A Little Bit About Love Languages
The art of appreciating the way your partner gives and receives love.
R. and I were standing on the shores of Duck in the northern part of North Carolina’s Outer Banks when I told him something I’d been holding onto for a while. “I hate when you do home projects on the weekends,” I said. “I know you don’t really have time during the week and you do these things out of love, but I really just want to hang out with you and do fun things together.” Basically, I continued, I don’t care if the house is a little dirty or the backyard looks like garbage. I’m sick of losing half our Saturday to multi-hour trips to Home Depot. I’d rather have the time back.
This difference in how we tackle our weekends has little to do with activities we find fulfilling and everything to do with our respective love languages. Even if you’re not familiar with the New York Times Bestseller The Five Love Languages: The Secret to Love that Lasts by Gary Chapman, you’ve likely encountered the concept. As the title suggests, there are five love languages. They are words of affirmation, quality time, receiving gifts, acts of service and physical touch.
This is where I share the disclaimer that I have never read the book and most of my understanding of the following ideas is based on some quick research and the societal conversation around this concept. I’m by no means an expert on the love languages. I leave that honor to Mr. Chapman. For the purposes of this post, the main things to know are:
Everyone has a love language for expressing love.
Everyone has a love language for receiving love.
There are primary love languages and secondary ones, which means that more than one way of expressing and receiving love might appeal to you.
Knowing your partner’s primary ways of expressing and receiving love is important for having a long-lasting relationship that doesn’t make everyone wonder if you actually like your partner at all and whether it would be best if you two just broke up already.
I’m paraphrasing, but you get the gist. Love languages are helpful for fostering affection in your intimate partnerships (and potentially, all the relationships you maintain with people you truly care about). In that case, you should start by knowing yours. How do you prefer to express love? What makes you feel loved? Then ask the same questions of your partner. Do you know how they give and receive love?
For me, physical touch is the primary way I feel loved. This is why it has taken me years of training not to instinctively recoil when strangers/people I hardly know or have just met insist on greeting me with a hug. Hugs are for people you love, not weirdos from Tinder who haven’t impressed you yet.
Those who know me in real life have probably heard me recount my most harrowing first date story in which a man immediately hugged me and then proceeded to insist on sitting on the same side of the picnic table as me before telling me a batshit story about his attempt to get an emotional support designation for his cat and other not-interesting stories five inches from my face the entire night. Straight-up horror show. I’m still recovering.
Why? Because I reserve that kind of physical closeness for people I love! It took R. and I two dates before he got a hug instead of a handshake and even then he claims I hugged him for two seconds before bolting to my car and driving away. I take my physical touch love language very seriously.
My secondary receptive love language is quality time. That’s what prompted the conversation in the Outer Banks. My ideal date is spending all morning in a coffee shop and all evening at a wine bar, connecting and talking and getting to know one another more intimately. I feel loved when I have the undivided attention of the person I adore. When I see people on dates or at gatherings where no one is talking and everyone is staring at their phones, it makes me want to walk directly into the ocean. To me, those situations are where love goes to die.
When it comes to showering someone with affection, I am all about the words of affirmation. I tell R., E. and our dogs that I love them approximately 800,000 times per day on average. It’s constant. And if I’m not saying, “I love you” on repeat, I’m saying things like, “I’m so proud of you.” “You look so handsome in that shirt.” “That’s a great color on you.” “You’re so smart and strong.” “I like the way your dick looks in those boxers.” “That’s a good boy!” I’m basically the family’s one-woman hype squad. Thankfully, both R. and our pup Sally are Libras. Libras love compliments.
Quality time is my secondary way of showing love. I experience a lot of joy in knowing someone on a deeper level. I take pride in giving other people my undivided attention when we’re together. Am I always perfect at it? No. Do I sometimes do the thing I hate and get caught up reading an article on my phone when I should be engaging with my husband? Yes. It’s something I have to practice, even though it comes fairly naturally to me. When I want someone to know I care for them, however, I always put my phone away or (blissfully) leave it at home.
R. has a different approach for both expressing and receiving love. He is an acts of service kinda guy. R. tells me he loves me by doing things for me. That’s how I became the woman who gave up paperwork mere moments after saying, “I do.” R. handles all the shit I don’t want to do, from reading documents that make my eyes glaze over to completing many household chores while I teach yoga on Sundays.
It might not shock you to learn that I did not appreciate this very much at first. I am low-key needy. I want all the sex and attention and foot rubs and eye contract. One of my favorite things to do to R. is trap with a hug and then slowly wrap one leg around him followed by another until I’m hanging off of him. It makes him laugh, which is a big benefit. We also started doing a little dance together in the mirror while we’re brushing our teeth. It started with me bouncing my bum on him every time he tried to pass behind me. Now, it’s a thing.
And while R. does feel loved when I use words of affirmation (Libras like compliments! I’m serious!), he would probably feel more loved if I were more service-oriented in my actions. Back in the day, I worried that these differences made us fundamentally incompatible. If I needed a lot of sex to feel wanted and adored, how was I supposed to mesh with a man who does not hold physical touch to the same level of importance? Similarly, if I don’t really care about acts of service beyond them being a nice to have, how would I feel loved? And how was R. supposed to feel when I didn’t reciprocate his love in a way he recognizes and understands?
It took me longer than it should have to find an answer: Gratitude. I can appreciate that R. loves me and acknowledge that he is showing me in his own way. I can be thankful that he puts in the effort to do things to make me feel cared for. And he does the same for me. He knows that I glom onto him because I care.
Beyond that, we can also do our best to step outside the safety of our love language comfort zones. I can sweep the floor while he’s at work to keep the mountain of daily dog hair at bay. He can snuggle up to me for a few minutes of quality touching in bed before we both pass out from exhaustion. And we can both put down our phones and be present with one another.
The last thing I’ll say on the subject is that I check in with R. on a quarterly basis. I don’t have a calendar alert or anything crazy, but approximately four times per year I will ask R. if he’s happy in our relationship, if he feels loved, if there’s anything I can do to make him feel more loved. I ask because I want to know that our relationship is solid. I don’t want to be one of those couples that people dread being around. I also want to be sure that R. doesn’t feel I’m taking advantage of all the wonderful things he does for me because I truly appreciate them and him.
At the end of the day, I believe that love languages matter. They aren’t destined to make or break a relationship, but they do give us a means of communicating our needs to one another. The more we know about ourselves and our partners, the greater chance we have of creating a love that lasts. And isn’t a potentially awkward conversation about taking fewer weekend trips to Home Depot a worthy price to pay for ever-lasting love?
With pleasure,
Yes, Misstrix
P.S. The Unleash Your Inner Writer Workshop is open for signups! A couple people have already snagged their spots. Join us. It’s going to be a blast, and if you’ve always dreamed of having the confidence to write a book, essay, blog or something else entirely, this is a great place to get started. I’ll see you there. Muah!
Haha can we trade husbands? My man just wants to lay around and touch each other on the weekends and I’m like, um can you please get up and fix every single thing in the house? 😂