Showing Love

I have always believed that if you want advice, take it from someone who has been successful in that area.  However, sometimes it may be difficult to know when someone has been successful.  Looks can be deceiving.  I'd like to try to point you in a good direction and you can determine for yourself.

When growing up, my mother always gave us compliments regarding our strengths, made individual time for each child and gave us tons of gifts. This is how she showed her love. I always thought my father wasn't as good as showing love, but the truth is, he was always working, improving something or making a better life for the family. On the other hand, I tend to freely build others up, spend time with others often listening to what they have to say and give plenty of physical hugs.

Gary Chapman, in his book, "The 5 Love Languages", talks about the five ways in which people show love: Words of Affirmation, Quality Time, Gifts, Acts of Service and Physical Touch. In order to find one's love languages, you can simply watch how they treat other people. If you see them complimenting others a lot, most likely they themselves need consistent affirmations. If someone throws a big party for another person, doesn't it make sense that they thought through how it would feel if a big party was thrown for them?  Figuring out how someone shows love can be difficult sometimes because some people who are emotionally mature tend to show love in ways based on the other person's love language.

The golden rule states that you should treat others how you want to be treated. However, one key to mastering your relationships is learning how to treat others how they want to be treated. As usual, your feedback and commments are welcomed!

This post was reposted from http://finlit.biz/business/divorce-the-financial-nightmare/, originally written on February 24th, 2013.