So the other night, I went to a book club discussion of the 5 Love Languages. While I had read the original version of the book years ago, I needed a bit of a refresher. This time, I read the singles version, being that I’m a single individual. I also looked back at my earlier blog entry about said book, because I wanted to see if anything in me or my understanding had changed since I wrote about it last February. As is usually the case, things have changed. When I last wrote, my primary love language was physical touch, and a very close second was words of affirmation. But the beauty of evolution is that as we grow, we change.
As we become more self-aware, we can make different choices and see things in us for what they might really be. I think that the seasons of our lives tend to dictate what we feel we need. Honestly, I’m very much adaptable, and I’m not picky when it comes to how love is shown. As we were doing our assessments as a group, I was having a hard time choosing between certain of the answers, because for me, how I
want to receive love depends on the context and the person. Because I tend to see more than just the surface of things, I like to know that whatever was done was from the heart. For instance, even though words of affirmation were previously very important to me, when I have seen words with no action to accompany them or even words with contradictory actions, I began to understand that words of affirmation, while nice, were not the key to what I wanted. As a writer, words will always be important to me and I can definitely use them as a means of showing love, but I don’t think that they are the primary way that I receive love.
Now, my primary love languages (I think I'm bilingual) are quality time and physical touch. I think this is because, even as an introvert, I’ve always found something divine about the presence of those I love. I remember once when I was experiencing what I later learned was depression, there were times when I didn’t even feel like praying (and I love praying). Instead, the only thing I wanted to do was to be in the presence of my sisters. Thankfully, they lived across the street, so I called and made sure that at least
one of them was home and went right over. They were all doing work of some sort, but I didn’t care. I just needed their presence so as one of them sat on the couch, I laid on the couch beside her and simply enjoyed. It helped to ease whatever was going on in me, and I found some peace by being with them. Presence has always been important to me. And since that and physical touch tend to go hand in hand for me, being near the people I love can be the best thing ever. When I was in a long distance relationship, what allowed it to work for me was the fact that we talked all the time. For me, it was just like being present (presumably because one of the dialects of that particular language is “quality conversations,” and we had lots of those). Communication was always key, and because there was no physical presence (and therefore no physical touch) our quality time was via communication and conversation. Even when we just sat on the phone for hours or would fall asleep on the phone together, we had presence and I was pleased.
Therefore, being with the people I care about is vastly important. Being denied presence to me is like… a denial of love. While I am fairly adaptive, I recognize that presence is key. This can be a difficult love language to speak in these busy times that we live in, but for me, a few minutes of quality time, presence, and/or conversation can make all the difference between me being emotionally full and emotionally empty. But something I realized is that my main language of love is consistency. Without that, none of the other details and nuances make much difference. Sure, I'm flexible and adaptive, but I still like at least a wee bit of consistency.
So why did I take time to revisit the love languages? For a couple of reasons. It’s clear to see that we evolve, so we should pay attention to the changes in our emotional landscape. It’s also important to know what you want and need in a relationship. If you can’t articulate what you want, both you and the people you’re in relationship with will always be frustrated. It’s also important to know that you need to be aware of what your loved ones want/need in order to help the love in a relationship feel reciprocal. No one should be doing all the giving or work. Each person should know what the other’s love language is and do you best to speak it.
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