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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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.
It is common for couples to be opposites also in their sexual styles! Like it’s not enough for the partners to be opposite in everything else… As we know opposites attract and this is one of the reasons partners appear to be so different from each other… This is not a bad thing, there are actually a host of benefits in being so different (opposite) from our partner… Though this might make couples feel they are not compatible, compatibility has nothing to do with the things the partners like to do… Real comparability goes way beyond that. Having different interests and liking different things is just something to manage, and this includes different sexual styles…
Sexual styles influence the partners’ expectations about their sex life, are the drivers behind their sexuality, and are a part of the filter for their sexual experience.
When the partners don’t identify their sexual styles and don’t intentionally work with them, they find themselves in a misalignment and out of sync. This fuels what we already know areculprits to low intimacy… Leaving the partners further struggling for joint pleasure, connection, and love…
But as with everything relationship, this doesn’t have to break your relationship… There is a way to get on the same page and create a mutually satisfying and terrific sex life with your partner regardless of your differences, and other intimacy concerns…
In today’s podcast episode I’m excited to have a very informative and reassuring conversation with Deborah Fox, Sex Therapist, about how conditioning and other factors affect libido and desire, how partners are usually also opposite in sexuality styles and what to do about it, reasons for difficulties with female orgasms and male erectile dysfunction and how to address them, the truth about sexual satisfaction when couples have been together a long time and in older couples, and how to maintain a healthy sexual relationship to ensure a mutually satisfying sex life… This is an episode not to be missed!
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.
Some might believe they love unconditionally, because they believe that’s what’s expected and what’s appropriate in love… But upon further inspection it is obvious that their love is conditional… Is there a right way to love? Should we love unconditionally? Or should we, what some might consider, be smart about it and love conditionally?
In my book, love has nothing to do with conditions…
Now, this doesn’t mean we put up with abusive situations, or situations that don’t honor who we are, or that don’t support our purpose and our life Journey… This also doesn’t mean we are to be doormats and have no expectations in our relationship… All these things could be true, and we could still love the other…
So, when people believe love is conditional on certain things, that doesn’t really add up because we can obviously love no matter what, codependence and other dynamics and conditions aside…
But because we can love no matter what, it doesn’t mean we put up with a less than radiant and successful relationship… One that helps us become our best self… One that enriches us and makes our journey better…
~ We invest in cultivating our love, so it doesn’t get tied up with conditions and eroded by unmet expectations…
~ We invest in creating the best relationship to support and help expand our love…
This means we create the perfect space for our love. And this doesn’t mean a perfect relationship- there is no such thing. But it means a relationship in progress to its fullest potential…
Now this is journey worth investing in- playing in this realm and experiencing the rewards it yields is one of the best feelings… It’s so satisfying and fulfilling to take the interactions to the next level where both partners feel fully heard, understood, and accepted. Where they feel appreciated for who they are and what they contribute to the relationship and the other’s life. Where they feel deeply connected, and nourished and enlivened by their interactions.
Let’s commit to playing in the realm of having a relationship in progress to its fullest potential, where our love can thrive and shine…
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.
Sometimes we might wonder how much our partner actually loves us, and it at all… This is not an uncommon thought when we are having relationship issues, when we are fighting a lot, and even if we are just triggered… Our bond, our connection and our love is that vulnerable…
We have to remember that our partner and our relationship are happening in our head… As weird of a concept as that is, and as much as we can argue for the existence of them in our external world, our experience of them is still internal…
This is good news and a super empowering concept… This means that as soon as we choose to look at our partner and our relationship differently that we have a different partner and a different relationship! This is how we create new beginningsas well…
Isn’t this incredible? Let’s test it out…
~ Have some loving thoughts about your partner ~ Think about all the wonderful qualities about them ~ Notice what an amazing human they are ~ Recognize that they are also on a Journey ~ Realize that they are perfectly imperfect and a perfect match to you in your Journey…
Think some more along these lines.
Be grateful. Be joyful. Be so happy to have them in your life…
Notice how you now see your relationship and your partner in a better light…
I know that this is harder to do when we not getting along, when we are fighting or when we are struggling in our relationship, and specially when we are triggered even if everything is otherwise copacetic.
This reinforces the concept further of how susceptible we are to our feeble mind and the importance of not taking ourselves on a ride… Not taking ourselves too seriously. Not believing everything we think. Not getting sabotaged by our feelings, which flow from our thinking…
Our whole life is a construction! We are in charge of what we construct. Including the partner and relationship we have…
Realize this – if you have awesome thoughts, you have awesome feelings and therefore awesome actions, responses, and presence… This invites, seduces, induces your partner to reciprocate…
Yes, we can do all the nurturing, loving and romantical behaviors but we go much further when we do the internal loving first…
In today’s episode, I share how to recognize and address the culprits to low desire, transform your relationship dynamics that keep you stuck, and do all the tending and loving gestures to keep the love and the spark alive. It’s a must episode!
Want to create a stronger, deeper, more meaningful, and nourishing connection with your partner?
Check out our upcoming groundbreaking event for a Valentine’s Day Experience
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.
Much can be said with a four-letter word! Love… There is so much encompassed in that lovely word and concept… Love can be considered a noun, a verb, an adjective and even an adverb… There are many kinds of love depending on its context, and even within the same context… And, love is an emotion, a feeling, an experience, a decision, an action, and a state of Being… It is said God is Love… Any of these views or usage convey its Essence… There isn’t any other word or concept that is as coherent, complete, and Unifying…
Isn’t this such a gorgeous idea to contemplate and play with? Let me tell you, it’s just grand… I find it so fascinating, illuminating, and downright inspiring, nourishing and enlivening!
~ When we allow ourselves the opportunity to ponder the bigger questions in life ~ When we allow ourselves the luxury of exploring concepts that are esoteric in nature ~ When we allow ourselves the gift of other possible views and perspectives
… We allow and realize ourselves into a grander life experience…
For you see we tend to keep a very narrow, outdated, and limiting perspective and approach to how we understand life and go about creating the relationship and life we desire. We let our programming run the show…
This is why we have the painful, history/pattern-repeating, conflictual experience of the world and interactions with our partner…
But what if we were to open up to new possibilities, to a new reality… To the idea that Love is just magnificent and can be found literally everywhere…
The thing is that we love to argue for our limitations and our smallness, for the reality that we know through our senses which is completely subjective anyway depending on how we perceive and process information…
There is no one true reality as we think we know it… We can make a case for anything. We can connect whatever dots we want to make any case we want. We truly are the creators of our reality…
What if we were to let this sink in and chose to expand our perspectivefor the possibility of a more peaceful, harmonious, joyful, and loving experience? How would you go about expanding your perspective?
~ We’d let go of preconceived notions ~ We’d let go of stubbornness, judgement and control ~ We’d let go of righteousness ~ We’d let go of polarizing and binary thinking ~ We’d let go of exertion, separatism, divisiveness, manipulation, competition, assertion, exploitation, subjugation, domination and the like…
We have created toxic and destructive ways of living, but we don’t have to continue to subscribe, support and engage in these. We have a choice. One that we have to continue to make when we get seduced back into our old ways, when the programs demonstrate their hold on us…
We take notice, realign, and course correct as needed.
And, we’d do this over and over and over until we deprogrammed as much as possible… Until we are no longer showing up as a habit of our old limited/ing perception and programs… Until we realize our new reality… Until we see Love everywhere and feel the love all the time… Until we Become Love itself…
At the end of the day, this is as simple as making a decision, transcending our noisy mind, and connecting with our heart. And it can happen instantaneously… This is the Art of Loving…
Wishing you much love this Valentine’s Day and Always!
Want to create a stronger, deeper, more meaningful, and nourishing connection with your partner?
Check out our upcoming groundbreaking event for a Valentine’s Day Experience
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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