How Do You Take Your Love?

One of the recent lessons I have been taught is looking at the different way people express love. This can also sometimes be called a ‘Love Language. What I mean by that is simply people have a different ways to express themselves when it comes to showing love. The way a person shows love is also and mostly subconsciously the same the way a person wishes to receive love. There are five common languages when it comes to love.

 

1)    Time (Listening)

2)    Touch

3)    Words of Encouragement

4)    Acts of Service

5)    Gift Giving

If you think of your love like the tank in your car, then the way you receive love is how you refill said tank. If your tank becomes too low. it can led to some pretty negative consequences. Feelings of exclusion, Feeling unloved, rejected, unwanted, depression ect. 
The five languages seem pretty obvious.

Time is something easy, just being there for your partner. Listening to them and spending time with them. It doesn’t usually matter what it is that you are doing, as long as you are together. Spending time with someone is a great way to show them that you value them and they are a priority to you.

Touch is a basic and primitive way of expressing love. Simple contact, holding hands, a hug, a kiss, a hand placed on the small of your back. For children this is commonly the primary way they feel love. A touch from someone you love can feel like a electric buzz.

Praise, also knows as Words of Encouragement is a great way to give the person you love an ego boost. Being told you are worthy and valued sometimes is all a person needs to hear to feel good about themselves and know that the person speaking appreciates them and values them.

The forth language is Acts of Service. Doing stuff for the person you love and having them do stuff for you. I am not talking about Gifts. That’s language five. Act’s of service can be taking care of the one you love. Doing things for them to show that you love them, almost like being an old fashioned house wife, or assistant.

Finally we get to Gift’s. Buying the person you care for presents, small tokens of your love that can be pointed to and represented in material items. Things people can look at and know that you went out of you way to think of them and that you love them.

Most people will have a primary and a secondary language. Do you know yours? If not there is a simple strategy you can try.

1)            Think of a time that is comfortable to think of now, when you really felt totally loved. Or if those words don’t fit, a time when you felt highly valued by someone. Take the time to fully remember a specific time, a specific moment when you felt that way. If you haven’t found one in five minutes, invent a memory. (it will work perfectly anyway).

2)            As you remember that time seeing what you saw, hearing what you heard, feeling physically your body at that time check:

In order for you to feel loved or valued in that way, is it absolutely necessary for a person:

a)     Show you they love you (look at you a certain way, buy you certain things, take you certain places)?

b)     Tell you they love you in a certain tone of voice or with certain words?

c)     Touch you in a certain way?

Which of these three things is absolutely necessary for you to feel loved? Which one is so important that even if the other two weren’t happening, you’d feel loved just with one?

3)            Usually feeling loved is a one step strategy. Some sight/sound/touch triggers the internal kinsthetic feeling of being loved. When you know this about yourself and your partner, you can ensure each of you is able to send messages when you need it most. To identify someone else’s strategy, ask them the questions exactly as written here

Know how a person feels love, know how your partner feels love, is important to the wellbeing of any relationship. If you can understand how the feel, then you will know how to properly express to your partner that you love them.

When I did this test, when I closed my eyes and thought about the time I felt most loved, the image my mind conjured was a strange one. I had thought I would think about my recent relationship but instead the image my mind conjured went back much, much further. I was being held from behind. Arms around my waist, lips nuzzling the side of my neck. Softly spoken words of love being whispered into my ear.

But this I deduced my primary love language as Touch. Being held, being touched resonates something deep inside me. Simple contact, even the idea of it, lifts my heart. My secondary was harder. For I while I felt it was either Time, or Words of Encouragement. I’m still not very certain, but as I write this I feel more drawn to Time. I don’t need them to talk to me, don’t even need us to be doing the same thing. But together, or in close proximity to each other is something that simply feels right to me.

If you have read this far then I encourage you to work through the exercise. Test this on yourself and if you have a partner test on them as well. I would be curious to hear how other people speak the language of love and if this it has taught you anything or changed the way you two are going to interact with each other.

TroyJ