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

The Beginning Of The End.

         The third definition of the word ‘Closure’ as described by The Free Dictionary is:

3.

a. A bringing to an end; a conclusion: finally brought the project to closure.

b. A feeling of finality or resolution, especially after a traumatic experience.

Wikipedia, a source we can all trust, first sentence when describing ‘Closure’ in reference to psychology as:

“Closure or need for closure are psychological terms that describe the desire or need individuals have for information that will allow them to conclude an issue that had previously been clouded in ambiguity and uncertainty. Upon reaching this conclusion, they are now able to attain a state of epistemic "closure".

So why am I looking at the definition closure, well that’s simple, but to explain I need to go back to last night.

The origin of quite a few of my issues I have is due to isolation. I feel stuck in the middle of this beautiful country most of us call home, without much contact with the majority of society and the outside world. It was a state of being the slowly drove me senseless. I became in effect slightly mad.

In the four months I have been going to therapy, there I said it and I am not ashamed, a simple part of my recovery has been to reconnect with my friends and those I call family. To find new ways that I can interact with the outside world, even while living in the quiet of nowhere.

So I have been writing. Posting the writings on blogs and looking forward to the comments people leave. I have also been trying to be more active on social media. For me this meant Facebook. Regular posts and updates, photos and links on an almost daily basis. It also meant messaging with my friends, old and new. A novel and new way to stay connected. At least it was for me.

And yet I never got into twitter. I had seen that friends had twitter accounts and read many an article about tweets that had been tweeted and affected the entire world. Mostly because they were getting people enraged. But it is a new social and effective form of social interaction that I simply hadn’t participated in.

So last night I signed up. I joined. I know I am coming late to the party here but I am trying to contribute. It should have been yay for me. It that was how I was feeling. I went through the process and ended up linking my Facebook account and Contact list to my twitter account. It auto followed any and all accounts it found that had also been attached to any of those details. And then I spent the rest of the night adding Celebs I liked. I was having fun with it. I even connected it to my phone and can now tweet from anywhere.

            Except what I didn’t realize is that it had linked Beau’s twitter account. Maybe I should have seen that coming but the truth was, it simply just never occurred to me. Not until I got home from University, logged on to my computer and was updated that he had blocked me.

            Oh, okay then.

            Now here is where it gets interesting. Initially I was hurt. Having been systematically and constantly rejected I should be used to it by now. The simple fact that at the end of the day, even something as inconsequential as this, was something that he felt needed the need to block. It seemed so small and petty. But then I thought on it. Here he was trying to begin a new life. In his own way trying to do the same thing as I am and be a new person. So why would he want anything that he considered damaging from his old life interfering with his new. By cutting out everything that was us, he could maintain closure and live his new life. I can respect that. I think.

            But where does that leave me? Where is my closure? If you have been reading anything else I have posted here, then you know from my limited knowledge, just how confused I have been about everything. I cant understand how you tell a person you love them, the whole while giving that love to someone else? Can you move past the pain of your history and find a simple and suitable way to coexist with each other? Despite everything that had happened in the past I had always assumed that at some point we could at least site down together and if not put things right, at least find a form of closure that would work for me.

            Yet, blocking my on twitter was a serious wakeup call for me. That conversation, that final conversation, the one I thought I desperately needed would never come. It wasn’t in him to offer even that little bit of solace.

            So all my questions would go unanswered. I will never be able to achieve the closure I need, in the way I needed. My feeling of trying to stumble through my own ‘Swamp of Sadness’ was only going to continue unless I could find another way to achieve closure.

            So how fortunate was it that I had an appointment to see my counselor today.

            Over that last few months we have been working through the issues I have had in how things were ended. At first my shock at seeing the proof of what I had felt but never know until I saw what I felt was proof of their betrayal and the disbelief I had in it all.

I struggled with my anger. Anger directed at them, but mostly anger directed at myself. The NLP program taught me how to release those feeling and even offer and ask for forgiveness for any and all actions. It might not of been to his face, but It was what I needed at the time.

This also helped with the weight of depression I had. The slow spiral down and the feeling of just letting go again. Abandoning all the progress I had done, because of feeling that I had deserved to be treated that way. I learnt how to forgive myself, and being able to objectively look at the relationship. Of seeing how incompatible we were as a couple and accepting that as a reality. To be able to not close myself off to the possibility of future love.

I don’t know if you are beginning to recognize the pattern, but I was closely following the stages of grief. Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance.

So I was up to acceptance.

Yet I felt without knowing why he choose those actions over others, why he played those cruel games, that I couldn’t begin to find a way to move on. I was stuck, but had to keep my head up and pushing through my swap.

So today, after he blocked twitter, it was made so clear that I would never be given that courtesy. I would never get my conversation. Never would we find a middle ground. A simple acquaintance wasn’t something he was able to offer. The wounds I had received I would have to find a way to heal myself.

My desire of how in a perfect world, we could exist together. It was a hope that would never become a reality.

So when I sat down across from the councilor today, I turned and asked for any exercises that will begin the process of acceptance. Of finding a way to letting go without the benefit of understanding. And we spent an hour doing just that. Taking those first steps of cutting the emotional ties. Unpacking the baggage I was carrying. Simply letting go of that need to understand the why of everything and just to accept it as is. Which isn’t something I easily can do. Normally I need to understand everything, have every questioned answered before I am able to move on.

It’s wasn’t a cure. But I have taken that first step on what I hope is the final leg of this journey. The final one to finally obtain closure.

And I feel good about that.

Or maybe it’s the painkillers I am on for my shoulder.

This Bill Should Be Unnecessary.

Last night one hundred and twenty one members of New Zealand’s Parliament voted on equality for marriage. Of those seventy seven cast a vote in favour of it. It passed its second reading. A third and final reading could be held as early as four weeks away. If passed then any two people, regardless of gender or orientation can sign the paperwork declaring themselves a single entity, and accepting everything that comes with the role of being someone's significant other. The headaches and the jubilation and everything that comes from it.
But any kind of love between two people should be celebrated and accepted with their friends and family. For this reason I am all happy about the proposed law. Yet while I understand the significance of this act, I am a little bit offended that I need a law to allow me to marry another man. This is something that should be between myself and the person I marry. The fact that I need a government to make it legal I find ridiculous and here is why.
When a bill needs to be put in place to enforce something that should be a natural law it as if I am being told that what I have been doing until now is in a sense wrong, that I am a minority the needs protection. I am no minority I have never identified myself as one. Simply because being gay is only a small part of who I am. 
By this I mean I identify myself more as a writer, yet I don’t need a law to be allowed to marry another writer. I consider myself a huge geek and I don’t need a law to marry another geek. 
But because I am gay I need a law to marry another gay? Forgive me, but of that I take some offence. 

Yeah, okay. I know what you are going to say. Gender is different for those other things. And maybe you are right. I just don’t see it that way. 

However, for the third reading. I would love if we could gather everyone somewhere. Have a massive BBQ and a ton of champagne and drink to either celebrate or commiserate. A big party, the count displayed on a projector, with shows before and after and entertainment for everyone.

Or maybe I am just looking for a reason to drink :P

Anyway, I would love to hear your thoughts on this so leave a comment.

Troy.