7 Ways to Show Love on Valentine's Day
Feb 13, 2025
Valentine’s Day is a time to celebrate your sweetheart and deepen your love. Most people chose to do this with gifts or fancy outings like we see couples do in romantic movies, but there are so many ways to show love.
Love has 7 elements: vulnerability, compassion, curiosity, service, intimacy, commitment, and connection. Each one contributes to the strength and stability of love. In this post, I’ll give an example of how you might strengthen your relationship within each element. Pick one to try with your special someone. Make this Valentine’s Day even more meaningful by putting intentional effort into your relationship.
Vulnerability
Vulnerability is the foundation of love because it builds and maintains trust. Without it, love becomes unstable and insecure. If you would like to deepen your trust, this exercise is perfect for you.
It’s called an eye gazing meditation. All you have to do is sit a few feet from your partner, set a timer for 15 minutes, and gaze into their eyes. It’s simple, yet powerful. While you’re gazing into each other’s eyes, refrain from touching each other and avoid distractions. Allow your partner to really see you and try to really see them.
As you do this, acknowledge any unpleasant emotions you experience. Vulnerability can be uncomfortable. The discomfort helps you practice trusting your partner. You are both there to support each other. Your eye gazing exercise is a judgement-free zone.
Compassion
Marriage.com defines compassion as “love that allows us to see our partners for who they truly are, flaws and all, and still love them unconditionally.” In essence, compassion is vulnerability’s counterpart. Vulnerability allows your partner to see you without judgement or pretense and compassion allows you to see your partner without judgement or pretense.
To increase compassion in your relationship, try active listening. Take a moment to check in with each other. Ask your partner how they have been feeling lately and if there is anything that’s been on their mind. As they talk, mirror their words, validate their experience, show appreciation for their vulnerability, and practice empathy.
Mirroring their words helps to show them that you understand what they are saying. Every once in a while, repeat what they are saying back to them in your own words. This gives them a chance to correct you if you didn’t quite get what they were trying to say.
Validating their experience doesn’t require that you understand why they feel the way they do (that’s what empathy is for). Validating someone's experience is when you show respect and care for what they are feeling without judgement. You allow them space to express their own thoughts and feelings without projecting your own opinion.
Be sure to verbally thank them for being honest and vulnerable with you. It’s not easy to be that open, support them with appreciation!
Lastly, practice putting yourself in their shoes as you listen. Empathy is a powerful connector of hearts.
Curiosity
Curiosity is a powerful part of building a connection. Being curious about your partner means having a desire to understand how they experience life. And feeling understood is a crucial part of feeling loved.
This activity is an easy one. You’re going to get to know each other with a big long list of questions. There are a few options for where to find those questions: a book, a box of cards, or a website.
Grab some snacks, settle into the couch, and enjoy learning about your significant other!
Service
Service is the aspect of love that gives for the sake of giving. It doesn’t expect anything back, it just wants to show care for another person.
This activity takes a bit more work, and the effort is so worth it. To deepen your relationship with service, start by asking yourself this question: “What is one way I can serve my partner today?” And then do whatever it is that you thought of as soon as possible. The next step is to turn that question into a habit of service.
Every morning when you wake up, ask yourself that question. “What is one way I can serve my partner today?” Once you think of your answer, do it as soon as possible. And if you can’t do it right away, put a reminder in your phone right away.
Try this for a week and take notice of the impact it makes on your relationship. Do you feel closer to your partner? Do they feel closer to you?
Intimacy
When we hear “intimacy” most of us immediately think of sex, but intimacy goes way beyond the physical. Physical closeness is just one part of intimacy.
Intimacy is a sense of closeness, trust, and unity. To foster intimacy, it is important that you know your partner’s love language. How do they prefer to show and receive love? What kinds of actions are meaningful to them? Gifts? Quality time? Physical affection?
If they can’t decide, here’s a quiz they can take to help them figure out their love language: 5lovelanguages.com
Once you know their love language, write a list of ways you could show love to them using their preferred language. This valentine’s day, tailor your celebration around their love language.
Commitment
Showing commitment to each other creates security in a relationship. It relieves anxiety and forges a bond that is stable and dependable. Strengthening commitment takes a bit of time (like most aspects of love), so this activity will also take some time. (I guarantee it will be time well spent.)
The task is to start a love journal. The first step is to buy a journal specifically dedicated to your relationship. This is going to become your record of love. The idea is to use it to write love letters back and forth. One person will start. They’ll pour their affection out onto the page and then hand it off to their partner to read. And then it’s the other person’s turn to write a love letter.
It is important to be compassionate as you keep up your love journal. You may write a heartfelt note and then wait anxiously for a response, and then become frustrated when you don’t get it right away. Life is busy and hard and overwhelming! Be forgiving of your partner and practice giving without the expectation of receiving. The point of the love journal is to show that you are committed to your love, even when life gets tough.
Connection
I’m sure by now, you have noticed that all 7 elements of love bleed into each other. There is a lot of overlap, especially when talking about connection. All of the previous elements of love contribute to connection in some way.
Connection is a feeling of being bound together, like your partner is your other half. If you want to strengthen that feeling, try a daily dance.
When you dance together, you move together as one. You and your other half create something together. It’s simple, but finding a time to dance together daily gives you a daily opportunity to reconnect and remind your hearts that you’re a team. Set aside 5 minutes everyday to hold each other and sway to your favorite song.
Happy Valentine’s Day! May your love shine bright.
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