see them, I had learned nice reflective listening skills where somebody says they're frustrated, they're angry, and I'm having the their partner reflect those away. Now, what are they saying? What do you hear them saying? And then the couple with the other partner would say, OK, sure. I hear them say that they're angry or they're frustrated or they wonder why. And then they would say, I'm really mad at him and he does all these sort of things. And I would say, OK, to the guy, reflect back, what do you hear that your partner is saying? And then they reflect back. Oh, I know. I've heard it a million times.

[00:08:06] He thinks this or this. And then you sit back and go, OK, you've both hurt each other and go, let's fix this. And so now in this world of VFT that I'm so passionate about now we can say, OK, hey, we're listening to our partner and this is an emotional bid. We're going to turn off our fixing and judgment statements. We're going to go all in on empathy. We want to hear what our partner has to say. But so before I got to that, I'm a shiny new marriage therapist. I go to I think it was just a three hour training on this five love languages. And I go home. I'm going to practice these skills. So again, actually, it is I think it is important to go over all these words of affirmation. So that is those kudo's, those attaboys. We want to hear that somebody thinks we're doing a great job or that's the people who are guilty of and this is me. Let me be vulnerable here. If I my wife may do a hundred things a day to keep our kids in order, the house in order, the everything running smooth. And if I come home and I go out and clean the dog poop out of the backyard or straighten up around the house, I want to make sure, man, that boy cleaning that dog poop. But that was I think it was going to be that hard. But boy, I just finished that knows that I am seeking those words of affirmation, even though she's done a hundred things and hasn't had to lay them all out for me.

[00:09:16] I do a couple of things and I'm. And I would like some praise now, please, and the words of affirmation. It's that concept and it's funny because this one is that action doesn't necessarily speak louder than words. You want to hear that. You want to hear those words. You want to hear that people care about you. They love you. They notice you. They think that you are doing an amazing job, especially the words I love. You become very important people that will lead with this words of affirmation. Oftentimes they are the people that say, I told my spouse I loved her five times a day and she hasn't said it at all. Isn't that what's wrong with this? And words of affirmation is important to them. Quality time. This is the one where then nothing says I love you like full, undivided attention and not half paying attention on your phone. This is where putting something down, no distractions don't postpone dates. Being all in with your partner is this quality. Time is how they feel, love. And a lot of times that's this person who says, look, I just want to be able to just sit there with you and just focus on you and have deep quality conversations and and at times for another partner. If that's not there, that's not their love language. They can feel smothered or overwhelmed with that.

[00:10:23] But so that one's quality time receiving gifts. This one's fascinating to me. My wife and I, neither one are huge on the receiving gift. So a birthday can come and we we're telling each other how much we we love each other and maybe want to go out to dinner or something like that. And we want to spend that time together. But as far as the gift giving goes, it's not significant. It might be a little something, but it's one of those things where if I don't get a gift or if I and I believe it, why watch her listen to this now and say she's weeping in a corner of my eye. All I wanted were gifts. And Tony can't pick up on any of that. But this is the part where you're not getting those gifts, not giving those gifts, doesn't feel like something's left out. But, boy, this one, again, a significant gift. Giving is your love language. Then that's this concept where if you're not receiving gifts or if your gifts aren't met with oh, my gosh, thank you so much. This shows me you love me. Then you feel like that is your love being rejected. And I've got a good story for that here in a second to so acts of service. This is the concept of cleaning the house, mowing the lawn, doing those things. And a lot of times you hear from the wife saying he's he leaves all these projects undone or we've got I've got the honey do list that he isn't complete.

[00:11:30] And that's just so frustrating. So that might be a cue that her love language is acts of service. And then the last one is physical touch. Now, I think when we think about physical touch, a lot of times we immediately go to sex. But physical touch is much more than that. Physical touch, his hand holding back, rubbing arm around snuggling. And this one significant as well. Because, again, if you find yourself keeping score, I'm always the one that reaches out to hold her hand or I'm fine. I'm not going to do it. I'm not going to wait till she reaches out to hold my hand or I'm the one that's always put my arm around her or initiating the kiss or the hug or sex or that sort of thing. Then it's obvious that physical touch is one of your go to love languages and meanwhile, your partner, if that's not one of their primary or secondary love languages, they're going along just maybe oblivious that the significance of you not responding, are you not initiating. So in essence, you're setting them up for they're taking this test. They don't even know they're taking so. So, again, words of affirmation, quality time, receiving gifts, acts of service and physical touch. So this brings me to a couple of stories, some of my go to stories. Let me take you back then where I was starting here.

[00:12:34] I'm a shiny new marriage therapist. I'm going through these things a lot. And I've identified pretty clearly that I'm a physical touch guy. And again, it doesn't just have to mean sex or intimacy. It can be I'm a on my hand holder. I'm a walk in the door and give my wife a kiss. I love a hug. And so I would find at times that, yeah, I was the scorekeeper. I was the one I'm going to drive down the road. And she's not reaching her hand over here. And and so I'm setting her up for failure. She's not even aware that I'm processing anything is wrong in that moment. So I'm pretty dialed in. I physical touch and then I'm a words of affirmation guy there is that part of me that wants to hear you're the man. Thanks so much for all that you do. And so I've got this identified that I've got it figured out that my wife is an active service person. Long ago my wife identified that at the end of the day, she really loves the house to be clean, picked up, everything put away. And and I have to tell you that when we had four small children, there was this part of me that would come home from work and and the kids had toys out everywhere. We had a toy room in particular, and we could close the door on it. So in my mind, it's like it's close the door. It's going to we're going to repeat this whole thing tomorrow.

[00:13:44] But my wife wanted to make sure that the house was clean at the end of the night. And I used to try to make sense of that this long before my days of F.T. and hearing that is an emotional bid. And I was trying to convince her here I am fixing in judgment statements of why does it matter? Why don't why can't we just close the toy room door and then we start tomorrow and you open it up and then you're not going to drive yourself crazy at night because the kids are going to get everything out again. And man, she did such an amazing job letting me know that she couldn't really turn off her brain, go to sleep like the day was done until the house was in order was put together. And so at that moment, I knew that I. I love her enough that my job now becomes at the end of the evening, I'm going to help her. I'm going to I'm going to dust things and clean things and put pillows where they're supposed to go and dishes away and all that sort of thing. So I think I've got this thing figured out right. I think that the acts of services, my wife's primary love language, so I start running this little experiment is as I take this training, as I'm doing this as a marriage therapist and I think I've got hers figured out.

[00:14:42] I know what mine is, mine, the physical touch, probably number one. And then words of affirmation number two and have my wife figured out as acts of service. So I start going about the night and I'm going to I'm going into I'm all in I'm on the I'm giving the kids baths. I'm clean in the house. I'm brushing the dogs. I'm trying to do everything I can. And and probably along the way a man look at these kids and that bath wanting to get my own words of affirmation, goals or needs met. But so I try to do all I can. And then it's like kids are in bed, house is immaculate. And we we would go upstairs and we would sit there, watch TV, maybe have a little bit of a snack or something. And I'm kind of thinking, OK, all right, scratch that. Acts of service itch for her. And here comes maybe a back rub or maybe. All right, here we go. I've set the table. Now let's get the physical touch needs met. And we sit there, we watch TV and we maybe connect and talk and laugh. And just then she falls asleep and I think, OK, all right. Fair enough. I will try this again tomorrow. And I go through and the kids a bath and brush the dogs and get everything. Here we go. I have met her love language of acts of service and here comes the physical touch. Not necessarily so it was I don't remember how long it was where I said, hey, can I just point something out to my wife? And I let her know that I'm doing this training, this love language training.

[00:15:58] And I'm pretty sure that I've got my own identified as physical touch and words of affirmation. And I told her and I've got yours down to yours is obviously it's acts of service. And so I don't know if you're noticing that, as I do all of these acts of service that, yeah, maybe I'm thinking of now, I my love language will be met as well. And this physical touch. And she had the funniest look on her face where she was like active service. Yeah, that's nice, because I think if I had to pick out of any of those, it's quality time. And so then I had this big epiphany where not having given that a voice before and try and just make assumptions on my own that she was having her her love language meant so as we cleaned the house and then had this time together, then she was in heaven because we're now we're just hanging out. Kids are asleep, house is all put together and we're spending that quality time together where we are just talking about the day's events. Maybe we are giving each other a little foot massage and then she's just fallen asleep and pure bliss because she is in her happy place. Her love language is being met. That taught me a great lesson that day.

[00:17:01] That they're hers is more quality time. And this was we were married twenty seven years now and that is definitely the case. We love our weekly date nights and there's a plug there is a marriage therapist to make that a priority. But I know now that nothing shows connection there like that quality time. So I want to go over a few things. I have another story for another go to that I talk about often. So I go back to this of these early days of marriage therapy. And I was working with a couple and they were they were both on a second marriage and the guy had not necessarily been to counseling before. So I think he was a little bit skeptical to begin with. And if he only knew what was going through my head at that point as a new therapist. And so I'm now I'm all in on these love languages. I'm finding that the reflective listening is not as productive as I thought. I have no idea what he EFT is at this point. And so we're going to dial down and go deep on these five love languages we identify as I go over these. And this guy, he gets pretty emotional and he says that feels so good to have that validated because he said that his love language was gift giving. He had grown up with not a lot of money. And so gifts had been pretty significant when a when his dad could save up enough to give his mom a gift.

[00:18:07] It was a big deal. It didn't really matter what the gift was. So this guy had grown up in his first marriage. He had been a big gift giver. And admittedly, the gifts didn't necessarily go over well. And so he always felt empty when he would give these gifts. So now he's in this new marriage, this new relationship, and we're identifying this and he gets really emotional. It was a beautiful, honestly beautiful moment when I remember this so well. And I think, man, here's a guy that he is he's a bit older, a little more set in his ways. He just was validated that his gift giving means more than just here's a present, here's a gift. It means this is his expression or how he shows love and and we process this. And then his wife is more in charge of the finances in this relationship. And I think beautiful moment. So I look over and I say, OK, now can you see the significance? And he said he later he's one of these who loves to leave flowers around the house and and he just loves to bring things home from a trip. And then I think now she's going to be able to validate this is going to be the coolest moment as a marriage therapist up to this point. And then she just looks at him. Yeah, but he spends too much money. But and I've told him a million times, we've got a budget.

[00:19:12] If you're not following the budget, then you're and it was like this missed opportunity. And I just watched this guy just get deflated as we just validated his love language of gift giving, this is the way he says, I love you. And having his wife say, in essence, what he's hearing then is, yeah, I don't love you because you spend too much money. It's a little dramatic, but that's the concept behind how we express love and how we feel love give back to us. It turns out that the more we talked about with her, she was an attaboy. She was a words of affirmation person. And that one did go on to live happily ever after. But I remember that being a pretty key or pivotal moment when I saw. So I get to speak about this one often. There's there's I sometimes groups will come, asked me to just come speak lighthearted and maybe do some Q&A. And this is usually a nice place to start because and then that leads to a lot of questions. And I actually went on Gary Chapman's website and he has a lot of frequently asked questions about the love languages. So I want to cover a few of those. So he one of the number one frequently asked question on his website is, what if I can't discover my primary love language? And I have and I do. I have a lot of people here's where we can go deep dive that say, what if I just don't really have any of those? None of those really matter to me.

[00:20:23] And now is the time where, you know, that's not an answer that I can give in just the. Hey, does anybody have any questions at the end of a five love language presentation? That's when we need to get on the couch a little bit more, because my experience has been that the reason why someone may have had a love language or two early on, let's say it was words of affirmation, they needed these attaboys. And if their spouse just felt like that was ridiculous, if you have to ask for it, then I'm not going to tell you. Or if if a spouse is hardened and they look, I never had those grown ups, I don't see why I have to give those two these words of affirmation to you. Then over time, what's a partner going to do? They're going to that's them trying to be vulnerable. And over time, they're not going to continue to put their heart out there. They're going to tuck those feelings away. So same as if your of your love languages is gift giving and your gifts are repeatedly rejected at some point, then you are going to make it can just from a defense mechanism standpoint, you're going to start to to hide that love language. You're not going to you're going to put those buttons away because your spouse knows how to press them. Here's another gift. Spouse presses button: I don't want gift.

[00:21:28] You spend too much money. And at that point, we don't feel loved. We don't feel validated. We don't feel heard. And so we're going to tuck those away. So when I have somebody come up to me and say, hey, what if what if none of those if I really don't care about any of those, then I want to say, OK, let's give a little more work around that. Now, let's start working on some of these E F.T. skills of let's get your partner in here. Let's talk about emotional biz. Let's talk about what that's like for you to give a gift and have it rejected. And let's give it a voice. Maybe that your partner, once they understand the significance of gift giving for you, then they get to share their story of why they don't want that gift. And I've had some amazing examples here, that one in particular, where when a guy was then told that that his wife now viewed him rejecting her gifts as her not feeling love, this was another experience I never thought of in this one a long time. But he was pretty emotional because he said when she gives me gifts, he said, then I feel bad because I don't feel like I'm the provider that I should be. I feel like when she's giving me gifts, she's basically saying, hey, look, you never do this. And it's obviously because you don't make enough money. And the wife, which like I that I didn't that's not where I go with that.

[00:22:35] And it was a pretty beautiful moment there. So we got a nice combo of we've got the five love languages plus emotionally focused therapy, E F.T. And now at that point, we've acknowledged that when she wants to give a gift, that this is her saying, hey, not only this is my heart, but I'm showing you this is my love. And the guy now understanding this has nothing to do with him as a provider. This is him being able to say thank you. Thank you so much. And then he gets to give that a voice. I still worry that I'm not doing a good enough job providing. Now she can meet that emotional bid. And man, now, instead of being defensive, we've actually grown together. So what if I can't discover my primary love language? I like this. Gary Chapman says. First, observe how you often express love to others. If you're regularly doing acts of service for others, that's a good sign, that's your love language. If you're consistently verbally affirming people than words of affirmation is probably your love language. I remember feeling that way. So I love to sometimes if people don't get enough positive in their life and I'm not just giving out hollow praise, man, you wear the heck out of that blue shirt. But I do feel like if somebody is, people don't hear enough positives. And so I am one who likes to compliment others and acknowledge others. And so that's true. That is one of the first ways I recognize that words of affirmation are important to me.

[00:23:48] It's funny if you're a big on social media, this is a maybe a little bit of a joke that I just play out in my head a lot of times. I don't if you ever read those posts or somebody says, man, what a day I got up, I got myself out of bed, I put my clothes on, I walk down the hall, I, I made breakfast. I ate the breakfast. I put the breakfast away. I we just laid out some pretty regular normal things. But then people are responding with I don't know how you do it or man you get so much done. And it's I feel like at times that's the person who is starved for these words of effort. And they're looking for these kudo's, these attaboys. This brings up one of the biggest stories I'd love to tell. This is my talk about vulnerability. So now we've identified I'm a words of affirmation guy. I remember this as if it were yesterday, but I remember driving home from the airport once. Just my wife and I were in the car and I remember, you know, he should go away where I think we had been out of town. Maybe it was on a vacation. And now you're back to reality, right? Especially driving home from the airport. And I think I start just going through outloud all the things that are coming up that week. Maybe there are a couple of speaking assignments.

[00:24:47] It was a really heavy client week because I had taken a few days off before and if I'm not in the chair, I don't get paid. And there's some writing projects and a website revamp and all these things. And I'm just going over these and my wife is sitting there and nothing negative. But and that's the part where I get to use my good marriage therapist EFT skills, although I'm sure it is annoying at times to be married to a marriage therapist where I get to say, hey, you're not really saying anything when here is my train of thought, here's where I go. When you don't say anything. I've already worked this through to man this guy is never going to be able to get ahead. He's got too much going on. I'm worried that he's going to have a nervous breakdown, so I might as well go ahead and pull the ripcord. Now, get out of the relationship and remember that point. She's been married twenty years at this point, I think. And she looks over at me and says, are you serious? That's where your mind goes. And I'm like, yes, I but when I don't hear anything, I take it down this worst case scenario. And and she's us. I wasn't thinking any of that stuff because, like, I was just kind of thinking, man, I feel bad that this is where Tony goes in his mind. And I was kind of like, OK, I mean, even you could give me that feedback, OK? But I felt like you knew that I'm here for you.

[00:25:50] We had this amazing vacation. Oh, there we go. Quality time. So she's a man. My my quality time cup is filled. So thankfully, she's. Hey, what do you need in this scenario? What would help? And now I have developed what I now call my famous live living in a box under an overpass speech. I worked it through to I was like, OK. I think in my mind I'm going to this place of where I have all these things and it feels stressful. But part of me, I think, is wanting, first of all, the words of affirmation. I want to hear this. Hey, I'm so grateful for how hard you work for our family. And I am. Oh, I know. But I'm needy when I'm going like this. Emotional vulnerability, maybe. Yeah, that's me saying I want to hear that you're the man. And I was like, I think I want to go as far as to say and if I don't accomplish all of these things and we end up having to sell our house and we live in a box under an overpass, that you're right there with me in that box, I remember her looking like "how big is the box"? But I mean, that's a little bit of a stretch, but it's a big enough box maybe. OK, she's in. So so that is now turned into the every now and again, if I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed and I can be nice and vulnerable and I know my love language is words of affirmation, I literally can text her now and say, hey, I'm going to need that box in an overpass speech when I get home and she goes, I'm on it.

[00:27:01] I can't wait. I can't wait till I get some crayons and decorate the heck out of the inside of this box with you. And we laugh. But I'm grateful that I can express that. Here's my need, this love language to feel this love through words of affirmation. So back to this. Gary Chapman says, What do you complain about the most often when you say to your spouse, I don't think that you'd ever touch me if I didn't initiate it, then revealing the physical touch is your love language. If your spouse goes on a business trip and you say, you know, bring me anything, then what? Gift giving. Right, then that's probably one of your main love languages. If you hear this statement or if you express this statement, we don't ever spend time together that indicates that the love language of quality time is important to you, but your complaints often reveal kind of those innermost desires. And happiness is a nice thing here. So we have difficulty remembering what you complain about. Most often I suggest you ask your spouse because chances are that they will know what do you request of your spouse most often if you're saying, well, give me a back rub or if you're then you're asking for physical touch.

[00:27:58] Right. Do you think we get a weekend away this month? That one's quality time. Would it be possible for you to mow the grass this afternoon expresses a desire for acts of service. And he goes on to say, your answer your own answer to these three questions will likely reveal your primary love language. Let me go through for the sake of time. Here are a couple more of these. Gary Chapman, one of the frequent ask questions is, does your love language change as you get older? He tends to think that your love language, for the most part stays the same. And I see that over the years as well. The hard part is what I kind of mentioned earlier. I do feel like people over time of this love language isn't met, doesn't even know that they're they're part of this I don't want to say game or whether they're in The Matrix or whatever you want to call it. If they don't know the significance of you giving a gift, are you seeking these words of affirmation? Or you wanting this physical touch? Then over time, as those needs aren't met, it's pretty natural for us to start to stuff those feelings away. So does our love language change as we get older? Chapman says no. And then in my experience, what does or can happen is those love languages change, but the change is them kind of being stuffed down.

[00:29:03] So we don't want to let that happen. Does the Five Love Languages Work concept work with children? Absolutely. I know that each one of my kids, I think they express love differently. I feel like they receive love differently. And then he goes on to talk about. That those love languages stay the same for the most part, when your children become teenagers as well. And this is a big one. What if the primary love language of your spouse is difficult for you? That's a great question, because a lot of people talk about if I didn't grow up in a touching family, that touchy feely family, then how do I become that person? And now number one. I think that's one that needs to be talked through. There's a plug for marriage therapy. I'm not going to lie, but I think being able to just communicate through that, if that's not your if that's not easy for you, if your spouse's love language is physical touch, there's a lot there's a lot there that we need to talk about. As a matter of fact, I've got a podcast episode coming up that I am taking copious notes on because it's one of these soapbox moments. I want to talk about you. If you go back to Episode twenty five, I talk about the nurtured heart approach for parenting. Episode twenty six, I talk about F.T. emotionally focused therapy for couples. There's another one I'm going to get to pretty quickly here. And it's talking about our relationship with physical touch, our relationship with sex. It's with objectification of women and men. And I think that one's going to be a pretty big deal.

[00:30:19] Physical touch could be a tough one. If that's not your go to and your spouse says, look, why don't you initiate sex more or why don't you reach out and hold my hand more? I know that there can be a lot underneath that we can at times. I've worked with enough spouses who feel like once I open that Pandora's box of, then I feel like I'm going. That's all I'm good for. Is this as a physical object. So we're going to talk about that in a future episode. But but what we can bring just bringing this awareness around these love languages, this concept, the good news is that they can all be learned. And even though we may have grown up only speaking one or two of these languages, they all can be learned. But they're going to need to be learned at a pace over time and in a safe way. So just having that awareness that, hey, physical touches might go to, maybe we can start with holding hands more. It doesn't have to mean that now. Every time I come in the door, got to do this giant bear hug or a koala bear.

[00:31:09] I was in an airport once where a friend was coming back from a long trip, long absence, and another friend jumped up and did the quick. I never heard the phrase koala bear, but jumped up in the arms and legs around the body and looked like they were hanging on like a koala bear. So that's where my mind went with that one. So if you're not a words of affirmation person, you discover that your spouse's love language is words of affirmation, honest to goodness. And this is a part where I say, hey, we got to do the work. Sometimes if you have to write statements down that your spouse wants to hear, then that's what we're gonna do.

[00:31:38] Over time, it becomes more of a learned behavior. And when you see your spouse respond, well, then that feels good. If you have to have that speech, that or text that I need that you're the man speech tonight. I need that box under the overpass speech. That's OK to say that's OK to be vulnerable. Once you're both on the same page, you understand the significance there. He did one of the questions was, are some of the love languages found more among women than others with men? And I do. I like this. Gary Chapman said, I've never done the research to discover the love languages are their gender slanted. He said it may be true that more men have physical touch and words of affirmation is their love language and more women have quality time and gifts. But he said, I don't know if that's true. In my experience, my practice and now are the hundreds and hundreds of couples I've worked with. That's the way I see it typically play out doesn't mean that it's bad if it's not that way, but where a lot of guys, it's physical touch and words of affirmation and a lot of the women I work with are quality time, maybe not even as much gifts, but for me, it's active service. I often find that gifts is a little bit further down the list. But if you are a gift, if that is important to you, that is OK. And I love hearing the stories around where that comes from.

[00:32:38] I think that's the rest of it more. How is the wife of the five love languages been so successful? I think that one's pretty key because it can be a fundamental connection for a couple that they haven't talked about before and it can help them feel like, wow, I see. I was when my spouse would say these things and compliment me, I always felt like they were just doing it because they felt they had to. But when you look at it from a that's him expressing love to me. And when I say you're saying that or no, I don't look pretty or whatever, that oftentimes we're rejecting their their attempt at showing us love through words of affirmation. So I think that's why the concept of the five love languages is a wonderful thing to explore. So I'm going to wrap things up right now, but I highly recommend the book, The Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman. And he's done a few different variations of it, I think five love languages for teens and children. I think there might even be one that has to do with businesses. And again, this is all about awareness, right? That's something I talk about on a lot of the podcast. Being more open, being more self aware and aware of the feelings of others helps us understand how we can interact better with people. So I am I am grateful for the time that you spent with me today going over the five love languages.

[00:33:48] I highly recommend you get in the book and there are some online quizzes that are amazing. If you're not sure what they are, take one of these quizzes. If you come up with my love, languages are none of the above, then what we talked about a little earlier might be worth exploring. Why are those love languages harder for you to tap into? Were they there? If you're going to be honest with yourself? Were they there at some point, but then they were shut down by their spouse? If they are, go find help. Don't just think, OK, I got to stuff these feelings for the rest of my life. That is not a productive thought as a. Therapist to somebody who's passionate about this, you can repair your marriage. Absolutely. You can go find a therapist that's confident and comfortable with couples therapy and then get in there and find a safe environment to be able to express yourself and not have those things that you're going to talk about be shut down, be fixed or judged and get some awareness around there and then get some homework to do that will help you understand how you express love, how to feel love, how to be able to share your emotions and how to discover what's going on with your partner and why they maybe react the way they do.

[00:34:49] Ok. Hey, I hope you enjoyed this bonus episode that you're all ready to go with your love languages. You've taken the quiz. You've talked about it with your spouse. You're ready for a more magnetic marriage, more connected conversations. If so, don't forget to head over to Tony Overbay Dotcom and sign up right now to be one of the first ones to know about how to have a more magnetic marriage, to have more connected conversations. And I will now play us off with the wonderful, the talented, Aurora Florence with its wonderful.