Love Languages

[Phoebe]

Has anyone taken this love languages quiz to identify your love language or the love language of your partner or friend or kid, etc? This might seem like the type of quiz I normally would classify under "Bogus", along with all the personality quizzes and strengths analyses and which BTS member would you be besties with quizzes or astrology charts, which I take to be all about equally valuable or pointless.

However, even in my advanced age I find this love language quiz meaningful and useful:
https://5lovelanguages.com/quizzes/love-language

It tells you something you should already know about yourself, and it's not trying to get at some hidden essence or supernatural bs, or most importantly, at things that are better evaluated by other people than by yourself. It's just you, telling yourself with greater clarity, a few things you already know about yourself on some level. The result is that you identify with greater specificity what you think you want - and then best of all, you can compare that to what other people want. This latter benefit maybe is best for those of us who are challenged to interpret other people's thoughts and feelings... Perhaps those of us who are not neurotypical in that way and to whom other people are often a black box of mystery.

So for example, I already knew that some people are huggers and some people are not, and that I'm not. It's not like a great mystery was revealed by finding out that my love language is acts of service along with words of affirmation, while all the other things that are meaningless to me are quite important to others. Some people need touch not just for the reasons I would assume, but because they genuinely don't feel as loved or secure unless you are touching them on a regular basis. It's like a cat: some of them really don't need or want you to touch them and others of them need to be in your lap once a day. So again, not terribly mysterious but helpful to put a pin in it and really think about what it means for people to need certain things to feel loved.

It's also helpful to understand why you're drawn to certain things in other people. Like when I see a person who's really good at acts of service, I'm attracted to it on a base level regardless of anything else. That's how my parents and their parents tended to express affection, although one group was also a bunch of touchers and the other group was a bunch of affirmers. So it is also helpful to see that when a person who is set up to value different things is doing those things, they are expressing their feelings of love for you in a way you might not be receiving as an expression of love. It's all quite interesting.

[DMDarcs]

I have never taken the love language quiz, but Mrs. Darcs had at one point in time. She said her love language was gift giving, which made complete sense to me at a time. She loved getting/making gifts for others. She could also become very disappointed if a gift given to her was not to her liking, because she would interepret that as the person did not love them in the proper manner as they should have known the gift was one she didn't appreciate.

She told me that she had also taken the test for me, and that my love language was physicality. I don't know how much I actually agree with that. I mean, I definitely hug friends that I havent seen in a long time.... but that is mostly it in terms of me showing that affection to anyone outside of my family. I do, however, definitely have the need to receive means of physical affection. A hug, a hand hold, a squeeze, are all very very important for me. I think they let me know that I am loved and valued.

i don't think it's one of the end results of the love language quiz, but I always felt that my love language was food. If I am really trying to show you love or appreciation,it's definitely through food. It could be me cooking for you, or taking you out to dinner, or even just getting you that snacky treat that you really like, but it's definitely food. It's probably also the reason that I often try to have serious meetings that I might need to have out of normal work hours at restaurants or with food available shortly before or afterwards.

This is the kind of thing that I generally view as hooey nonsense. Recent life events (which I am not quite ready to talk about yet, but will get there) have made me reconsider some of the merit of this however. I think if people have different types of love language, they may not always fully realize when another person is trying to tell them they love them. Much like how at the beginning of The Thing, if the Americans spoke Swedish or Russian or whatever (I don't know...never seen the movie) they would have avoided the entire problem.

[Phoebe]

That's very interesting! I would bet a lot of people put food up high on the list ... To the point that I wonder if somehow that could be incorporated? Maybe there should be questions that determine whether food ranks highly and if so, Is it perceived by the person as a gift to be given and received? A form of caring for someone much like a touch or hug or the way you would feed a person when they were sick in order to heal them? Or is it more of an act of service like showing hospitality to the guest? Maybe food could be different things to different people or multiple things at once. But it resonates a lot with me because I want to cook for the people I love as a demonstration of that love and I definitely want them to enjoy the food and I need to be sure that they did. Thus I live most of my life frustrated, haha! But really. And I don't think it's an accident that one of my kids likes to cook with me and that's a way that we bond mutually.

I also wonder if the positive and the negative sides, and the different directions of the relationship, actually line up In a given love language? In other words, do people who want to receive touch also express their love through touch? Or do people who want to receive words of affirmation feel especially slighted if they get negative words? Or is there mismatch in these areas, like where one person might go around praising others with words of affirmation but what they really want for themselves is gifts? Or where you prefer to receive acts of service but don't really mind when they are absent, while you would be especially aggrieved if you got negative words instead of positive ones?

I feel like we need more layers to the inquiry! But it has been edifying. I find that I take more deliberate steps to try to demonstrate things that I know other people are wanting to receive. When you're not a hugger this may sound strange but you really have to tell yourself to hug other people or you will forget or neglect it. For huggers I know that's awful but that's how it is when you aren't really a natural hugger.

[Kyle]

My love language is time. With a big family and a full time job and other outside obligations, I show my love by being with or around the ones I love. It doesn't matter if we're going to a festival or watching Love Island on TV. Proximity is the key.

[Phoebe]

That's one of the big five, apparently... It features large for my husband as well and I wonder if it's because of a similar feeling that time is scarce and commodified and precious, so spending it is a really important thing? But for him it's also about the togetherness and the focus. Like just being in the vicinity wouldn't really be enough - there has to be time for a meaningful exchange and concentration on one another.

[Kyle]

But for him it's also about the togetherness and the focus. Like just being in the vicinity wouldn't really be enough - there has to be time for a meaningful exchange and concentration on one another.

Yes. It's not enough that I'm with the ones that I love. It's important that I'm doing something with them, not just around them. If that makes sense.

[DMDarcs]

I broke down and took the test. And it said also said that my love language was quality time - though I am very content to just be around people and do not necessarily have to be doing something with them. One of my goals this summer has been to just be around my children, even if we're not doing anything actively together. It is enough to have daughter on her phone and son on his Switch while I am on lappy, but we're all in the same room. It feels happy to me.

I am a bit disappointed that I couldn't see how I ranked in the other languages though, as two other seemed to be almost as strong as time. ONe of them was miniscule. But I don't know what they are!

[Phoebe]

I wanted to know this too so I kind of reverse engineered and looked at the questions again, to confirm that the words of affirmation were second place for me. But I was pretty sure already and everything else was very low on my list, so it was easy to identify from a few changes.

The stuff that's low still matters though... I think it just doesn't matter in the way the quiz is asking for, in a way that lines up with how it would matter to others. So for example gifts... If I wasn't getting any gifts at the normal times or people were being thoughtless about it, that wouldn't be nice - I just don't care that much about the details of gifts and don't see them as an important expression of love relative to other things. And touch - It's still important to me, It's just different. I'm not clingy, I don't need touch for reassurance, and it's not how I express love. If I love somebody I set about working for them. But I still want to touch the people I love and if I was deprived of touch I would be unhappy. So it's not that it's unimportant, It's just not something I'm using to communicate my feelings and I don't notice it as much when other people communicate their feelings that way to me.

[Tahlvin]

My love language is acts of service. Working to provide for my family, giving up my weekends to spend taking the kids to swim meets.

[DMDarcs]

This arrticle popped up on my feed, and I've been thinking about it all day. For those of you who don't want to reac the article, the idea of "pebbling" is that sending memes, links, music, etc. to people throughout the day is a form of love can be an expression of love. This is totally something that I do, and I see my son do it often as well. You find something that sparks joy in you, and you share it with someone, because you believe it will also make them happy and shows them that you are thinking about this. This is something that I very much used to do until recently, I'm not sure if everyone recognizes this as a type of love, and I think that some could certainly see that as being distracting or possibly even annoying. I totally want to share the things I love with the people I love, and I definitely do feel (unrightly) disappointed if they don't love it as well.

[Mike]

My take on love languages are that they are unscientific and only as meaningful as you want to make them. Probably more helpful than zodiac signs, but on par with your Briggs-Meyer personality inventory or your choice of Hogwarts house.

The original five love languages were designed by a Baptist preacher who wanted to help married couples in his congregation learn to understand each other better, and interestingly, the love language of gifts was about receiving gifts, not giving them. His book on the subject, written in 1992, was clearly aimed at the middle aged boomers in his congregation and is pretty misogynistic.

But my own opinion is that the concept has grown beyond that and makes a convenient shorthand for discussion. People find that helpful, and I think that's awesome. On the flip side, like anything else, it can also be weaponized, such as using it to explain that I'm not actually an asshole, we just have different love languages, and that's why it seems like I expect so much from you without reciprocating. But that's with anything. As a tool to facilitate communication, I support it.