What His Love Language Looks Like: Quality Time
Photo by Natalia Sobolivska on Unsplash
We’ve all heard it said that there are five love languages — well, at least, that’s what Gary Chapman, the author of The Five Love Languages: The Secret to Love That Lasts, says. Chapman breaks down the love languages into just a few categories: words of affirmation, quality time, acts of service, physical touch, and receiving gifts. We typically favor one or two love languages above the rest.
So how do you tell someone you love them without actually saying it? You might offer to pick up his medicine even though the pharmacy is out of your way, or leave a sweet note on the bathroom mirror for him to find, or hold his hand when you’re out and about. Expressing our love for someone is an intentional, intimate act, and no two people will show it the exact same way.
But here’s an even better question for you: how does your significant other express his love without saying those three magic words? Coming to understand and recognize his personal ways of showing us affection can not only help us appreciate his loving acts even more, but learn how to show him love in a way that will resonate more deeply — even if his particular love language isn’t native to us. Learning to speak our significant other’s love language is one of the most effective ways to reinforce and enhance our relationship’s bond.
Being that there are five love languages, and every one of them is so unique, we’ve decided to create a series of “What His Love Language Looks Like” articles, each dedicated to a specific love language. This week, we’re focusing on quality time.
What is quality time?
Quality time is a love language that centers around closeness and undistracted, meaningful time spent together. Spending quality time with someone sends the message that being in relationship with them is more important to us than scrolling through our socials, answering a text, or anything else we could be doing. It’s meant to increase our emotional intimacy with someone else by allowing them to feel valuable to us.
How can we offer quality time?
Spending quality time with someone means spending dedicated time together — giving them, or whatever you’re doing together, your undivided attention and investment. This means putting our phone away when we’re watching a movie with him, actually listening when he’s telling us about his new obsession, and having regular nights just the two of us.
Here are some specific examples of what quality time looks like:
Sharing meals together as often as possible
Making eye contact and actively listening when he’s telling a story
Having a sitcom that you watch together (or a book you read together!)
Learning the rules of his video game and watching him play a round
Planning and prioritizing weekly date nights
Putting your phone away for extended periods of time
Quality time doesn’t require us to set aside hours out of every day to stare into each other’s eyes or plan extravagant outings every weekend, but instead, to make whatever time we have with our significant other meaningful.
What quality time can do for him.
We’re one of the few people that can offer our significant other quality time. But even so, spending quality time with a close friend or sibling won’t feel the same to him as quality time spent with us — so if this is his love language, we can’t count on others in his life to provide it.
Being present and intentional when offering quality time will make him feel valuable, desired, and respected. Ensuring that he doesn’t feel the need to fight for our attention will solidify trust, deepen our appreciation for one another, and increase our relationship’s security by reigniting the connection that brought us together in the first place.
In short…
Our time is precious — we don’t always have loads of it to spare, but offering our significant other quality time, during which we’re totally present, is one of the most meaningful, romantic gifts we can give them.
