The 5 Love Languages Gone Wrong

Today’s almonds have been activated by:

⏰ IN A RUSH?

Today’s 30-Second Summary

If you don’t have time to read the whole email today, here are some key takeaways:

• If we’re partnered, it’s hard to thrive as individuals if we’re not thriving as a couple

• Even if we’re not partnered, it’s hard to thrive if not feeling appreciated, or able to make other people around us feel appreciated

• The 5 love languages are a great tool for this, but are often disastrously misapplied even when we know each other’s “language”

  • (there are two easy fixes for this, though; see today’s main feature)

• When it comes to supplements, sometimes cost is no guarantee of quality.

  • Ora combats this in three ways (see today's sponsor section for details!)

Read on to learn about these things and more…

👀 WATCH AND LEARN

The Point of Writing Letters We Never Send

A general principle of mental health is that the less we are able to express, the more unwell we get it. It’s when we have to stifle our rage, sadness or fear that we start to develop secondary symptoms, such as sleeplessness, paranoia, bitterness, poor digestion, and more.

So, how do we make the best use of unsent letters, to relieve those symptoms?

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Prefer text? Click here to read the transcript!

🫂 MAIN FEATURE

Levelling up the 5 love languages

The saying “happy wife; happy life” certainly goes regardless of gender, and if we’re partnered, it’s difficult to thrive in our individual lives if we’re not thriving as a couple. So, with the usual note that mental health is also just health, let’s take a look at getting beyond the basics of a well-known, often clumsily-applied model:

The 5 love languages

You’re probably familiar with “the 5 love languages”, as developed by Dr. Gary Chapman. If not, they are:

1. Acts of Service

2. Gift-Giving

3. Physical Touch

4. Quality Time

5. Words of Affirmation

The idea is that we each weight these differently, and problems can arise when a couple are “speaking a different language”.

So, is this a basic compatibility test?

It doesn’t have to be!

We can, if we’re aware of each other’s primary love languages, make an effort to do a thing we wouldn’t necessarily do automatically, to ensure they’re loved the way they need to be.

But…

What a lot of people overlook is that we can also have different primary love languages for giving and for receiving. And, missing that can mean that even taking each other’s primarily love languages into account, efforts to make a partner feel loved, or to feel loved oneself, can miss 50% of the time.

So it’s important for partners to ask each other…

• Not: “what’s your primary love language?” ❌

• But: “what’s your primary way of expressing love?” ✅

• And: “which love language makes you feel most loved?” ✅

For what it’s worth, I thrive on Words of Affirmation, so thanks again to everyone who leaves kind feedback on our articles! It lets me know I provided a good Act of Service 😉

So far, so simple, right? You and your partner (or: other person! Because as we’ve just seen, these go for all kinds of dynamics, not just romantic partnerships) need to be aware of each other’s preferred love languages for giving and receiving.

But…

There’s another pitfall that many fall into, and that’s assuming that the other person has the same idea about what a given love language means, when there’s more to clarify.

For example:

• Acts of Service: is it more important that the service be useful, or that it took effort?

• Gift-Giving: is it better that a gift be more expensive, or more thoughtful and personal?

• Physical Touch: what counts here? If we’re shoulder-to-shoulder on the couch, is that physical touch or is something more active needed?

• Quality Time: does it count if we’re both doing our own thing but together in the same room, comfortable in silence together? Or does it need to be a more active and involved activity together? And is it quality time if we’re at a social event together, or does it need to be just us?

• Words of Affirmation: what, exactly, do we need to hear? For romantic partners, “I love you” can often be important, but is there something else we need to hear? Perhaps a “because…”, or perhaps a “so much that…”, or perhaps something else entirely? Does it no longer count if we have to put the words in our partner’s mouth, or is that just good two-way communication?

Bottom line:

There’s a lot more to this than a “What’s your love language?” click-through quiz, but with a little application and good communication, this model can really resolve a lot of would-be problems that can grow from feeling unappreciated or such. And, the same principles go just the same for friends and others as they do for romantic partners.

In short, it’s one of the keys to good interpersonal relationships in general—something critical for our overall well-being!

❤️ OUR SPONSORS MAKE THIS PUBLICATION POSSIBLE

Ora | Purer, Cleaner, Stronger: Supplements That Work!

It’s easy to have an expectation of “you get what you pay for”, but one of the biggest problems buying supplements is that sometimes cost is no guarantee of quality.

In other words, you can pay too much and still get something that was made in someone’s shed and contains many impurities, or was manufactured in a way that completely defeats the purpose and robs the supplement of any effectiveness.

Ora combats this in three ways:

• Having high quality (and transparent, verifiable!) sources

• Having rigorous testing of their products

  • (by 3rd party labs; you can see those test results on their website)

• Having a 60-day no-quibble money-back guarantee—if you’re not satisfied with the results, they’ll refund you in full

As for what they sell, they have a range of 28 products so far, for comprehensive all-around health.

Click here to check out Ora and start enjoying better daily cumulative results from your supplementation!

Please do visit our sponsors—they help keep 10almonds free

🌎 AROUND THE WEB

What’s happening in the health world…

• The desire to have a romantic partner is associated with lower life satisfaction, but more so in older adults

• Simple risk score prognostic of stroke in patients with HFpEF but no atrial fibrillation

• Dance away distress: rekindling health and happiness

• Sunscreen has a shelf life, and other facts to know

• For type 2 diabetics who exercise, some approaches are better than others

More to come tomorrow!

📖 ONE-MINUTE BOOK REVIEW

DBT Made Simple: A Step-by-Step Guide to Dialectical Behavior Therapy - by Sheri van Dijk

This book offers very clear explanations of DBT. In fact, a more fitting title might have been "DBT made clear", because it does it without oversimplification.

This is a way in which van Dijk's work stands out from that of many writers on the subject! Many authors oversimplify, to the point that a reader may wonder "is that all it is?" when, in reality, there's rather more to it.

This work is, therefore, refreshingly comprehensive, without sacrificing clarity.

Van Dijk also takes us through the four pillars of DBT:

1. Mindfulness

2. Distress tolerance

3. Emotional regulation

4. Interpersonal effectiveness

Each of these can help an individual alone; together, they produce a composite effect with a synergy that makes each more effective. Hence, pillars.

On the topic of "an individual", you may be wondering "is this book for therapists or the general public?" and the answer is yes, yes it is.

That is to say: it's written with the assumption that the reader wants to learn DBT in order to practice it as a therapist... and/but is written in such a fashion that it's very easy to apply the skills to oneself, too. As it's an introductory guide—a comprehensive one, but without assuming prior knowledge—it's a perfect resource for anyone to get a good grounding in the subject.

Bottom line: if you've been hearing about DBT (possibly from us!) and wondering where you might start, this book is an excellent place to begin.

Click here to check out DBT Made Simple, and start making many parts of life easier!

Wishing you a wonderful Sunday,

The 10almonds Team