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image depicting the various love languages

Modern Love Language: Updating Marriage Therapy Techniques for Today’s Couples

Love is a concept and word that we all use. When it comes to marriage, we make covenant commitments to wholeheartedly love one another through actions. We profess love, show it, feel it, and receive it—at least this shows there is hope.

So, love is not something we can check off the list; it’s simply a way of doing, living, and thinking. Through marriage counseling, you can learn how to use love to signify your lifelong devotion to your loved one.

Understanding Marriage Therapy Interventions

Marriage therapy is a powerful tool for strengthening relationships. It helps address specific issues and improves emotional bonding, communication, and conflict resolution.

For a licensed marriage and family therapist, it is not just a remedy for any relationships during a crisis. It is also one of the most proactive measures that helps many couples, regardless of their situation.

Taking part in therapy enables couples to gain insights into different dynamics and cultivate skills that can nurture lasting relationships. Through therapy, you can get an opportunity to attain those goals as a couple.

The key strength of therapy often lies in its capability to provide a more structured and safer environment for spouses to explore their marriage issues through a well-trained professional’s guidance. Therapy will help identify underlying issues, equip couples, and facilitate constructive conversations with practical and solid tools to:

  • Restore trust
  • Set boundaries
  • Address dysfunctional aspects of interaction
  • Effectively resolve conflicts
  • Explore relationship patterns
  • Communicate effectively

Love Languages in Today’s Marriages

Marriage relationships serve as pillars in life, offering companionship, support, and joy. But as we navigate different challenges of modern living, the quality of those marriages may sometimes flow and ebb, dictated by the distractions and pressures of today’s world. This is where love languages stand as a beacon of connection and understanding each other as a couple.

What Love Language Is

We all receive and express love differently, and those differences might be the main reason why good intentions and feelings sometimes get lost in translation.

Take this as an example—you spend days, weeks, or even months trying to get the most amazing gift for your partner, but they respond this way: “I would have appreciated it if you had done this and that.” It is not necessarily that you messed things up or that they are insensitive or ungrateful. They just have different love languages.

Knowing how you and your partner prefer to express and receive love can result in a healthier marriage relationship and more thoughtful connections.

Forms of Love Languages

According to marriage therapists, we have to learn how to speak our spouse’s love languages if we want them to understand us better. Here are some of the love language forms that marriage counselors have highlighted:

  • Act of Service

Partners desire to show affection and love when their significant others participate in tasks and are physically helpful. These responsibilities might include cleaning, picking them up from the airport, making dinner, doing dishes, or doing laundry.

It might also be small things, like filling up a water bottle for them, putting toothpaste on your partner’s toothbrush early in the morning, or starting a warm shower for them.

  • Physical Touch

Partners with physical touch as one of their key love languages often feel love through affection. For instance, in addition to sex, they feel more loved when their significant other gives them a nice massage, holds their hands, or touches their arms after a hectic day.

These partners’ idea of a date night may include cuddling on a couch as they watch a romantic move, walking together when holding hands, or slow dancing with physical contact. Doing this to your partner will make them feel loved, especially when interacting with you.

  • Marriage Check-in or Honesty Hour

Marriage check-in is more than just a love language; it is also a couple’s therapy exercise that helps improve communication. Ideally, it should be weekly and must be face-to-face.

During this moment, discuss the improvement you want in your marriage and the things that bother you as a couple. This exercise will allow you to listen and be heard, eventually building good communication skills.

  • Words of Affirmation

Is this one of your love languages? If yes, you truly value hearing your significant other express their love for you. This includes more digital communication, encouragement, compliments, and “I love you.”

Listening to your significant other express their love and gratitude won’t just make you feel understood. It will also make you feel appreciated. Remember to be careful of how you speak and show your love. If that is your spouse’s love language, they will feel appreciated for receiving unprovoked compliments.

  • Quality Time

These days, undivided attention is becoming one of the rarest commodities. For people whose love language is getting quality time, this means always being with your significant other in the same space with an intentional and focused presence.

If this is your love language or your partner’s, ensure you set aside enough time for shared activities, being together without distractions, or meaningful conversations. In addition, actively engage, listen, and nurture your connection through experiences you’ve shared as a couple.

  • Showing Appreciation

A marriage relationship is a ‘two-way street.’ So, it can help to always appreciate what your significant other does for you, and the same is true for your partner.

As a married couple, you can easily take one another for granted. To avoid this, let your significant other know you appreciate what they do. You can write down a note or card or give them something encouraging and sweet to read.

 

The bottom line is that we all have one or several love languages that we prefer, which are usually different from our partners. So, if you show affection and love through those love languages, your partner may not notice them, and vice versa. This is why it is important to always seek marriage therapy if you feel things are going haywire in your relationship. Through therapy, you can learn more love languages that you can express, spicing up your marriage even more.