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.
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.
Aside from financial strain, many couples start considering divorce when find themselves frequently in conflict or no longer feeling the relationship…
At its core, these issues often stem from undermining relationship patterns or a lack of connection… And can easily be addressed by enriching the relationship and deepening the connection between the partners…
Being intentional about our relationship is a proven way to safeguard it against cheating and divorce.
That said, I understand how the idea of investing in the relationship and deepening connection might want to make you throw up in your mouth if you are currently at odds or feeling completely estranged. I get it, especially if:
~ Conversations derail no matter how hard you try to get on the same page
~ You feel you are the one doing all the work- apologizing, planning, and trying to make things better
~ The idea of being available, open, or vulnerable feels overwhelming or even terrifying
~ Making the first move toward connection or intimacy feels awkward and unnatural
~ You worry that your partner might not understand or appreciate your efforts, or worse- might reject them outright
~ The things you’ve tried so far haven’t gained any traction or given the results you hoped for
~ Even if there is improvement, it often feels short-lived with the relationship slipping back into old patterns
These feelings are valid, and they are part of the challenge.
The truth is, if there is little effort to mindfully addressing issues, vulnerably sharing needs and preferences, and proactively investing in nurturing our relationship giving love and caring, the relationship has very little chance of surviving, never mind thriving…
These are antidotes to frequent conflicts and estrangement in our relationship… When we feel connected, we can have more understanding, give grace more readily, and find it easier to align, problem-solve, collaborate, and play together…
WHEN FREQUENT CONFLICTS IS THE CULPRIT
It is certainly not easy to be in a relationship that is riddled with tension and conflict. When conversations feel flat, superficial, or forced and the slightest truth can turn into a disagreement. When any behavior, decision, or comment has the potential to trigger a and argument that quickly escalate into a full-blown fight. When concerns or dislikes are left unspoken simply to avoid another argument.
This dynamic arises from the partners’ limiting belief systems, relationship mindset, communication styles, and defensive patterns. Creating habits and patterns that hinder the ability to show up compassionately, vulnerably, and authentically for one another.
~ Being Fully Committed – Closing any gaps or leaks and being intentionally building a successful relationship with a shared vision for a life together.
~ Taking Full Accountability – Owning your role in the current dynamic and making the necessary changes to foster different, more positive outcomes.
~ Proactively Addressing Challenges – Tackling what’s not working with compassion, kindness, and patience, while investing in nurturing and strengthening the relationship.
Making a commitment to making the relationship work, is in itself a powerful step toward making the relationship work…
WHEN ESTRANGEMENT IS THE CULPRIT
And it’s certainly not easy to be in a relationship that feels cold, distant, and transactional… Where the partners function more like roommates, prioritize their children over the relationship, or simply lead parallel lives. Where they might have challenges finding things in common or having fun together. Where they have let their physical intimacy fall by the wayside…
It is actually painful to live in a barren household or have a distant relationship. As humans, we have an innate need for connection, it’s hardwired into us as a fundamental part of our being. When we don’t meet this need, and especially if we have abandonment wounds, the pain can be excruciating. This pain invites our ugliest defense mechanisms as we try to cope with the distress…
Unfortunately, these defense mechanisms perpetuate the destructive power struggle cycle, the dissatisfying patterns, that couples experience when they haven’t invested in personal development and relationship enrichment.
The solution lies in creating, maintaining, and deepening their connection to create emotional safety that allows them to take the relationship and their intimacy to the next level:
~ Creating Connection – Gently reaching out for interest in connecting and nurturing the relationship. Showing interest in our partner with curiosity about their thoughts, feelings, experiences and desires.
~ Maintaining Connection – Implementing Connection Habits™ to protect the bond, cultivate a sense of closeness, and easily re-engage and reconnect even during challenging times.
~ Deepening Connection – Elevating interactions by engaging in more intimate, vulnerable, and authentic conversations that explore values, personal truths, emotions, and even existential topics for a richer and more profound connection.
Showing genuine interest in our partner can make a world of difference. When they feel truly valued, appreciated, understood, and desired the foundation of the relationship strengthens and the relationship starts to flourish.
Being intentional about our relationship is a proven way to safeguard it against cheating and divorce. By addressing and transforming defense mechanisms, programs, and patterns that drive our interactions, and by actively investing in connecting with our partner, we pave the way the way for creating the relationship we desire.
It is up to us to prevent the demise of our relationship by showing up with the best of intentions and with our Best Self. Only then can our relationship become the relationship we both love.
Happy showing up…
With Much Love & Light!
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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.
Continuing with the reparenting and reprogramming theme for personal development and relationship enrichment… In May we focus on Mothering, nurturing, caring, meeting needs and emotional reprogramming. In June we focus on Fathering, structuring, stabilizing, shifting mindsets and mental reprogramming.
We do this for our own healing and growth, and to enrich and enhance our relationship. We do our side of the work utilizing our relationship as a playground. And as we go we have the added benefit of creating our strong, radiant and successful relationship… Not too shabby.
But all this can sound too serious and difficult if we let it. We do not need to “work” at these things. We just need to invest our focus and be intentional about Becoming our Best Self, who we really are anyway at the end of the day… And, about nurturing and enriching our relationship… We make this super easy with our online couple therapy.
Reprogramming for Dummies
You don’t necessarily need to do this with a couple therapist or relationship coach. This is highly recommended if you are struggling though. But know that you can effortlessly invest in your relationship by:
~ being intentional
~ taking the high road
~ bringing gratitude, compassion, and grace to your interactions
Integrating targeted tactics, habits, and behaviors into your interactions with your partner, your daily routine (ideal day), and your lifestyle is a way to automate consistently investing in your relationship.
We want to make upgrading ourselves and our relationship as easily and effortlessly as possible. Life is complicated enough without us adding more complexity into the mix.
Embrace Love Practices
To kick off this month, let’s focus on implementing or expanding our Self-Love Practice and our Partner-Love Practice. Let’s continue our emotional reprogramming by nurturing ourselves, our partner and our relationship… This soothing and self- and co-regulation will support the mental reprogramming we’ll be embracing in the coming weeks.
Most importantly, we are learning how to give and receive love… Believe or not this is actually challenging for partners… Because of our upbringing and our wounding, we have developed a myriad of ways of protecting ourselves from our pain and from further pain. Our defense mechanisms shut in our vulnerability, unique brilliance, wholeness, and radiance… We move about as a conglomerate of protective layers…
In our meeting our needs and stretching to meet our partner’s needs, with our Self-Love and Partner-Love Practices, we start shedding these layers and accessing other parts of ourselves. We start becoming more who we really are by allowing our internal radiant Essence to shine through.
The practices help us cultivate giving and receiving love, become more loving, strengthen our connection in love, Be our loving selves- expand our Love Consciousness… Also known as Unity Consciousness, Oneness, and the like. Which is really what we are aspiring for at the end of the day…
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) 2023 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.
Upgrading our programs and reprogramming ourselves has been all the rage… And it makes sense as we are waking up to the fact that we create our own reality… We want to create what we want after all, not something driven by our outdated and misguided programming…
Our programming constitutes of emotional and mental defenses meant to protect us. The problem is that they end up sabotaging our attempts at creating the relationship and life we desire… There are simple ways to change your programming…
Our programming simply developed as we grew up through interactions with our caregivers and the world. We learned what’s acceptable, how to be, how to think, how to look at the world, how to experience love, how to deal with disappointment and so much more through these interactions with our loved ones and by adapting to social norms…
These created patterns in our way of being and how we do our life… They inform everything about us. What we make of our ethnicity, our religion, our gender, and the like including our beliefs, our habits, and all the rest of it. But these are all constructions, We are a construction… This is not who we are…
All the patterns and habits that make up who we are as we usually know ourselves, are all but layers of muck covering the true Essence of who we are. Covering our innocence, our radiance, our joy… This is our true self, our authentic self.
Everything else can be deconstructed and reconstructed… We can reprogram everything…
What to Reprogram
And this is the good news! Because if we feel stuck, if we can’t make the changes we want, if we keep having the same old issues, if we can’t get to the next level and so on, it’s because we have a program that is keeping things just as they are presumably for our own safety…
This means that we can get unstuck and create what we desire by changing our programming…
When it comes to our relationship, we might have all kinds of programs going on about love, affection, intimacy, trust, support, worthiness, and so on… We have belief systems and expectations about these that are deeply ingrained.
There are also programs around who we believe we are, who others are, who our partner is, why we are together, how we should be in relationship, and so on…
And all this impacts how we look at ourselves, at our partner and our interactions- what kind of relationship, and life, we are able to create at the end of the day.
There are a multitude of ways in which we can reprogram ourselves, but I’d like to focus here on one that utilizes our relationship and that helps the relationship in turn. This has to do with Stretching…
We Stretch the spectrum of our characteristics, abilities, strengths, and such to be more inclusive and exhaustive… In other words, we reprogram ourselves for Becoming more whole…
How to Reprogram
We all know that opposites attract. That’s why partners always seem so opposite… One is neat, the other is messy. One likes to save, the other likes to spend. One is outgoing, the other is shy. And so on…
The oppositeness in couples doesn’t just stop at personal characteristics. It also impacts needs and coping and defense mechanisms…
Which in the surface might seem like a formula for disaster, and it can be- ask the many couples that didn’t create their successful relationship. But this is also a blessing, a way for partners to support each other’s evolution…
When partner’s get stuck in their power struggle trying to get their own needs met, and having a challenge also meeting their partner’s seemingly opposing needs, they have to stretch to get there…
It is in that stretching that we have to own other characteristics and strengths, that we might not have known we had, or that we have to develop. It is in that stretching that that we draw from our internal resources. It is in that stretching that we transcend the having to be right for being more compassionate, the micro for the macro, the minutiae for the connection, and such.
When we Stretch in our relationship to meet our partner’s needs, we are actually also growing and evolving ourselves… It’s a Win-Win.
This is the beauty of being in relationship. Our partner is our Life Partner, our Journey Partner. Them and the relationship are a Gift…
Hanging on to how this makes our relationship beautiful as part of our relationship mindset makes all the trials and tribulations actually exciting. Anytime you hit a bump it’s an opportunity for further growth. It’s an opportunity for evolving and becoming more our true Essence… And isn’t this what life is all about? If that’s not a Blessing, I don’t know what is.
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) 2023 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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