Let’s Look: My Love Language

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Happy Wednesday, friends & family!

We’re just four days away from celebrating Valentine’s Day and that means we’re still focusing on all the topics of love. I’m linking up today to discuss my love language, but truthfully this is a topic I have discussed on the blog umpteen times and think it’s critically important for you and your significant other to learn about. Love isn’t just one day a year with frilly lace, chocolate hearts, and roses. True love is a choice every day of the year.

So, without further adieu…

The book “The 5 Love Languages” has almost 42,000 five star reviews on Amazon alone. There’s a reason why Gary Chapman’s book is so successful and I will go ahead and admit I have reveled in every book I have read that he’s written.

“The 5 Love Languages” book determines that there are categories of receiving love that we each fall in to with a dominant category in one (sometimes two). Words of Affirmation, Quality Time, Physical Touch, Acts of Service, and Receiving Gifts. The idea is that your significant other may be loving you with every ounce of love that they know how to give because that’s what they are used to receiving when they grew up, BUT, it may feel like your spouse loves you AT ALL because that is not how you need to receive love.

You see this pattern over and over in people around us.

Example 1: Tom helps Sandy with the dishes, mows the grass, and provides the family income so she can be a stay at home mom and pursue her knitting crafts. He’s showing her love by Acts of Service. Tom, however, rarely compliments Sandy so his Acts of Service are hardly noticed and Sandy feels unloved, undesired, and unaccomplished because her love language is actually Words of Affirmation.

Example 2: Tina is a wonderful wife who dotes on her family hand and foot, makes sure Bob’s meals are ready and always asks about his day. Tina keeps a clean house and always gets dolled up for Bob every day so that she looks her best for him. However, Tina isn’t very affectionate and doesn’t hold Bob’s hand, doesn’t stroke his back while watching TV, and doesn’t cuddle with him at night. Bob notices these things but feels like she’s wasting her time because he’d rather have more intimate time together holding hands and touching throughout the evenings than to have a clean house and a wife with makeup on. Bob’s love language is Physical Touch.

Example 3: Ted travels a lot for work and always makes a point to bring back a gift for Pam each time. Pam appreciates the token that he was thinking of her to bring her a gift, but she doesn’t really want or need the gifts. She feels lonely and misses Ted’s companionship. Ted tries his hardest to make up for it with presents, but what she really wants is presence. Ted is showing love with “Giving Gifts”, but Pam receives love by “Quality Time”.

Do you see the disconnects here by the examples I came up with? It’s eye opening in how it explains that someone can feel like they’re doing their best to be loving yet the other person doesn’t feel loved at all.

So, I took my love language test (again) and it shows that my love languages are:

It’s good to take the quiz every couple of year, in my opinion, as you and your relationship change. I know mine has shifted some and I was interested to see what it is currently.

I have always been an Acts of Service person in the way that I show love, but this quiz confirms that that is how I feel loved as well. Quality time and words of affirmation are my 2nd highest, but I know quality time is what I cherish most with the hubs. He is always so busy and knows someone everywhere we go so we very, very rarely have alone time with undivided attention. My favorite days are when we do anything and everything together with or without an agenda.

What is your love language? You can take the quiz here! There are four quizzes to choose from: couples, singles, teens, and kids.

Did you ever consider that your kids and teens have love languages as well and that by knowing how to show them the love that they need they will have their emotional needs met and it could reduce friction with them?

Genius.