Henry and Kasey’s Love Languages
We’re working on figuring out our “Love Languages.” If we don’t know our partner’s love language we’re essentially doomed to an unhappy relationship or one that will fail. Don’t ask me why I’m just figuring this out at 56. Thankfully, our coach Judy asked us to get the book and read it. And figure out our own love language and then take action.
Not knowing a love language is like trying to speak to your partner in English when he speaks Chinese. Essentially you could be speaking faster or slower or louder or softer and the message that YOU think is special and loving and caring, goes unnoticed. And the result is that we or our partner end up with an empty “love tank.” Empty. It’s like having Celiac Disease. You eat food but the mechanisms in your intestines are simply unable to extract the nutrients. So you essentially starve.
Not speaking a love language in a relationship is like loving someone, but feeling starved for love at the same time.
The 5 are:
- Words of Affirmation
- Quality Time
- Receiving Gifts
- Acts of Service
- Physical Touch
So just think if someone really wants to hear words of affirmation and their spouse gives them gifts. It’s a recipe for disaster. Feelings are constantly hurt and the unsuspecting partner can really be trying their best!
When I read the book on Sunday, one of the things I learned that makes total sense, is that we learn our love languages as children, either by watching our parents or by what our parents did or didn’t do for us. So if your parents didn’t touch, then you might either crave touch in a relationship or find that you don’t care much for it. Or if you felt criticized as a child, you might need Words of Affirmation as an adult in a relationship.
How is that intersecting with us?
Well, after reading the book and taking the quiz, I have 3 that nearly tied. My top one is Acts of Service, which means to me that I would like Henry to be more helpful with things like doing some house chores or take care of calling the apartment maintenance people if we have something that needs to be done. In other words, I want to feel like I’m being taken care of.
My second is Words of Affirmation. I didn’t know this until I took the the quiz. I give words of affirmation all the time… to everyone. Evidently what we give out most as a love language is what we want returned to us. So this makes total sense!
And then my third is Quality Time. Henry and I do spend lots of fun time together and have frequentadventures. But I would like to have better quality conversations and to really feel heard during our time together. We could tweak our quality time when we’re just at home.
Henry’s first Love Language, which I just found out last night, is Receiving Gifts. This is making SO much sense to me now because he’s incredibly thoughtful when it comes to gift giving. When we first met he was selling paint and after our first meeting he created a book mark out of paint sample colors with words key to the “us” that had already begun. “Enlightenment,” “Free Spirit,” “Coffee Date,” “Bliss,” “Awakening,” and “Wine Glass.” He shows the same sort of care with anyone he’s buying or creating for.
This is important, because, according to the book, what someone does for their spouse or others is really what they want for themselves.
Henry’s second is Quality Time. As I mentioned earlier, we do get to spend a lot of time together and really get to do amazing things. But we each agreed tonight that we want to take some steps to ensure our time at home is more quality based.
Henry’s third is Acts of Service. So this means we both want Acts of Service. We each want the other to do things for each other as a sign of love Which is really horrifying and pretty funny at the same time. I want him to volunteer to cook dinner for me or empty the dishwasher cause he notices it. He wants me to do the same thing for him 🙂 The other night I got super frustrated with him because he asked me to put the baby cat in his crate for the night. I snapped at him and asked why I should do it, why didn’t he do it?
What I know now is by me putting the kitten away, he would see it as an act of love.
So we both want the other to do Acts of Service, so we both feel loved. But we both have such a desire for Acts of Service we’re sort of screwed! This one is going to take a bit of thought and work on both of our parts, and likely with Judy too, to figure out how each of us can do things for the other so we each feel loved and not frustrated by “having” to do whatever that particular act might be.
We hope this is making sense to you and that you take time to look into this book and do the quiz to learn your Love Language and that of your significant other. If you’re in a bad place or a semi OK place or even a pretty good place, but you want to make your relationship even stronger. We want to share what we’re learning to make other relationships richer.
With love from us both.
Kasey and Henry
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