Have you ever felt like you were putting a lot of effort into showing love to your partner, but they just didn’t seem to be getting the message? Or maybe you have felt like you and your partner aren’t speaking the same language when it comes to showing affection. Learning which of the five languages is yours and which is your partner’s could be the key to unlocking a deeper level of connection and could help you see things from their perspective.
You may have heard the term “love languages,” but you may be wondering: what exactly are they? To put it simply, the love languages are the different ways in which people give and receive love. The concept of love languages was introduced by Dr. Gary Chapman in his book The Five Languages: How to Express Heartfelt Commitment to Your Mate where he proposed that each individual has a preferred way of expressing love. According to Chapman, the primary love languages are acts of service, physical touch, quality time, words of affirmation, and giving and receiving gifts. Understanding your own love language, as well as your partner’s, can help improve communication, deepen intimacy, strengthen your relationship, and help build a foundation of mutual understanding, respect, and appreciation for one another.
Let’s take a brief look at each love language:
Those with acts of service as their love language feel most loved when their partner does things for them that they perceive as helpful, such as running errands, cooking, cleaning, getting their partner’s favorite coffee in the morning, or performing other tasks. The focus is on the effort and the willingness to help, rather than the actual task itself.
People who have physical touch as their love language feel most appreciated when they receive physical contact and intimacy from their partners. This includes things like holding hands, hugging, kissing, having sex, massaging one’s back or shoulders, and cuddling. Physical touch communicates a sense of emotional closeness and comfort that words or actions may not be able to convey.
If your love language is quality time, you feel most loved when your partner and other loved ones spend uninterrupted, focused time with you. This means giving undivided attention, actively listening, and engaging in activities or conversations that both of you enjoy. Things like keeping phones away while on a date, your partner listening intently while you speak, and simply being present with each other are seen as meaningful.
Those whose love language is words of affirmation feel most appreciated when they receive verbal expressions of affection and appreciation from their partners. This includes words of encouragement, appreciation, and gratitude, such as saying “I love you” often, or compliments, like “you are so kind.” Words of affirmation convey a sense of love, respect, and validation that can help build self-esteem and deepen the emotional connection between two people.
For individuals who have gifts as their love language, they feel most loved when they receive thoughtful, meaningful, and personal gifts, or as Dr. Gary Chapman calls it: “visual symbols of love.” The focus is on the time and effort put into selecting and presenting the gift, rather than the monetary value of the gift itself. Gifts can communicate love, care, and affection within the relationship.
Written by Téa Del Rio, Counseling Intern. If you’d like to schedule an appointment with Téa, please call us at 412-322-2129.
References:
Chapman G. (1992). The five love languages: How to express heartfelt commitment to your mate. Northfield Publishing.
Setting Couples New Year’s Resolutions is a great way to create a stronger connection, reinforce your bond, and set expectations for the future. Having shared goals can help you both stick to your promises—the more effort you two put in, the stronger the relationship. If you’re looking for some goals to work toward with your partner, this list of 6 Relationship Resolutions for 2023 is the perfect place to start.
1. Make a conflict management plan: this will allow you both to have your unique emotional constitutions respected, as well as forming a plan for how to manage healthy conflict in your relationship. A plan for conflict implies that disagreements are not inherently a problem but aims at tackling issues in the relationship that can cause small issues to become much bigger. It also brings awareness about how emotions play into your disagreements and what to do so that there is a smaller likelihood that trigger topics spiral out of control.
2. Make a vision board for your relationship and what you want in the next month, 6 months, 1 year, 2 years and 5 years! Once you’re done, put your vision board in a place you’ll see often because when you see something that inspires you on a daily basis, you stay on track. You can even take a picture of it and use it as your phone wallpaper.
3. Create an environment of appreciation between yourself and your partner. Catch your partner doing three things a week that you are grateful for. Share this with each other at the end of each week.
4. It is commonplace to be consumed by work, children, and finances that we literally forget how important it is to carve out quality time with our partners. Schedule date nights every other month. Pick the day (time and place can come later). Having a planned date is a great way to maintain a sense of adventure and fun in your relationship—it ensures time to build emotional intimacy and check in with each other.
5. Make rituals that honor your birthday, anniversary, holidays, and other landmark events through time. Celebrating the passage of time is a key component of how relationship masters keep their relationship well.
6. Choose compassion over being right. So many relationships suffer because our egos become gridlocked in the pattern of trying to be correct instead of being understanding and loving towards our partners and loved ones! Keep this in mind and always remember it is our kindness and care which nurtures those that surround us!
Written by Marriage Counselor and Founder of the Counseling and Wellness Center of Pittsburgh, Stephanie Wijkstrom.
Fill out the form below or contact us at 412-322-2129.
If you have recently answered ‘yes’ to a marriage proposal, then along with the rush of planning your version of the perfect wedding you also may also be considering whether you should be going to premarital counseling. Premarital counseling is a form of couples therapy that emphasizes wellness. Our counselors have put together a list of questions to ask before marriage to determine if it makes the wellness grade for relationship health, this will help you and your partner to understand some parts of your relationship in a deeper way.
Don’t be afraid to feel a little uncomfortable, these are questions for couples that you wouldn’t normally think about but that also is what makes them especially powerful— to assess the strengths and various qualities of your unique partnership. This does not replace premarital counseling but it does help you each to examine your relationship in a mindful and healthy way.
Questions to Ask Before Marriage
With the help of questions like these, you and your partner can begin the lifelong process of deepening your understanding of yourselves and each other, keeping in mind, your answers to these questions will likely change over time. That is normal and to keep your marriage healthy, you should continually check in with each other and have hard conversations about things that matter to you. Wellness means that we manage and care for ourselves and our relationships in a way that keeps them strong and happy and that we strategically plan for success by growing our relationship to be stronger. Great marriages are created intentionally by addressing individual and relationship needs, prioritizing connection, listening and compromising. None of which are easy, but all of which are well worth it to live happily, in love, for the rest of your life.
If you’re interested in pre-marital counseling or couples therapy please contact us at 412-322-2129 or fill out the form below.
The term quiet quitting is a wave that sparked from the great resignation, and the apathy that some workers have experienced in dead end and toxic workplaces. Quiet quitting happens in many places including our romantic relationships. Any time that we are in a relationship and we notice that we stop caring and stop connecting with our partner, we are quiet quitting.
To use Gottman Method Marriage Therapy terms, we are all making ‘bids’ for connection in our relationships. A bid is any attempt from one partner to another for attention, affirmation, affection, or any other positive connection. Bids show up in simple ways, “How was dinner?” or they can be very complex, ‘I really wish we were having more sex!’ There are three basic ways that a partner can respond to a bid—they can turn toward, they can turn away, and they can turn against. The way that our partner responds to a bid has an impact.
In fact, researchers can predict divorce based on the number of bids that a person turns against. When a partner turns against a relationship, it is painful and creates a very toxic pattern. For example, one partner trying to connect says, ‘I would love to come with you to the store.’ Turning against says, ‘Why are you always trying to go with me, can’t you just leave me alone?’ whereas Turning Toward, might say, ‘That would be great, I will wait in the car!’ Turning away might be remaining neutral or not saying anything. Gottman Method states that happy partners in a relationship accept 86% of the bids that are made to them. Bids represent needs such as connection, attachment, understanding, intimacy, and excitement.
When we don’t have our needs met in a relationship, there is an awareness that things aren’t like we wish or had expected they would be. A person starts to wonder about the relationship and can even start to imagine that they could have their needs met with a different partner. Unmet needs create a slow landslide toward dissatisfaction and quiet quitting. A partner may first talk about the unhappiness, feelings of aloneness, or lack of appreciation that they feel. Even bids to create greater understanding and connection, if unacknowledged or not responded to, will also cease to happen, creating the cascade of distance and aloneness that hallmarks the most unhappy relationships, the relationships that very well may be headed for divorce.
Here are 5 Ways to Prevent Your Partner From Quiet Quitting You.
Written by Marriage Counselor and Founder of the Counseling and Wellness Center of Pittsburgh, Stephanie Wijkstrom.
Call 412-322-2129 or fill out the form below to get started with Couples Therapy.
At the start of a relationship, it’s perfectly normal and natural to feel nerves. You are still trying to present the best version of yourselves. Over time though and as the relationship progresses, it’s vital to learn how to feel comfortable in your relationship. A lack of comfort with your partner can prevent you from growing as a couple and can possibly lead to problems in the future. If you’re looking for relationship advice for couples, read on for 8 ways to make your relationship more comfortable.
These tips were provided by Stephanie Wijkstrom, licensed marriage counselor and founder of the Counseling and Wellness Center of Pittsburgh. Want more relationship help? Check out Stephanie’s book, Creating Relationship Wellness: An Introduction to the Techniques of Mindfulness for Healthy Relationships.Interested in More Relationship Advice for Couples?
If you are interested in marriage counseling or couples therapy, you can reach us at 412-322-2129 or email us at info@counselingwellnesspgh.com to get started. Or contact us here.
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Jealousy is an important and useful emotion. It can indicate that something is amiss in our relationship. It can help us act in a way that brings greater closeness and security to our connections when we respond to the signals of this emotion in a supportive and relationship-supporting way.
Yet jealousy can also reign down on our relationship, it can pull apart the integrity of a connection and cause a caring partner to turn away from an otherwise healthy union. The difference is often in how the person who exhibits jealousy manifests the emotion into communication and behavior.
We should also differentiate between rational and irrational jealousy, and pathological and non-pathological forms of this emotion. For instance if you are cheating on a partner or behaving in ways that challenge the commitment that you have made, it is obvious that your partner will have a rational response of jealousy. If there has NOT been infidelity in your relationship and your partner is often or sometimes jealous, they may be experiencing irrational jealously.
Irrational jealousy is either pathological, meaning related to a perceptual, biological, or mental health related diagnosis such as borderline or narcissistic personality disorder. Non-pathological, rational, and irrational jealousy can generally be helped by a partner by following some of the below stated ways of helping a jealous partner. As an aside, if you suspect that your partner has irrational and pathological jealousy, meaning not related to a real cause, and in extreme or even dangerous outbursts, you should exercise caution as some people have even escalated to highly aggressive and dangerous level of anger over jealousy.
It is never your job to fix another person but with all of this in mind, here are ways to interact best with your jealous partner.
Are you being flirty, are you crossing boundaries or eliciting responses in some people around you? Think about what you are really doing and imagine how your own behavior would make you feel if the tables were turned.
Jealousy is attachment insecurity and fear of disconnection. Label it as it is and help your partner process their concerns honestly and consciously.
Every relationship is about sacrifice and compromise but we also must have self awareness. Don’t give too much, if you think that your partners jealously is irrational, you might want to consider stepping away from the relationship and not end up sacrificing friends, activities, and important others to reduce their jealousy.
If you’re dealing with jealousy in your relationship and are interested in marriage counseling or couples therapy, you can reach us at 412-322-2129 or email us at info@counselingwellnesspgh.com to get started. Or contact us here.
Stephanie Wijkstrom, Co-founder of the Counseling and Wellness Center of Pittsburgh was interviewed about How to Deal with a Jealous Girlfriend. Read her tips (cited here) along with those of other relationship experts.
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Premarital Counseling Questionnaire, prepare your relationship for a long happy marriage.
If you have recently answered ‘yes’ to a marriage proposal, then along with the rush of planning your version of the perfect wedding you also may also be considering whether you should be going to premarital counseling. Premarital counseling is a form of couples therapy that emphasizes wellness. Our counselors have put together a premarital questionnaire to look at your relationship and to determine if it makes the wellness grade for relationship health, this will help you and your partner to understand some parts of your relationship in a deeper way.
Don’t be afraid to feel a little uncomfortable, these are questions for couples that you wouldn’t normally think about but that also is what makes them especially powerful— to assess the strengths and various qualities of your unique partnership. This does not replace premarital counseling but it does help you each to examine your relationship in a mindful and healthy way.
With the help of questions like these, you and your partner can begin the lifelong process of deepening your understanding of yourselves and each other, keeping in mind, your answers to these questions will likely change over time. That is normal and to keep your marriage healthy, you should continually check in with each other and have hard conversations about things that matter to you. Wellness means that we manage and care for ourselves and our relationships in a way that keeps them strong and happy and that we strategically plan for success by growing our relationship to be stronger. Great marriages are created intentionally by addressing individual and relationship needs, prioritizing connection, listening and compromising. None of which are easy, but all of which are well worth it to live happily, in love, for the rest of your life.
If you’re interested in pre-marital counseling or couples therapy please contact us at 412-322-2129 or fill out the form below.
Repair or Run the Other Way? My partner had an affair, Should I Stay or Go?
If you or your partner has recently discovered an affair has been happening in your relationship, in this moment you are likely trembling, a blurry fury of agonizing hurt, the entire relationship now may feel foreign to you. As a couples counselor affairs and their tempestuous aftermath are ironed our my office couch. Both parts of the couple struggle to make sense of the betrayal and its costs, couples seek aid and asylum to find the answers to questions such as; should we stay together or separate, will our relationship ever regain a sense of normalcy, ‘am I weak or foolish for thinking of staying?’ ‘how can we fix this?”
A relationship is founded and grows upon a platform of trust, without the reinforcement that trust provides, the person who was victimized by the affair will be thrust into a state of panic, questioning every action and motive of their life and partner. An affair is a trauma to the relationship, often people who have learned of, or been told about an affair from their partner, suffer from symptoms similar to PTSD or Acute Stress Disorder. Sleeplessness, anxious and intrusive thoughts and images, fear of it happening again. Within the wake of this mountain of emotional upheaval they create their next course of action, remain together or disassemble their lives. Use this guideline to weigh the options, keeping in mind the decision is one that must be made by ones self, as it is personal, intimate, and an infinitely complex choice to make.
All of these grim facts in mind, there is hope, if the above questions can be answered with certainty then there is a path to be forged toward forgiveness. Not an easy one but it is possible to have a connection which is stronger after an affair. Trust is a formula of consistency over a time, trust can be rebuilt if the formula is followed. With understanding, truth, and commitment, love is a robust and golden vessel which proudly contains the tender blossoms of our lives. A vessel that is able to withstand complete annihilation and be recreated to become gleaming and full again, or sometimes it is best to pluck our precious contents and replant somewhere anew…
In love and care,
Counseling and Wellness Center of Pittsburgh and Monroeville
Stephanie Wijkstrom MS, LPC, NBCC
Learn MoreJackie Mandock, LPC, NCC, LBSC, MH is a counselor at Counseling and Wellness Centers of Pittsburgh- Monroeville. She provides therapy to children, adolescents, families, couples, and adults. Jackie approaches therapy from a holistic perspective, always staying mindful of how the body, mind, and spirit are interconnected. Jackie is certified in trauma focused cognitive behavioral therapy and is trained in parent-child interaction therapy. She has worked with many different concerns in these specialized populations ranging from attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder to trauma, as well as anxiety and depression. Jackie is also a licensed behavioral specialist with a strong background in autism. Jackie was a school-based therapist and is familiar with school concerns and supporting educational issues. She is a graduate of University of Pittsburgh with a Bachelors in Psychology and Neuroscience and from Chatham University with a Masters in Counseling Psychology. Jackie also has a Master Herbalist diploma from American College of Health Sciences.
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Melissa Taylor, LMFT
Melissa Taylor, LMFT, MS is a very enthusiastic and compassionate professional that believes in the power of combining counseling and physical activity when working through personal issues. As a marriage and family therapist, Melissa works through family system issues that may influence a person’s current life situation, relationship issues, and emotional instability. As individuals, we have grown up with different family dynamics, viewed many family relationships and observed different ways of communicating that influence present time relationships and how we cope with issues. Family patterns exist, so Melissa helps people identify and understand those patterns, and then learn how they influence current problems. Melissa has worked for years with adults and adolescents that have been abused, abandoned, felt depression and anxiety, or struggle with current relationships; therefore, she is very comfortable working with individuals, couples and families that are dealing with past and current difficulties. She encourages self-care practices through counseling and exercise to build self-esteem, trust, communication and coping skills, to improve their own lives. Melissa is a psychoanalytic therapist that also provides CBT and other family system theories in her work. She encourages clients to trust her and themselves in the counseling process to work together towards healing and personal goals.
Melissa has lived in multiple states to complete her education and build her career while learning different cultures. She received her Bachelor’s Degree in Psychology at the University of Kentucky, and completed her Master’s Degree in Marriage and Family Therapy at Drexel University in Philadelphia. She also had the privilege of completing a Master’s degree in Kinesiology at LSU in Baton Rouge, which allows her to integrate physical activity for clients in their therapeutic treatment process. She has provided therapy in Kentucky, Indiana, Louisiana, Texas and now Pennsylvania. She has worked with Rape Crisis Centers, FQHC’s, Inpatient and Outpatient locations, integrated healthcare centers, and group practices. Melissa has experience in different levels and types of mental health care and has learned how mental health symptoms affect all populations.
Melissa recently moved to Pittsburgh from Texas and enjoys exploring her new city with her husband and two young children. She enjoys playing and teaching her children, Zumba and other exercises, and cooking with her family. Melissa is very energetic and is always seeking new experiences for herself and her family.
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