I was having a chat to my boyfriend the other night about the 5 love languages and just how poignant they seem to be in terms of how we give and receive love. For those of you who are unaware of the concept, it comes in the form of a book which is written by Gary Chapman. The entire premise being that there are five love languages: words of affirmation, acts of service, receiving gifts, quality time and physical touch. According to Chapman “each one is important and expresses love in its own way. Learning your partner’s and your own primary love language will help create a stronger bond in your relationship”. As corny as it sounds it’s proved to be an extremely useful tool in understanding what your own needs are within your relationship, but also what your partners are; and that these may differ greatly in terms of how you give love versus how you want to receive it.
Even more importantly than figuring out whether your love language is receiving gifts or physical touch is the actual conversation that this subject engages with your partner about what they need from you and vice versa within your relationship. The 5 love languages seem to be an easy to broach slide in towards the conversation which may be difficult to navigate naturally. Within my own relationship I am the emotional, always outwardly feeling partner whose thought processes read on my face immediately when I am in that introspective zone. To put this more simply, I am an open book and what you see it what you get. Quite honestly, I would be a truly shitty poker player because my poker face is non existent. On the other side of this is my partner who is always stoic, who is always positive and seemingly brushes off any life inconveniences without a second thought. I’ve come to learn over time that it isn’t that he doesn’t feel things or that they are of less value to him, that instead he doesn’t outwardly show the effects of these things as openly as I do.
As a result of this, and I suppose just life in general, we had never before sat down and had a conversation about all the ways that we needed to be loved or what it was that we expected from each other on a daily basis. The 5 love languages concept allowed us to speak openly and honestly in a way that we could benchmark our wants and needs against an already established list; which allows a space which is a little less vulnerable than basing this on all of your own feelings.
Personally I’ve come to realise that the way I give love is through words of affirmation and physical touch but how I want to receive love is through quality time and physical touch. My boyfriend on the other hand gives love through acts of service and physical touch but wants to receive love through words of affirmation and physical touch. The acts of service concept was something that I didn’t even think of and to be honest, most likely overlooked when thinking about the act of giving love.
The notion of the love languages made me realise that the things I need in receiving love are not the same as my partners. This was an important revelation for me because it made me realise that I was overlooking how he was giving love based on my own assumptions and expectations. It’s helped me to see things in a different way and make peace with the fact that how I choose to give love to someone will not be the same as how they provide that love back.
The other glaringly obvious element within this entire process has been that we don’t make time to talk about such important concepts and instead rest our laurels on the belief that we can simply mind read. Obviously this is not the case!
Sx
I blog for Change. 