Playing pickleball with your significant other is no easy task.

What starts out as a fun date night can turn into conflict and an awkwardly silent car ride home.

Whether it was poor communication or unmet expectations after your partner kept hitting the ball out, playing pickleball together can be difficult. 

That doesn’t have to be the case, though, according to Dr. Stormy Hill and Terri Citterman, who co-authored the book “In a Pickle: How to Master Love and Pickleball and Not Kill Each Other.” 

It explores how couples can better support their romantic partners on the pickleball court. One of their strategies? Try love languages. 

The Five Love Languages is a psychology and relationship book that helps couples connect and understand each other in terms of how they best receive love and affection. The languages are: physical touch, words of affirmation, acts of service, receiving gifts, and quality time. 

Citterman and Hill found that applying their partners’ love languages to pickleball was extremely beneficial to their games and their romance.

“My husband and I always believed our love language was acts of service. But we took the test and found out that it’s neither of our love languages,” said Citterman. “Mine is words of affirmation and his is quality time.”

This information completely changed their pickleball partnership and provided a better way to support each other in pickleball. 

“Knowing that information builds this awareness of what you and your partner actually need on the court. Now, he knows I need to be told that I’m doing a good job while we’re playing because those eye rolls can be so freaking loud,” explained Citterman. “It really helped him develop an awareness about how he impacts me and other people on the court. That’s emotional intelligence and data from the love languages. The more you know, the better you can be as a teammate and as a partner in real life.”

Hill and her life partner experienced a similar phenomenon after practicing their love languages on the pickleball court. 

“My partner and I are both physical touch. For example, if I make a bad shot and hit the ball sailing into the net and he doesn’t paddle tap me, I take that personally. Now, we paddle tap after every shot. Or, we high five or chest bump after a really good shot because that’s our love language,” said Hill. “That’s how I feel encouraged on the court and it’s how I receive and offer love. That’s the idea behind the love languages, which I’ve used in relationship coaching for a long time. And it’s been really fun to apply to the pickleball court.”

Hill, Citterman, and their respective partners have had the opportunity to put these findings to the test and they found success. Knowing this information about your partner is a simple way to create a more supportive atmosphere on the court. After all, your partner is your teammate. 

So, if your opponents are paddle tapping too much or chest bumping after a good shot, don’t take it personally. Maybe they’re just expressing their love language. 

Want more tips for how to play pickleball with your partner? Check out the book on Amazon and follow Pickleball.com on Instagram and X (formerly Twitter) for all things pickleball.