In any relationship, expressing love and affection is important. It’s that little thing that keeps the spark going. However, it is not always normal for couples to say ‘I love you’ on a daily basis or all the time. This is especially true for couples who have been together for a long time.
As humans, we all have different love languages. Love languages come in different forms including quality time together, verbal affirmation, physical touch, acts of service and receiving gifts.
Some people feel more loved if they’re given gifts, while others feel loved when you help them with certain tasks. This is what is meant by love languages. Knowing your partner’s love language can help you express your affection and appreciation much easier.
Let’s look at what you can do for each of the love languages that experts have come up with.
1. Receiving Gifts
There are many people that interpret gifts as a sign of love and affection. You can show your partner you care by giving them the occasional gift. If you’ve been with them for some time, it’s only natural that you should know at least a little bit about their likes and dislikes.
Buying a gift should come naturally, and you should do so occasionally. This is to ensure that the act of gift giving continues to be something special.
If you continuously give the same gifts, or surprise your other half too often, it might lose its luster.
Good gifts do not need to be too expensive. However, you do need to put some thought into it. You should buy something that cheers your partner up. If you’ve run out of ideas, you can always turn to flowers.
One of the best online flower shops in Singapore is Farm Florist. With island-wide delivery 24 hours a day, you can surprise your partner with flowers at midnight for occasions like birthdays and anniversaries.
Choose from a wide variety of romantic flowers and pair it with an accompanying gift like cakes of soft toys too. Farm Florist is also able to deliver on the same day, within one hour of your order. This is truly convenient if you’ve overlooked a special occasion, and want to make up for it.
Pair a bouquet of roses with a cake for that extra surprise during special occasions. Source: Farm Florist
2. Quality Time
Partners whose love language is quality time appreciate spending time doing meaningful things together. These types of people love it when you give them your undivided attention and there’s plenty of one to one interaction.
If you have a partner whose love language is quality time, they will feel appreciated when you take them out to a one on one dinner, join their evening walks, or book a weekend getaway together.
Sometimes, it doesn’t have to be large events or celebrations to bring you together. Quality time also means just having conversations where the both of you make eye contact.
Quality time should include daily activities too, like talking over dinner about your day, or putting the kids to bed together.
Source: xFrame
3. Words of Affirmation
Individuals whose love language is words of affirmation will feel warmth and love when you give them verbal encouragement. This means you should show them empathy and shower them with compliments.
It’s important to be sincere when showing your love to someone through words of affirmation. If you’re coming up with fake or false sentiments, they will definitely be able to feel your insincerity.
There’s also no need to overdo it. As long as you keep it real and sincere, your feelings will come through.
Showing love through words of affirmation also include written messages, such as social media messages, and interacting with their posts. Although verbal interaction should be the main mode of communication, you can also send positive messages to him or her via text messaging or social media.
4. Acts of Service
People who feel loved with acts of service are those who like it when you do things for them. It can be as simple as helping drive them from point A to point B, or helping with house chores.
Acts of service means showing your love with what you do, rather than what you say. Some of the things you can do to make your other half feel special is by making their lives more convenient and easier.
If you’re living with your significant other, you could take some time out on the weekends and wash the dishes or do the laundry and give them the day off.
If you’re married with kids, you can offer to drive them to school or to their extra-curricular activities for a change and let your spouse rest.
Suffice to say, it’s not difficult to perform acts of service to make your partner feel that you cherish them.
Source: xFrame
5. Physical Touch
Conveying love through physical touch doesn’t necessarily mean you need to get touchy feely all the time. It does mean that you should make an effort to show affection through ‘skinship’, which can include holding hands, kissing or hugging.
Many people associate physical touch with security and assurance. Therefore, you can try and show you care by keeping them close by.
Partners who feel loved through physical touch will appreciate it if you hug them once a day or even surprise them with one.
In Singapore, overt public displays of affection like kissing are frowned upon. However, you can still reassure your other half by holding their hand or shoulder when you’re outside walking.
Physical touch has been scientifically proven to calm anxiety and nervousness. It can also provide relief for pain and increase feelings of safety and security.
Touch is an almost magical or miraculous cure for sadness and heartbreak, so it’s always a good idea to show affection this way.
Source: xFrame
Love Does Take Some Work
Falling in love may seem like the most natural thing in the world to do. However, maintaining a long term relationship does take a bit of work. Letting your significant other know that your affection for them remains true and strong is one of those things you need to constantly do.
In real life, every individual would have a mixture of love languages that they can relate to, with one or two dominant languages. It helps to be creative and show your affection in more than one way so that it prevents your relationship from becoming mundane.