How do you express your love to your family members? Do you give them a gift? Do you give
them a back scratch? Do you tell them that you really appreciated something that they
did? Do you schedule special time in your day? There are multiple different ways that
we show love to each other in our families. And it's important that we recognize that.
In fact, we can better show love to our family members if we understand how love is shown.
In this video, we're going to talk about the different ways that we can express love and
how we can help everybody understand how love is going to be expressed so that everyone
feels that they can accept the love that given even if that's not their favorite way. There
are 5 different ways that a person can show love to somebody else. In my family, I show
love completely differently from my husband. This can sometimes create a little bit of
a problem. So, my love language is quality time. My husband's love language acts of service.
Those are just 2 of the 5 love languages. The other 3 love languages are giving gifts,
words of affirmation and touch. So, we've got touch, gifts, words of affirmation, quality
time and service. Because my love language is quality time, I like to have nice time
as a family, a meal. I like to go on a walk around the neighborhood with my husband and
talk. But he likes to get the lawn mode. Because he is a service guy. He wants to make sure
everything in the house is running just perfectly. So, let's say dinner is on the table, everybody
is waiting to eat it to have this quality time that I've established, my husband is
often out in the yard pushing the lawn mower. And I'm going ,"Hmm", and I say, "Honey, come
in." And he'll say, "Just a minute. I'm almost done." So, then what do I have to do? I have
to say, "Ah, bless his heart. He's loving me right now. He's doing it his way not may
way. But he is loving me right now." Most people enjoy all the different forms of showing
love. So, most people like to get a gift. They like to hear that they've done something
well and someone appreciates it. They like someone to serve them. Maybe get a foot massage
or something. They like all the different ways. Now, occasionally, there's a few people
who don't want their feet touched no matter what. In fact, they don't want to be touched
no matter what. It's important to know if one of those love languages is actually really
uncomfortable and a complete turn off to somebody else. Usually you can get by with just showing
some in every area of love to your family. But it is good to know what a favorite love
language is for somebody else. My favorite love language like I said is quality time.
But I also like words of affirmation and I like service too. In fact, I like all of them.
A good hug, any day of the week. Gift is probably the bottom for me. But I give gifts a lot.
And I do like gifts. So, how do you find out what somebody's love language is? Because
that's really important. There's 2 different ways. You can either ask the person, "Hey,
these are the 5 love languages which one is your love language? What's the one you like
the best?" Or if you don't want to ask because maybe for whatever reason, it seems like it
would be awkward for your relationship, then you can just notice how they seem to show
love to you or to other people. Garry Chapman says that "The way a person shows love most
often is the way that they want to receive love from you as well." So, if that person
is always telling you something kind about you, then guess what they want? Some kind
words. If they write you thank you notes and little love notes and draw you pictures, guess
what they want you to do? Write them love notes, thank you notes and draw them pictures.
So, take the clue from the way from the way the person is treating you. That will help
your love grow. Now, hopefully overtime, they will also recognize what your love language
is so that you can get the love the way you really like the best too. But I'll tell you
what. It's such a free to recognize there's 5 different ways to show love and that you're
focus is on showing love their way instead of your own way. Because then you don't have
to feel entitled about giving love or intention the way that you feel like you have to have
it to be happy. You can recognize that you can be happy with any of the ways. It's just
a choice to be happy or not. I'm a pretty direct person. So, I always feel like the
best way to figure something out is just to ask the person. Years ago, when I read about
the love languages, our family did a fun activity. I decided I wanted to know what everyone's
love language was and I wanted to teach them the love languages. But I wanted to do it
in a fun way. So, what we did is we had a special family activity night where I talk
them about the love language is and we discussed them. Then, I gave every person a piece of
paper and a pen. And I said, "Okay now, what I want you to do is I want you to write your
name at the top of the paper and then list 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 down the side of the paper.
Number 1, I want you to write your favorite love language. So, the way that you wish people
would show love to you the very most. Put it as number 1. And we're going to rank them
in order. All these ways of showing love to others are good. That was important to make
clear. But some people who are repelling somebody's hug are actually saying "I don't want you
to show me you love me." And we don't want to have that happening in families. So, I
told them to rank the love languages 1 through 5 down the paper. And then after we were going
to play a guessing game and see if we could guess who's love languages belong to who.
So, everyone wrote down their love languages in order of importance to them. I gather up
all the papers and then I said, "Okay, so Quinton, what love language do you think is
Quinton's number 1 love language?" And everyone thought about it and said, "Touch. He's a
huger." He likes to be touched. And he was like, "Yep! That's right." But then as we
work down the list and we got to maybe number 3 or something, they might guess wrong. And
he'd say, "No, actually it was this..." And so, we've played this guessing game with each
other. In that way the the whole family was able to learn how they love on each other.
The way that they wish other people showed love to them. Showing love to each other in
a family is a great way to strengthen your relationships. There is another video that
is all about improving relationships that I know you're going to enjoy. It's called
"How Can You Improve Your Relationships With Your Family". Watch it next.