The 5 Love Languages are Great, But...

What if understanding five simple love languages could revolutionize all your relationships—romantic and otherwise? Join me on this episode of "The Other Side of the Struggle" as we delve into the familiar yet ever-evolving concept of love languages—gifts, acts of service, words of affirmation, touch, and quality time. We'll explore how these love languages are not just for marriage but crucial for any relationship. But here's the twist: we'll also uncover five fundamental needs that every relationship relies on to truly thrive—feeling valued, seen, respected, cherished, and prioritized.

We'll unpack how these needs interplay and sometimes fluctuate, mirroring the dynamic nature of our connections. Are you feeling valued but not seen, or cherished but not prioritized? This episode will help you navigate these complexities. Plus, learn how self-respect underpins healthy relationships and get practical insights on overcoming self-rejection. Tune in to transform your approach to love and connection, ensuring you and your loved ones feel all the love you deserve.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 2:27

Hey, my loves, welcome back to another episode of the other side of the struggle. So this week we're talking about the five love languages. Now, this is something that is really important to consider because it's something that gets brought up with almost every single relationship Right, and they kind of have something to do with all of our relationships, even though I think they're kind of more focused in marriage because, you know, marriages need a lot of love to make them work. But you know, this is actually a concept I've been thinking about for a few days and I I was like really thinking about it and studying it and had some major epiphanies and I'm like, oh, I have to do a podcast on this. Like, my listeners are going to love this. But before I get started, remember again, I would love to boost my numbers a little bit more guys with my podcast and my followers on YouTube. So please go like, subscribe on the YouTube channel, go click the five star rating on the podcast so that way you know it boosts, it does boost this and also share with your friends, tell them about this podcast and about the youtube channel and have them go check it out, because I definitely want, you know, to help as many people as I can. So, if you're loving it, give me some love back.

Speaker 1: 4:02

And with that, let's go ahead and dive right in to the five love languages and let me tell you okay, this is crazy. I let me tell you a little bit about the love languages. Like, we've got, you know, gifts, we've got acts of service, we have words of affirmation, we have um oh touch and quality time. Right, we have five different love languages and you know, therapists, coaches, people are consistently talking about them and saying you know, like we need to learn how to speak each other's love languages. I'm not necessarily saying that that's not true, but the thing is is with love languages is they often change and evolve and develop and grow, while a person is changing, evolving, developing and growing too, and that's something we're going to consistently do throughout life, right? But in truth, I would say that relationships actually have five things that they need in order to thrive and survive, and our love languages actually point to each one of those five things, and those five things are value.

Speaker 1: 5:49

People want to be valued in the relationship. Thumbs up, guys, okay. People want to be valued in the relationship. They want to be seen, they want to be respected, they want to be cherished and they want to be prioritized. So there's five things that all relationships need. I'm going to go over them one more time. Okay, value there's being seen, being respected, being cherished and being prioritized. Being cherished and being prioritized Now there's going to be times in our relationships where, you know, we have all different types of levels.

Speaker 1: 6:40

Maybe sometimes we're feeling respected, but maybe not necessarily prioritized. Maybe we're feeling valued, but not necessarily seen right. Sometimes we're going to be feeling cherished, but not necessarily always prioritized or valued right. So I know you think you would think you'd feel all of them at the same time, but it's not necessarily the case. Sometimes we just need a little bit more cherishing, sometimes we need a little more prioritizing, sometimes we need a little more valued Right.

Speaker 1: 7:15

But then there's also other times when in your relationships, all five of them are low, and that's kind of when I come in to the picture is because, you know, people really do lack a lot of self-respect, and you can check out my last episode where I talked about like making mistakes. Right, we make mistakes and we feel like we can't forgive ourselves and that we shouldn't be valued, that we shouldn't be important, we shouldn't be prioritized, like all these different things, and so we tend to learn to reject love, and it's the way it shows up. That being said, but we also don't give ourselves the love, the respect, the seen-ness, the cherished-ness, prioritized-ness that we deserve. And sometimes we do, but the other person isn't giving those things to themselves, and so, you know, we're still feeling kind of low. There's lots of different ways relationships move and there's a lot of different interchanges in relationships, right, um?

Speaker 1: 8:42

But for example, let's let's go ahead and go with the example of, um, say, a husband and a wife where the husband has been looking at pornography and the wife, her love, her feelings of love, are very low, because she's feeling unseen, she's feeling disrespected, she's not feeling prioritized, she's not feeling cherished and she's definitely not feeling valued. Right, and her husband he's a good man, struggles a lot with things, but he doesn't want her to hurt. He's not sure how to drop the addiction, yet he wants to. He's just not sure how to, and he sees the hurt that he's put on his wife, so he wants to fix it for her, and the first thing he does is he goes out and buys her jewelry, or he goes out and buys her flowers, or he goes out and buys her all these lavish, wonderful gifts. But the problem is, is now she's feeling even more betrayed, like he can buy her love? That's a problem that I see a lot we're going into. Why in just a second? So he decides well, maybe I need to give her massages, or maybe I just need to hug her more, maybe I need to give her kisses. But she pulls away, she doesn't want to be touched by him, and so at this point he gives up and he says well, I just can't make her happy. She's never going to be happy, she's never going to be satisfied with me, never, never, never, never, never, right? So there's those things. Um, so there's those things, but what's the truth of the matter is is when those love languages are low, we really need instead to focus on the gateways to opening that relationship back back up and helping it flourish.

Speaker 1: 11:10

Okay, because the thing of the matter is is, people do want to be seen, they do like, they do want to be valued, they do want to be cherished. They do, they absolutely do. But it feels ingenuine when it's coming from someone who has been in a state of betrayal, when it's coming from someone who has been in a state of betrayal. But what is not ingenuine is actually telling someone why you love them. Those words of affirmation right, because they're being seen in those moments. They're also being seen when their pain is being recognized, their pain is being validated, their pain that maybe has been unconsciously and accidentally created by, you know, one or the other partner Isn't being dismissed. That's a word of affirmation, not just how wonderful and amazing someone is, but also I can understand why you'd feel that way. That's valid. You have every right to feel the way you do. I'd feel that way. That's a word of affirmation.

Speaker 1: 12:33

Another thing is acts of service Respecting somebody's time, respecting their talents, giving them the opportunity to rest. That is also something that is usually very genuine and that can come with words of affirmation and quality time. Making sure, like if the husband would actually make sure that he was planning dates, paying for the, making sure they were fun. Also making sure that if she needed to share how she was really feeling that she had a safe place in him. Those are all so incredibly important. And then he's able to bring in the gifts as well as the physical touch. And then all of a sudden, things shift and change and grow, because the truth of the matter is, when we are giving words of affirmations, we are seeing someone, truly seeing someone.

Speaker 1: 13:50

There's that one physical need or that one love language need. That need in that relationship is to be seen. When they're taking time, quality time, for that person, they're feeling prioritized. When they're serving, when they are giving those acts of service, they are respecting, they're respecting their time, they're respecting their energy, they're respecting who they are, because they know exactly how to get in and serve that person Right, who they are, because they know exactly how to get in and serve that person Right. And then we begin to feel and accept the value and the gifts and being cherished, that physical touch this is why the five love languages have worked so well is because they do nod to the five different things that every relationship needs Value, cherished, seen, prioritized and respected Right Now. There's one problem, though, with the five love languages it has been taught in such a way that you only need to focus on one.

Speaker 1: 15:19

The truth of the matter is, is relationships need all five of those love languages to thrive. We actually need to do all five of them, maybe one of them a little more than the others and a few of them a little less than the others. Take the situation with the husband and wife right, he needed to do more acts of service, words of affirmation and quality time more than what he did. The gifts and the touch, right. So it wasn't about just one thing. It wasn't about just elevating just one thing. It's about elevating the love by doing all five at some point. Okay.

Speaker 1: 16:17

And the thing is is, if you truly do love somebody, you naturally do all five of those Because you do want them to be seen, valued, cherished, respected and prioritized. What about, say, an entrepreneur and working with a client? Right? We definitely want to speak these love languages to them as well, because our clients especially for me, you know, as a coach and as an influencer, I want my clients and my followers to know that I see them, I hear them, I love and that's part of being seen, seen and heard. I love them, I respect them, I prioritize them, I uh, I cherish them, like all of the different things that happen when you know we're in relationships. I may do like a free masterclass right To serve my people. A gift I have freebies that I give away Right.

Speaker 1: 17:48

Touch, uh, touch. Now I can't just re like, physically reach out through the screen and like touch someone, right, but, uh, I do actually get get out and um meet with my clients and we I've gone to lunch many times with clients. I uh do nights of healings with some of my clients, right Like, so I'm actually getting out and touching them. But there's also other ways to touch. Have you ever heard of somebody say like I feel so touched when we deeply connect to someone and we deeply understand them and we write for them or we speak to them, give them hope, give them clarity and help them feel amazing, they're going to feel touched, right. And so there's more than one way we can touch someone and help them feel cherished. And then you have to forgive me, guys, I notes and I'm I'm looking at my notes, but, um, all right, let's see, we've talked about prioritized, seeing valued and then respected.

Speaker 1: 19:02

Like I said, these are all things that my clients also need to feel from me. So, um, we may, like I said, we might do like tours, we might give out freebies, we might uh connect in any single way we possibly can with you, just so that way you feel like you can have an amazing experience with us, because that is exactly what relationships are Having good experiences with other people. So, yeah, love languages are great. I have nothing at all against love languages, because it helps us to realize that what they are needing to feel from us specifically and the action that's associated with that feeling Right, because if somebody's wanting to feel prioritized, we know for a fact that we need to work on our quality time. If they're wanting to feel seen, then we need to work on our words of affirmation. If they are wanting to feel respected, we need to work on the service.

Speaker 1: 20:25

If they want to feel cherished, how can you touch them? How can they feel touched, feel cherished? How can you touch them? How can they feel touched and how? If they're wanting to feel valued, well, what gift can you give them? Okay, I hope this was helpful for you guys and again, don't forget to like and subscribe. Go give the um podcast a five-star review, the podcast a five-star review. If you're loving this content and if there's anything that you guys would love more from me, please don't hesitate to reach out Erin Anderson Betrayal Trauma Coaching on Facebook and let me know if you'd love me to talk about a podcast episode or if there's a podcast episode. You'd really love to see anything like that. Or if you would love to talk one-on-one with me, let's schedule that too. I am taking on clients right now and, um, just booking conversations to help people feel loved, seen and like they've got hope again. All right, my loves until next week. I'll see you on the other side. Bye.