Five Love Languages and The Secret To True Happiness

Love is a powerful force that has driven humanity since its earliest days. One of the most fundamental human emotions, love is the key to human bonding and can be defined as a special or extraordinary state of excitement about another person or thing – like a friend, a beloved pet, or even a beautiful partner. Love encompasses an array of positive and constructive emotional and psychological states, from an overriding sense of good faith, the most sublime religious belief, to the loosest romantic enjoyment. While love is a powerful emotion, it’s important to note that love can be unhealthy and destructive if it is not nurtured properly or if it is used excessively.

The powerful emotional charge of love has been called “the allure of love,” and “chemistry of love.” The exchange of physical intimacy – a hug, kiss, snuggle, and intimate moments with a partner – is the most direct path to feelings of love. However, there is an additional route to experiencing love: the exchange or giving of non-physical affection or affections. A deep personal connection to another person or a group of people creates an environment that allows for feelings of personal connectedness and connection – the “love language feel loved.”

The “love language” is basically a set of uniquely individualized neurological processes that allow people to experience love in unique ways. It is largely unknown which of these brain regions actually generate the specific responses to love. However, a few of the more common areas associated with feelings of love are the medial part of the brain (medial cortex) and the insula, both of which directly access parts of the brain associated with emotions. The human brain is remarkably complex, and each person has unique connections to others and other people. People with similar personalities, interests, beliefs, and experiences often share neurological pathways in similar but distinct ways.

When love is truly present and nurtured in the right way, it can lead to exhilarating highs in physiological arousal, including an intense physiological response to sexual stimuli. This physiological response is typically associated with euphoria, although other symptoms such as irritability, moodiness, anxiety and restlessness may also be felt. These “spontaneous emotional reactions” are the opposite of those often associated with feelings of love, such as feeling emotionally connected and genuinely invested in the other person. When this “spontaneous emotional response” (or EROA) is successfully triggered in the absence of any emotional input from the other person, it can lead to the exciting experience of being intensely close to another person, such as falling deeply in love.

Intuitively, one would think that being in love would lead to increased levels of happiness. While many of us have been taught that being in love is the ultimate goal in romantic relationships, very few of us have been shown how to experience true, deep, heartfelt feelings for another person. Most people unknowingly pursue happiness at the expense of other goals, such as family, career, material possessions, friends, and other important aspects of their lives. When you place the feelings of love and romance above these other necessities in life, you’re likely to feel unhappy – if not chronically unhappy. To feel happy in other areas of your life, you must learn to balance happiness with all of the other aspects of your life. This requires you to make time for relationships outside of the romantic one.

There are five love languages: physical expression of affection (physical kiss, cuddling, holding hands, hugging), verbal expression of affection (speaking lovingly, telling stories), nurturing of affection (benevolence toward a pet, sharing a hug), and affectionate memory of affections (keeping a personal journal of your feelings for your partner). While it is possible to bring all of these languages together and to experience the happiness and fulfillment that come from them simultaneously (in fact, many couples do just this), it’s not easy. Love languages are quite different from one another, even when they’re brought together. In order to bring all five of these languages together for total happiness, you must practice a certain amount of flexibility with your feelings.