What's Your Love Language?

        What communicates love to you might not mean a thing to your mate.

        Still can't seem to find a way to communicate your love to those closest to you? Perhaps it is time you learn about the "Love Languages".

        That's right. According to relationship expert Gary Chapman (not to be confused with Amy Grant's ex husband), author of the best-selling book "The Five Love Languages", there are exactly five different ways you can show love to your spouse, your kids, your friends, your parents, your coworkers, practically anyone you have an interpersonal relationship with, including God.

• One is Words of Affirmation, using words to affirm another person. If it is a spouse, it could be, 'You look nice in that dress,' or 'Do you ever look tough tonight!'

• A second love language is Acts of Service, doing things for them. You know the old saying 'actions speak louder than words,' for some people that is true. If you wash dishes, if you cook meals, if you offer to carry their bags, they feel loved.

• A third love language is Gifts. It is universal to give gifts as an expression of love. In anthropology, the study of cultures, anthropologists have never discovered a culture where gift-giving is not an expression of love. The gift says, 'She was thinking about me. Look what she got for me.'

• A fourth love language is Quality Time, which means you give a person your undivided attention. This doesn't mean sitting on the couch and watching television, because then someone else has your attention. If you are sitting on the couch with the TV off and you are looking into each other's eyes and talking that is quality time -- so is taking a walk or going out to eat, so long as you are communicating with each other.

• A fifth love language is Physical Touch. We have long known the emotional power of physical touch. In marriage it is holding hands, it is kissing, it is embracing, the whole sexual part of the marriage.

 

        Out of those five love languages, everyone has a primary love language. The problem is that by nature we speak our own love language. Whatever makes us feel loved is what we do for our spouse. So you have the husband whose love language is physical touch. He comes home and goes to the kitchen. He wants his wife to feel loved. He starts hugging her. She says, 'Leave me alone! Can't you see that I am busy?' His problem is not his sincerity. He was sincere. The problem was he was speaking his language and not her language. If acts of service is her love language, the best thing he could have done was to have gone in there and said, 'Honey, why don't you sit down and rest. Let me finish that.' Wow! She feels loved because he is speaking her language.

        So what's your love language?  Take the short quiz  HERE.

        Here's my test result, the top most in the list being the one I prefer to "speak" the most (my primary love language):

#1 Acts of Service -- I prefer to show my love through favors and chores and doing things for others. I feel put-upon and unappreciated when my efforts are taken for granted.

#2 Touch -- I want to give and/or receive affection physically.

#3 Quality Time -- This can be expressed either through those intimate tete-a-tete discussions or via doing things together.

#4 Words of Affirmation -- I need to hear praise to know I am loved and I may also prefer to express my affection verbally. Negative comments cut right to the bone. I want to hear that I'm loved and how much and why.

#5 Gifts -- I am moved by presents and physical tokens of affection. It's the fact that someone is thinking about me enough to give me something that moves me. The objects are of secondary importance to the relationship and sentiment with which they were intended.

Now, I know why I'm so "kuripot", hehehehe :P