I was having a conversation with a friend today and he expressed disgust because his dog licked him in the face while he was trying to sleep.
While he was irritated, he also spoke of how he was lying down with his eyes closed but wasn’t wearing his CPAP machine which helps him breathe. I explained to him that, while he was annoyed by dog breath and spit on his face, she was showing concern and love and making sure he was okay. For the last few years, there’s been this study going around which helps people decipher their specific Love Language and understand others thru their language. There are 5 Love Languages which help you understand why a person does or doesn’t respond to you in the manner you’ve become accustomed or feeds your soul. His dog was expressing her Love Language of affection and physical touch to show him she cared about him.
I took the Love Language quiz a few years ago and it was no surprise to me or anyone who knows me that my main one is Affection and Physical Touch followed by Quality Time. Just like I’m a frickin cupid who loves love, thru touch is how I receive my affirmation someone cares about and desires me. When you’ve grown up with affection, it’s how you know someone cares about you. I believed all people were this way but am sadly disappointed when someone else’s LL is Words of Affirmation or Acts of Service. Yes, it’s great to hear someone whose opinion you respect tell you they are proud of you but when affection or receiving gifts is your LL, it doesn’t speak to or touch your soul.
Those words of affirmation and kudos are great and help you grow with confidence when received from an elder like your parent or grandparent because their approval is always sought to confirm we’re following the path they lay for us. I own 100% that I sought words of affirmation from my mother for decades and struggled with making decisions in my own personal life because I never knew if I was living up to her expectations. Yes, I know now that’s no way to live, you can’t live your life teetering on someone else’s opinions because it’s your life to live, not theirs.
Being who and how I am with the leading language of Affection, I naturally give the other languages, I believe they fall directly under mine. If I care about someone, I will tell them how much I appreciate them and how proud I am for something they’ve done in their life; to show them I’m thinking about them, I’ll send or buy them small trinkets just because I was thinking of them which caters to the language of Receiving Gifts.
Since I crave physical touch and attention, I’m going to want to be around them all the dayum time (Attention) and offer to help with any task that won’t get my clothes dirty, make me sweat or damage a nail (Act of Service). C’mon now, I’m still a girly girl who will gladly keep you company and hand you tools as you’re changing oil or brakes, just please, I beg of you, don’t expect me to do the work with you because I will not be happy and if I ain’t happy, you won’t be either.
Recently, I reached a milestone in my life: I bought my own car with my own insurance! Yay me! Now, to some, that may seem ridiculous but for me it was an act of acknowledging I’m officially an adult and it only took 47 years.
I’ve always had my mom and dad there in the car buying process, putting cars and insurance in their names for me, taking care of me like parents do and I LOVE and APPRECIATE them for it. Thru the car buying process, I had to admit for the first time that I might be a little spoiled because I’ve been blessed to live a life only dreamt of and hoped for by many but it was my norm and all I’d ever known. In verbalizing being spoiled, I also realized I can also be quite the brat when things don’t go my way and I don’t know which language that is a part of, might just be my personality.
I’ve actually had it pretty great in my life but still had the audacity to complain and have been humbled by the stories of others which brought a tear to my eye because their upbringing was some shit. I’ve been blessed to experience all of the LLs growing up from those around me and have grown accustomed to and expect anyone who enters my life to exhibit all of them. Being brought up the way I was, I don’t understand someone who only has one LL and the brat rears her ugly head when I’m not showered with all of the languages.
Since I am aware of the LLs, I never thought about how someone with a different language would impact me and my feelings nor did I realize how much I need the affection in a romantic relationship until I didn’t have it. I’ve stayed in a couple of relationships with the belief the person I was with would wake up and shower me with affection outside of the bedroom and them being horny because they cared about me. Let me state this: showing affection just to get laid is more of an insult than attempt of showing affection and sexual innuendos without affection makes someone like me feel like I’m only there for you to empty your sack and that’s not gonna make the pannies drop………..at all.
I simply believe once you learn someone’s LL and care about them, you will do what it takes to adapt and give them what they desire and crave, WRONG! When someone only lives by one LL, they live with blinders on and know absolutely nothing about the others and show their love thru the only language they know which is where the clash comes into play. Selfishly, I don’t accept the inability to adapt and become who they need you to be because, if you care about someone, you’re supposed to do what it takes, right? But, unfortunately, everyone isn’t built to be affectionate, tell you they’re proud of and appreciate you, or lavish you with gifts and attention. Although I appear to act as though I know everything, I actually don’t, shocking right? All I go on is what I feel in my soul and would be willing to do for the person I claim to care about because I know what it means to them.
When you have a job/career, technology will come into play and alter everything you previously knew, you have to learn new skills and ways of getting the job done, why can’t you do that for the person you claim to want to be with? If you don’t adapt at work, they will quickly replace you with someone who went to school and received the training and a degree and replace you with the quickness but you expect the person who cares about you to just accept you as you are?
Is it because the person you’re with isn’t paying for your livelihood that you see no reason to grow and adapt to being what they need? When it comes to love and relationships, they may not financially compensate you but the feelings they fill your soul with can’t compare with that paycheck. Well, wait, I’ll take that back because if your LL is Receiving Gifts, money and material items are what you relate to. I don’t understand the Receiving Gifts as an act of love because I grew up watching my mother have everything materialistic she had ever dreamed of bestowed upon her by her husband and still left because she wasn’t fulfilled in the areas which mattered most to her. This is not to say that I don’t appreciate jewelry, purses, or shoes because I do, just not as the only way to prove you love me.
We all have our own Love Language and, if we’re lucky, we’ll find the one who speaks it fluently and live happily ever after. Now, the reality is, with everyone being as unique and individual as snowflakes, there will be people who speak a different language than the one which speaks to and ignites your soul but their overall being captivates your mind and spirit and, at that point, you have a decision to make: do you take them as they are while making the compromise and lacking what you desire or just walk away because it’s not worth the energy and time at this phase of your life?
That’s a question I’m not able to answer for you or anyone else, hell, I’m having a hard enough time answering it for myself. I think the LL chart is very helpful if you use it to understand what soothes another’s soul and spirit with the willingness and ability to adapt to make them feel desired and wanted. I believe it becomes a problem when you know what it takes and do nothing about it and use “I wasn’t brought up that way so I don’t know any other way to be” as a crutch because you’re telling that person they’re not worth you even trying.
Learn your language and study the others so you know how to love another properly but don’t say you understand but are unwilling to adapt and show them what they mean to you. Love is all about effort, whether it be thru time, attention, affection, gifts or words of affirmation, everyone has a language that, once decoded, will open them up to being the best person for and to you. When loved properly, we naturally become better people, it shows in our smiles, the way our eyes light up around them, and our overall being.
