What is Love? Love is many things, and we can all define it differently. And, we can all give it and receive it differently… It is common in couples for the partners to feel that they give more love than their partner does. It’s interesting when both partners in the relationship feel this way. The reason for this is that they are giving love the way they themselves like to receive love, not necessarily in the way that their partner likes to receive it. This leaves the partners giving love that the other doesn’t even register…
What a conundrum, right? The partners give the love, and the other doesn’t feel it.
They are both investing in their relationship with no impact. They get frustrated at giving the love that seemingly it not being reciprocated. The partners struggle to understand what’s happening, feeling resentful at not being loved enough…
When this continues, with the partners none the wiser that they are both investing just not in the required way, the resentment starts manifesting in poor interactions. Which are riddled with cynicism, criticism, control, defensiveness, passive aggressiveness, defiance, power struggles, and other pesky ways.
This can all be easily shifted when the partners give their love in the way the other likes to receive it!
This idea was developed by Dr. Gary Chapman and presented in his popular book, The 5 Love Languages. He shares the 5 love languages commonly desired by partners and how to give love in those languages. Now we all like to receive love in all the 5 languages, but usually we have 2 top ones we prefer.
I teach clients to focus on giving their partner love in their top two languages, so they no longer spin their wheels giving love how they like to receive it and it being lost on their partner. This shift in how they give love makes a great impact as the partners start to immediately feel more loved. An investment well worth what it requires to shift their approach.
Dr. Chapman also presents pitfalls to avoid according to each love language. It’s interesting that partners have the hardest time giving the love in the way that their partner desires it, and do exactly the things that hurts the other the most… This is all part of our relationship dynamics and our patterns.
The way we struggle giving the right love for our partner and avoiding the related pitfalls is all part of how we are to continue to evolve… This is yet another way in how we are a perfect match for each other…
Here are the 5 Love Languages and Their Pitfalls
Learning our Love Languages is key in ensuring we are showing each other love in the way that touches are heart the most and avoid the common pitfalls that hurt our partner.
1~ Words of Affirmation
Partners with this love language feel most loved through verbal expressions of affection, praise, and encouragement. This also includes compliments, appreciation, acknowledgment, credit, and validation.
These Have this Flavor: ~ Saying, “I love you,” frequently. ~ Giving genuine compliments like, “You’re amazing at what you do.” ~ Leaving a heartfelt note or sending a thoughtful text message.
Pitfalls to Avoid: ~ Insincere or forced compliments can feel empty. ~ Negative or critical words can be especially hurtful to someone who values affirmation. ~ Assuming your partner “already knows” you appreciate them without saying it.
2~ Acts of Service
Love is expressed through helpful actions rather than words. Doing things that make life easier for the partner is the key to their heart. These partners really appreciate practical and hands on support. Help with their to-do list or getting things done.
These Have this Flavor: ~ Cooking a meal for them when they’ve had a long day. ~ Taking care of household chores without being asked. ~ Running an errand they’ve been putting off.
Pitfalls to Avoid: ~ Doing things out of obligation rather than genuine love. ~ Assuming your acts of service are meaningful to your partner without asking. ~ Expecting praise in return, or having strings attached, rather than giving selflessly.
3~ Quality Time
Undivided attention and meaningful experiences are the primary ways these partners feel loved. This is where the attunement, presence, and protected couple and intimate time come into play.
These Have this Flavor: ~ Planning a date night with special touches. ~ Engaging in deep conversations without distractions. ~ Taking a weekend trip together to reconnect.
Pitfalls to Avoid: ~ Being physically present but mentally absent (e.g., scrolling on your phone). ~ Assuming quantity of time matters more than quality. ~ Failing to plan meaningful activities together.
4~ Physical Touch
Physical affection is the primary way these partners feel connected and loved. This doesn’t always mean physical intimacy or sexy time. It can be as simple as touch. These can look like caressing, petting, patting, grazing, kissing, and the like…
These have this flavor: ~ Holding hands while walking together. ~ Giving hugs, back rubs, or gentle touches throughout the day. ~ Cuddling on the couch while watching a movie.
Pitfalls to Avoid: ~ Assuming all physical touch is romantical- non-intimate affection is important too. ~ Withholding touch as punishment. ~ Forgetting that small, spontaneous gestures of touch can mean a lot.
5~ Receiving Gifts
For some, tangible symbols of love carry deep emotional significance. It’s not about materialism but about the thoughtfulness behind the gift. Though some partners have higher expectations on the kinds of gifts.
These have this flavor: ~ Bringing home their favorite snack just because. ~ Giving a meaningful birthday or anniversary present. ~ Surprising them with a small, sentimental token that reminds you of them.
Pitfalls to Avoid: ~ Thinking it’s about money rather than meaning. ~ Forgetting special occasions or failing to put thought into gifts. ~ Assuming a generic or last-minute gift will have the same impact as something personal.
Understanding and speaking our partner’s Love Language, and knowing and communicating our own, can be truly transformative in our relationship.
Identifying and prioritizing our love languages can help prevent unnecessary conflicts, and deepen our connection. If you don’t already know yours, check out Dr. Chapman’squiz!Here.
This is a fun exercise to share with your partner to realign, add more dimension to your relating, and just for kicks. Why not?
If you notice resistance in giving your partner love in their Love Language, take some time to explore what’s behind that for you and how you need to stretch for your own growth…
Often when couples struggle in their relationship, or when they feel they are in a bit of a slump, it has to do with Relationship Neglect… When life gets hectic with demands and we barely have time to sleep, the further thing from our mind is being cute in our relationship. Because we are so used to a life of grind, this state of affairs is common. Where the relationship and our bond take a major blow.
The relationship can sustain challenging times, but ongoing neglect takes its toll. There are specific factors that play a role during these difficult times, that can at times be pervasive in the relationship making matters worse. Shifting these is key to getting out of the slump along with intentionally and effortlessly investing in the relationship.
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~~ Watch our related videos on our YouTube channel
~~ Download our Date Your Partner Protocolto learn how to better date your partner for more fun, connection and love!
PPS: Do you need support taking yourself, your relationship, and your life to the next level- actually living a healthy, happy, harmonious and overall abundant life?
Copyright (c) 2025 Emma K. Viglucci. All rights reserved.
Want to Use this Article in Your Own Website or Publication? Be our guest! Here is how, you MUST include: Emma K. Viglucci, LMFT is the Founder and Director of Metropolitan Marriage & Family Therapy, PLLC, a private practice that specializes in working with couples, she is the creator of the MetroRelationship™ philosophy and the Successful Couple Strategy™ that assist couples succeed at their relationship and their life. Stay Connected™ with Emma and receive weekly connection notes in your inbox with Personal Development and Relationship Enrichment insights and strategies, visit: www.metrorelationship.com.
Call me weird, call me naïve, call me a hopeless romantic, but I choose to believe there is more love in the air and in the world than we sometimes see… I know this might be an unpopular opinion given the state of the world, but our reality is what we make of it. While plenty may challenge this belief, our reality is shaped our own state of mind…
Have you ever seen the movie It’s a Beautiful Life? It’s about a father in a concentration camp who shields their young son from the horrors of their situation by turning it into a game. Because of his father’s unwavering perspective, the boy never experiences the trauma of their conditions in the same way. Watch the trailer here
This story reminds us of something profound:
We are super powerful creators…
What we think and what we believe, we manifest…
What we focus on, grows…
Why not put this superpower to work, as we can create whatever we desire.
For me, that means focusing on love- helping couples create their radiant and successful relationship and rekindling their love. Actually, not just rekindle it but create something new, a New Love…
What is this New Love?
For starters, the concept of New Love is about transcending our limitations to be as loving as we can be…
~ Letting go of the pettiness of our lower self
~ Releasing attachments to perceived limitations
~ Having grace for our own and other’s shortcomings
~ Being generous with- kindness, openness, flexibility, understanding, acknowledgement, acceptance, forgiveness, empathy, compassion, attention, affection, nurturing, support, cooperation, collaboration (Correlating to the 5 Elements of the Successful Relationship Strategy™)
~ Investing in win-win outcomes and elevating love as a collective experience
This Higher Perspective elevates us for a Grander Experience…
When we filter life through pettiness, we act petty
When we filter life through generosity, we act generously
When we filter life through love, we act lovingly
We can identify what we want to create and experience, and have it grow by simply focusing on and cultivating its related virtue, quality, feeling or state.
What this mean for our relationship
Here is the beautiful part: Aside from just feeling amazing and having a fabulous personal experience, you’ll notice your partner starts to shift along…
We can’t possibly operate from this Higher Perspective and not have it rub off on others, especially the ones closest to us, like our partner.
But a word of caution: Our approach has to be authentic and heart-felt. Not just lip service, hedging, conditions, or strings attached. Which are lower-self’s rules of engagement… With limiting underlying programming still running the show… This is the larger part of us and wins every time. So if there is a discrepancy between how we are showing up or our desire and what our programming dictates, the programming will impact the outcome no matter how hard we try…
Your partner and others will always respond to the underlying patterns, regardless of the words and actions. That’s why so many people say, “I tried everything, and nothing worked.”
We want to bring consciousness to our patterns allowing for a sustainable Higher Perspective. For there we can fill the space left behind by the dissolved patterns with the good stuff…
Now is the time to embrace this New Love.
Give it shot: Address your patterns and replace prior sabotaging habits with ones that nourish you, nurture your relationship, and delight your partner…
~~ Watch our related videos on our YouTube channel
~~ Download our Date Your Partner Protocolto learn how to better date your partner for more fun, connection and love!
PS: Do you need support taking yourself, your relationship, and your life to the next level- actually living a healthy, happy, harmonious and overall abundant life?
Copyright (c) 2025 Emma K. Viglucci. All rights reserved.
Want to Use this Article in Your Own Website or Publication? Be our guest! Here is how, you MUST include: Emma K. Viglucci, LMFT is the Founder and Director of Metropolitan Marriage & Family Therapy, PLLC, a private practice that specializes in working with couples, she is the creator of the MetroRelationship™ philosophy and the Successful Couple Strategy™ that assist couples succeed at their relationship and their life. Stay Connected™ with Emma and receive weekly connection notes in your inbox with Personal Development and Relationship Enrichment insights and strategies, visit: www.metrorelationship.com.
Do you find that you often butt heads with your partner when dealing with the business of life? Or that you operate as if you are lost at sea without any direction, and you end up wherever the tide takes you? This has to do with not being on the same page, or not having a clear joint life vision and plan. It also has to do with each of your own personal development levels and relationship dynamics. The more pronounced the impasses, powerstruggles, drama, chaos, and lack of forward movement experienced by the partners, the more wounding and developmental delay that might be plaguing the couple…
I have been expressly adding another dimension to our personal growth and healing and relationship dynamics work to better assist couples with their relationship transformation. We’ve been playing with owning more our masculine and feminine characteristics… The interplay in their polarity for our personal wellness and for the success and radiance of our relationship just can’t continue to be ignored (as always, this is regardless of gender).
How the differences between the set of characteristics have been played down can no longer be ignored inside or outside the context of our relationship. Continuing to do so seemingly to create equality among the genders, just continues to reinforce the patriarchy… It does no one any good for the feminine characteristics and energy to continue to be oppressed… For everyone to seem more alike, “equal”, and bonded in our more coveted masculine traits and characteristics…
Just like we polarize in a host of other ways in our relationship validating the opposites attract paradigm, this is another layer that is to be taken more seriously for the vitality and success of our relationship.
For not doing so is a complete disregard for ourselves and the experience with our partner. Disowning major parts of ourselves and lopsiding our relationship energetics makes for unhealthy partners and messy relationship dynamics. And, not conducive for creating our epic love affair with our partner and our best life, our grander human experience…
There are 3 levels of development for each set of characteristics, and both apply to both partners…
~ Dormant – This is when we are not even aware that we have a range of characteristics available to us, and that we might be shut down to part of the range… Or that we are not fully owning our more inherent side of the spectrum of characteristics. We shut down part of ourselves…
~ Distorted – This is when we begin to wake up to other aspects of ourselves, but we are wobbly in their use. This is when we show up with our toxic masculinity and toxic femininity. This is when we act out especially with our more inherent energy or in its defense…
~ Divine – This is when we start to master the balance, integration, and polarization interplay of our characteristics, intentionally drawing from all the benefits of our wholeness… This is when we tap into the sacredness of each of our energies, when we use our energies to their full potential and glory. This is when we tap into ourrelationship inherent synergy. When we intentionally polarize with our partner to create our spark, passion, and bliss… This is how we create our sacred union, rejoice in oneness…
There is much to be said for owning all of ourselves, all of our tendencies, quirks, aspects, traits, characteristics, energies, and the like. Regardless of what we label things, there is something to be said for fully owning and honoring ourselves… For fully utilizing the avatar we are living our life through…
~~~
Whatever is not really working as you’d like in your life, put it through this lens and see if you get a different awareness as to what needs shifting, realigning, coming online, and so on…
See where you are developmentally. See where you are lopsided. See where you need to focus more attention. See how to embrace and cultivate your inherent side more. See how to support and give to yourself what your inherent energy needs… See how to fully honor all of yourself…
See how to support your partner in doing this for themselves, or just in supporting all parts of them… See how to give your partner’s inherent energy what it needs more.
See how to polarize to invite your partner’s polarity to come out to play…
As you experiment and tend to this, you’ll automatically start creating changes in your programs, patterns, and dynamics. Pay attention to how you are experiencing yourself and your world differently, and how everything and everyone start to respond differently to you… Enjoy!
PSS: Do you need support taking yourself, your relationship, and your life to the next level- actually living a healthy, happy, harmonious and overall abundant life?
Copyright (c) 2024 Emma K. Viglucci. All rights reserved.
Want to Use this Article in Your Own Website or Publication? Be our guest! Here is how, you MUST include: Emma K. Viglucci, LMFT is the Founder and Director of Metropolitan Marriage & Family Therapy, PLLC, a private practice that specializes in working with couples, she is the creator of the MetroRelationship™ philosophy and the Successful Couple Strategy™ that assist couples succeed at their relationship and their life. Stay Connected™ with Emma and receive weekly connection notes in your inbox with Personal Development and Relationship Enrichment insights and strategies, visit: www.metrorelationship.com.
There is a reason why our relationship seems to have lost the fizzle, or when we find that we are getting on each other’s nerves, bickering, or fighting more. When we feel stuck. Partners might attribute different reasons to this, and they might be very valid. But there is usually an underlaying reason that when tapped into and addressed, creates massive shifts for the partners, the relationship, AND their lives…
Today’s reason might seem illusive or abstract, but regardless, when partners play with this concept they are rewarded for their investment.
We are talking about fully owning all aspects of ourselves… But specifically to today’s topic, to owning both our masculine and our feminine aspects, characteristics, traits, energies… Because of social conditioning and the current way of things in our still very patriarchal society, we have oppressed our feminine side… Most of us are a lot more comfortable with our masculine traits, embracing and leading with them and judge, put down, or disown our feminine ones…
This leaves us operating with less than our full selves, and for those of us who are inherently more feminine and suppress those aspects end up really operating at a lower capacity. When we don’t own or utilize the greater part of ourselves, we experience mental and physical illness along with creating unnecessary friction and discomfort in our relationship.
If we are showing up with our masculine, what is our masculine partner to do? And I’m not talking about gender… Opposite energies attract, and when the more inherently masculine partner is met with their partner showing up with their own masculine, when the unspoken agreement is that they are to show up more with their inherent feminine, they are at a loss for how to show up. This leaves the inherently more feminine partner desiring their partner to show up more in their masculine, but of course they can’t because the role is already filled. Or they do, and problems arise… As you have two masculine energies trying to have a romantic relationship…
Similarly for the inherently masculine partner, they are limited in using their masculine because their partner might be showing up with it, and their feminine is also oppressed…
A conundrum for the couple indeed and a terribly disempowering situation for partners…
We are not saying that it’s a No No for the more feminine partners to use their masculine traits. For that would mean over compensating the other way and inviting a host of other issues…
Again, we all have both energies to varying degrees and our job is to own them fully so we are whole, enabling us to have our better human experience…
The key is to integrate the traits, energies within ourselves and to learn to intentionally use them in different contexts for better outcomes…
Additionally, in the context of our romantic relationship, when we polarize, we generate the spark we desire as opposites attract…
Playing at integrating the traits within ourselves and at creating a dance with our partner’s allows us to really manifest all we desire and become our most radiant selves.
First things first – recognize what traits you lead with and which you are oppressing…
Secondly – start owning and using all of your traits more…
Thirdly – support your partner in using all of their traits, especially their inherently opposite ones…
As a result of these qualities, each energy has different needs:
~ The Masculine needs appreciation, freedom, purpose
~ The Feminine needs attention, security, nourishing
When we start owning all of our characteristics and finding the balance between them for ourselves, we become whole and more vibrant. We are in our glory.
When the more integrated partners meet and complement in the interaction with their polarities that’s where the magic happens. This is when the union feels sacred…
Give it a shot, start owning and polarizing your traits more, and see how things start shifting immediately in your interactions and overall in your relationship and in your life…
PSS: Do you need support taking yourself, your relationship, and your life to the next level- actually living a healthy, happy, harmonious and overall abundant life?
Copyright (c) 2024 Emma K. Viglucci. All rights reserved.
Want to Use this Article in Your Own Website or Publication? Be our guest! Here is how, you MUST include: Emma K. Viglucci, LMFT is the Founder and Director of Metropolitan Marriage & Family Therapy, PLLC, a private practice that specializes in working with couples, she is the creator of the MetroRelationship™ philosophy and the Successful Couple Strategy™ that assist couples succeed at their relationship and their life. Stay Connected™ with Emma and receive weekly connection notes in your inbox with Personal Development and Relationship Enrichment insights and strategies, visit: www.metrorelationship.com.
Ah summertime… What is summertime if not a time for repose and realignment? What about a time to heal, evolve, expand? What about a time to reconnect with our partner and reset our relationship? What about a time to uplevel our life through some couple fun?
Anything goes, really, as long as we are intentional and investing in creating the relationship and life we love…
A softer approach to our relationship helps turn things around and enrich our relationship… Are you familiar with the concept of having a softer life? Well, here I extrapolate that concept and apply it to our relationship. A Softer Relationship™ is one that allows for more ease, harmony, joy, connection and love…
In today’s video, I cover the 5 Key Tactics to help us embrace a Softer Relationship™. I talk about Making Assumptions, Assigning Motives, Giving Grace, Giving Appreciations, and Delighting Our Partner… These are tactics that when embraced they remove the layer that creates drama, disturbances, and disconnect in our relationship. They help the partner create more authenticity, vulnerability, availability, safety and so much more. Enjoy!
PSS: Do you need support taking yourself, your relationship, and your life to the next level- actually living a healthy, happy, harmonious and overall abundant life?
Copyright (c) 2024 Emma K. Viglucci. All rights reserved.
Want to Use this Article in Your Own Website or Publication? Be our guest! Here is how, you MUST include: Emma K. Viglucci, LMFT is the Founder and Director of Metropolitan Marriage & Family Therapy, PLLC, a private practice that specializes in working with couples, she is the creator of the MetroRelationship™ philosophy and the Successful Couple Strategy™ that assist couples succeed at their relationship and their life. Stay Connected™ with Emma and receive weekly connection notes in your inbox with Personal Development and Relationship Enrichment insights and strategies, visit: www.metrorelationship.com.
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Emma K. Viglucci, LMFT has been in the mental health profession in varying capacities for the past 20+ years. She is the Founder and Director of metrorelationship.com a psychotherapy and coaching practice specializing in working with busy professional and entrepreneurial couples who are struggling getting on the same page and feeling connected. The work helps couples create a radiant and successful relationship and meaningful life by becoming a strong partnership and increasing their connection, intimacy, and fun. Emma is the creator of the MetroRelationship™ philosophy and the Successful Relationship Strategy™.
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