It has been established that what it takes for each person to feel loved looks different. As suggested by relationship therapist Gary Chapman, five love languages categorise the ways people understand and receive love. This is reflected in how people deal with situations of conflict and is particularly useful for, but not limited to romantic relationships. Understanding our own and a partner’s love language can be useful in avoiding and resolving conflict.
In the Words of Affirmation love language, people feel most loved when love is expressed through an explicit form of communication like in verbal conversations, text messages, or handwritten notes. Because of sensitivity to language, someone with this love language feels terrible in a fight. Polite, clear communication can help resolve the situation. It could take time for them to find words reassuring again but genuine and appropriately frequent reassurances would be useful.
Next, let’s look at the love language of Receiving Gifts in which gifts are seen as a symbol of love. Love is most felt through the effort and thought gone into it. Because thought and effort are what stand out to them, in a fight they see the other person’s thoughts to be working against them and their efforts being channeled towards opposing them. This makes them feel threatened and gives them a tendency to shut down or withdraw from the situation. What they need to feel better is reassurance and the most effective way this can be expressed to them is by doing something thoughtful and effortful for them- a gift or small token perhaps.
Moving onto the love language of Physical Touch, this involves any kind of loving physical touch for one to feel affection. It could be a simple pat on the back, having a hand-held, or a hug. Someone with this love language is likely to be a straightforward and expressive person. In a fight, it helps for them to be able to express themselves, take responsibility for their own feelings, and keep away from excessive blaming as they could tend to blame the other person more than what their mistakes account for. They could always be comforted through a physical form of affection.
The next love language where attention translates to the feeling of love is Quality Time. What is most important to someone with this love language is time and attention and so, they must not be walked out on or ignored in any way during a fight. If they don’t see their side of the argument being paid attention to, they feel attacked and see the relationship as being under threat. This could lead to them holding onto their side of the argument more strongly and without caring to consider another point of view, making it harder to resolve the conflict.
Coming onto the last of the love languages, Acts of Service– here, there is a focus on practicality and productivity, where helping translates to love. Conflict with such a person can often be avoided by keeping up doing things that have been promised to be done and not promising to do more than can be done. In a fight, they are likely to distance themselves and delegate tasks. What needs to be done to resolve conflict is to help them with something by lifting some burden off their shoulders. This becomes more effective if they have not asked for the help.
We can see how different people react and cope with a fight differently based on their love language. In an ideal world, it would be easy to resolve any conflict using this theory but in reality, when two people are reacting and coping with a fight at the same time, things become a lot trickier. Having the same love language as your partner usually makes things easier but the chances of that are low. Some pairs of love languages (words of affirmation and quality time, acts of service and receiving gifts, physical touch and quality time) work better together than others.
There are several other factors such as self-awareness, emotion regulation, empathy, and communication effectiveness among other elements of emotional intelligence involved in conflict resolution. Understanding love languages and its implication in situations of conflict is just one way to help make it easier.
By Niti Hinduja