Wrapping up the month of March, here’s a quick screenshot review of the month’s news. Let me know which ones you like the most. Thanks for your input, -David M Masters
Month: March 2018
Love and the Past
We are all haunted by the demons which haunt us from our past. As much as we try to do our best to move forward to enjoy the best things in life, without victory over the past, the issues which we hold close to our hearts, those things which we have loved, lost, and hurt our feelings continue to haunt us.
Being a victim of the past disempowers us and gives the power we could potentially wield to those people, situations, and circumstances which overtake our attention, preventing us from enjoying to the fullest the best things this life has to offer. Left to themselves, this unresolved trauma can overtake you and ruin any possibility of having any hope of experiencing prolonged joy.
Relationships trigger these memories and the emotions connected to them, bringing them to the surface, even if we’re unaware of what’s happening. Unless you know this is what’s happening, it could have a negative impact on the relationship.
If you can look at this as a gift from God, as a way to bring our hidden emotional demons to the surface so we can deal with and exorcise them, then it will not seem so much like a curse or irrational pain on the loose.
Left unresolved, issues from your past will continue to appear affecting the lens through which you see life and all relationships. Therefore, if you have unresolved issues with a parent (could be anyone or any experience from your past) which you’ve pushed down way inside and may not even be conscious of, this will color intimate relationships as you are given the opportunity to deal with those issues which do not serve you.
Ignored opportunities will look as though you are overreacting to something that would otherwise be perceived as a minimal challenge, insignificant, or benign. Yet, here you are, all emotionally charged up, being ruled by the very thing which needs to be brought up and cleared.
We are all triggered and react in different ways when this opportunity presents itself.
This is God’s invitation for you to deal with and heal hidden or ignored trauma from the past. Without this natural mechanism of using relationships to allow unresolved issues from the past to appear, you would forever be a victim of the past.
God wants you to be free, to enjoy life, and have victory over the past.
To have victory over the past you must be brave and courageous to face the virtual demons of the past that haunt you.
It’s not enough to ignore the past and pretend that it just didn’t happen. This will only allow those issues to slowly eat away at you, robbing you of joy, promoting the deterioration of your immune system leading to disease and advanced aging, even premature mortality.
Some of the trauma from the past will have you seeing yourself vulnerable and a potential victim of abuse from those who are closest to you when no threat is actually present.
You may also have feelings of fear, unworthiness, feeling as though you cannot be truly understood, disrespected, feeling as though you are being unjustly criticized, and the inability to trust other people. You are easily offended and are poised to defend yourself, always on the alert for some potential threat.
These are just a few of the signs that may be calling you to look within, especially if it appears to be a reaction which might be considered excessive based on the facts when viewed objectively.
When they appear, have the courage to look inside. The feelings you are experiencing may not have anything to do with your partner (though admittedly, it may feel like it at the time), it may be an unresolved issue from your past begging to be unearthed and set free.
Love brings these things to the surface, and love is the key that unlocks the trunk where all the things holding you back are contained within.
If you do not take the opportunity to deal with these issues, you are likely to project them on your partner and your potential for true love may not be recognized or available to you.
The good news is that love is never failing, and you will be presented with another opportunity to deal with these issues when the next opportunity for love arises.
See you at the Soulmate Wizardry event.
Keeping Secrets
Unless you’re a sociopath, psychopath, or pathological liar, keeping secrets will have a negative impact on your holistic systems. Keeping secrets causes the decline of your autoimmune system and leads to a decline of quality in your mind, body, and soul. This act of withholding powerful information, which you would be better served by releasing, leaves you keeping secrets and promotes deterioration of health, the onset of disease(s), premature aging and death.
Those who are keeping secrets are more likely to withdraw from social interaction, have fewer friends, and are prone to paranoia, feeling as though potential interaction with others will put them at risk.
Keeping secrets in a romantic relationship causes separation and prevents a relationship from progressing or deepening.
Secret keepers are highly proficient at projecting their issues onto the people they encounter.
If you hide unexpressed anger regarding people from your past which might include parental angst, keeping these feelings deeply held within will likely cause you to see these attributes applied to the people (or person) closest to you.
Children who suffered abuse and keep these details highly regarded secrets as adults will suspect any prospective partner as potentially abusive, even when no real potential for abuse exists.
For those who actively push down their past of having been abandoned in their early years, they are likely to be clingier in relationships and fear being abandoned by their partner.
These emotionally charged memories and thoughts, even if they are deeply hidden, possibly even from the cognoscente mind of the secret keeper, will become the filter through which the keeper of secrets views life.
The keeper of secrets is likely to hide many secrets which is likely to include their own feelings. In relationships, one partner might sense emotional disconnect or psychological distraction, and query, “What’s wrong?” To which the secret keeper will respond, “Oh, nothing.”
The solution to this self-destructive withholding is to find ways to find ways to express yourself, starting with surface issues, then digging deeper as you become more adept at sharing your feelings.
If you’re in the habit of keeping secrets, you’re likely to do it all the time, not speaking up when you are disappointed, disillusioned, or feel as though your feelings have been disrespected or hurt.
Start speaking up for yourself. The next time you go out to eat, and your food arrives in a way you did not expect, do not push down your feelings and force yourself to silently eat your dish silently vowing not to come back to this establishment. Instead, note your concerns to the server, offering the dish to the wait staff who can take it back to the kitchen and make it right.
Start speaking up and asserting your concerns, while allowing others to make accommodations which would be more pleasing to you.
Nest time someone asks, “What’s wrong?” Don’t hide your feelings. Tell them what’s wrong but temper your expression with respectful compassion. Your tendency might be to start your expressing yourself with the object of what’s bothering you, which places blame and puts the recipient on the defensive.
I Feel Like
If you want whoever it is to hear how you feel, then start with, “I feel like…”
No one can deny how you feel. How you feel is how you feel. Even though you may be expressing your disapproval of something that is based on someone else’s actions, no one can deny that whatever is the object of what has made you feel bad, it’s not disrespectful to the cause.
This is a safe way to express yourself, while taking full responsibility for your own feelings.
Once you get used to the idea of being more open and honest in this way, you can consider talking about things that you have encountered in your past which you have kept secret.
Whatever has happened to you in your past is not good or bad, it just happened. It was a part of your past. You are an amazing person today, and had you not gone through all those experiences, you would not have become the person you are today.
And it is highly likely that once you get to a level about peace about your past, you can help others who share similar tendencies to keep secrets, once you realize the benefits of not keeping secrets.
Statistics Do Not Apply to Individuals
For those of us in service to others, statistics help us to serve a greater number of people in less time do to our understanding of statistics which represent generalities, symptoms, tendencies, and popular beliefs or opinions regarding just about anything but statistics do not apply to individuals.
Far be it from me, or anyone in service to assume that people would study up on the published reports to assure their symptoms or problems would be in accord with the statistical data. People are not robots or numbers because they are individuals, just as you and I are individuals.
Let’s say, for instance, that you are a psychologist, and someone asserts, “All psychologists are restricted by scientific method.” While this may be true for the majority of psychologists, which only need be defined by a group representing 51% of the entire group, it doesn’t mean if applies to you.
You might be one of the psychologists who does not approach people as part of the whole, but as individuals to whom the statistics may not be applicable, because every human being is unique.
No matter how honest, open, and intensely someone may try to express something to you in great detail, much of the internal data will never be expressed, because it’s impossible to know what’s really going on inside someone else’s head.
There is a complete life of information racked up inside the mind, body, and spirit of every person, some of it can be recalled easily, or by prompting, yet this only accounts for about five percent of a person’s life experience.
The other 95 percent of life experience is recorded by the unconscious mind, or physiologically by the musculoskeletal or nervous systems. Other information is either recorded or leaves wounds and scars amid the cells of the body and/or the DNA.
Not having access to all the information makes it impossible to reduce a human being to the limited conditions of scientific method, even though this is the basis of human psychology.
It is vastly helpful to have a good understanding of the general conditions or symptoms to make a general diagnosis. At the very least, this is a good place to start, but people are not statistics.
Generalization is a form of abuse
To assume that anyone, a patient, client, acquaintance, friend, or family member, can be generally defined by a categorical subset of symptoms, attributes, or belief systems, is abusive.
To assume anything about anyone without having walked a lifetime in that person’s shoes (and even then, it would only scratch the surface because you would be walking and observing from your perspective) is a disservice to that individual and it is a form of abuse.
It would be like saying, “All two-year-olds are brats.” While it may be generally accepted that generally, a two-year-old human will begin to assert his or her independence with a tendency to become defiant, to assume your two-year old child is a brat is not only assumptive, it is abusive. Every two-year old child is an individual.
How much more of an individual will you become over a lifetime of experience and the making of your own way along your own life’s journey?
No one is “normal.” There is no such thing as normal. You must be willing to let go of the fantasy that any two people could be considered to be alike. Even among identical twins, they are not exact replications of each other, even though they are identical. How could one assume that any other two people could also be alike?
Statistics do not apply to individuals
Statistics do not apply to you. Certainly, you can agree that a general set of data could apply to you, though not completely. There will always be some exceptions to the rule(s) as they are applied and compared to each individual.
You are not a statistic.
You are a magnificent one-of-a-kind work of art. You are not broken. There is nothing wrong with you. You are just a little piece of God on a journey. A journey unlike any other journey. Find your own way to get the most out of this life the best way that you can.
My friends and I will be here to help you along the way, if you need us, and we understand you are not a statistic.
Ready to Move on In Love?
How Do You Know If You’re Ready to Move on in Love?
When you activate a shared love with another person you create an emotional connection with that person which remains long after that lover has been separated from your active life. How do you know if you’re ready to move on in love?
You might be seeking for the answer to how do you know if you’re ready to move on in love because you know you’re going to be ever-connected to your former lover, and the connection is even more severe if you shared an intimate physical relationship.
Sex complicates the moving on of it all because as you are contemplating entertaining another lover, the lingering connection to your former lover(s) is at the very least awkward and confusing.
In a perfect world, the first time you fall in love, you would meet your one true love and live out your lives together, hand-in-hand, for the rest of your life happily ever after.
Also, in a perfect world, you would experience a long succession of tragic love interests which break your heart and allow you to experience how interacting with another person on a deep level could be enjoyable and one of the most catastrophic, painful chapters of your life.
Love is love, and there is really no wrong way to do it. Your love journey will be different than any other person. No two love journeys are alike, though they may share some similarities. So, any attempt to give anyone advice is fruitless.
I can make suggestions, and you must decide for yourself what is good for you to consider and what is not. In fact, that is all coaching is; reviewing a variety of options with you, letting you decide which options and actions are best for you, and supporting you in the creative process.
That said, these seem to be the best ideas to consider prior to moving on to another relationship in the best way.
It’s Over
Relationships are tricky business, and those lingering connections can confuse any attempt to connect with another person, so cutting the ties to your greatest ability will go a long way in leaving your heart open enough to embrace a new love.
Let your feelings be your guide about the healthiness of creating space by setting boundaries which protect your heart from either hurting or re-engaging the love trance all over again.
Being in the throes of love creates energetic, physiological, electromagnetic, and a barrage of chemical reactions in the brain and throughout your body, which cause you to fall in love all over again, if you are exposed to a former lover if you experience him or her with any of your five senses.
At least for a while (probably 90 days) do not allow yourself to be exposed to your ex- if possible because you need this time and space to heal, so you can be ready to move on in love.
Nostalgic Emotional Ties
If you want to be ready to move on in love, you have to let go of your former expectations, the hopes, and dreams you held deep within your heart about your former lover.
Ruminating about what could have been will only cause you emotional pain throughout the separation and have you longing for vying for another chance to right wrongs. You cannot change the past or make things right. What is done is done and so is this relationship.
There’s no need to focus your attention on all the things that went wrong or all the good times which were so enjoyable. These nostalgic efforts need to be avoided, at least for the 90-day period (or however long you need) for healing yourself.
You need to find ways to think or talk about your life with your ex- without significant emotional impact, positive or negative.
You know you are closing in on healthfully being ready to move on in love when you can think back on your love experience without passionate fantasizing or heavy emotional pain.
Residual Love
Understand that maintaining a residual love for your ex- is totally acceptable and healthy unless your relationship, even if you were with a toxic or abusive lover.
Residual love must be respectful of your protection if your self and your heart, as well as the memory of your former lover, without feeling emotional pain or resentment.
Let this residual love be tempered by realizing that things just are as they are, and the past is the past. You and your lover shared these moments, but the time has come for both of you to move on in love, going your separate ways.
You love and look after yourself, love your ex- and hope the best for him or her.
There is no blame, or judgment because we’re all doing the best we can with what we have.
Loving You
The best thing you can do is to love yourself to the best of your ability.
Many have heard some variation of the question, “How can you love somebody else if you don’t love yourself, first?” We all know this, but most of us do not understand what it means to love one’s self.
When you love yourself, you treat yourself with all the love, respect, and acceptance that you would ever desire to receive from a lover.
This can be difficult as you’re getting ready to move on in love, and you might be a million miles away from having this kind of love for yourself at this time and space. Just do the best you can to love yourself more.
When you consider finding all the love you could ever desire from within, you don’t need someone else to make you feel loved.
Ready to Move on in Love
If you are at peace with the idea that it’s over and find the nostalgic emotional ties honorable and manageable, can maintain a healthy residual love and love yourself more than you did before, you are ready to move on in love.
See you at the Soulmate Wizardry event.
Diagnosing Everyone
There are those of us who are in the mental health arenas, either professionally or as laypeople, who have varying degrees of knowledge of a variety of mental health disorders. Once you have access to this kind of information, you can fall into the trap of diagnosing everyone you meet or know as having a particular mental disease or disorder.
Some of these people are doctors, therapists, coaches, patients and/or curious bystanders.
It’s easy, once you get access to a certain amount of information, to consider yourself an expert, as you start to diagnose everyone you come across as having a problem.
In some cases, learning about certain mental disorders can be very valuable, such as dealing with someone you know personally, maybe intimately, who may (or may not) suffer from a mental disorder or disease.
Having a good understanding about how someone might react in certain circumstances can help you understand and deal with them when the face challenges or tend to react in ways that don’t seem normal to you.
This can be very helpful in helping you to determine if someone is “safe” to be around or have access to intimate details of your life, especially if they can have a negative effect on your life. You have every right to determine who has access to and influence in the life that you live.
Early detection of certain personality types, and of people who may be toxic, abusive, or potentially dangerous, is hugely advantageous.
Even so, diagnosing everyone is an unhealthy approach to building community and it keeps people separated by categorizing traits, which may not be signs of a mental disease or disorder at all.
This fits perfectly into the judge matrix.
The judge matrix keeps us separated from our peers because we can quickly determine what we do not like or approve of in someone else as we categorize those around us, placing individuals in a box of likeminded folks.
Doctors, therapists, counselors, and professionals in all trades do this; it is a widely accepted (and promoted) practice, but it not a high-vibration activity.
Admittedly, it may be an effective way to manage and filter through a wide variety of people and may enhance your ability to focus and save countless hours of discovery and therapy, it is unjust, and not conducive to promoting individuality, freedom, peace, and harmony.
The judge matrix destroys community, fosters separation and dissention, and is harmful to the potential expansion and evolution of the human race.
If you must diagnose clients as part and parcel of your day-job, or must attempt to diagnose someone in an effort to keep yourself safe from potential loss or harm, then do so, but do not let your judgment spread to your circle of influence, or the community at large.
Diagnosing others is judging them based on a very limited amount of data, and you cannot know a person well enough be evaluating a short list of “red flags.”
Mental disorders or diseases are not the only way we categorize, diagnose, separate, and judge others. This applies to all categorizations which separate people into groups.
It is socially acceptable to sort people by gender, health status, age, height, color of eyes or hair, income, political views, religion, race, physical location or address (or lack of physical home address), media preferences, even the clothes they wear, and the cars they drive, amid a nearly endless list of categories to judge and separate others by.
Judging others is not good medicine.
One of my personal heroes said, “Judge not, lest you be judged.” And is akin to, “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.”
Unless “Judge” is part of your job title or job description (or necessary for personal protection) then it should be avoided. Even so, if you are required to judge, keep it focused on only the areas when and where it is warranted, and try to celebrate the differences of anyone else.
Judge if you must, then move on, loving and accepting others for who and what they are, regardless of their individual characteristics. Don’t take judgment home or to your community.
After all, aren’t we all just doing the best that we can with what we have?
I know I am.
And I love you just the way you are.
Fear is the Doorway
When you feel the fear of something your first instinct is to find safety and security from that which you fear or turn and run in the opposite direction of it. This instinctual reaction has allowed the human race to survive amidst predators and calamity over time. For those who are on a path of personal growth and expansion, fear is the doorway to all the best things in life.
We fear so many things, mostly those things unknown to us, and our instincts try to keep us safe from what we fear. Your inner voice will try to talk you out of anything because it’s scared that something bad might happen as the result of something you have little or no experience with.
It is far worse if you have had experience with a particular thing, circumstance, or situation which did not work out well in the past. You will pretty much do just about anything to avoid finding yourself in that situation again, and there’s nothing wrong with that. For most people safety and security is the best policy.
For those who dare to accept the challenge, they have come to realize that fear is the doorway which leads to all the best things in life. Fear is a signal and a sign that something amazing is waiting for you on the other side of fear.
Experience will educate you of the benefits of pushing through the fear to see what’s on the other side, and you will come to know that which awaits you may not be what you originally thought was on the other side of fear.
You may have had an originally idea about what pushing through the fear may yield you, only to find something far greater than you could have imagined was waiting for you as your reward for facing your fear and overcoming the very thing that frightened you.
It takes courage to face your fears and much more to actually take the action(s) necessary to overcome the fear which has overtaken you. You will need to rustle up some personal strength just to look your fear in the eye, feel good enough about yourself to put yourself at risk, with the determination and commitment to see this episode through to see what happens once you have conquered your fear.
Sometimes God or your guardian angel will be so frustrated with your hesitance to face your fear and enjoy what is waiting for you on the other side of fear, that they will conspire to set up circumstances and situations which you will not be able to avoid. Thereby forcing you to face your fears, as if to drag you through this transformative process kicking and screaming, in a devil-may-care let go or be dragged method of metamorphosis.
Always, when you find yourself the victor of overcoming your fear, you are blessed with the benefits of having not only surviving the process, but thriving in a new, more empowered version of life and yourself.
As you overcome fear, you inspire others who are also restrained by fear’s shackles. Your inspiration can be the fuel which enables others to reach out and dare to face their fears, just as hearing about or seeing someone face their fears may have been an inspiration for you to consider overcoming your fear(s).
This is part of the new evolution of human potential in a world which is manipulated and controlled by fear. Every day more of us are awakening to the lies we’ve been presented with and those which we’ve let keep us down.
Overcoming fear moves you into a higher vibration of power affecting not only your life, but the lives around you, your community, the community at large, affecting the entire planet.
Facing your fears, those things which are frightening, and doing what it takes to push through to the other side is the currency of living a better life, your best life, and making the world a better place.
Shocked By Your Partner
What do you do when someone you entrusted your heart with turns out to be a different person than he or she represented himself or herself as when you trusted him or her with your heart?
This is a tender and sometimes shocking moment of truth, when you realize that your partner is not the person you thought he or she was.
First of all, do not discount your feelings. You feel the way you’re feeling about this realization, and you, or anyone else, has no right to disrespect what you are feeling. Even when you’re processing ill feelings about this current stage of your life, try to keep your wits about you.
Try to avoid striking out at your partner with an emotional outburst. If you can’t help it, no one would blame you. Resist the urge to blow up in rage, and hurling negative projections, which you may feel obligated to apologize for later, and begin your review process, as soon as you are able to find the space to think as possible.
Remember, this is someone you love. Unless you’re dealing with a psychopath, this person with whom you have trusted your heart, would not do anything to hurt you, because he or she does love you. It’s just that in this moment, his or her love for you looks differently than what you expected.
You build a vast array of expectations which represent what you expect your lover’s love for you to look like. When you see expressions of love which are contrary to what you expected to see, you feel like you’ve been assaulted, and the emotional impact is tragic.
Nothing wrong with having expectations and being deeply attached to them, this is completely normal and natural, but realize,
Your partner wouldn’t do anything to hurt you.
Up to now, your life has been full of experiences which have culminated in the person that you are in this moment. You’ve faced certain situations and circumstances throughout your journey and you’ve dealt with them in the best way that you could have in the moment.
Every one of those experience has left a residual energy inside of you, whether the experience resolved graciously or tragically. No matter how you’ve managed your life in the past, the truth is, you did the best you could have in that moment, with what you had to work with at the time.
This is your journey.
Just as you are on a journey, so your partner is on his or her own journey, and is a collection of his or her experiences up to this moment in time.
When your partner surprises you with his or her doing the best he or she can with what he or she has, it can sometimes be disturbing and shocking. No one would blame you for being taken aback by this unexpected reveal.
In your attempt to rationalize and figure out why he or she would have done this thing which has captured your attention, consider that while your partner loves you deeply, he or she is just doing the best that he or she can with what he or she has moment to moment.
Sometimes, a person does something that has nothing to do with you, but it feels as though it is a personal affront, or outright attack, focused at you. Even though, in real life, any thought of you was not present when this event happened.
You’re upset because you feel like every moment of your partner’s life should be viewed through your consciousness. You think this is a fair expectation because it feels like everything that you think, say, or do, is run through your partner’s consciousness, even though you know that to do so would be impossible.
Sometimes you will react to life circumstance and in the moment of impact you respond intuitively or instinctively without first considering how your reaction will affect your partner.
If you’ve reacted to something life has presented you with, and your action or reaction triggered your partner or caused him or her to be shocked by your response, how would you like him or her to respond?
You would feel bad for hurting your partner’s feelings and you would be apologetic because you wouldn’t have done anything intentionally to cause your partner pain. You were only doing the best you could do with what you had in the moment.
Consider why your partner might have felt like he or she had to respond in the manner which has surprised you and captured your attention. After all, he or she has lived a whole life which has led him or her to this moment.
Try to imagine what it might be like to be your partner, living his or her life up to this point, and ask yourself what he or she may have experienced in the past which has cause him or her to have such a reaction today?
Often when these situations and circumstances who up in life, it is grounded in a hidden set of programming which has built up from the past. Sometime very early in life, early childhood, and in many cases, the person who is reacting has no idea the reaction is energy recoiling off a childhood memory.
Find a place of compassion and empathy for your partner when you are surprised or shocked, even if you’re the victim of his or her abuse. But if you’ve been abused, take action to stop the abuse, because you never have to submit to being abused by anyone.
Love your partner but look after yourself.
After all, we’re all doing the best we can with what we have.
Seven Seconds to Change the World
When I change my world the world changes
Seven seconds at a time.
When you look around the world, it’s easy to get distracted by all the things in the world you don’t want or like. You focus on the things that upset you, the things you wish you could change but are not within your reach. When you focus on things that you cannot change, you add energy to those things, and they proliferate, gaining energetic advantage.
Your attentive disapproval causes those things you don’t like, which are outside of your circle of influence, to grow and become even more problematic.
What about the things in your life that you can change?
If you focus on the intimate details of your life, and those situations and circumstances within your circle of influence that you can change, you have the ability to change your own life, which in effect changes the world.
When I change my world the world changes
The key is the ability to affect change. If you simply observe and turn your attention to something you add to the energetic power of it. If you observe something that you can impact or change, and you take the action necessary to change a thing, it changes.
The result of changing anything you have the ability to influence in your life has a ripple effect which changes the lives of those within arm’s reach, rippling out to the local community, the community at large, and the world.
That little ripple from your change which may seem to have little significance to you picks up momentum as it ripples throughout the world, picking up energy, inspiring others to make these little changes.
In this way, one little change you make inspires someone else to make a change, which inspires someone else to make a change. On and on it goes, when one day you look back and see the whole world changes and this greater change had the ability to come to fruition thanks to your being a part of the change.
When something captures your attention, you can focus your attention on it making it more powerful, or if it appears to be negative and beyond your influence or control, change your attention to something you can affect, or something delightful.
Seven Second Delay
By focusing your attention for more than seven seconds adds energy to what is capturing your attention. If you can refocus from something negative to a positive thought within seven seconds, the negative energy is unsupported by your energy, and the new more positive thought is promoted for every moment which exceeds the seven-second delay.
When you change your attention to something that makes you happy or fills your heart with love, it increases. The more you focus your attention on the things that you like, the more powerful they become.
Adding energy to the things you love has a ripple effect which spreads throughout the community and the world, filling the energetic field with positivity making the world a better place.
Warriors who fight against what they abhor add energy to the very thing they are fighting against. They would yield greater results for their efforts by supporting the solution rather than focusing on the problem.
You can do it any way you want.
One person may not be able to change the world by making one small change, but if millions or billions of people made one small change, the world changes.
Let today be the time for change.
What Is Your Love Language?
When you express your affection to someone, you possess a certain style and method for communicating how you feel. Likewise, your partner has a particular method of expressing him- or her-self. Both of you also have certain expressions which you are particularly fond of that make you feel as though you are deeply loved. This method of giving and receiving love is a form of communication referred to as your “love language” as coined by author Gary Chapman.
What Is your love language?
In Chapman’s book, The Five Love Languages, he delineates five different communication methods or styles of communicating love. By reducing these into five basic categories, you can easily determine which love language(s) you and your partner are most aligned with.
According to the author, everyone has a primary and secondary love language. Most people tend to express their love for their partner using their own love language. If getting a gift from someone make you feel loved and cherished, then it is highly likely that you will express your love to your partner by giving him or her a gift because Receiving Gifts is your primary love language.
What if your partner’s heart speaks a different love language?
Here is the rub: You buy your partner gifts because this is meaningful for you but your partner’s heart speaks an entirely different love language. No matter how many gifts you give your partner to express your affection for him or her, while appreciated, your partner is not receptive to the sincerity and tenderness of your love’s message.
Learning what love language your partner’s heart speaks is a highly regarded tool for effective love communication.
Let’s take a brief look at Chapman’s five love languages. They are:
1. Words of Affirmation
If your partner’s love language is Words of Affirmation, his or her heart responds to certain spoken and/or written words which make him or her feel loved and appreciated, such as, “I love you,” “You are amazing,” “You look sexy in that outfit,” or, “I am so proud of you.”
Different words of affirmation work best for different people. What might be seen as a compliment to one person might be seen as offensive to the next. Taking your time to do a little research to find out which words and phrases your Words of Affirmation partner responds best to is effort well spent.
2. Quality Time
If your partner’s heart responds to Quality Time, he or she will revel in spending private and focused one-on-one time with you.
Could be anything from a quaint dinner out at a restaurant with enough privacy to talk and gaze into each other’s eyes to sitting on the sofa with the TV turned down and phones silenced, having one-on-one time. Attentive listening to your partner and giving him or her the uninterrupted space to express him-or her-self wile you look into his of her eyes and listen attentively could be done anywhere, anytime, if he or she is receptive to this type of loving communication.
3. Receiving Gifts
If your partner’s heart responds to gifts, keep in mind that they not all be expensive gifts. Simple gifts are just as meaningful, if not more so. A handmade card, presenting a freshly picked flower while taking a stroll with your partner, or giving your partner a monetary gift that he or she can contribute to his or her favorite charity.
Those who are prone to receiving gifts as a sign of being loved and cherished will desire a little something-something in between holidays to feel deeply loved. Fortunately for you, they don’t have to be expensive, only meaningful to your partner.
4. Acts of Service
Acts of service are those things that you do which make your partner feel loved and adored. Like all love languages, you will need to find out which specific acts speak to your partner’s heart.
Simple acts of service could include volunteering to perform a chore which your partner normally accepts as his or her responsibility, detailing his or her car, or joining in an activity your partner is engaged in to show love and supportiveness. Pretty much any assistance you can offer to “lighten the load” of any responsibility he or she might have would be particularly endearing to the Act of Service lover.
5. Physical Touch
People either like being touched or they don’t but if your partner’s heart longs for physical tough, then by all means, reach out and touch him or her, even if you are one who doesn’t like to touch or be touched.
Simple touching can be just holding hands in public, a little foot-play under the table at dinner, putting your hand on his or her arm or leg while deeply connecting in conversation or listening will go a long way with someone whose love language is Physical Touch.
Of course, sexual intimacy is assumed in the language of Physical Touch, but it need not be the primary form of communication to express sincere love.
For more information, check out The Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman.