Valentine’s Day was just yesterday. It is a perfect time to check if we actually manage to communicate our expectations well in the couple. In the evening I saw a post of a girl on Facebook sharing in a female only group how upset she was that the guy she is dating did not give her anything for Valentine’s Day and ignored it completely. She in advance bought a gift for him, but did not have a chance to give it to him as they didn’t even appoint a date. The day after, today, I heard a different complaint – from a guy, sharing how annoyed he is with Valentine’s Day and that he hates the buzz about it while his couple expects him to get her a gift or show a romantic gesture for her. These are totally unrelated couples proving how many couples struggle with communication and managing expectations.
Many of us know from the book 5 languages of love, that there are 5 ways through which we feel ourselves loved. It is touch, services, time together, words and gifts. Often it is a couple of major languages – for example services and touch or time together and words etc. It can be any combination. The way how you show appreciation and love to your couple is a typically YOUR love language.
But what happens when two people in the couple have different love languages, what happens when they don’t match? Like for example for the couples described above the main love languages could be gifts for her and services for him. It means that she does not consider services as showing love, and he does not consider gifts as showing love. In this cases it is important to communicate to your partner in which way he/she can show to you that they appreciate you. You might consider to make a kind love request.
In the example above the girl could share in advance that this celebration is something very important to her and she will feel very loved if they would go out and make a gift exchange. Then the guy could share that this celebration gives him a lot of stress. They could continue to finding a middle ground what to do so that the date satisfies both of them. Perhaps get take away dinner and watch a romantic movie or giving each other some sort of details that feels meaningful (for example if her love language is gifts – he could give her flowers, and if his love language is services – she can make him a cake or something else that he appreciates) in stead of going out to a restaurant and exchanging expensive gifts.
And what are your experiences about expectations, Communication, and Valentine’s day?
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