Wednesday, 03 March 2010 16:07 | and posted in Relationships
The fifth and final love language is that of compliments. Here love is received as you notice and affirm a person and their achievements. It's as if your carefully chosen compliments literally pour in love through a person's ears!! This is the verbal love language and for a compliment lover to receive love they need you to say it.
There are three types of compliments that you can give someone. The first is affection of which "I love you" is the most obvious example. Compliment lovers need this communicated verbally more than others. If "I love you" becomes cliched or unthinking then love stops being communicated. Imagination is therefore required to say this sentiment in different ways. For example, "You are so much fun to be with," or "I'm so proud of you," or "I missed you today."
The second set of compliments relate to who a person is by complimenting the positive aspects of their personality or appearance. To be really effective this kind of compliment needs to be specific. For example, telling someone they are encouraging will be more effective if you back it up with when you noticed this recently. Compliment lovers like to be noticed. Complimenting appearance needs to be similar and not just a "you look good" but expanding it with something specific, e.g., "that outfit really highlights your beautiful eyes."
Thirdly, compliment a person's achievements by praising them when they've done well and drawing out a positive comment when they haven't done so well. The latter is very important as on bad days compliment lovers need to hear words of affirmation even more. Remember that this is just one set of three styles of complimenting. Therefore it should perhaps only figure in a third of your compliments. The issue being that focussing too much on complimenting achievement can lead to a person trying to earn love by doing well. We need to let people know they are loved for who they are and not for what they do or achieve.
The challenge for non compliment lovers is thinking of something posiove to say. Too many of us find it easier to say something negative or critical rather then saying something positive. In a verbal love language like compliments we need to make sure our words are majoritively positive so that they are communicating love. Writing down a list of compliments or noting down positive things you've noticed can be a good place to start when loving a compliment lover.
You will also definitely need to get over the perceived "cheese-factor." Remember your words are love and not cheese to a compliment lover!! Becoming comfortable saying these things in private is only the starting place as public compliments communicate even more love to a compliment lover. One reason weddings are so beautiful is that families and friends feel released to compliment the bride and groom. However, any celebration or ceremony is an ideal place to build up and publically compliment a compliment lover.
Based upon Dr Gary Chapman's book, The Five Love Languages.
