‘She’s always on my case to be home more. She doesn’t appreciate that I’m out working my but off to support this family. I can’t seem to win.’
Sound familiar? If we are missing the mark with any key relationships in our lives whether that be home, work or with our coaching, it’s quite possible we aren’t aware of how they want to be loved. Not everyone wants to be loved in the same way (sounds obvious doesn’t it), so it may be worth understanding how the people around us want to be loved, so we can strengthen these key relationships.
Love languages are a useful concept to help build awareness, simply broken into five areas;
Physical Touch
Words of Affirmation
Acts of Service
Quality Time
Gift Giving
Most people will have a preference of how they ‘want to be loved.’ Now we aren’t fans of ‘putting people in boxes,’ so take this as an awareness tool, rather than the 'silver bullet' to solve all relationship problems.
Also, we will generally show love to others through our own preference, often to little effect. If you love doing things for others, you may find yourself working longer shifts, constantly cooking the dinner, doing the dishes and vacuuming, which will hit the mark with people who love ‘acts of service,’ although may fall flat if all they want is a spontaneous gift or some quality time.
Consider how your coaching or work colleagues want to feel loved. They might just want a bit of praise (words of affirmation), an informal yarn one on one (quality time) or a cheeky hug / high 5 (physical touch). Understanding this will go a long way to getting the best out of each other.
And of course, it may be timely to do this with your darling at home. This could spark a great conversation.
Refer to 'Enhancing Relationships' from the Leading Coach Programme
Or take the quiz here:
https://www.5lovelanguages.com/quizzes/love-language
