At this point, pop culture has thoroughly talked about The Five Love Languages. As the originators explain, people with different personalities give and receive love in different ways. How do you make someone feel loved? Speak to them in their love language. It's not just about romantic love -- it's about love between family members, friends, everyone. A kind of 'unified theory' about communicating love with other people.
The tricky part is understanding everyone's love language. Not to mention, one's own.
Let's enumerate them:
Acts of ServiceReceiving Gifts
Quality Time
Words of Affirmation
Physical Touch
The love languages seem simple when listed, but they are more complex than they first appear. "Physical Touch," for example, doesn't just mean sex. "Quality Time" doesn't just mean number of hours spent together, but includes meaningful conversations and meaningful activities. It's not always easy to determine what someone's love language is, either -- and if two people speak different languages, they may speak at crossed purposes and not understand one another at all, resulting in frustration and so much miscommunication.
A close-up contemplation of each love language, and what it looks like in practice, will be helpful (I think) to understand not only myself, but the people around me. I think that over time, the love language I speak has changed. (Perhaps that is because I have better identified the love languages of the people around me?) Has the language I most want to hear changed as well?
Let's take a closer look.
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