Transcript
A (0:00)
Your love language is not your actual love language. Love languages themselves are preferences. And your subconscious attachment needs are what actually matter and affect the way that you give and receive love more than absolutely anything. So today we are going to dive into what love languages actually are, why they do not matter as much as your subconscious needs do, and how to identify what your own subconscious needs and relationships really are. And this is all types of relationships. Most people think they know what they need in relationships, but they don't. And I'm going to tell you how I know what it is that you need according to your relationship or attachment style. My name is Thais Gibson. I'm a counselor, a relationship coach, and my entire life's work is dedicated to helping people build the best relationships of their life and more deeply understand themselves. So here's the first thing. If you only focus on love languages, you can still end up in the wrong relationship. Let me tell you why. Number one, there are five love languages and this is the original work of Dr. Gary Chapman. He says we have words of affirmation which are giving compliments. We have quality time, which is spending actual time with people. We have physical touch, which is pretty self explanatory, physical affection, intimacy. Then we have gifts and acts of service. Acts of service are things like bringing somebody coffee or cooking them breakfast in the morning or driving them to the airport. And every person has different love languages. This became a really trending topic over the past decade and a half and a lot of times these love languages can be things you got a lot of as a child or can in fact be the exact opposite. Things you didn't get any of and were starving for instead. The things that upset you the most in your relationships though, reveal your deepest up unmet needs. And I want to explain to you why needs matter so much more than love languages. Here's an example. I once worked with a couple. One person was more anxious in a relationship and one person was more avoidant or emotionally unavailable. The anxious person in the relationship, they said they had a huge love language around words of affirmation and so did the person who was more emotionally unavailable. What was really interesting is that that anxious person kept trying to give their partner words of affirmation by saying things like, you're the best partner in the world. I can't imag imagine living without you. And can you guess how the emotionally unavailable person responded? They actually felt a little overwhelmed by that because their version of words of affirmation was different. You see, they wanted words of affirmation through through sincere acknowledgement and appreciation. Their version of words of affirmation was more things like hearing somebody say, hey, thanks for showing up for me yesterday and really trying to have my back in that conversation, or thanks for taking out the trash and doing those chores around the house. I really appreciate you contributing. Dismissive avoidance or more emotionally unavailable people in relationships, they want to hear acknowledgement as words of affirmation, whereas more anxious people need a lot more validation. And so words of affirmation as a love language doesn't get deep enough. Instead, when we understand what our needs are in relationships, that's ultimately what starts to change everything. Let me give you one other example. I'm somebody who always had a quality time love language. But if you sit me down and I get to watch Netflix with somebody that I love like my husband for five hours, or I get to spend one hour having a meaningful conversation, that meaningful conversation is going to contribute to the need for emotional connection. And I will take the one hour of emotional connection over the five general hours of quality time any day. So. So what I'm getting at here is that I want you to understand needs in a relationship are so much more important than love languages. They run deeper, they land in a different way. And if we're always working with love languages, you can still end up in a relationship where you're not even fulfilled. And so you don't discover your own needs by imagining your dream partner. You discover them by studying your pain. And I'm actually gonna take you through each attachment style or love style in a relationship. You can see what yours are, and I'm gonna tell you the most needs for each one. So if you see yourself as somebody who's a little bit more needy in relationships or clingy, or wants to move really quick and develops feelings really fast, you might be anxiously attached and anxiously attached individuals in relationships, they need deep validation, consistent reassurance. They need a lot of certainty. In relationships, they want to feel like they are a priority, and they want to feel that somebody deeply cares about them and is willing to invest in them long term. On the flip side, if somebody's more avoidant in relationships, the types of people who are slower to commit, and also the type of individual who sometimes stuffs down their emotions and isn't super vulnerable in love, in this particular case, the big needs of this individual tend to be things like freedom, autonomy, independence. They want to feel like they can have the relationship to themselves while being in a relationship with somebody else. They also value very much sincere forms of acknowledgement and appreciation, like I mentioned, that goes a really long way. And they also want to feel support, supported, empathize with and accepted. They often do not like when people are judgmental or critical of them. It makes them deeply shut down and want to push somebody away. Last but not least, if you're the hot and cold partner in relationships or fearful avoidant, this individual in relationships tends to want a lot more novelty. They tend to also want their freedom and autonomy. And yet at the same time, they have this deep need to feel valued and prioritized. And they also deeply need trust and stability if they can even make a relationship work over the long haul at all. Otherwise, they tend to unravel and sometimes quite quickly. You see, each type of archetype tends to need different things in a relationship. And one of the biggest problems that we run into is that we try to give love in relationships to people as we would need love. But what actually brings us together is to understand how somebody may need to give and receive love in a different way way than you. And when we finally understand that and know each other's needs, we can give love as they would need love instead of as we would need it. Let me tell you one more story to end this off with. I worked with a couple years ago. It was a female and male. And the woman in the relationship, she was much more anxious, she was a little more needy and clingy and didn't want to be abandoned. And her partner was much more avoided, needed a lot of his freedom and autonomy and space and was slower to warm up. And they got into an argument one Sunday afternoon and he said, hey, I just need a couple of hours to process. I can't keep talking about the same problem. I don't even know what I'm feeling. I just need to go take the afternoon to myself. And you know what she did? She told me on Monday, as I was just getting to know her through our first couple of sessions together, she said, hey, you know what I did when he said he needed space? I surprised him. I cooked him a meal, I wrote him a cute note and I surprised him. And he wasn't happy about it. And she couldn't understand why he wasn't happy, because that would have been something she would have received well if she was on the end of that continuum. So she showed up on announced giving love to her partner as she would need love. And in the midst of doing that, she completely missed that her partner needed different things than she did and accidentally, completely overrode his needs. And made him feel more misunderstood and more distant from her. In fact, he reported feeling deeply unseen by that experience. And so what we want to be able to do is, is assess what our needs are, understand our needs deeply and be able to communicate them in our relationships. Because that's actually how we build the best relationships of our life. I just want to pop in here and let you know we are doing a seven day free trial to the All Access Membership Pass at PDF, which means you get access to literally everything inside of the school. And this includes the four live webinars I do with our students every single week. And on top of that, you get access to all of our different courses. We have over 55 different courses on relationships, Communication, Boundaries, Emotional Mastery, Guilt, Guilt and Shame. Learning your needs. So many different facets that are really important to master our lives and feel really good about our lives going forward. And last but not least, there's a daily community event. We have trained facilitators and coaches who are in there doing that work, showing up to support you on your journey every single day. Please join me on the other side. Come check it out, see if it's a fit for you. I'd love to see you there. Go ahead and sign up by clicking the link in the description box below. That's it for today. Thank you for stopping by. I hope you subscribe to this channel and that you enjoyed today's video and I'll see you tomorrow.
