Love Life with Matthew Hussey - (Rewind) "What if we have different love languages?"

Episode Date: September 8, 2023

Many of us have a preferred way that we tend to feel loved in a relationship. These are known as "love languages": physical touch, words of affirmation, quality time, gifts, and acts of service. In this episode, Matt and Stephen talk about whether it matters if you and your partner have different love languages and how you can navigate these differences in a relationship. --- Follow Matt @thematthewhussey Follow Stephen @stephenhhussey ---   ►► Stop Waiting and Start Creating the Happiness You Deserve NOW - Claim your spot on my Virtual Retreat, June 2 - 4, 2023 → MHVirtualRetreat.com

If you're with someone who truly is so divorced from your love languages that they would have to change by 80% for you to feel loved, that's Matthew Hussey with the Love Life Podcast. I am excited to share this clip with you today. Let's get into it. What if someone doesn't meet your needs naturally in their behavior? I think that relationships are about compromise. And I think that sometimes we can, a little bit of an adjustment to the middle can go a long way in a relationship. I don't think if you're with someone who truly is so divorced from your love languages that they would have to change by 80% for you to feel loved. That's a problem. You're going to constantly run into issues and any effort they make is probably not going to

feel enough. And they're also going to feel hopeless because they can't get close to where you want them to be. So I do think to some extent, we have to find people that our love language is an alien to them, but it may be that we could use 10% more of them, you know, acting on that love language. And when that happens, it can make a big 10% shift can make a big difference in a relationship communicating. I really love when you do this is it, it makes me feel loved or it turns me on, or it's exciting to me when you do this, or even just having a reaction when someone does something, you know, like giving them a real reaction, something that, that starts, they start to associate with a sense of fun for them or a

sense of excitement for them. Cause they go, when I do this, I really love, I may not love doing it. I may not understand as much. I may not understand why they love it so much because I don't need this, but I love the reaction and I love how it makes them feel. But to do that, you do have to communicate how something makes you feel. You do have to communicate that it's a lovely thing when they do it. Yeah. Positive reinforcement is like psychology 101, but it's unbelievably powerful and important and underused. People just go, oh, they did what I wanted or they did what I expected. Good. You know, that's what I need. But you have to show love in the moments when you're feeling love. And also pay attention to what love language could you be nourishing for them that they might want more of. I think that's important too, is understanding.

I mean, we should mention what the love languages are. I forget them sometimes. There's acts of service. There's quality time. There's touch, words of affirmation, gifts. So, you know, if you understand what your partners are or what your partner really appreciates, then you can start to find out how you can do more of that. And then they recognize that this isn't a one-way street where you're just asking for something. You're also trying to give them what they need. And I've said it before, it's very easy. The easiest thing in the world is

to give somebody what you want. There's two things that are really easy. Give someone what you want and because you want it, you're probably used to it and well-versed in that language. So you know how to give it or giving them what is easy for you to give them. So, you know, some of us, it's really easy to give affection because we're affectionate, but we're not. So, you know, our words don't come so freely or quality time doesn't come so easily. And it's easy to keep giving the thing that's easy for us to give. And the cliche would be like, you know, someone who's got a lot of money can spend money on people and that's how they give. And because it's easy for them to do that, it's, that doesn't mean it's what they need. It just means what is easy for you to give.

So we have to look at not just giving what we want to give, or sorry, not just giving what we would want given to us, because that's just projecting and not just giving what's comfortable for us to give, but giving what we may not even want, but we know they need and giving them what they're actually calling for instead of what's easy for us to give them. And I say that because it's got to be a two-way street. We've got to be at the same time as communicating better about what we need from somebody else, listening better to what they need from us. Yeah. Yeah. And I think to go to one of her questions, can you change the love language of your partner? I think that's asking too much, right? I don't think you can change what someone loves. I think it's not that someone always loves like one or two

things, right? There's people who like, I like affection and words of affirmation, but a surprise is wonderful or a lovely, thoughtful thing. So there's other things people can appreciate, but I don't think you can... If you have a preferred way to receive love, it's not like that's going to suddenly disappear, I don't think. No. I mean, look, sometimes there are love languages that have been dormant in us for a while. It's not that we don't care about them. It's just that we haven't had them in a long time or in some cases ever. So someone who hasn't had a lot of affection in their lives doesn't necessarily mean that it's not one of their love languages, but they may not be used to it.

There'll be people who would show up at the beginning of the retreat and they weren't huggers. And then by the end of it, they're hugging everybody. And they're like, I wasn't a hugger. And now I can't get enough. I've seen that dozens of times, dozens of times. So that's someone who had lost connection with a certain love language, not because it's not who they are, but because they were undernourished in that area or hadn't practiced it. So I do think that you can tease out people's, you know, love for a love language. If you start to show them the positive side of it again. And one last thing on this, There are some people who stay in relationships for a long time, always wishing that their partner were essentially someone else in the way that they behaved.

And sometimes the answer is to bring them a little closer to the middle through the way that you educate them about your needs and you teach them how to love through the way that you educate them about your needs and you teach them how to love through the way that you love them. Sometimes it's saying my partner may never be this, but I'm not going to rely only on my partner for this. My needs are going to be met by a tribe, not by one person acting as a tribe. And that there's words of affirmation I can get from, from friends or from people around me, mentors, you know, whatever it may be. There's, there's things we get from a tribe that sometimes we place an over-reliance on one person to meet all of our needs. And lastly,

if you truly don't think someone is up to meeting your needs and the part of the tribe that they represent is not delivering for you in the way that you would like, then there's always the possibility that this isn't the right person. That's it for today, everyone. Before you go, big news. I have a date for our live retreat in Florida this October. It is going to be from the 9th to the 15th of that month. We're going to be spending six days together working on your biggest challenges in life. Whatever you feel is holding you back, or maybe you don't even know,

but we are going to work on it together with me and my team as your coaches i can't wait to see you there go to mhretreat.com to apply now Bye.