Love tank generally means how loved you feel. It is a meter that is not visible through your eyes, rather it can be described as a bucket of feelings that fills up when your partner shows the love you wish for. On the other hand, if you feel like you are not loved enough by your partner the love tank slowly empties down and as a result, relationships don’t last.
I get several emails on a regular basis stating
“We don’t have enough fun on a regular basis”
“My partner don’t have enough time for me”
“We are seeming to distant ourselves apart”
“My partner is not showing me love anymore”
And the list goes on and on. These are the statements that actually end a relationship. The efforts that you used to put before slowly perish with time.
Couples start blaming it on time, work and loss of affection for this. But this is somewhat not the case. Your love meter can be made full again and the relationship can work out forever. But in order to do so, one needs to understand his/her partner.
What is the difference between an empty love tank and a full love tank?
We, humans, have a need for both mental and physical affection. Depending on the person whether he is in or out of the relationship, the love meter’s value changes. In simple words, if you feel like you are loved enough by your partner your love tank starts filling up. Viceversa, if you feel like your partner is not loving you anymore like before or showing his/her love to you anymore the value starts dropping. The definition of both terms may change according to the type of person they are.
You know you have a full love tank when your emotional and physical needs are fulfilled by your partner. For example, if your partner is giving you ample time if your partner accepts you in front of everyone if your partner cares about you and shows possessiveness about you, these things will make you feel that your partner loves you and your love tank remains full.
Similarly on the other hand, if your partner doesn’t give you enough time, he/she is busy with their own work, you guys don’t have good times anymore, the importance of you in his/her life goes down slowly, your love meter starts deteriorating. If under such circumstances, the love tank keeps going down there comes a time when it goes empty. There are also other factors such as broken trust, unsolved conflict, a cold war, stress and so on that contribute to an empty love tank. This is the time when you feel like the relationship can’t last anymore and you decide to move on.
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The love languages
Your ex is your ex today as you or your ex stopped putting on effort anymore. At the initial stages of a relationship, you start putting in a lot of effort. Be it more time or doing minute-to-minute things that your partner loves. With time, these efforts start declining as the matter of “she is mine anyways” comes up. When this happens, you or your partner stops providing you with the love languages that you/your partner experienced at the beginning. Things become boring and you start thinking it is not working anymore.
Dr. Gary Chapman used the term “love tank” in his book “The five love languages” where he mentions this.
Every person in this world is different and not everyone wishes for the same love language. You might send him/her lubby dubby messages on a regular basis but what she/he wants is time. Understanding the love language your partner craves is very important.
Having said so, there are generally 5 love languages
- Assisting your partner
- Small or big gifts
- Words of Affirmation
- Quality time
- Physical touch
As said before, not everyone loves the same love language. So you need to determine which one actually keeps your love tank fulfilled. If someone helps you out with work then you fall under the assisting your partner love language. If you are impressed with gifts (be it small, expensive, or big), you fall under the gifts love language.
Similarly, if you feel your love tank getting full by compliments or encouraging messages from your partner you fall under the “words of affirmation” category. If a hug or a kiss from your partner on a regular basis fulfills your love tank or makes your day then you fall under the “physical touch” category. And if you are someone who wants more time from your partner, be it spending more time with you or continuously talking over the phone, then my friend you belong to the “time” category.
Knowing your partner is important and plays a major role in keeping the relationship forever. If you keep pampering your partner with the correct love language your partner craves then that relationship will definitely last, no matter what happens.
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Empty love tank is not only limited to partners
This is indeed true. Empty love tank is not only limited to partners. Rather, even every child goes through this empty love tank. This leads to the build-up of a feeling of rejection, unwanted and abandonment within the child. A child needs emotional love as well. Remember, a child always grows up to be an adult but the past stays with him/her throughout his/her life. This past may haunt or make him/her feel good about it.
Psychologists say that a child always contains an empty love tank that needs to be filled up with affection and unconditioned love to make it full. A child is generally seemed to misbehave when he/she does not get enough love. Not to be confused with pampering, children are considered pure souls who just need love and guidance to make choose the right direction. If being a parent you are not taking care of your child, he or she will have problems choosing the right path. Usher your child with the love he/she needs and just see how it works like a wonder for your child.
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The actual problems with couples
I have seen couples complaining “Our love is gone”, “Our love faded away with time”, “We do not spend much time with each other” and so on. What is love? Love is actually an emotion that binds people together. I have seen unmarried couples blaming it on their relationship that things couldn’t make it till marriage. Simultaneously, I have seen married couples complaining that things won’t work as the spark is not there anymore.
This is purely wrong! It’s you who’s not willing to put the effort anymore. It’s you who has taken things for granted. It would only work out when you start communicating with your partner, when you understand what fulfills your partner’s love tank.
And the same goes for your partner as well. Things will surely make it till the last once you understand each other and put in the efforts both wants. This is how you exactly convert the empty love tank into a full love tank.
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How to cope with an empty love tank and save your relationship?
1. Understanding
It is very important to understand your partner when it comes to converting an empty love tank to a full one. It takes years to understand someone and when you actually get to know the love languages of your partner and what your partner actually wants, you are already one step ahead.
2. Sit down and start talking with your partner
After understanding your partner, it’s time to have a conversation about what’s going wrong in the relationship and how to make things go the right way. The communication gap has been a major problem since the introduction of new technologies. Even after the introduction of mobile phones, Skype, Facebook and so on, people forgot the easiest way to communicate which is to sit and talk about their problems. Just talk about why your or your partner’s love tank is not fulfilled? What you can do to fulfill it? What changes do you both need to do to avoid failure?
3. Consider each point that’s not working out
This is important as finding out the main problem is the tough part. Are you doing enough to make this relationship work? Who’s fault it is? What is the main problem? How do you solve this problem to fill up your partner’s love tank? Slowly solve these questions and start immediately on them.
4. Either give up or repair your love tank
After you sort everything out, it’s time for you to go for the pairing process. There are two options. Either you go back and try to repair things to make it last forever. Or you just let go off things and give up. The second one is always the easiest one. The first one is the tougher one. But if succeeded the first one can bear you a result that you can’t possibly think of. Does it mean that giving up won’t help you get better results? If you can’t stick to somebody even after knowing him/her for so many years and giving up so easily, how would you possibly make it with another person who will be so new to you?
This is the sole reason why marriages don’t work out nowadays. Looking for better options and not focusing on the fact of fulfilling your partner’s love tank has been a major problem. In this world of searching for the “best for myself” we are losing the correct ones who were actually the perfect ones for us.
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