Understanding your partner’s love language can elevate your Valentine’s date experience and strengthen your relationship with your partner.
Navigating love may be complicated, but planning a date on the 14th of February is equally not for the weak. From finding the perfect gift to finding reservations, Valentine’s Day comes with a lot of pressure and high expectations. Yet, whether you’ve known your partner for ages or have still not said the four-letter word, this day is about celebrating your partner and not taking the love you both luckily stumbled upon for granted.
Valentine’s Day might be seen as cliché, but it allows couples to reignite the spark they might’ve felt on their very first date. And what better way to celebrate that love than by understanding your partner’s love language?
Love Languages was first introduced in a book – The Five Love Languages – on how we prefer to give and receive love. “People speak different love languages. Your emotional love language and the language of your spouse may be different as Chinese and English,” wrote the author, Gary Chapman.
So, can celebrating Valentine’s Day using the five love languages be the secret to keeping the love alive? Dr Martin Graff, a Senior Lecturer in Psychology at the University of South Wales who specialises in romantic relationships stresses the importance of knowing your partner. “If we practice these love languages … the whole kind of thing of knowing somebody else, of being considerate of what they want, I think that’s kind of key in relationships.”
The love languages: A personalised date for your partner
“Knowing what people want. It’s a bit like celebrating somebody’s significant birthday when they’re quite introverted, they don’t want a lot of people to be aware of it and they just want a quiet event, and their partner organises a big event, that’s not gonna do it is it? It’s understanding what people want,” said Dr Martin Graff.
The art of gift giving:
When it comes to gifts, there is no one type fits all. Your partner may fall under one of those three categories: sentimental, practical or a prideful “material girl”.
Many struggle with how much to buy or how much to spend on gifts, and many just throw money on the problem instead of thinking about what is suitable for their partner.
Yet in this case, one man’s/woman’s “cheap” is another man’s/woman’s “thoughtful”. That is the importance of dating someone you’re emotionally compatible with in terms of what you both love and appreciate.
Most unique gift idea in 2025
Quality time:
You might see your partner every day, but it barely matters if you’re not spending time to connect with them. With the right atmosphere, time spent away from hectic life
“That’s part of the idea of people having date nights is to not letting your love and relationship fade into a kind of existence, and that you have those periods once a month or whatever where you go out on dates and do something different or you go to the movies … you just do something exciting for that one day,” said Dr Martin Graff.
While there are many ways to enjoy your time together, the classic dinner date is classic for a reason. Not only does it give you the chance to connect in a different environment, but what is a better love language than sharing delicious food?
Acts of service:
This love language may not spark the most passionate sort of love, but it works to nurture a deeper sort of love that comes from knowing and caring for your partner. Things like taking over your partner’s chores, cooking them dinner or making breakfast in bed. This one might be the most selfless act as you think of your partner’s needs and not your own.
“You wouldn’t want someone to be coming up to you with a cup of coffee every ten minutes if you weren’t reciprocating. It all depends on what they consider to be important,” Dr Martin Graff.
Words of affirmation:
We often hear the saying “Actions speak louder than words”. While this can be true, for many it is essential to hear genuine and reassuring words to feel loved. It can be anything from a traditional love letter to making a Spotify playlist of your favourite songs.
“It’s also the day that you’ve got kind of the license to declare your love for somebody which you might’ve been frightened to do beforehand. So people might think there’s this person I like that I can’t bring the courage to, but Valentine’s Day is an excuse to do that.”
Physical touch:
There are many free ways you can express your love to your partner through physical touch that needs no explanation. But if you want to make a dressed-up night out of it, then taking Salsa or Bachata classes can be a unique way to celebrate and remember your Valentine’s night.
Salsa Buena Dance Classes has amazing reviews praising the talented teacher and the great atmosphere of the place.
Bailando Central also provides Salsa and Bachata classes but in the bar setting of Revolucion de Cuba.
Rekindling the spark: why celebrating Valentine’s Day matters?
Similarly to the couples who are still enjoying their honeymoon phase, this day comes as an opportunity to reignite the passionate love for couples in all stages.
“Passionate love is that idea … that spark that kind of excitement, that kind of early days of passion and early kisses and all that kind of stuff that kind of makes you feel good and makes you feel euphoric,” said Dr Martin Graff.
“So there’s that kind of early stages of love which triggers some parts of your brain and if you do an MRI scan the parts of your brain associated with the pleasure and euphoria light up. And the parts of your brain associated with depression and sadness and even reasoning tend to sort of die down and that might explain why people in love might go crazy and tend to have their head in the clouds.”
While this holiday celebration tends to be centred around this idea of feeling the euphoria for a day, the real meaning of love that should be treasured, and for the lucky couples, aimed for is a more consistent and slow sort of love.
Infatuation might make everything feel perfect at first, but long-term love is built on knowing how to communicate affection in ways that resonate. When a partner recognizes and responds to your love language, it shows they understand what makes you feel valued.
As Dr Martin Graff explains, “There’s also those elements of compassionate love. People say they fall in love at first sight but probably they don’t, because love is really all about trusting your partner, showing some affection for your partner, that kinda thing. So it’s more of those long-lasting kind of things about your partner and what you do for your partner, which is real love.”
So while the previously mentioned ideas can inspire you, it may also come to many as reassuring that there is no right or wrong way to plan Valentine’s Day. At the end of the day, the one love language that can replace all is the effort you put in your partner to show you really do still and always have cared.