The key to a fulfilling relationship

"Love is never any better than the lover. Wicked people love wickedly, violent people love violently, weak people love weakly, stupid people love stupidly, but the love of a free man is never safe.” – Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye

Love is a topic we don't formally learn about. It isn't taught in school or by our parents (usually). And in many cases, we lack a good model for it—there are a lot of divorces. To top it off, the media and film/TV industries feed us overly romanticized notions of love and relationships as the be-all and end-all forces that will save us.

So, you have to figure it out on your own. That's why I've written several blog posts on the topic—I've been trying to figure out what love is. I’ve approached it from philosophical and spiritual angles, but now I’m looking at it from a practical perspective.

Why relationships are important:

Relationships are a significant part of our lives. We seek relationships to fulfill our emotional need for love and to feel significant, understood, and valued. As life goes on, we spend most of our time either alone or with our partners (see the chart below, starting around age 30). So, it’s important to select a partner you enjoy spending time with and know how to foster a strong relationship.

What love can add to your life:

Love also has the potential to vastly improve our lives. It has inspired poets, writers, and artists since the dawn of time. Two of my favorite authors, Ayn Rand and Toni Morrison, have interesting perspectives on what love offers. In her novel The Fountainhead, Rand describes love as a person’s highest reverence:

"That love is reverence, and worship, and glory, and the upward glance. Not a bandage for dirty sores. But they don't know it. Those who speak of love most promiscuously are the ones who've never felt it. They make some sort of feeble stew out of sympathy, compassion, contempt and general indifference, and they call it love. Once you've felt what it means to love as you and I know it—the total passion for the total height— you're incapable of anything else."

Reverence is a "deep respect for someone or something." And it has biblical roots, which makes love’s meaning here transcend a feeling, emotion, individual, or couple and adopt a higher, spiritual importance. For Rand, love is when one person appreciates the highest virtues the other person embodies. The characters in her novels who experience this “gain a profoundly personal, selfish joy from the mere existence of the person one loves,” (from Rand’s book The Virtue of Selfishness). Love is one of life’s greatest peaks and offers a feeling of transcendence.

For Morrison, love is a positive sum game with the potential to better both parties: “They don't know the real kinds, the better kinds, where losses are cut and everybody benefits. It takes a certain intelligence to love like that—softly, without props," (from Morrison’s novel Love). The moments of love Morrison describes in her novels focus on tenderness—where characters are treated with respect, admiration, and care. She advocates a more mature and lasting form of love compared to infatuation, which is fleeting and superficial.

Why relationships fail:
The root of many relationship failures is that one or both partners don’t feel loved or valued. This is the focus of Gary Chapman’s book The Five Love Languages (first published in 1992). The conclusion Chapman reached after 25 years of marriage counseling is that there are five fundamental ways people feel and express their love (described below). He calls these love languages, and they’re primarily determined during our childhood with how we feel loved by our parents.

Problems arise in relationships because people speak different love languages. For instance, if your partner expresses their love by giving you gifts, but this isn’t your primary love language, you won’t feel loved by them. But the point isn’t to figure out how your partner expresses love. It's about your partner adapting to your love language because that’s the only way your emotional need for love will be fulfilled.

And being in love is not enough to sustain a relationship. A relationship requires consistent effort on both sides and conscious choices to make your partner feel seen and appreciated (which is achieved through applying their love language). For a relationship to thrive, it’s essential to identify each partner’s primary love language and take consistent steps to make them feel loved in that way.

The five love languages:

Here’s a brief summary of the five fundamental love languages with examples.

Words of affirmation
- Giving compliments and using encouraging words, like “You’re a great musician, you should consider pursuing music professionally.”
- Phrasing your words as requests, not demands. For instance, saying, “It’s amazing when you mow the lawn. The house looks great!” instead of “You don’t do any chores around the house. Why don’t you get off the couch and mow the lawn?”
- Tone of voice matters (speak genuinely, not sarcastically).
Quality time
- Spending time together and doing activities your partner enjoys.
- Giving your partner your undivided attention and not multi-tasking or interrupting when they speak to you.
- Having high-quality conversations where you share experiences and thoughts.
- Listening to your partner’s problems instead of providing solutions.
Receiving gifts
- Gifts are visual symbols of your love and reminders that you’re thinking of your partner.
- Gifts don’t have to be expensive; they can be as small as notes.
Acts of service
- Doing tasks you know your partner wants you to do and will help them, like taking the trash out or raking the leaves.
- Similar to words of affirmation, it’s important to phrase what you want your partner to do as requests, not demands.
Physical touch
- This one is self-explanatory but it means your partner feels loved by physical touch, so hugging, holding hands, etc.

How to improve your relationship with love languages:

Take Chapman’s love language quiz (it’s free, you just need to provide your email to get the results).

It’s a quick 30-question quiz that identifies your primary and secondary love languages (so you can find out how you feel loved).
The quiz ranks how you score in each of the five love languages (i.e. you might have 30% in physical touch so it’s your primary love language, then 20% in quality time, and so on).

Analyze the results.

If your primary love language is acts of service, think about what activities your partner can do that are meaningful to you and make you feel loved. For example, doing the dishes, making dinner one night a week, or raking leaves.
Note any significant allocations to secondary languages and repeat the above bullet.

Communicate your results with your partner and have them take the quiz too.

After you’ve reflected on what makes you feel loved, share your findings with your partner so they can start implementing them.
Start small and encourage your partner with positive reinforcement—compliment or thank them when they implement your primary love language.
Good relationships require both parties to put work in. Your partner needs to take the quiz too, and then you need to apply the findings.

If you’re serious about building a strong relationship, read Chapman’s book (it’s just over 200 pages long and has a lot of valuable insights).
Implement your findings from the quiz and your partner’s preferences consistently. Love is a choice that requires consistent effort and application.