Love Tips: For Dumpees, Married Couples, & Yourself

By Charlie Huntington, M.A., Ph.D. Candidate
​Reviewed by Tchiki Davis, M.A., Ph.D.

Love tips are science-driven methods for increasing the amount of meaningful connection and intimacy you have in your life. Psychology research can show the way to greater love.​

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Who could be more excited about writing an article about Love Tips than a couple therapist? I am all about learning to care for ourselves and each other. As humans, we have a lot of tendencies that work to ensure our survival, but not our happiness. Your brain is more concerned with whether you make it through life than with how you feel about yourself along the way. ​

Loving ourselves and loving others are two of the greatest joys in life, so let’s look at some tips for getting some more of those gifts in our lives.

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What Are Love Tips? (A Definition)​

Love Tips are recommendations that can help you experience more love in your life. My recommendations fall into two broad, but highly related, categories, according to the two primary approaches psychologists have to thinking about love (Heshmati & Donaldson, 2020). We can think of love as both an energy that exists between people, and as a positive emotion that we can experience. You have probably experienced love in both ways. The first experience of love – energy between people – is what happens when you reunite with a dear friend, give your significant other a gift, or your cat or dog greets you when you come home.
 
The other way to think about love is to think of it as an emotion. In this sense, love is an experience you can have almost any time, for any reason. In the past week, I have felt love while watching people on TV whom I did not know, while looking at the mountains that rise up behind my house, and while being swept into nostalgic memories by a song from my teenage years.
 
It is my personal, somewhat scientific opinion, that the more you experience love, in either of these ways, the better off you will be. But in case you’re not convinced that more love is good, let’s see what the science says.

Why Are Love Tips Important?​

The field of positive psychology makes it quite clear that for optimal functioning – to be our best selves – we need other people, and we need to be close to them (Donaldson & Donaldson, 2018). If we want to experience close relationships, and all the benefits that come with them, we need to understand how we build and maintain them. That’s where love tips come in.
 
At the same time, the whole thing about “putting your own oxygen mask on first” is true in this domain, too. To love other people selflessly and genuinely, it helps to feel good about ourselves first (Neff & Beretvas, 2013). You might not be surprised to know that self-love and loving others can mutually reinforce each other (Campbell & Baumeister, 2001) – the more you have of one, the more you will have of the other (unless your self-love is truly narcissistic in nature). So it is important to work on both at the same time – showing love to ourselves and to others.

Benefits of Love Tips

Having more love will benefit you: research tells us again and again that having high-quality relationships makes us happier and healthier while having few relationships or unhealthy ones stresses us out and decreases our well-being (Baumeister & Leary, 1995; Uchino et al., 1996). And research is clear on the importance of self-love to our well-being, too (Neff, 2011).

Love Tips for Dumpees

“Deep in your wounds are seeds, waiting to grow beautiful flowers.” – Niti Majethia
​
My primary love tip for the recently dumped is to do your very best to see this as an opportunity for personal growth. Stressful life situations, as the quote above suggests, are an occasion for us to look inward, assess ourselves, and take meaningful action (Tedeschi et al., 1998).
 
If you have recently been dumped, how you choose to look at the situation matters a great deal (Tashiro & Frazier, 2003). Seeing the situation as either “all my fault” or “all their fault” is a natural tendency when emotions are running high, but it is likely neither accurate nor helpful. If you can see the gray area in the situation – the ways that the breakup was a reflection of where both you and your ex were at – then you are more likely to experience post-breakup growth.
 
When two people break up, it is because the relationship was not right for either of them at the time. You can try to recognize how the relationship was not right for you because of who you are and who the other person is. Nobody is right or wrong – the situation is just not ideal for the two of you to keep going. When we acknowledge how the circumstances made the relationship hard to maintain, we have an easier time letting go of our own role in the breakup, as well as resentment toward the other person (Tashiro & Frazier, 2003).  
 
In writing all this, I speak from personal experience. When each of my last two relationships ended, I thought at first that it was all my fault. As I began to recognize that I carried much of the responsibility, but far from all of it, it became easier to forgive the other person, forgive myself, and move on.

Love Tips for Married Couples

“Happily ever after is not a fairy tale—it’s a choice.” – Fawn Weaver
​
I chose the quote above because it brings us back to the idea of “love as a social tie”. That tie only exists as long as we are choosing to act on our love. Relationships take work, and that work can be measured in moments, weeks, and years.
 
My first love tip for married individuals – or really, anyone in a long-term, committed relationship – is to stay attuned to your partner. This means being aware of what is happening in your partner’s life and staying in steady, effective communication with each other (Eckstein & Goldman, 2001). For example, I have counseled many couples to build into their daily and weekly routines as many “check-ins” as possible. Check-ins are a time to acknowledge each other and share gratitude and needs. You would be amazed at what changes in the life of a couple when they commit to telling each other one thing they appreciate about the other person each day.
 
Regularly exercising these tools of awareness and communication builds trust and intimacy, without which a relationship will not effectively evolve and change over time (Bagarozzi, 1997). In other words, we use our communication skills and pay attention so that our partners can feel known and can share what they are experiencing without expecting to be judged or dismissed.
 
Bagarozzi (1997) believed that there is a need for mutual trust between partners for intimacy to continue to develop in a relationship. Therefore, if true intimacy is to be part of a healthy couple relationship, each partner must feel totally secure in sharing his or her innermost thoughts, feelings, and self-disclosures with his or her partner without the fear of being judged, evaluated, or ridiculed.
 
To be a little more concrete, here are six behaviors that couples report make their relationships more satisfying (Shumway & Wampler, 2002). There is nothing groundbreaking here, but these behaviors represent the foundation of a healthy relationship, so putting them into practice will increase the love in your life:

• Greeting each other consistently. This might sound a little basic, but being acknowledged when we come home, or even just enter the room, really matters. It sends the message, “Things feel different when you are here.” If you want to throw your partner’s name into the greeting, that might make it feel even more personal.​  
• Talking about daily life. Whether it is something you read in the news or what the office cafeteria was offering for lunch today, telling your partner about your day – and actively listening to the little details of their day – shows investment in understanding each other’s experiences.  
• Giving praise. Sometimes I find it a little depressing how often people feel underappreciated by their partners. This is why daily appreciations matter so much: they show that you are paying attention and that you are aware of the effort your partner is putting in. Try your best to show your partner that you do not take them for granted.  
• Sharing memories. Remembering what you have done together builds a sense of “we-ness”, reminding you of where you have been together and perhaps inspiring you to think more about where you want to go.  
• Doing things together. The realities of full-time work and parenthood lead many couples to put special time together on the back burner. But your relationship exists independently of your job and your family, and making time for shared activities is a great way to honor your relationship.  
• Giving feedback. Last but certainly not least, love grows not just with praise but also with constructive feedback. If you can tell your partner when something they do bothers or upsets you, while also communicating your care for them, they get a chance to grow as a person – and your relationship gets to evolve in positive ways, too.

Love Tips for Yourself​

“Talk to yourself like someone you love.” – Brene Brown
​
Love is a feeling you can have for yourself, not just other people, and as Brene Brown tells us, self-love is all in how we treat ourselves. Interviews with psychologists and therapists who study self-love have revealed three key components (Henschke & Sedlmeier, 2021):
 

• Self-contact: We start by paying attention to ourselves. If a feeling comes up and you ignore it, if you hold your tongue and later feel disappointed in yourself, if you are “not an angry person” except for those very rare moments when you explode at others – it might be time to slow down and pay more attention.  
• Self-acceptance: When we recognize more of our own experience, we can try our best to accept what is happening. For example, I have many judgmental thoughts about other people throughout the day. I used to worry about what it meant that I had all these thoughts. Now, I have accepted that the thoughts will keep coming, but if I do not act on them, I am ok.  
• Self-care: This is the hardest part, if you ask me: self-love means telling ourselves that we are worthy of being cared for, and then giving ourselves that care. I am continuously working to undo years of conditioning that told me I should just keep working and did not need self-care.

 
The more we practice self-love, the more gratifying our relationships with other people will be (Lewandowski et al., 2010). In other words, more love in our lives! If you’d like more suggestions for practicing self-love, check out this video:

Video: How to Practice Self-Love

Love Tips to Find Love

“Far too many people are looking for the right person, instead of trying to be the right person.” – Gloria Steinem
​
How do you find love? As Gloria Steinem suggests, loving relationships develop pretty organically if we are out there living our best lives and being our best selves. My primary tip for finding love with other people is to be doing things you love in the first place. The more we engage in activities we love, the more attuned we are to what really matters to us, and knowing our personal goals and priorities can help us connect with people who are good fits for us (Canevello & Crocker, 2010).
 
Research tells us that people who have solid connections with friends and family seem more likely to move into committed relationships (Schindler et al., 2010). Our patterns of relating are pretty consistent across all relationships, so if you notice parallels between how you behave with potential partners and how you behave with friends, you could try to address those behaviors in your friendships, first.

Unrequited Love Tips

“The person you’re meant to be with will never have to be chased, begged, or given an ultimatum.” – Mandy Hale
​
Unrequited love is hard on everybody involved: the would-be lover typically feels hurt and rejected, while the person doing the rejecting often feels guilty (Baumeister et al., 1993). When we are rejected, our self-esteem is typically threatened, and since social acceptance and rejection are central to human survival, this makes sense. My love tip for the unrequited lover is to embrace the quote above from Mandy Hale as much as possible. You do not want to be forever demanding or trying to earn love from somebody else, so it is probably worth it to wait for a potential partner who does not need to be convinced of your worthiness.

Tips for When Love Starts to Fade

“Ultimately the bond of all companionship, whether in marriage or friendship, is a conversation.” – Oscar Wilde
​
When conversations are good, a relationship tends to go well. When negative interactions begin to multiply and reinforce each other, a relationship will start to suffer (Gottman et al., 1998). Couples that cannot break these patterns often find staying together too difficult to keep up. My love tip here is to recognize when defensiveness, contempt, or hostility are starting to appear in your relationship (Gottman, 1994) and do your best to break the cycle!  
 
Love can also fade because partners drift apart in their interests (Carswell et al., 2021). Relationships stay healthy when partners share their novel interests together – doing new things together has been experimentally shown to bring couples closer together (Aron et al., 2000). This can be another way to stop love from fading.

Love Tips Quotes

Here are a few more quotes that can provide helpful tips about how to love:
​

• “Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength while loving someone deeply gives you courage.” – Lao Tzu
• “To know when to go away and when to come closer is the key to any lasting relationship.” – Doménico Cieri Estrada
• “We are afraid to care too much, for fear that the other person does not care at all.” – Eleanor Roosevelt
• “The purpose of a relationship is not to have another who might complete you, but to have another with whom you might share your completeness.” – Neale Donald Walsch
• "The greatest happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved; loved for ourselves, or rather, loved in spite of ourselves." – Victor Hugo
• "In love there are two things – bodies and words." – Joyce Carol Oates

Articles Related to Love Tips​

​Want to learn more? Check out these articles:

• Love Messages: For Him, For Her, & For Them
• Loving Yourself: Why and How to Do It
• Healthy Relationships: Definition, Characteristics, and Tips​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Books Related to Love Tips​

If you’d like to keep learning more, here are a few books that you might be interested in.

• "Best Dating Advice I Ever Got": 3000 Women Pick Their Favorite Love Tips
• 8 Rules of Love: How to Find It, Keep It, and Let It Go
• The Mastery of Love: A Practical Guide to the Art of Relationship: A Toltec Wisdom Book

Final Thoughts on Love Tips​

I hope these love tips have helped you identify a couple of ways to increase the love connection and feelings of love in your life. It is always worth it to dedicate more time to loving yourself and loving others.​

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References

• Aron, A., Norman, C. C., Aron, E. N., McKenna, C., & Heyman, R. E. (2000). Couples' shared participation in novel and arousing activities and experienced relationship quality. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 78(2), 273-284.
• Bagarozzi, D. A. (1997). Marital intimacy needs questionnaire: Preliminary report. American Journal of Family Therapy, 25, 285-290.
• Baumeister, R. F., & Leary, M. R. (1995). The need to belong: desire for interpersonal attachments as a fundamental human motivation. Psychological Bulletin, 117(3), 497-529.
• Baumeister, R. F., Wotman, S. R., & Stillwell, A. M. (1993). Unrequited love: On heartbreak, anger, guilt, scriptlessness, and humiliation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 64(3), 377–394.
• Campbell, W. K., & Baumeister, R. F. (2001). Is loving the self necessary for loving another? An examination of identity and intimacy. In M. Clark, & G. Fletcher (Eds.), Blackwell handbook of social psychology Vol. 2: Interpersonal processes (pp. 437–456). London, UK: Blackwell.
• Canevello, A., & Crocker, J. (2010). Creating good relationships: responsiveness, relationship quality, and interpersonal goals. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 99(1), 78-106.
• Carswell, K. L., Muise, A., Harasymchuk, C., Horne, R. M., Visserman, M. L., & Impett, E. A. (2021). Growing desire or growing apart? Consequences of personal self-expansion for romantic passion. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 121(2), 354-377.
• Donaldson, S. I., & Donaldson, S. I. (2018). Other people matter: The power of positive relationships. In M. A. Warren & S. I. Donaldson (Eds.), Toward a positive psychology of relationships: Theory and research. Westport, CT: Praeger.
• Eckstein, D., & Goldman, A. (2001). The Couple’s Gender-Based Communication Questionnaire (CGCQ). The Family Journal: Counseling and Therapy for Couples and Families, 9, 62-74.
• Gottman, J. M. (1994). Why marriages succeed or fail. New York: Simon & Schuster.
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• Henschke, E., & Sedlmeier, P. (2021). What is self-love? Redefinition of a controversial construct. The Humanistic Psychologist. Advance online publication.
• Heshmati, S., & Donaldson, S. I. (2020). The science of positive relationships and love. In Positive psychological science (pp. 52-63). Routledge.
• Lewandowski, G. W., Nardone, N., & Raines, A. J. (2010). The role of self-concept clarity in relationship quality. Self and Identity, 9(4), 416-433.
• Neff, K. D. (2011). Self‐compassion, self‐esteem, and well‐being. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 5(1), 1-12.
• Neff, K. D., & Beretvas, S. N. (2013). The role of self-compassion in romantic relationships. Self and Identity, 12(1), 78-98.
• Schindler, I., Fagundes, C. P., & Murdock, K. W. (2010). Predictors of romantic relationship formation: Attachment style, prior relationships, and dating goals. Personal Relationships, 17(1), 97-105.
• Shumway, S. T., & Wampler, R. S. (2002). A behaviorally focused measure for relationships: The Couple Behavior Report (CBR). American Journal of Family Therapy, 30, 311-321.
• Tashiro, T. Y., & Frazier, P. (2003). “I’ll never be in a relationship like that again”: Personal growth following romantic relationship breakups. Personal Relationships, 10(1), 113-128.
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• Uchino, B. N., Cacioppo, J. T., & Kiecolt-Glaser, J. K. (1996). The relationship between social support and physiological processes: A review with emphasis on underlying mechanisms and implications for health. Psychological Bulletin, 119, 488–531.

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