Therapy Thursday – (5LL4) How to Love

Part 4 of "Lessons on The Five Love Languages"

If you missed Part 1, 2 or 3, find them here:

Love Language… (wins & losses!)

Learning about love and how it is expressed was just the beginning.

How to love WELL should be the ultimate goal.

Once you know the five love languages and what your partner’s primary (and secondary) love language is, you can improve and strengthen your relationship by demonstrating your love in a manner that best fills their love tank. It is reciprocity of needs that makes a relationship stable and healthy.

How do you know what someone’s needs are (with respect to their love language)? One way is to pay close attention to their requests and complaints. Another, unsurprisingly, is to pay attention to how they express love, which is often the primary way they want to feel loved.

Remember, the recipient determines the love they need to receive.

Another way to determine their primary and secondary love language is to have them take the Five Love Languages quiz, and once you know their primary and secondary love language, start practicing loving them well! But what does that look like in reality- and not just as ideas?

(If you need a recap on each Love Language, please read Therapy Thursday (5LL1), Speaking my Language.)

Rather than repeating 5LL1, which outlined the love languages and gave general examples, I thought it would be helpful to talk to people around me and recount specific examples of love languages in action- both wins and fails.

I met up with two friends for breakfast and mimosas, and they were gracious enough to spend some of the morning talking with me about the Love languages and their experiences.

The ladies sound off:

Lindsay (alias) took the quiz, and her ranking came out as follows:

Touch
Quality Time
Acts of Services
Words of Affirmation
GIfts

Touch was surprising to her because she grew up in a family that was not very physically affectionate.

Lindsay: “But in love, with a partner- I want that. I want to be holding hands- if we’re walking through the grocery store, I hook my fingers into the back pocket of his pants, or want to tuck my arm though his when we’re walking through the parking lot.

She paused and laughed, “But when we’re sleeping, DON’T TOUCH ME.”

She added, “If you are touching me, you love me.” Then paused.

I don’t know,” she laughed, adding “I’m not saying my parents don’t love me, we just didn’t grow up in a physically affectionate family.

Maybe its important to me because it didn’t happen in my relationship with (insert name of her ex).

She added, “Of course, when you take the love language test, you can’t help but immediately compare it to the most recent relationship.”

Wen it came to the lowest ranking on her list, Gifts, she said this:

“Gifts make me so uncomfortable. I don’t know how to respond.”

I totally believe in the love languages, and I think it's so important to know right out of the gate what your partner needs, so it's not a guessing game.

"Lindsay" Tweet

Nora (an alias), took the quiz and came out with the following ranking:

Acts of Service
Words of Affirmation
Quality Time
Gifts
Physical Touch

I asked if I we could dig into her top two love languages, Acts of Service and Words of Affirmation, to find out why they were so important to her.

“Well, I guess its partly due to my current situation. I’m the one bringing home the bacon.

My appreciation at this point, since I’m bringing home the money, is that the other person in the household could do more around the house.”

“Things are getting done,” she paused, “but when I wanted to really clean the house the other day, I had to initiate the plan and then tell him what to do.

“I shouldn’t have to ask him to vacuum. If you see something on the floor, fucking pick it up and put it in the garbage can,” she ranted.

Then, when I asked about ‘fails’, she rolled her eyes as she recounted gifts she has received from her spouse. “He would give me gifts- material things, jewelry, handbags, and things of that nature, because that’s what our materialistic society expects.. and to promote his image as a husband who makes sure his wife looks like she’s well taken care of.

“He’s not taking my personality and needs into consideration. I’m not into flashy jewelry, but he thought I should have diamond earrings. It’s a fucking pissing contest,” she spat in disgust, “like marking his territory.”

“On the other hand,” Lindsay chimed in, “It’s a measurable way to show your love, especially when you’re a dude– he’s not going to remember all the times he gave you affirmations or whatever, but gifts are an easy way for him to keep score.”

A Male Perspective:

Alias: Roger

“Roger took the quiz for me, and was surprised by his #1 love language: Quality Time. “That surprised me because I am so independent.”

Quality time (30%)
Words of Affirmation (27%)
Act of Service (23%)
Physical touch (20%)
Gifts (0%)

His ranking, however, was very close in range for four of the five languages, and he initially struggled to come up with things he considered “wins” from a partner.

“Honestly,” he said, “the wins are usually really little things… a text that says ‘I hope your day’s going well.’

Another win would be like, she would do cool things- like make a really special nice dinner for us or plan a really nice evening out.”

A fail would be when I’m talking to her and I can tell I only have 1/2 her attention.

The Lovebirds:

A married couple agreed to take the Love Language quiz for me and found their languages to be closely synced. Their top three languages were the same, with only their last two reversed.

Acts of Service (him 29% her 33%)
Words of Affirmation (him 26%, her 30%)
Quality time (him 26%, her 20%)

his 4 & 5: Physical Touch (13%) and Gifts (6%)

her 4 & 5: Gifts (13%) and Physical Touch (3%)

While they didn’t give me any examples of wins & fails, he did tell me that it sparked good conversation and that they enjoyed taking the quiz and seeing each others results.

It was interesting to observe that most of the men I talked to would not give me example of times their partners “failed”, though they were pretty quick to talk about their own wins & losses.

Personal Experience:

When it came to me recounting the most memorable win & loss in past relationships, I had no problem coming up with examples in each category.

FAIL: The most epic “fail” was when an ex-husband bought me a pair of samurai swords for a birthday gift one year. It was a double fail – gifts is my #5 love language, and while the samurai swords (in his mind) represented my burgeoning interest in Feng Shui, in reality, the two have virtually NOTHING in common.

WIN: A hanging wine glass rack I’d ordered sat on my counter for WEEKS until my then-boyfriend asked why they were still there and not hung up. When I confessed that hanging them up was harder than I’d expected due to some unexpected challenges, he went out to his car, brought in his drill, borrowed a few tools from my garage, and measured, cut, and hung them in 20 minutes or less.

Acts of Service is my #1 Love Language, so yeah, I swooned.