February, the month of love and of St Valentine's Day, may be the best time of year to talk about love. According to US author John Gray, the man behind many self-help books, we all need 10 essential types of love, or “love tanks,” in order to experience happiness and emotional satisfaction. For Egyptian life coach Nihal Soliman, these love tanks can make us better able to understand our emotional needs and feel more satisfied with our lives. “Fulfilling emotional needs comes from filling up the 10 love tanks that we carry through our life's journey in various stages. Filling those tanks in the right way helps us to be more in tune with our lives. The more we are able to pay attention to those needs and understand them, the more we will have a better quality of life and better relationships with ourselves and with the outside world,” Soliman said. “The concept of the love tank, established by the famous US author John Gray, is actually very similar to a car's petrol tank in that it needs to be kept full in order to function well. In the same way as the fuel in the tank powers the car's engine, the love tanks contain the ingredients that can keep our emotional well-being in good shape and empower us to attain self-fulfillment,” she added. The first love tank starts when we are conceived in our mother's womb. This love tank is filled by God, the care-giver who created us and cares for us. Because this type of love was implanted in us when we were just an egg, it accompanies us for our whole lives. To help maintain it in good shape, we have to pay attention to our spiritual needs by believing and practising rituals that connect us with God. One of the least of these, though still very strong, is contemplating the beauty that God has created around us in nature and experiencing the positive vibes we have by being by the sea shore, or in green spaces, or simply by exposing ourselves to the sun. Doing good deeds and being grateful for what we have is another way of keeping this love tank appropriately filled. The second love tank is the love of our parents, something we particularly need from the moment we are born until the age of seven. In these years, we experience the love and care of our main care-givers in life after God. Our sense of safety and stability are formed at this stage of life, and this type of love is unconditional: we are loved regardless of how we behave. Even if we misbehave, our parents still give us unconditional love, and it is this we start to learn about at this stage, Soliman said. This third love tank, which starts at the age of seven and continues until 14, is the type of love we get from the wider circle of our family members, siblings and school friends. Our bonding to this wider circle is deepened, and we are more aware of this love bond, making us more in contact with the outer world. This stage embraces lots of “fun” as well, something Soliman elaborates on as a need that accompanies us even in later stages of life, when we can become “too serious” or drained by endless responsibilities and feel that something is missing as a result. This is because our heart needs to breath and get a regular dose of fun, so we don't feel that our youthful spirit is fading away as we get older. Psychologists often advise elderly people to stay with their grandchildren to keep their hearts and minds alert and in good shape. The same need is satisfied when we are around close friends, allowing us to become more spontaneous and let go. Each one of us has a little child inside him who needs to be fed from time to time, though for Soliman if we miss the fun derived from this love tank, we can always compensate for it later by discovering new fun activities we like. Some people might start mountain climbing later in life, for example, or running, or doing art classes – and this may explain the trend in Egypt of joining art classes and travel groups among middle-aged people. The fourth love tank starts at 14 and continues until 21, and we get this type of love through our peers who share the same interests and dreams at this life stage. We start to discover our interests and share them with our peers, meaning that Soliman advises parents of sons and daughters of this age to give them the freedom to explore their interests and share with their peers. Parents shouldn't be over-protective, she said, and if the emotional needs of this stage are not met, they may pop up again in later stages of life. This may explain why some middle-aged people develop a special nostalgia for their years of adolescence, feeling that they may not have lived it properly or have been inhibited by their parents and academic studies, Soliman commented.
TANKS FIVE TO TEN: The fifth love tank starts from the age of 21 and lasts until 28. While it is a crucial one, it may be neglected for various reasons. At this stage of life, we start to give love to ourselves and form a solid identity; we start to get a sense of our passion in life that will keep us going and driven. We experience a relationship of maturity with ourselves, and we figure out what we love and start to seek it out. Soliman clarified that some people who get married in the early years of this stage might miss some aspects of it: they may get distracted by accommodating their spouses and their children from focusing on themselves, something that may be particularly true of women as they are natural care-givers who are always taking care of the people around them. This may explain why some men and women go to therapists later in life to help them compensate for what they missed at earlier stages in life. The sixth tank starts from 28 and continues until 35. At this stage, we have already formed an identity, and we are supposedly ready to share love with a partner. The example that best describes the sharing of love at this stage is sitting in a car on a long road trip. An individual may have been able to drive alone in a previous stage, but now he is ready to share with a partner, in other words, to give and receive love in a mutual relationship. Psychological research indicates that some people might fall into the trap of setting too high hopes on marriage, thinking that it will add self-esteem or solve one's problems, and this can be a wrong assumption. The best marriages are there not to solve pre-existing problems, but to bring about a “co-piloting way of life” in which partners are ready to give and to receive. The seventh tank starts from 35 and goes on until 42, and Soliman explained that this stage rotates around loving a dependent. We start to give back some of the unconditional love we received when we were young to a dependent person, often because we are psychologically ready to love a child of our own. If we don't have a child, we may find ourselves giving love to little ones in a larger family, such as nieces or nephews. The eighth tank starts from 42 and continues until 49. While it is also related to giving love, at this point it is to a wider circle, such as the community we were raised in through volunteering activities and charitable work. People at this stage need to grow out of their own small circles; we also tend to realise that we were created by God for a reason, which is giving back love, not just receiving. Giving love also keeps the heart happy and alive, and some professionals advise unhappy people to engage in charitable activities because they can make a difference in their lives. The ninth tank starts from 49 and continues until 56, a stage when our children start to depend more on themselves. We may have more time to think of our own lives, and many people might have a tendency to explore the world more or travel more at this stage. This can give the heart a sense of satisfaction, and we may also start to think about what can be done to benefit the outer world. The tenth tank starts from 56 and beyond, and the giving urge starts to grow in this phase. We may start doing more good deeds or seeking to have purer hearts. Our relationship with God starts to be stronger than ever. For Soliman, there is an element of flexibility in going back and forth between these life stages: we can always go back and grab what we missed by understanding our needs and accommodating them, she said.
