Depending on where you were born and who your parents are, you grew up learning a very specific language: Spanish, English, Japanese, etc. This language, also known as your primary language, is the language you feel the most comfortable speaking and understanding.
If you eventually decide to ever learn another language, that language will become known as your secondary language.
If, however, you only speak your primary language and you encounter someone who speaks a different language than yours, your communication with that person will be limited.
If you wish to communicate with that person, then you must learn to speak that person's primary language.
Love has a similar dynamic.
The 5 love languages that people speak are acts of service, quality time, physical touch, receiving gifts, and words of affirmation.
This means that how you communicate love to someone may be different than how someone receives it.
For example, there are a lot of people who tend to think that the way you express love in a romantic relationship is by spending quality time with your partner. This can include going on a date or having a purposeful conversation with your partner.
But your partner’s love language might not be quality time. Instead, it might be words of affirmation.
So, it doesn’t matter how much time you spend together, if you’re not affirming your partner in the right way, you can be spending all day and all night together and your partner may still not feel loved.
Some people’s love language may be gifts, which means that these people feel loved when they get a gift. And it’s not because they’re materialistic, but because they appreciate the thought behind it.
For other people, when they receive a gift, they don’t think much of it. They’ll just think, “Alright, that’s cool.” But some people need that in order to feel loved in a relationship.
So, the question you should be asking yourself is, what’s your partner's love language?
This is important to know because once you know what your partner’s love language is, you then know specifically what you can do to make your partner feel loved.
This will also help you understand your partner better and will help save you a lot of confusion and frustration in the long run.