Is Your Love Tank on Empty?

Do you know that you have a way you need to be loved? It is called your love strategy and is your own unique way in which you feel loved and fulfilled. Each one of us has our own love strategy and whether or not your love strategy gets filled determines how fulfilled you feel in your relationships and yourself.


A love strategy can be seen as an internal LOVE TANK and if our love tank is full we feel vibrant, fully energized, confident, happy, grateful, beautiful and at peace. If our love tank is empty we feel depressed, empty, lonely, insecure, not good enough, lethargic and often angry.  The ability to fulfill each other’s independent love strategies will ensure you have a successful, loving and fulfilling relationship which thrives instead of dies.

So how do you determine your love strategy and how do you communicate your needs to get your love tank filled up?

The first step is to ask yourself the following questions…

As a child, when was the first time you felt loved? What was that specific time? (Notice the first images which come to mind and who you were with and what you were feeling)

How did you know you were loved? (What was happening and who was it that was ensuring you felt loved)

We could have learnt love from a loving grandparent,  parent, sibling or close friend.

As children this original feeling of love would have formed a neurological mapping within and therefore form the way in which we need to be loved. Our thought processes would have followed an order and therefore an imprint is made in our belief system which tells the mind that when X happens, I feel loved. (Not very romantic…but true). For example we may have learnt that when our parents complement us, told us we were good or rewarded us for doing something great we would have learnt that when we hear those comments or see that reward then we are loved.  It is an emotional equation which is determined and created by our inner child. It is our LOVE LANGUAGE and if a person does not speak our own love language then we will never feel completely loved.

When our love tank is on empty we begin to display neediness, anger, frustration, possessiveness and we tend to build up a lot of unexpressed resentment towards our partner. This resentment comes from a repeated cycle of unmet expectations. However for most of us, these expectations are subconscious and we do not completely know how we need to be loved or that we are not being directly fulfilled. We also have no idea how to communicate our needs to others.

Now, because we process our world through our senses (visual, auditory, kinesthetic) think about how you process love and what is your mapping made up of?

Do you respond to visual cues? These include a look from your partner, gift receiving, seeing a response from your partner, seeing your partner do something special for you)

Do you respond to sounds? These may include words from your partner and compliments, their tonality, music, sounds in nature and comments you may be telling yourself. The best example is hearing them say, I love you.)

Do you respond to feelings? These may include touch, intimacy, spending quality time together, receiving acts of kindness, doing activities together or feeling it in your gut and intuition)

You may be saying, well…I respond to all those things. Of course you do, however there is one which is most dominant and one which you respond to first and once that initial process is met the rest can follow smoothly. For example you may recognize here that you process love through visual cues which means you first respond to seeing a look of love on your partners face. You then, for example, may tell yourself you are loved and then feel a sense of love within. Your love strategy would then look like this…

Visual→ Auditory→ Kinesthetic

Or you may hear compliments and a gentle tonality from your partner and see a loving look on their face, which makes you feel warm and fuzzy and loved within and then you tell yourself you are loved. So then your love strategy may look something like this…

Auditory →Visual →Kinesthetic →Auditory

How great would it be if we knew exactly how each one of us needed to be loved and then be able to fulfill this strategy? That would mean we would speak each other’s love language and be able to ensure they felt loved and complete every day, in the exact process in which they need to be loved. We ensure their inner child was full and felt safe and can thrive in an environment of trust, belief and faith.

The thing is…we actually express our own love strategy…meaning that we love others in the way we need to be loved, not necessarily in the way they need to be loved. It also means that our partner expresses love to us in the way they need to be loved not necessarily in the way we need to be loved. Which is why in time, although we can acknowledge our partners for fulfilling us, there is still a part of us which remains empty and unloved. If this persists over time without any recognition or communication, what builds up is resentment and loneliness which then causes distance between couples and may cause a person to seek love somewhere else.

Let’s look at Bill & Jane for example…  Jane, after 15 years of marriage is feeling frustrated, unloved lonely and needy. She complains of Bill not loving her and not being able to show her love. Bill feels shocked when he hears this because he says to Jane, How can you think I do not love you, look at how much I do for you…I work so hard to give you a lifestyle, I help around the house…I even ensure your car is washed and full every week. Bill feels hurt by the even suggestion that he does not Jane and cannot understand what more he can do. When Jane begins to explore her love strategy she realizes that what is missing is personal one on one time with Bill, seeing him with her spending quality time together and having him listen to her and take an interest in her life. She realizes that if she had all those things she would feel truly happy and fulfilled as a woman. She realized a deep need to be heard and to be understood and truly acknowledged.

This is a common situation between couples. Can you relate?

The key now is to look at how you can communicate your love strategy to your partner.

For a start, print out this article and go through it with your partner. Get clear on how you need to be loved and how your partner can fulfill your needs. The clearer you can be the better, because this is about teaching each other our love language without them having to guess or assume. This means we are taking personal responsibility for our needs and communicating them in a clear mature way in order to ensure we are filled. No more expectations, no more assumptions, no more disappointment…this now means you have a road map to fulfilling each other on a very deep and powerful level.

Help your partner by giving them suggestions and then listen actively to what your partner needs and how you can fulfill them as well. Make a commitment to do something specifically for your partner each day the more simple the better, as long as it is consistent, creative and genuinely given to them with love and care. Please email me if you have any difficulties or require further coaching assistance with this.

Imagine how relationships can thrive if we can both focus on speaking each other’s love language and giving them exactly what they need. Imagine receiving that back…we will be a thriving planet vibrating with love and vitality… bring it on!

Enjoy!

To your truth and freedom,

Cheryne


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