This might seem as if it's more ap­pro­pri­ate to Valen­tine's Day, but this is an is­sue that's al­ways im­por­tant and it's a de­cep­tive­ly sim­ple one: how do you ex­press love? Think about it. How do you ex­press love with your fam­i­ly, your friends, your part­ner, your pup­py...? Are you com­fort­able do­ing that on your own? With oth­ers there? In pub­lic? Are you com­fort­able do­ing it at all? How about oth­ers in your fam­i­ly? Apart from your pup­py, who else reg­u­lar­ly jumps in­to your lap and says, "I love you"? We learn to ex­press af­fec­tion from our fam­i­lies and how they ex­press af­fec­tion to us in our ear­li­est years and be­yond. Keep this in mind: all chil­dren need emo­tion­al warmth. Emo­tion­al warmth may be de­fined as be­ing gen­uine­ly in­ter­est­ed in the oth­er per­son, notic­ing his/her feel­ings, re­spond­ing to these ap­pro­pri­ate­ly and ex­press­ing af­fec­tion open­ly and com­fort­ably. Fam­i­lies dif­fer in how they deal with love and emo­tion­al warmth and there is no one or per­fect way to ex­press it. Some fam­i­lies use words and tell each oth­er reg­u­lar­ly how they feel.

Some fam­i­lies are very phys­i­cal­ly af­fec­tion­ate and there are lots of hugs and kiss­es. Some fam­i­lies do both. Some fam­i­lies are less di­rect and love is ex­pressed ma­te­ri­al­ly, that is, with pos­ses­sions. So ex­pen­sive presents are giv­en of­ten or there are lav­ish ges­tures, such as re­dec­o­rat­ing a room or re­paint­ing a car or some­thing sim­i­lar. Liv­ing stan­dards are usu­al­ly quite high be­cause keep­ing the fam­i­ly in lux­u­ry is a state­ment of love. And then there are fam­i­lies where love isn't ex­pressed at all. Some­times this is be­cause the fam­i­ly isn't com­fort­able ex­press­ing emo­tion or warmth. Some­times there isn't much emo­tion­al warmth or close­ness in the fam­i­ly to be ex­pressed. And some­times, un­for­tu­nate­ly, the at­mos­phere in the fam­i­ly is as far from emo­tion­al warmth as one can get.

How im­por­tant is emo­tion­al warmth? Vi­tal. And its ex­pres­sion needs to be phys­i­cal as well as ver­bal, at least for ba­bies and chil­dren. Ba­bies who aren't picked up and played with do not thrive. Even though they may be fed and cared for, they be­come un­re­spon­sive and dan­ger­ous­ly with­drawn. It seems that nur­tur­ing phys­i­cal con­tact is es­sen­tial for prop­er brain de­vel­op­ment. Lat­er on, when we pride our­selves that we have grown up and out­grown all that, we still can't ever do with­out the warmth of love and af­fec­tion. So it is vi­tal to un­der­stand the ways in which you have learnt to com­mu­ni­cate these things and the meth­ods which your friends and your part­ner use. Where these are sim­i­lar, there is eas­i­ly a shared un­der­stand­ing.

Even if you both use dif­fer­ent meth­ods, if you are at least fa­mil­iar with the oth­er per­son's, that can al­so work, be­cause you will recog­nise it as love. The dif­fi­cul­ty be­gins when you can't recog­nise each oth­er's de­c­la­ra­tions of love for what they are. That can quick­ly de­te­ri­o­rate in­to feel­ing that there isn't any love there and that in its turn can eas­i­ly be­come re­sent­ment and hate. Giv­en the im­por­tance of emo­tion­al warmth, it's nat­ur­al that it can be­come a bar­gain­ing chip in re­la­tion­ships. Of­ten what hap­pens is that one par­ty with­holds af­fec­tion, dol­ing it out in tiny dos­es; just enough to keep the oth­er par­ty in­volved and keep the re­la­tion­ship go­ing. But go­ing where? If some­one is will­ing to use some­thing as im­por­tant as love to ma­nip­u­late and con­trol, the re­la­tion­ship can't work. The pity is, most peo­ple can't see that and re­main trapped in the cy­cle of try­ing use­less­ly to win love.