How to honour your love on Valentine’s Day

BREANNE MASSEY STAFF REPORTER breanne@kamloopsthisweek.com

Valentine’s Day is less than a week away and Viviane Wingerak, a clinical counsellor from Synergy Counselling Kamloops, is sharing insights about how to use the five love languages to strengthen romantic relationships.

Wingerak encourages couples to read Gary Chapman’s book, The 5 Love Languages: The Secret to Love That Lasts, to practise self-love and to strengthen intimacy for couples — both new and existing relationships alike.

“The five love languages are most helpful when they enhance couples’ understanding of each other, but also when it improves a couples’ ability to meet each other’s needs as it would have felt instinctually,” Wingerak said.

“We have to understand each other’s love languages. It makes us more love-bilingual. It’s our job to communicate better and to understand each other.”

The five love languages are words of affirmation, quality time, receiving gifts, acts of service and physical touch. However, Wingerak urges couples to continuously ask one another questions to develop deep mutual understanding and accepting about what is important to the other person by honouring their needs.

“It’s about speaking each other’s languages and understanding,” she said. “The consensus and compromise is not always achievable. It’s not always about compromise. It’s sometimes about shared logic.”

While the potential for conflict can increase on Valentine’s Day, due to unspoken expectations about how to spend the day,

Wingerak urges couples to stop and talk about how best to celebrate together.

Wingerak said respecting your significant other, and making them feel seen, does not have to cost money.

Some of Wingerak’s suggestions for each love language:

• Words of affirmation: Write a letter for your partner, outlining why they’re special to you, or make them a card to express your gratitude for your partnership;

• Quality time: Pick up the ingredients to cook a meal together;

• Receiving gifts: Bake your partner’s favourite food to express edible love;

• Acts of service: If you live together, you can clean the house with extra care or wash your partner’s car for them;

• Physical touch: Hold hands in public places, cuddle or give a head scratch.

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Guest Conductor Jennifer Tung conducts In The Time of Our Disbelieving during the Kamloops Symphony Orchestra’s Feb. 4 concert at Sagebrush Theatre, Mozart’s Dark Side. ALLEN DOUGLAS/KTW