Love Languages

[joreth]

This is something I've written about on PMM as the subject comes up, and I have this conversation with people as they move closer into my Monkeysphere and become in danger of offending me without understanding why.  So since I saw it recently in someone else's journal, I'm taking the opportunity to discuss it.  

The Five Love Languages, by Dr. Gary Chapman, was quite a revolutionary book for me. I highly recommend everyone read it, and follow up with the Five Love Languages for Singles. He gets a little preachy/religious at the very end, but it's still a worthwhile book.

The book is all about how we communicate "Love" , and how different people communicate it in different ways, which sets us up for all kinds of heartache if we don't know how the other person is communicating and they don't know how we communicate.

Here is how Dr. Chapman explains it directly from his book:

In the area of linguistics, there are major language groups: Japanese, Chinese, Spanish, English, Portuguese, Greek, German, French, and so on. Most of us grow up learning the language of our parents and siblings, which becomes our primary or native tongue. Later, we may learn additional languages but usually with much more effort These become our secondary languages. We speak and understand best our native language. We feel most comfortable speaking that language. The more we use a secondary language, the more comfortable we become conversing in it. If we speak only our primary language and encounter someone else who speaks only his or her primary language, which is different from ours, our communicaiton will be limited. We must rely on pointing, gruntting, drawing pictures, or acting out our ideas. We can communicate, but it is awkward. Language differences are part and parcel of human culture. If we are to communicate effectively across cultural lines, we must learn the language of those with whom we wish to communicate. In the area of love, it is similiar. Your emotional love language and the language of your spouse may be as different as Chinese from English. No matter how hard you try to express love in English, if your spouse understands only Chinese, you will never understand how to love each other. ... There are basically five emotional love lanugages - five ways that people speak and understand emotional love. ... Within the five basic emotional love languages, there are many dialects.

For these purposes, "Love" is defined as: "conscious love. It is intentional love. It is a commitment to love ... it requires thought and action. It does not wait for the encouragement of warm emotions but chooses to look out for the interest of the lover because you are committed to the other's well-being". Love is something you *do* for another person and something you feel when someone *does* it for you, and it does not have to be limited to romantic partnerships. "Love", in this respect, can be expressed between family members, friends, even co-workers, acquaintences and general humanity.

The basic premise is that if you feel "loved", you are happy and if you show "love" to someone else in the "language" they speak, they will feel happy.

Take a stereotypical hypothetical example: A husband and wife sits at the breakfast table. She is trying to tell him about her plans for the day while he reads his newspaper. She is frustrated that he doesn't appear to be listening to her and he is annoyed that she is interrupting his reading. Eventually she explodes with "You just don't love me!" He looks up, baffled. He replies that of course he loves her, doesn't he do all sorts of things to show her?

Her primary Love Language is Quality Time. She wants him to *be* with her, giving her his undivided attention. She does not feel loved because he is not speaking her primary Love Language. His primary Love Language is Acts of Service - he *does* things for her. He fixes the brakes in her car because he doesn't want her to get into an accident. He mows the lawn and takes out the trash every week without being asked. She doesn't see these services as acts of love, maybe because she thinks they are just things a husband is supposed to do. He is hurt because all his effort at showing her his love is going unnoticed.

This is a fairly obvious example of people having different Love Languages and what can be done about it. He can make a concerted effort to give her his undivided attention and she can learn to appreciate his good deeds more and even do things for him with the feelings of love now embedded in her actions for him.

But another, less obvious example is this:

Two co-workers in an office are not really getting along. Mary is very resentful that Sue is not "carrying her own load". Sue is nearly hostile towards Mary. Mary decides to do something positive about it, rather than bitching to the boss and getting Sue fired. Mary's primary Love Language is Acts of Service, which is why it irritates her so much when Sue doesn't seem to *do* as much. So she sits Sue down to ask her what she can do to make Sue's life easier. Sue thinks about it and comes back with "If you tell me something I can do for you first, I'll tell you what you can do for me". So Mary thinks about it and says "Somehow the job of making coffee fell to me because no one else ever seemed to do it. It would make my life easier if you could share the job with me, maybe switch off every week". Sue agrees, then admits hers. She tells Mary that some aspects of the job are particularly difficult for her and sometimes it takes her a little while to catch on, so if Mary could just give her a little praise when she notices Sue doing something well, it would mean a lot to her. Sue's primary Love Language is Words Of Affirmation.

These two women, who are co-workers, and most definately not even friends, can find a way to communicate "love" for each other to make the other happier in their work environment.

So, in what way do you express love to people?  What can people do for you that makes you feel loved?

Some people are bilingual. Some people are particularly skilled at languages and are even tri-lingual. In the Languages of Love, I discovered that I speak 4 Love Languages fluently, and didn't even know it.

On the one hand, this is quite convenient in that there is a wide range of things a person can do to make me feel loved and I will generally understand someone when they are trying to communicate Love to me, as well as being capable of showing Love to them in a manner that they will understand.

On the other hand, this is quite inconvenient when I didn't know that there were 4 different ways that someone can make me feel loved, because someone might be showing me in one way, but I would feel "empty" in one of the other languages and not know how to communicate that they needed to do something in that area to show me they loved me since I *was* feeling loved in another area.

The 5 Languages are:

Words of Affirmation
Physical Touch
Quality Time
Gift Giving
Acts of Service

There are several places online where you can take a quick quiz that will give you an estimation of what your Primary Love Language is, but, just like with the Meyers-Briggs Type Indicators (which I also HIGHLY recommend everyone read, in Please Understand Me II, and use it in conjunction with this book for relationship tips), I believe it is more beneficial to read the texts provided and decide for yourself based upon the full definitions of each category.

One such quiz is:

The Five Love Languages

I have multiple love languages!

My Detailed Results:
Quality Time:	8
Physical Touch:	8
Acts of Service:	8
Words of Affirmation:	6
Receiving Gifts:	0

Take the Quiz!

Check out the Book

I've taken the quiz in a couple of places, and because of my multi-lingual capability, the results are all just a little different each time but basically fall into one range of results (just like my MBTI results!). After reading 3 of Dr. Chapman's books to get a good feel for the categories, I personally rank my languages as such:

Quality Time:	10
Physical Touch:	10
Words of Affirmation:	9
Acts of Service:	9
Receiving Gifts:	1

Some might be confused about the Quality Time because I seem to require so few hours within a relationship.  Quality Time refers to *time spent together*, not necessarily the quantity of time spent together.  My particular dialect of Quality Time includes "giving me your undivided attention" as in the above hypothetical example, but it ALSO includes "sharing activities even if the attention is divided between me and the activity".  Doing the grocery shopping, you playing WoW while I read on the couch, both of us working on our respective projects in the same room, all count for Quality time for me and has significant value in whether I feel "loved" or not.  People who do not see shared activities and shared chores as Quality Time and require only my "undivided attention" as Quality Time has a very high chance of hurting me because sharing these activities even while attention is divided means so much to me.  I do lots of things and I constantly have time-management issues so I need to be able to multi-task.  Plus, I want to be able to share those activities and passions in my life with someone else, like reading and working on projects.  These "dialect" peculiarities can also be discovered in the understanding of my MBTI personality.

If anyone is confused that Physical Touch is one of my Primary Love Languages because I always seem so physically withdrawn, this is because I have a very long history of Physical Touch being expressed in a negative manner, and because Touch means so much to me, it had a significant impact on me when it was "wrong", so I withdrew physically from people and now I lack the skills to express emotion physically for things like friendly cuddling.  But I *really* appreciate it when someone offers it to me, and after a few times of receiving, after I feel secure in our relationship (whatever type that might be) I will eventually open up and start reciprocating, even initiating Touch.

Acts of Service is something that I do most often to express my love, but I don't necessarily require it be done for me as often as I like to do it for other people, which is why it's ranked 4th among the top ... but I still like to have Acts of Service performed for me as a way to express love.  Conversely, Words of Affirmation mean a lot to me but I'm not as good at saying them to other people.  Words of Affirmation is another tricky language, like Physical Touch.  Because it means so much to me, if you say the wrong things and don't offer affirmation for the right ones, I will explode in a manner out of proportion to the offense.  Anyone who reads my Online Skeezballs posts should be able to vouch for this.  In order to get this one right, a person should discover my MBTI type to learn what kinds of things about myself I value to correctly give me Words Of Affirmation on those traits I appreciate most.

Originally I agreed with the various quizzes opinions that Gift Giving was 0.  I'm a very practical-minded person and most gifts just don't make sense to me.  They costs money that could better be spent elsewhere and are usually for trivial things.  Particularly flowers.  Don't ever buy me flowers!  Gifts also tend to come with a sense of obligation, that they should be reciprocated.  I don't *do* gifts.  Every once in a while I will be out and see something that reminds me of a particular person.  If I have the money for it, I will buy it, but I absolutely do not want to attach any sort of reciprocated sense of obligation to gifts given or received.  I finally just cut out xmas exchanges entirely with the exception of my parents (my sister and I go in together for one nice gift) and my 10-year old nephew.  My sister and I don't exchange and I don't exchange with my friends or partners.  I'd rather just give them something when I happen to find it, rather than feel obligated to give them something because society says that December 25th is the day we give people stuff.  If someone wants to buy me a gift, I refuse to let myself feel obligated to reciprocate with a gift.  So don't expect any gifts from me just because it's a gift-giving holiday.

But a few gifts received have stood out in my memory and really pleased me.  I had a car with a shitty radio.  I went on an extended trip and lent my car to my then-boyfriend whose car was out of commission at the time.  When I came back, he had my car washed, detailed (which I never take the time to do), and the radio replaced with one of his older radios that was practically new and much nicer than mine that didn't work at all.  It cost him no money, and it was something that I wanted to do for myself anyway, and he is particularly skilled in electronics and so enjoyed the activity.  Another past boyfriend went on a trip to China and came back with a large amount of Chinese brocaded silk because he knew that I like to sew and I was already planning to make a Chinese-style dress - I even had the pattern and was nearly ready to start shopping for the fabric the week he came back and surprised me with it.  One of my current sweeties is a leatherworker and costumer and randomly collects costume stuff.  As he meets people that seem to suit his various items, he gives them away.  He has given me a couple of outfits that he had sitting in his closet just waiting for someone small enough who could wear them and whose personality was suited to them.  He also made me a leather choker in my two favorite colors that happened to match one of the outfits he gave me previously.  He found a decorative pin somewhere that made him think of me, so he turned it into the pendent for the choker.

What all of these have in common is that they are gifts that are expressly meant for me.  In order to give me such gifts, the givers had to know me intimately and they found things that showed how well they paid attention to the unique qualities that make up "me".  In the finding of things elsewhere, it showed they were thinking of me when I wasn't around.  The gifts didn't cost much money and they utlized their natural talents, such as working with electronics or making leather items.  And none of them were given with any sense of obligation that I should return the favor with gifts for them.

So with a couple of examples of gifts that pleased me greatly, I have to add a point to the Gift Giving category, even though I *still* feel the same about gifts in general.  It takes a great deal of effort to pick out the kind of gift that I will value like this, and I am overly-sensative to a sense of obligation, so it's just easier not to give me gifts and not to expect them from me.  I generally just don't know what to give people - I'm horrible at matching up the right gift with each person.  My family and I still do xmas lists because none of us can buy the "right gift" for each other just out of our heads.  My nephew, however, shows signs of being a great gift giver and I take special care in picking out his gifts to recipriocate.

So whether you are already happy in a relationship, or you feel there is room for improvement, no matter what kind of relationship it is, these little online quizzes about The Five Love Languages and Meyers-Briggs Personality Type Indicators (MBTI) are a fun little resource for adding to the quality of your relationships.  But I can't stress enough the importance of reading the full texts (with a set of highlighters and a pencil!) to evaluate each person (yourself included) individually.  These are wonderful resources, but we also have to take into account individual history and experience that will make exceptions to certain rules.  Categories are great for lumping people into as a place to start from, but don't forget that the people you're dealing with are individuals, and making a decision based on what category you place them in could have disasterous effects if you forget something unique about them that contradicts with the category. 

For instance, I am an INTX, slightly leaning towards INTJ with a strong overlap of ISTP in the Meyers-Briggs system (don't worry if you don't know what that means, it's mostly irrelevant for this example - I'll explain the relevant part).  I had a partner who was dating me and another girl who was an INF-something (I forget).  NTs typically don't place much emotional weight on holidays.  We just generally don't give a crap about days that society has dictated as "special", although we might have our own "special" days reserved.  NFs, however, place much more emotional weight on "special" days and have a tendency to take things more personally than NTs do.  So my then-partner called me up asking if I wanted to spend Valentine's Day together.  I said sure.  Then, because of a recent Resolution of mine, I made a great effort to keep that day open, even turning down work so I wouldn't flake out on personal plans.  A couple of days before V-Day, I told him that I was still free for it, and what were we going to do.  He blinked and said that he made plans with his other girlfriend because he knew that NTs didn't really care about holidays whereas NFs did, so it would mean more to her than to me.  He would spend the same amount of time with me another day, since it was the Quality Time he new I appreciated, not what day it fell on.

Logically, this made sense based upon the categories that we each fell into.  I *don't* care about spending V-Day with someone and I *do* care about Quality Time.  She *does* care about holidays.  But he didn't take into account the individuality that somewhat contradicted with the category classifications.  I had recently decided to focus more attention on my personal relationships and not cancel plans for work as often.  This was a HUGE effort for me, emotionally, and as a J, I get really cranky when my schedule gets upset or changed.  These two things combined made it very important to me that he not break our "date" on Valentine's Day, even though that particular date wasn't actually important.  I also have issues with my partners' other partners not accepting me in our shared partner's life and not viewing shared time as Quality Time, which is something his other girlfriend was showing signs of at this point.  If he was concerned about hurting her feelings, as an NF who wanted to spend *that day* with him, a good compromise would be to spend V-Day with both of us.  She would have gotten her holiday, I would have gotten my Quality Time, not had my schedule changed, an acknowledgement of the amount of effort I made to keep the date, AND seen signs of her really trying to accept a poly relationship, which was important to me. 

Placing me in a category, like NT, is helpful to narrow down the range of activities to do and things to say.  But making decisions based on that category without taking into account the INTJ category (which has its own peculiarities), my Primary Love Languages, AND those little quirks that I have that are based on personal experience both in my past and with respect to the specific situation, can make a decision that *seems* intuitive and right be spectacularly wrong. 

So, by all means, PLEASE go out and read The Five Love Languages and The Five Love Languages For Singles and Please Understand Me II and learn all your various categories and the categories for your loved ones for tools to improve communication and understanding.  But after you read the materials and take the quizzes and decide what categories everyone fits into ... TALK to each other about them and find the idiosyncrasies and quirks that make everyone special and unique.

Comments

[omnifarious.livejournal.com]

*smile* When you are feeling expository it's always kinda fun to read. :-)

[joreth]

I'm glad *someone* is reading my very lengthy ramblings

[summer-jackel.livejournal.com]

I've looked at this theory before and found it very useful. Thanks for the meme.

I find that I express all of these to varying degrees, with time and touch predominating. Chris is big on acts of service, and it took us awhile to really communicate well through that.

[joreth]

Yeah, sorry ya'll had to wade through all that exposition before you get to the meme.

[a-rowan-dryad.livejournal.com]

I found this post curtosey (sp?) of Summer Jackel so please allow me a moment to say thank you to her in your journal. THANKS SJ!!!

Ok now that I did that let me say that I could hug right now. You see I read this book a couple years ago and it was like lightning hit my brain. I have spent a great deal of time trying to educate those around me on how to deal with me... to great failure. I am not writting to complain so I will leave it at the fact that I like with a predominetly "acts of service person" who does not take kindly to steping out of the language and I am an equal split between Quality Time (sub set of it being in depth and well understood conversations) and Words of Affirmation (both at 9). To say living with this person can be down right miserable is an understatment. However since she is my mother and my career is brand new I am greatful for the roof over my head.

The hug I mention if for someone posting the segment about how the love languages do not apply strickly to ones lover. It can affect the working world, family, etc.... Thank you for reminding me of that segment perhaps if I get lucky enough to bend her ear about it and have her listen then she'll get it and we can work on making this period of co-habitation pleasant.

[joreth]

Welcome!

That's why I so highly recommend Love Languages for Singles, because it discusses how to "love" other types of people, not just romantic partners, even if you're not "single". I think the original book is a great place to start, but the Singles book offers more depth and a more rounded look at the different languages.

My parents don't understand anything about me, although we get along just fine now that I don't live with them. I discovered that my parents and sister are all the same personality type and I am a radically different type, which accounted for all the misunderstanding growing up. My nephew turns out to be a much different type then they are too (he's living with all of them) and before he was 5, my family was already having trouble understanding him and why he did things and how to relate to him. So, in an effort to prevent the hardships I had growing up for him, I gave them a copy of Love Languages For Children.

Good luck with your mom!

[a-rowan-dryad.livejournal.com]

P.S. I copied a chunk of this post - only that which I was resonably sure was from Dr. Chapmans book - but felt I should ask if you are ok with that. Please drop by my journal to have a look and if you are unhappy with my actions I will take it down.

[joreth]

I have no problem with you copying parts of my post and I don't mind link-backs to my journal. Only the parts in italics are direct quotes from the book. The paragraph about "For these purposes, love is defined as..." is all my interpretation of how Dr. Chapman defines "love", with the italicized sentence being a direct quote.

[james-the-evil1.livejournal.com]

veddy veddy interestink! ;-)