February - Love Language
”Make dedicated, non-negotiable time for each other a priority, and never stop being curious about your partner. Don't assume you know who they are today, just because you went to bed with them the night before. In short, never stop asking questions.”
- John Gottman
One of the people I follow and talked about his work in the article posted here is John Gottman. He and his team have one of the most beautiful newsletters dedicated to relationships. It is a great read and it is a great joy when something new shows up like a tool or some actions that I can share with my coaching clients that have better relationships as their main goal or for our work or to use them to improve the relationship with the special man in my life or with my closest friends.
One of these newsletters inspired this article since in February there is Valentine’s Day and we celebrate Dragobetele, a Romanian old tradition dedicated to love - here is an invitation to create a February filled with acts of love.
To have a great relationship (and this is not only about a loved one) means to pay attention and notice your partner trying to connect with you at any level. Being mindful of these bids of connection and responding to them are two ways to create a successful bond. John Gottman together with Dr James Murray researched the connections, and created ”love equations”. Each level of the theory is built like an advice and represented like a layer of a house. With 7 levels, the model is called ”The Sound Relationship House Theory” and you can read more about it here. For short - after years of study, Gottman and Murray published findings of the natural principles of love in 2002 in a book titled ”The Mathematics of Marriage”, and they also published for therapists in John’s 2015 book Principia Amoris: The New Science of Love. Math and therapy do go together according to the two researchers.
What they learned from their research data is that there are three principal parts of a friendship. First one is building love maps - this a road map of your partner’s inner world - emotions of interest, feeling that you want to continue to know the other one. You create this map by asking open-ended questions and remembering the answers. The second layer is sharing the fondness and admiration system - communicate your affection and respect. Try to develop a habit of scanning around you for things that your partner is doing right and comment on those.
The third part is turning towards connection in a mindful way - it can be bits so you can have a Kaizen approach on this - as long as you listen to your partner’s needs and keep turning towards positive feedback. This is where my article comes in handy - the list below will create small acts of connection with your partner in February.
Positive perspective and managing conflicts in a constructive way is about how we perceive and choose to see our partner, while we start repairing things early and in an effective way, and not waiting until you are in a negative perspective with your partner where you might become hypervigilant for put-downs, tending to disregard the positive events.
Layer six is about making life dreams come true. Creating a space that encourages the partners to talk honestly about their values, beliefs, dreams, convictions, and aspirations is one of the most important parts of any relationships. And creating this atmosphere will make you feel that the relationship supports your life dreams.
Victor Frankl wrote that the pursuit of happiness is empty, but we find happiness along the way as we search for a deeper meaning in life and fill the ”existential vacuum”. When it comes to relationships - a life together should share a sense of purpose and meaning, not just pursuing happiness meaning that we create a shared meaning while we search for our happiness together.
The two pillars of support for this house are trust and commitments. Always answering with ”yes” when you ask the question ”Will my partner be there for me when I need them?” is a good way to assess trust in a relationship because this establishes the second phase of love - where your relationship becomes a fertile ground or a safe haven. Creating emotional connection where you can discuss your emotions with calm, touching base on every day with listening and being mindful of one another are just some of the habits or actions that you can take to build on trust in your relationship.
Making negative comparisons between one’s partner with alternative relationships is a variable of commitment. In order to build and keep strong the pillar of commitment in your house, you need to nurture pro-relationship thoughts, put boundaries with others who might interfere with your relationship and speak highly about your partnership.
If you have read so far perhaps you wonder what this has to do with February? Each habit we bring into any relationship can make it strong or weak, as you’ve read above. So creating a habit of doing small acts of love for your partner builds the pillars of your house stronger. If what was mentioned above might show up as difficult, the list above is a simplistic way of investing in your relationship.
Here are some ideas of what you can do with your partner in February to give a mighty energy boost to your love:
Give your partner a genuine compliment
Spend a tech free evening with your partner
Do one of their regular chores for them
Take your partner to try a new restaurant
Buy them coffee or a treat on your way home
Fill up their gas tank
Do something with your partner that they enjoy
Make space and time to give your partner alone time when they need it
Celebrate small victories together
Surprise them with small gifts
Send them small love declaration SMSes
Slip a cute written note in their bag or wallet to show you are thinking of them
Give your partner a hug or a kiss just because
Reserve 10 minutes every evening to speak about your partner’s day
Take a few minutes to just hold each other and breathe (the embrace is an aware way of connecting with your partner)
Express gratitude and thank your partner for all that they do
Surprise them with a date night or a mini adventure in the city (might be an exhibition, a theme park or a cultural event)
Cook your partner’s favorite dish just because
Give them reasons why you love them (it can be a voice message that they can listen whenever they want or write on paper so they can have them with them all the time)
Buy something that you know they want but will never buy because there is no space in the family budget for it.
You have 20 ideas - come up with 9 of your own and you will have a February filled with small acts of love :)
You can even share the strategy with your partner - write all the ideas you have together with him/her on small post-its and put them in a jar, one idea - one post-it. Each day (one day you, the next day your partner) extract a post it and do the activity on it. Being mindful of your partner’s needs is a great way of knowing yourself better in a ludic way that builds your love language.
Photo credit @michaelrfenton
