Loving
Love and marriage. Two subjects I can hardly profess myself to be an expert on and yet as I find myself in the midst of wedding season and partaking in two fairly large weddings, these are two topics of conversation I cannot seem to avoid.
A few weeks ago, as my good friend Hamish was listening to me and helping me navigate through an emotional matter of the heart, he asked me something that I must admit has now been somewhat life-changing for me; he asked me what my love languages are. As we talked through this I realised that I hadn’t really thought about it before and I had no idea what mine were.
If there is one small gift or token of advice I can offer up to any of my friends about to get married or even to those who already are married, it is to take the time to learn what your love languages are. Although this is definitely a black hole of a subject area for me, just learning what my own love languages are over the past few weeks has been incredibly eye-opening.
The concept behind love languages, although very basic, is something I had never really considered before Hamish asked me what mine were. The best-selling book, The 5 Love Languages, by Gary Chapman explains how we all have different love languages, ways of expressing our love or showing others that we care about them.
Shortly after this conversation I found myself on the 5 Love Languages website taking the quiz to determine how it is that I show my love for others. I took the quiz both as a single person and as in a relationship in order to see how I am both with my friends and also when I’m coupled up. You can visit the site here: www.5lovelanguages.com
Learning what my love languages are has helped me to understand a lot about myself and my relationship with my family, friends, colleagues and anyone I’ve ever dated. I think everyone should take the time to learn what their love languages are and those of the people they surround themselves with. It’s a great tool to better understand yourself and the people in your life and how you interact and communicate with them – often times without words.
To me, among many other things, a marriage means that you’ve both committed to communicating with each other for the rest of your lives – no matter how difficult, and even when you feel like you can’t find the words. Entering into a marriage means you both have a willingness and desire to never give up communicating with one another, and to keep trying to improve upon that communication until death do you part.
Clearly, this helps if you’re marrying someone you get along with and can communicate easily with. The whole notion of marrying your best friend is obviously something we all want – someone we know we love to tell everything to and be around all the time. But even in the best of circumstances, there will inevitably come a point where communication becomes hard and awkward or difficult conversations need to be had.
Learning how to communicate in relationships has not always come easily to me. In fact, I think it’s safe to say that it still is quite difficult for me, but I’m committed to working on that part of myself and it is incredibly important to me that whoever I am with is also committed to working on and always trying to better that part of themselves as well. Looking back at some of my past relationships that haven’t worked out, romantic, professional and even friendships, a lot of these failures started out with some sort of a communication break down. One or both parties being upset about something and not effectively communicating the problem to the other person.
I have always really respected my more to the point, straightforward friends who have no issues communicating how they’re feeling. They say what they’re thinking the moment they think it without hesitation. Meadow, my best friend who just got married, has this direct quality. She has always been able to say what she wants when she wants it – something I admire so much about her.
To be able to clearly state what it is you’re feeling and what it is you want in life or in a relationship is such an important quality to learn, but for many it does not come so easily. For me, this has always been quite difficult. When I’m angry or hurt about something, finding the words to express myself in the moment feels impossible. If I’m really upset about something I normally need some time to process my emotions and usually I need to write them down to work through what I’m feeling.
I remember with past boyfriends having fights and crying and not ever being able to get the right words out, feeling so upset and infuriated when they articulated themselves so clearly even in the throws of anger. This would frustrate me to no end and I would just cry and know all the things I was feeling but have no way of putting them into words.
Society tells us that when two people are having a problem they should sit down and talk about it, face to face or at least discuss it over the phone. But for me that has almost always felt impossible. To look someone in the face and articulate to them that I am upset with them is incredibly difficult for me. I almost always end up finding myself completely tongue tied in scenarios where I really need to express my hurt, anger or frustration. It has only been recently that I’ve really come to understand this about myself and begin to try to work with this part of me, instead of having it be something working against me and my relationships.
There are five primary ways or languages that people use to show how they care or love others: physical touch, quality time, acts of service, words of affirmation and giving gifts. Most of us tend to have one or sometimes two dominant ways they use to show their love. The highest possible score for a love language is a 12.
I took the Love Languages quiz as both a ‘single person’ and as ‘in a relationship’ in order to see how I express myself both when I’m in a relationship and when I’m with my friends and colleagues. Learning these things about myself immediately made a few things in my life incredibly clear to me. My results in both quizzes showed that my dominant love language is physical touch, by a lot. In both quizzes I scored the highest possible score, 12 points, for physical touch. Affection.
I am a very affectionate person. I love hugs, kisses and snuggling up to the people I love. Holding hands, linking arms, pats on the back, piggy backs, messing up people’s hair, kissing people on the cheek, even smacking my friends on the butt. I am very playful and affectionate. If you’re close with me then you will know that if I haven’t seen you for a few days or more then you can fully expect huge hugs and kisses from me when I see you and if we work together and I like you, then I’ll likely tap you on the shoulder or pinch your cheek or maybe poke you in the side playfully throughout the day. If you are sitting next to me during a World Cup game and England is playing, well then you can expect me to be squirming all over the place, grabbing your hand out of nowhere, nervously tapping the table, squeezing my own hands and just generally freaking out. During the last game someone commented that I should get a stress ball to squeeze. The same applies to me in a horror movie or any film that involves any kind of violence or anything scary. In a romantic relationship, physical touch is extremely important to me for me to feel secure and happy. I would not do well with someone who shies away from hugs and kisses, or who doesn’t want to cuddle with me all night long.
Just discussing my results with a few friends it was crazy to me how differently we all feel about physical touch. I literally would feel completely rejected if my partner didn’t snuggle with me and reciprocate my hugs and cuddles throughout the night. Yet three of my friends all agreed that they want only a few moments of hugs before falling asleep and then they want their own space. This was so eye-opening to me and explained so much to me about my personality.
Learning that physical touch is overwhelmingly my most dominant love language highlighted to me so many things about myself. I feel deeply and it then takes time for me to understand and articulate what it is I’m feeling. If I’m upset or hurt, or the opposite, I want to be held, cry, hug, or snuggle up when I’m trying to resolve a fight, or possibly smash something or scream or even go running or do some yoga, or whatever physical way I need to process my emotions before I can even think about articulating them.
My second love language, which I also scored quite high for (10/12 in a relationship and 9/12 as a single) is quality time. I cherish quality time with the people I love and care about. If I move things around to spend time with you or call you, that is a big thing for me. I’m showing you I care if I keep an afternoon free for you in one way or another or if I make concrete plans with you. This also means that if you hang out with me and you’re distracted by your phone the whole time or if you cancel on me at the last minute or just completely blow me off and act like it’s not a big deal, I will be particularly hurt. And far less likely to want to make time for you again. I have almost ended friendships with people who have cancelled plans on me after a few times in a row.
In both quizzes, my lowest scoring love languages, or the ones I basically never use, were acts of service and gift giving. This felt particularly poignant to me as I realised a couple of my friend’s more dominant love languages were gift giving, which is by far my lowest scoring or least used love language. I realised with a few people in my life that our love languages are so completely different that both of us have been showing our love in ways that are completely to foreign to the other.
Gift giving, a love language that doesn’t even register for me, is something I have never liked. The pressure to buy gifts for birthdays, holidays and special occasions will forever be something I find to be exasperating. Buying a gift out of obligation feels wrong to me on so many levels. And even more so for me, receiving gifts makes me incredibly uncomfortable and I’m very bad at accepting them (Ask anyone close to me how I feel about Christmas ).
Understating the love languages of the people around us can help us to see how in fact they might be telling us how much they care all the time but we may not have realised. They are just speaking to us in a different love language, or perhaps wanting us to speak to them in their own love language and not understanding ours.
In a successful marriage, finding someone who is willing to do the work to continually communicate with us for a lifetime is possibly the most important piece of the puzzle. Finding someone who will want to talk about things with you and help you learn to articulate your frustrations, hurts, and concerns in your relationship is key. No communication or poor communication is the killer for so many relationships. Understanding love languages is another way or tool you can use to help communicate with and better understand your loved ones.
Every relationship evolves into it’s own dynamic where communication is concerned. One of my favourite love stories is that of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. They are arguably one of the greatest love stories in British history, a passionate and loving union between two people with very strong dispositions and fierce independent streaks. As their relationship evolved, historians tell us how they used to write each other letters when they would fight and have them delivered to each other via their servants. I think I particularly like this as I tend to resort to writing when I can’t seem to get my emotions out in any other way.
The current Crown Prince of Denmark, Prince Frederik, and his beautiful Australian wife, Mary, met in 2000 in Sydney when Australia was hosting the Olympics. Although the two were immediately drawn to one another, the timing and geography was obviously difficult, and in those days before social media, they spent more than a year writing letters to each other to navigate through their long-distance relationship. It wasn’t until several years after they met that Mary and Frederik were able to publicly acknowledge their relationship and Mary moved to Denmark. But they both acknowledge their ease of communication with one another, despite the distance, right from the start.
Meadow and Andy, my friends who got married two weeks ago, live and work together. Their work hours have not always been in sync and their schedules have seen them both burning the candle at both ends many times. But they have made a consistent effort to spend quality time together outside of work and general co-habitation. I remember trying to set-up a catch up call with Meadow last year and on the day of our scheduled call she messaged me to tell me she needed to spend the day with Andy instead so she wouldn’t be able to chat after all. She said they both had been working so much that he had written in her calendar “babe time” and she wasn’t allowed to make plans or work that day because it was their scheduled time together. I love that.
There are so many aspects that go into a relationship to make it succeed, and I believe knowing and understanding your partner’s love languages (or any of your loved ones) can be a big help. I wish I had taken this quiz about 20 years ago before I started dating!
I urge all of you, if you don’t already know what your love languages are, to take this quiz and learn: www.5lovelanguages.com.