Hi, I’m Ilia Jones, licensed professional counselor in Suwanee, Georgia, and I’m here to talk to you about two concepts that I use when I am doing couples counseling and marriage therapy work. One of them is love languages, which you may have heard of because a lot of people talk about it, even in social situations where people ask, “What’s your love language?” This means that we typically express love in one of five different ways.
The five love languages are quality time, gifts, words of affirmation, acts of service, and physical touch. We all express love in all of these ways, but there is usually one that we prefer or that means the most to us. I often ask my clients, if you have a friend who has been diagnosed with an illness, what is the first thing you want to do for that person? Whichever category that falls into is probably the love language you see as most important. In a couple, you may have two different love languages, so one person is expressing love in one way, but the other person would like to receive it in a different way. It is really important to identify that so you can learn to translate their love language into yours and vice versa.
The other concept is called the love bank. This means that in every relationship, we all make deposits and withdrawals. If you are going to make a withdrawal but you have not made enough deposits, then you are going to be in debt, but if you have made enough deposits, when you make a withdrawal there will still be “money” in the love bank. In marriage, it is very difficult to eliminate all withdrawals; they will happen sometimes. However, I encourage clients to increase how many deposits they make as much as possible, because that is the healthiest way to keep the love bank full so that when a withdrawal happens, you are not in as big of trouble. These are two ideas that I use a lot in couples counseling. I hope this was helpful to you. Please feel free to like or subscribe if you want to see more of my content.
