Heather Aardema breaks down three types of love and shares what she learned about communication during a trip with her husband. She recommends a quiz on six universal needs to help couples identify which behaviors strengthen or weaken their relationships.
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Hi everybody. Welcome to today's Boost. People have been studying love for centuries. Why relationships have a huge impact on our health and well being. There's a construct I saw that breaks love into three dimensions. The first is unconditional. Your needs are my needs and I'll go to the end of the world to put a smile on your face. The second dimension is more conditional. If you meet my needs, I'll meet your needs. And the third dimension is it's all about my needs. You have needs? No, no, no. You're not allowed to have needs. A few months ago, my husband and I packed up the kids and we went to Florida for two weeks. We had a good time. However, my husband and I were having a little bit of trouble communicating. We were definitely not operating out of that first dimension of unconditional love. In those two weeks, I ate the same way I always eat. I was grain free and I was dairy free, but. But the food was sticking to me differently. In two weeks I gained seven pounds. Seven pounds. And I'm five four. So not only could you see it, but I could really feel it. So what do you do when you're not really getting along with your partner? My recommendation is to take the quiz that I've included in the email. It looks at six universal needs. And those needs are certainty, Variety, Significance, connection and love. Growth and contribution. When I took this quiz, the two that rose to the top for me were growth and significance. For my husband, it's certainty. Now, what I really like about this quiz is that you can break down those needs and resourceful and unresourceful behaviors. So for example, if certainty ends up being one of your needs, a resourceful behavior is to clean, is to organize. An unresourceful behavior is to overeat or to watch TV for three hours, which would be a huge amount of time in front of the television. When we are doing unresourceful behaviors, we are looking through, looking for happiness outside of ourselves. We're, we're looking to other things or other people to provide that happiness. So my recommendation to you is think about what dimension of love you're operating in, how you are feeling, what your needs are, and then how you are meeting those needs. Take the quiz. It will be very telling. Take care.
