What is your partner’s love language? What is your love language? Since learning about the concept of love languages a few years ago, I’ve been trying to be more conscious about how I show my love to my husband. The Five Love Languages is a book by Gary Chapman. There are five different ways to express and experience love — “love languages”. These five love languages are:
- Receiving Gifts
- Quality Time
- Words of Affirmation
- Acts of Service
- Physical Touch
Each individual has his or her own way of expressing his love. Naturally, since this is the way we express our love, we also expect to receive love this same way. For example, I express my love best through words. I love writing long letters of affirmation, texting “I love you” to my husband during random moments of the day, having long, intimate conversations with friends. Given this, I enjoy it when I receive expressions of love through words as well. I cherish love letters, keep sentimental text messages from way back, and love long talks with my husband. But not everyone expresses love the same way. To love better, we have to be aware of how others express their own love – their love language. Gary Chapman shares that people shouldn’t use the love languages they like most to show their love, but rather the love languages that their loved ones can receive.
What’s your love language? You can discover your love language by taking this profiling test: http://www.5lovelanguages.com/profile/. My husband and I took it individually and then shared our results. You can allot approximately ten minutes each for the test. When we got our results, it made for wonderful bonding time too! Go ahead and take the test!
Another way to find out what your love language is to observe how you most often show your love to others. If you are regularly giving presents, this could gifts could be your love language. If you enjoy showing your love for others by doing tasks, then Acts of Service is your primary love language. You can also observe how others like receiving love – this indicates what their love language is.
Loving Better through Love Language
One of the things I learned from understanding our love language as a couple better is that how my husband receives love isn’t the way I typically show love. My husband loves it when I do little tasks for him — getting him a glass of water (even if the water dispenser is just a foot away from him), preparing his food, etc. I, on the other hand, am not a very “service-oriented” person. I used to get irritated at him getting irritated when I’d point out that the water is literally just a foot away, so why couldn’t he just get the water himself? It turns out that my husband’s love language, or the way he receives love, is acts of service.
I thought back to sources of our squabbles. Half of it really was because I wasn’t doing enough to make him feel appreciated. He did find joy when I’d prepare his pajamas for him at night, put toothpaste on his toothbrush, fix his baon for work. To me, they were small acts of love. To him, they were big acts of love. I didn’t understand how much those little acts meant so much to him.
Another lesson I learned is that how my husband gives love isn’t the way I prefer to receive love. If I show my love through words of affirmation, I prefer receiving love through words of affirmation. I like hearing words of assurance and listening to pep talk. I love letters. I love words! However, my husband isn’t that wordy type of guy. So while I’m looking for words of love from him, he’s been showing me love through his love language of giving love — gifts and service. My husband enjoys shopping for presents or running an errand for me. I’ve told him on more than one occasion though not to spend on gifts anymore – I’m not really big on presents. But still he continues to do so. This is his primary love language and I’m learning to understand that. Through this, I’ve come to appreciate the presents he gets me, and the surprise milk tea runs he does for me, even more.
That’s how it all balances out in the end – being conscious about how your partner expresses love, and how you receive love. If there’s awareness both ways, it makes for a more loving relationship.
This goes for family members and friends too. I’ve become more understanding of how others show their love and how they prefer to receive love. My sisters and I have a great time trying to understand our own parents’ love languages. It gave us a deeper understanding of how they’d want to be shown love, and how we shouldn’t hold grudges against them because they have a particular way of showing love. It’s also a wonderful way to learn about your kids’ love languages, your best friends’, even your co-workers.
So the biggest gift of love languages to me is more self-awareness: how you effectively show your love to others, and how you gratefully receive the love other people show you. There are different ways of showing love after all, and just because it’s not in the way I prefer to receive it, it doesn’t mean that other person loves me less. It reminds me of this wonderful quote:
“Just because someone doesn’t love you the way you want them to, doesn’t mean they don’t love you with everything they have.”
Learn your and your loved ones’ love language, and you’ll be loving a lot more wholeheartedly, a lot more ferociously.
“Love is something you do for someone else, not something you do for yourself.” — Gary Chapman