Many of us are familiar with Dr. Gary Chapman’s Five Love Languages. These love languages represent the way we prefer to receive love in our close relationships, and include five categories: Words of Affirmation, Acts of Service, Gifts, Physical Touch, and Quality Time. While learning and communicating our preferred love languages can be an enlightening way to unlock deeper trust and connection in our relationships with others, I have been pondering the powerful potential of how these love languages can change our relationships with ourselves.
Not all of us are in situations where people we love are frequently showing us the love we need and deserve through our preferred love language. Whether you are single, working through difficulties in your relationship, or simply living away from close friends and family, sometimes the only person that we can rely on to show us consistent and careful love is US.
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So how can we learn to better speak our love language in our relationship with ourselves? As with any other situation in which we are seeking to strengthen our communication skills, the first step involves gaining understanding, and the second, practice! In order to show yourself love in your preferred love language, you have to know what that preferred love language is! It requires a little self-awareness and a knowledge of your own needs and desires. This quiz from Dr. Chapman’s website is a great tool to help you figure out your love language if you are having trouble identifying it on your own.
* Note: Your primary love language for how you like to receive love from others may be different from how you like to receive love from yourself (what I like to call your self-love language). Try out different things, and learn what works the best for you!
After you know how you like to receive love, you have the power to start practicing showing that love to yourself! Intentionally work activities into your routine that give you time to show yourself love and compassion in the way that you like to receive it most.
Here are some ideas for how you can show yourself love in your preferred self-love language (there are lots more – get creative!):
The words we say have power – especially the ones we say to ourselves. Regardless of your preferred self-love language, each of us can benefit from speaking kinder and more loving words to ourselves! If Words of Affirmation is your preferred self-love language, these little efforts will make a big difference in strengthening your relationship with yourself.
Practice thinking kind thoughts about yourself.
Write yourself a love letter.
Listen to your favorite music, book, or poetry.
Implement positive affirmations into your daily routine.
Individuals who prefer acts of service are often very other-focused and are constantly worried about the needs of those around them. How often do you really think about your needs and do something nice for yourself? If you need someone to give you permission, then here you go!
Ask yourself what you need today, and then go do it.
Say “no” to something unnecessary on your “to-do” list.
Perform a service for someone else (alright, alright, sometimes, this is just what you need to feel a little extra love in your day!).
Giving a meaningful gift is not always about how much money it costs; it’s more about the thought that goes into getting and giving the gift. Take some time to think about your needs, and treat yourself to something that will be meaningful to you!
Budget some money each month to buy yourself a small gift.
The love language of Physical Touch is all about physical experience and connecting to your body. A great way to show yourself love in ways that relate to physical touch is by connecting to your senses, and by showing your body some extra love.
Give yourself a foot, hand, or neck massage (or splurge a little and get a professional massage). This is a great video to help guide you through some simple and relaxing self-massage!
Take a bath and be sure to use your favorite bath salts, bath bombs, or essential oils.
When you date someone else, you make sure to spend a lot of time with them so you can get to know them. But are we willing to do the same for ourselves? Spending time to re-connect with yourself and get to know who you are in the present moment can be so healing and enlightening. Take some time to get to know yourself better today!
Take yourself out on a date.
Spend some time out in nature.
Implement a meditation practice into your day.
Go on an adventure and try something you have always wanted to try.
Regardless of your situation, you deserve love, and practicing self-love is a great way to guarantee that you will get it! Get to know your preferred self-love language and start showing yourself some love more intentionally today!
Discover your self-love language, and implement one practice to show yourself some love this week.
Bunt, S., & Hazelwood, Z. J. (2017). Walking the walk, talking the talk: Love languages, self‐regulation, and relationship satisfaction. Personal Relationships, 24(2), 280–290. https://doi-org.erl.lib.byu.edu/10.1111/pere.12182
*The Healthy Humans Project is an Amazon Associate and earns from qualifying purchases. Thank you so much for supporting our efforts to improve relationships!
Rian Nicole Gordon is from Orem, Utah, and graduated from Brigham Young University with a Bachelor of Science in Family Life and Human Development. She has been married to her best friend Mark for five years, and they have two beautiful children, one boy and one girl. Apart from her full-time job as a stay-at-home mom, she works for The Dibble Institute, which specializes in relationship education for youth.
Physical touch is a great way to connect. For many of us, kissing, cuddling, hugging, holding hands and sex help us feel a closer bond with our partners. Humans are biologically driven to connect with people physically, and many of us enjoy physical touch as our dominant love language.
Having physical touch as a dominant love language does not necessarily denote a high sex drive. It really just means that appropriate physical touch is how we feel the most connected to our other half.
“Touches may be explicit and call for your full attention, such as a back rub or sexual foreplay. They can be implicit and require only a moment, such as putting your hand on his shoulder as you pour a cup of coffee. Once you discover that physical touch is the primary love language of your spouse, you are limited only by your imagination. Kiss when you get in the car. It may greatly enhance your travels. Give a hug before you go shopping. You may hear less griping when you return.”
-Gary Chapman
Here are six ways to increase the quality of physical touch in your relationship.
1. Use Appropriate Touch to Communicate
Using appropriate physical touch can be a way of expressing not only love, but the other things we feel. We use physical touch to convey support, grief, play, humor, joy, appreciation, attraction, and unity.
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For example, when my husband and I are having a difficult conversation (discussing something that is emotional for one of us, or when we are disagreeing and debating) we hold hands or rest one hand on our partner’s leg. That simple touch helps us connect and makes it easier to see problems not as ‘me vs. him’, but as ‘us vs. problem’. It is an easy reminder that we are not alone in whatever pain or frustration we may be feeling.
2. Make sure that not all physical touch is sexual in nature.
While sex is certainly an important part of romantic relationships, if physical touch is only sexual in nature, it can leave a person feeling objectified. Physical touch is not always meant to be foreplay either. If you find that you expect every long kiss or backrub to lead to sex, you need to reevaluate your expectations. If physical touch is expected to lead to sex each time, it will become less and less frequent, and often less sincere. It can also lead to painful feelings of loss and lack of connection if physical touch is your partner’s dominant love language.
Photo by freestocks on Unsplash
Take opportunities to embrace, cuddle, make out, and even flirt or smack your partner’s butt without needing it to go anywhere! Massage your partner’s back or feet, or play with their hair. A nibble on the ear can go a long way too. Physical touch (including sex!) is less about personal pleasure and more about emotional connection.
3. If your relationship (and even sex life) is struggling, there may not be enough touch.
When you reach out with tender touch, you create emotional closeness. This is especially true if the primary love language of your spouse is physical touch. You may say, “What if I’m just not a toucher? I didn’t grow up in a touchy-feely family.” The good news is that you can learn to speak this love language. It can begin with a pat on the back, or putting your hand on their leg as you sit together on the couch.
-Gary Chapman
As humans, we are biologically programmed to need human contact. Human touch creates semiochemical bonding and releases hormones like oxytocin. This semiochemical bonding cements couples together, and the oxytocin makes people pretty happy and excited about that bonding. If there is not enough touch happening, it is hard to feel connected to our partners.
4. Communicate your needs.
If you are not happy with the amount or style of physical touch in your relationship, communicate about it. Be open. If you can be vulnerable enough to be naked in a room together, why can’t you talk about what you need?
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For example: my husband cannot hold hands for very long. When we hold hands, it is only for about a minute at a time. I worried that he did not want to be affectionate in public (something important to me), but his straightforward communication cleared that up. On the other hand, grabbing my butt is off limits if I am in a dress. For whatever reason, if I am in a dress, it just drives me crazy; otherwise, no big deal. I communicated this to him, and he has been perfectly respectful.
Affectionate touch should be enjoyable – we should feel good about it! If we do not, we have a responsibility to speak up. And if our partners communicate to us, we have a responsibility to respond appropriately.
5. Know your partner’s limits.
We all have our own boundaries – things we are uncomfortable with, and things we want and need. Keeping your partner’s limits in mind, and being respectful of those is important.
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6. Emotional safety is just as important as physical safety.
Remember to keep your partner safe. Physical touch has to be appropriate. It can be fun and sexy and gentle and energetic and all kids of things, but if we ever touch our partners in ways that violate their safety, that is not okay. It just isn’t. Physical touch must include a sense of trust and the ability to be vulnerable and comfortable. If those feelings go away, we need to make some changes.
If you are involved in a physically or emotionally unsafe relationship, please get help. We all, regardless of our gender, orientation, history, or any other variable, deserve to be safe and secure in our relationships. Please reach out to a trusted loved one, the police, or other resources in your community for assistance.
Find at least one way each day for a week to use appropriate physical touch in your relationship without it leading to sex. (Sex is good too! But we want you to broaden your physical touch repertoire and be more creative.)
References
Bland, A. M., & McQueen, K. S. (2018). The distribution of Chapman’s love languages in couples: An exploratory cluster analysis. Couple and Family Psychology: Research and Practice, 7(2), 103–126. https://doi-org.erl.lib.byu.edu/10.1037/cfp0000102
Egbert, N., & Polk, D. (2006). Speaking the language of relational maintenance: A validity test of Chapman’s (1992) five love languages. Communication Research Reports, 23(1), 19–26. https://doi-org.erl.lib.byu.edu/10.1080/17464090500535822
Jakubiak, B. K., & Feeney, B. C. (2017). Affectionate touch to promote relational, psychological, and physical well-being in adulthood: A theoretical model and review of the research. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 21(3), 228–252. https://doi-org.erl.lib.byu.edu/10.1177/1088868316650307
Reddan, M. C., Young, H., Falkner, J., López-Solà, M., & Wager, T. D. (2020). Touch and social support influence interpersonal synchrony and pain. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 15(10), 1064–1075. https://doi-org.erl.lib.byu.edu/10.1093/scan/nsaa048
Aubrey-Dawn Palmer was born and raised in Farmington, New Mexico, and she has a bachelor’s degree in family studies from Brigham Young University. She has two younger brothers and is married to her best friend, Richard. In addition to her research on relationships, human attachment, and healthy sexuality, Aubrey-Dawn volunteers with her husband as a teacher for the Strengthening Families Program, is a research director for a counseling center, and works as a home counselor at a residential treatment center.
*Photo of Brett and Beatriz Burbank, provided by Remi Stoneman Photography
Written by Aubrey-Dawn Palmer
With Valentine’s Day approaching, we want to teach about Gary Chapman’s five love languages. Many of you already know about love languages, and know what yours are. We are going to be reviewing each of the five love languages over February. This month, we have one goal, and we want you to join us in that goal. For us here at Healthy Humans Project, February is about learning to love our partners their way.
What does that mean?
It is so easy to express love to our partners the way we want to receive love – in a way that is comfortable to us. But are we really loving our partners the way they need us to? While our intentions are good, it may be that we are not loving our partner according to their love language, and therefore, they are not really feeling loved.
A person’s top two love languages are their most important. These love languages are: physical touch, quality time, acts of service, words of affirmation, and gifts. I am not going to go into how each of the five languages work right now, so stay tuned, because we will go through all of them this month!
If you have not taken the test, or, if it has been a while, you can take it here.
We have homework for you, and it doubles as a date night:
Guess what your partner’s top two love languages are.
Each of you take the test using the link above (do not help each other).
Talk about your results. Bepositive. (This is not a blaming game!)
Good luck! Tell us about your results, and as always, contact us with any questions.
References
Bland, A. M., & McQueen, K. S. (2018). The distribution of Chapman’s love languages in couples: An exploratory cluster analysis. Couple and Family Psychology: Research and Practice, 7(2), 103–126. https://doi-org.erl.lib.byu.edu/10.1037/cfp0000102
Bunt, S., & Hazelwood, Z. J. (2017). Walking the walk, talking the talk: Love languages, self‐regulation, and relationship satisfaction. Personal Relationships, 24(2), 280–290. https://doi-org.erl.lib.byu.edu/10.1111/pere.12182
Gawda, B. (2019). The structure of the concepts related to love spectrum: Emotional verbal fluency technique application, initial psychometrics, and its validation. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 48(6), 1339–1361. https://doi-org.erl.lib.byu.edu/10.1007/s10936-019-09661-y
Robinson, M. D., Persich, M. R., Sjoblom-Schmidt, S., & Penzel, I. B. (2020). Love stories: How language use patterns vary by relationship quality. Discourse Processes, 57(1), 81–98. https://doi-org.erl.lib.byu.edu/10.1080/0163853X.2019.1627158
Aubrey-Dawn Palmer was born and raised in Farmington, New Mexico, and she has a bachelor’s degree in family studies from Brigham Young University. She has two younger brothers and is married to her best friend, Richard. In addition to her research on relationships, human attachment, and healthy sexuality, Aubrey-Dawn volunteers with her husband as a teacher for the Strengthening Families Program, is a research director for a counseling center, and works as a home counselor at a residential treatment center.
Discover your self-love language, and implement one practice to show yourself some love this week. 
Find at least one way each day for a week to use appropriate physical touch in your relationship without it leading to sex. (Sex is good too! But we want you to broaden your physical touch repertoire and be more creative.)
Aubrey-Dawn Palmer was born and raised in Farmington, New Mexico, and she has a bachelor’s degree in family studies from Brigham Young University. She has two younger brothers and is married to her best friend, Richard. In addition to her research on relationships, human attachment, and healthy sexuality, Aubrey-Dawn volunteers with her husband as a teacher for the Strengthening Families Program, is a research director for a counseling center, and works as a home counselor at a residential treatment center.