According to this paradigm, there are 5 Love Languages, or 5 different ways that one feels accepted, appreciated, and understood by those around them. They are:
1. Words of Affirmation
2. Quality time
3. Receiving Gifts
4. Acts of Service
5. Physical Touch
There are two that are critical for me. My number one Love Language is Words of Affirmation. With a close runner up, Receiving Gifts. I think those closest to me, like members of my immediate family, could have guessed these. They know me well. Honestly, it's not hard to figure out. I have always made it perfectly clear, I love gifts and I need praise. But what was fascinating to me was learning what others should and should not do to communicate their love.
Words of Affirmations
Tools to use: (This is how you should love me)
-Sincere verbal compliments
-Encouraging words
-Kind words
-Humble words
Traps to avoid: (This is what makes me wither up like a dried old leaf and crumble to pieces)
-"Constructive" criticism
-Verbal threats
-Making demands
-Verbal flattery to get what you want
Ironically, all the 'traps to avoid' were employed by my husband for most of our marriage. Now, I know there were other circumstances going on which effected how I felt about myself. There was a lot of abuse, and I think most people would feel hurt by it, but I always thought to myself, if I were stronger inside then I could withstand it or it wouldn't hurt so much. And I think I'm right. I think it was so crushing to me was because what he was doing was the antithesis of what I needed to feel loved. And under these conditions, I really did crumble. I remember looking for and seeking his praise, adoration, compliments, but when I didn't get it, I was emotionally destroyed and sometimes even blindsided. I knew he would tell me he loved me with his lips or in writing, but I after a while I didn't believe it anymore. There were too many traps and not enough tools being employed.
Receiving Gifts
Tools to use:
-Flowers and cards
-Personalization
-Gift of self
-Anything with a bow
Traps to avoid:
-Special Occasions
-Expensive gifts
-"Don't get me anything." (especially when I say don't get me anything--horrible offense!)
-Start a tradition you can't maintain
I know, needing to receive gifts to feel loved really sucks! But it's easy for people to show their love in this way because it doesn't take a lot of work to throw together a gift, unfortunately, it's also really easy to forget or to only get gifts on special occasions.
Until now, it has seemed vain, worldly and self centered of me. I found myself loathing this part of me during my marriage. But the fact is, it's real and no matter how I tried to change this about myself, I never could.
For me, the thing that communicated that I wasn't loved the most, was when my husband would offer himself (going with me somewhere that was important to me, for example) as a gift, but then would back out at the last minute. Or he wouldn't agree to do it with me in the first place. And that happened more times than I even want or care to count. It's just how it was.
The other hard part about being a gift's person is that it's easy for others to say, well I don't have enough money. For me, that tells me, you don't have enough 'love' for me. I'm not important. Because gifts don't have to cost anything; those kinds of gifts just take more thought and time. So, in my marriage, when we had extra cash, I got gifts, but when we didn't have money, I was given nothing.
The most fascinating part of learning about these languages was seeing that the way I try to show others, (including my husband), that I love them, directly reflects what my own love language is. I cake on the praise and I shower people with gifts...unbeknownst to me, not everyone is like me!
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