Quality Time

Love language number four is quality time. Quality time is one that people seem to think they understand, but oftentimes don’t quite hit the mark.

For the most part, quality time is as it sounds, spending time together. BUT that’s not where it ends. The most important components of quality time are not only spending time, but giving your partner your undivided attention. This means that sitting together and rewatching Game of Thrones for the third time and simultaneously scrolling through your phone while your partner sits on the other end of the couch and does the same is not quality time.

You’re in the same space, but you’re not focused on one another, you’re focused on the show and your socials.

You’ll know that you’re hitting the mark or that your partner is if you get the sense that when you’re engaging in these activities that you are in some sense “giving [your] lives to each other” (Chapman 1992).

Two “dialects” as Dr. Chapman refers to them that may help you make that mark are Quality Conversation and Quality Activities.

Quality conversation refers to “sympathetic dialogue where two individuals are sharing their experiences, thoughts, feelings, and desires in a friendly uninterrupted context” (Chapman 1992). You’ll know if you’re doing it if you’re, first, giving that focused attention, and then second, listening to understand, validate, and empathize, rather than listening to respond. This requires time spent sitting together or doing an activity together that allows you to really share with one another.

Quality activities, alternatively, refers to doing anything “in which one or both of you has an interest” (Chapman 1992). During these activities all it requires is that it’s something one of you wants to do and the other is willing to do it with them. In an ideal world you guys would be into the same things, but that’s not always the case, and in that case, it’s extremely powerful to do something with your partner because they want to and because you love them. Your partner can tell when you’re “doing something [they] want to do, and doing it wholeheartedly”. It shifts the emphasis on the activity from the actual doing to the why you’re doing. The point it to be together, regardless of what the activity is.

For those of you whom quality time is your primary love language, what kinds of things really fill your love tank? For those for whom it is not but are partnered with a quality time speaker, how have you adjusted to speak their language?

If this is something you struggle with and you’re in New York State, click the button below and let’s work together to help you speak your partner’s language.