20 Powerful Ways To Show Love To A Woman With 'Acts Of Service' Love Language
Use this list to make your girlfriend feel loved every day!
Dean Drobot / shutterstock Are you in love with a woman who has the "acts of service" love language and want make her feel loved? If this isn't your own love language, you may struggle with what exactly you should do next.
Gary Chapman’s The 5 Love Languages are all everyone is talking about these days. The basic premise around love languages is that everyone has a "language" — or a way in which they naturally express and best receive love. When we learn how to speak our partner's love language, we make them feel like they are loved and they are happy.
The five love languages are words of affirmation, quality time, acts of service, gift-giving and physical touch. While all of these love languages should be very straightforward, they are not.
Fortunately, "acts of service" is one of the most straightforward love languages. Basically, a man who wants his girlfriend or wife to feel loved through acts of service just needs to do things, anything — without being asked.
Men, luckily, are very good at doing what they are asked to do — it’s often easier than using their words to express their feelings or give gifts. And that is great, but the key to success with this love language is to anticipate what your girlfriend wants and then do it without her asking you to do so.
Now, don’t freak out. It can be hard to anticipate what your girlfriend might want but that is why I am here — to give you some sense of what your girlfriend, and many women, might want to be done by their boyfriends.
Here are 20 ways to bond with a woman with 'acts of service' as her love language
1. Do a chore that they don’t like to do
Who wouldn’t like a chore done for them that they don’t like to do? I am guessing that your girlfriend does lots of those chores for you every day. Think laundry, cooking, and housekeeping?
What kind of chores does your girlfriend hate to do? Perhaps getting their oil changed, taking out the garbage, cleaning out the basement, grocery shopping, or some of the others listed below.
If you can make it so that your girlfriend doesn’t have to do the thing that she dreads doing, she will definitely feel loved.
2. Plan the dinner menu for a week
I know – this one probably makes you want to skip to #3 but this is a huge one!
If there is one thing that all of us women hate doing it’s to plan a meal. To choose what is going to be served for dinner. The cooking part isn’t so bad but the planning sucks.
An excellent act of service is to tell your girlfriend that you will plan dinner for a week. If you can follow through and cook it too, you will get extra bonus points.
3. Give her a massage
I know that you might think that you don’t know how to do this one but I can promise you that you can. You probably have sex with your girlfriend regularly and know her body better than anyone.
And, really, it’s not about technique, it’s about intention. If you crawl into bed next to your girlfriend and offer to rub her back, just the act of doing it will mean the world to her no matter what the quality.
4. Plan a surprise night out or a vacation
Again, women spend much of their lives planning. Dinners, dates, vacations etc. And the planning gets old.
If you want to make your girlfriend feel loved, take over the planning for date night. Even better, plan it for a night that isn’t usually a date night.
If you have a vacation planned, offer to take over the details so that she can just sit back and enjoy.
The cherry on top will be how creative you can be. Don’t do the same old thing. Find something new that you haven’t done before. Do something that you know she loves to do but hasn’t done for a while. Do something that she knows that you might not want to do but will do it anyway.
Your girlfriend will love you for it.
5. Clean the house
This is a scary one, for many reasons.
The first is that you probably don’t want to clean the house and the prospect of doing so fills you with dread.
The second is that you are worried that you won’t do it the way that she wants you to do it.
But know that if you clean the house without being asked your girlfriend will absolutely love you for it, even if your technique is different from hers.
6. Make their coffee
Mornings are hard. Making coffee to get those mornings started can be challenging.
Imagine how good your girlfriend would feel if you brought her some coffee in bed. Even better, if you brought some for yourself and you shared a few quiet minutes together before the chaos of the day begins!
7. Pack their lunch
Again, the mornings can be chaotic and getting out the door on time is sometimes impossible. As a result, we don’t get to pack our lunch and have to either go without or spend a ton of money buying lunch.
If you can get up a little bit early and pack your girlfriend’s lunch, you will ensure that she has lunch and keep her from having to spend lots of money on takeout!
8. Pay the bills
Unless your girlfriend is fanatically attached to paying the bills, taking them over and paying them on time is something that she would surely appreciate.
No one likes to pay bills, probably even you don’t, but taking care of them without asking would be a lovely surprise.
9. Walk her dog
Of course, we all love our dogs madly but sometimes walking them is a pain. And I am guessing that if the dog is hers, you are less likely to take on that chore for her.
Do it. Get that dog out of the house for her. After all a tired dog is a good dog and that will take a load off her shoulders!
10. Wash the dishes
My boyfriend is 100 percent in charge of washing the dishes in our house. He took it over when we first got together (mostly, I think because I am bad at it).
It is a lovely thing, to walk by a sink full of dishes, knowing that, when he gets home from work, he will deal with it and happily so.
So, if your girlfriend's love language is the act of service, washing the dishes is an excellent activity to take on!
11. Let her choose the movie
I know — this one might fill you with dread.
I mean, you know that chances are 100 percent that if you let her choose the movie you will be made to watch some silly rom-com but know that, not only will your girlfriend enjoy her movie but she will love it even more than you sat next to her and watched it.
12. Draw her a bath
This is something that you should definitely not do in the middle of your girlfriend’s busy day but, at the end of the day, maybe after dinner, a bath would be lovely.
Many of us don’t do baths because we are too busy. Drawing your girlfriend a bath signals to her that you will do the things that need to be done and she can just relax.
13. Fold the laundry
This is an act of service that I would not appreciate because I love to fold my laundry but I would definitely appreciate it if my boyfriend put my laundry away after I folded it.
What would your girlfriend appreciate around the laundry? Would she like you to do the whole thing, wash, fold and put away, or would some portion of it make her happy?
Watch her laundry habits and see what you think she would like best.
14. Hold doors open
This one does it for me and for almost every girl I know — a man who holds the door open so that we can pass through without touching it.
Bonus points if you go around to her side of the car and open her door before she gets in or out!
15. Pick her up at the airport
My ex used to pick me up at the airport — which was lovely — but he was always waiting for me at the curb.
My boyfriend makes that extra effort and parks the car and is waiting for me when I come through the gate. I love that — and it definitely makes me feel special!
16. Anticipate their needs
This is a very hard one for men — not because they don’t want to but because it doesn’t come naturally to them.
But this is the No. 1 act of service that would make a huge difference in making your girlfriend feel loved. There isn’t a woman I know who doesn’t wish that her man anticipated her needs more often.
If you have no idea how to do this, watch your girlfriend and see what she does. Maybe ask her girlfriends what they think that she might like you to do for her. And then do it!
The rewards will be worth going out on a limb and doing something you aren’t comfortable with.
17. Be the designated driver
Many of us love to go out and have a few drinks. It’s a fun thing to do with friends and very relaxing at the end of the day. But, unless you live somewhere that has Uber, at the end of the evening someone has to drive home.
Is your girlfriend usually the designated driver? Most likely yes. Offer to be the one who does it next time. That will make her feel safe and cared for.
18. Unload the dishwasher
This is the thing that I hate most to do – unload the dishwasher. I don’t mind loading it, because that means I am not hand washing my dishes, but unloading it is not fun.
Next time you see that the dishwasher is full of clean dishes, unload it for her. You might find that it’s just what the doctor ordered for your girlfriend to feel loved.
19. Breakfast in bed
Wouldn’t you love it if your girlfriend brought you a yummy breakfast in bed? That she took the time to get up before you and whipped together something that you loved? I am guessing yes. So, do it for her!
That being said, don’t leave the kitchen a mess that she has to clean up. That will undo all of the good that you did with breakfast.
20. Plug in her phone
Of course, we all hate it when our phone battery runs out. We are often left adrift without it working and that makes us crabby.
If you see your girlfriend’s phone lying around, in need of a charge, plug it in. That way, it will always be working and you can text her those little love notes that she enjoys receiving.
It’s important that men do these acts of service regularly so that their girlfriends feel loved and cared for and safe.
If your girlfriend’s love language is anything other than acts of service, don’t prioritize doing acts of service for them. While they might appreciate it, it won’t make them feel loved and might even make them feel unloved because you are doing what comes easily to you as opposed to making an effort to give her what she really needs to feel loved!
Mitzi Bockmann is an NYC-based Certified Life Coach and mental health advocate who works exclusively with women to help them be all they want to be in this crazy world in which we live.