A book that I have read, and recommended is THE FIVE LOVE LANGUAGES by Gary Chapman. The premise is that we are loosely divided into five categories when it comes to our wants and needs in a relationship.
These are the five love languages: Words of Affirmation, Acts of Service, Receiving Gifts, Quality Time, and Physical Touch. Each one is important and expresses love in its own way. Chapman suggests that learning your partner's and your own primary love language will help create a stronger bond in your relationship. We all have attributes of each category, and it may be disingenuous to put people in boxes, however as a general concept it’s interesting to determine the hierarchy of these attributes.
For example, do you know people who are always sending little gifts, cookies, or cards, or flowers to mark an occasion? Perhaps they know you collect angels or cardinals. That person’s love language is gifting. Often if a person gifts, they find pleasure in receiving. They are validated by the giving and receiving experience. They feel loved when they give, and feel loved when they receive.
We all respond to words of affirmation. You wrote a beautiful poem. Thank you for doing the laundry. Your new haircut is very flattering. Those who are generous with those compliments often also respond in kind.
An act of service is not just the domain of the volunteer, but applies to all the gestures that we extend to our family and friends to express and cement our feelings. Serving dinner at a mission. Giving clothes to the homeless. Mowing the lawn. Bringing the neighbours cushions inside after the first raindrop. Over-tipping the breakfast waitress.
Quality time is date night, or family dinners, or eating birthday cupcakes, reading to children before bed, or any other sacred allocated time.
Physical touch is holding hands, hugging, a touch on the shoulder, making love, brushing someone’s hair.
I have taken a look at my own love languages. Right now with Covid-19 raging I am stumbling with my need to extend physical touch. I work with people who are hospitalized for the symptoms of mental illness. They are often starved for human contact, a kind of skin hunger that fuels their feelings of worthlessness. Here is my dilemma. I am immune suppressed, and it has taken me years for the penny to drop with respect to my vulnerability. Since 2015, I have been plagued by colds. A virus! I finally understand how I have unwittingly compromised my own safety by my need to extend physical touch, hand holding, hugs etc. to those who live in great solitude.
What is your love language? Think about the people you care about.
