Love Languages

Over the past few days I've been reading The Five Love Languages, by Gary Chapman. In the book, he proposes that there are five primary avenues through which people give and receive love: Words of Affirmation, Quality Time, Receiving Gifts, Acts of Service, and Physical Touch. His theory is that many couples struggle to make each other feel loved because they are wired to give/receive love differently than their partner.

Toward the end of the book, Chapman encourages the reader to list, in order of importance to them, the ways that they experience the love that someone else is offering them. After thinking about it, I think I'd rank them as follows:

1) Physical Touch - While there are times that I can be stand-offish, I'm usually a touchy-feely kind of person. I really love being able to be in close physical proximity to someone that I care about.

2) Acts of Service - This one is kind of ironic, because on one level I like to be totally self-sufficient. But on another level, it totally meant the world to me when Jen took care of me when I was sick, even when I was acting grumpy about it. A few weeks ago when I was being a complete butthole towards her, I felt awful and ended up staying home from work. She offered to come check on me and bring me food and medicine. I'm not proud of my response (just like I'm not proud of much of anything about how poorly I acted for so long), but I told her not to bother because I just wanted to be left alone. At the same time, nothing could have more clearly told me what a truly good friend she wanted to be for me. I hated myself for telling her to stay away.

3) Words of Affirmation - This one is also a weird one. I usually have a very positive self-image (perhaps overly positive...), so that the last thing that I would want or need is for someone to throw more fuel on that fire. Flattery will get you nowhere with me. At the same time, I love to be encouraged - particularly when someone confirms that I was successful in an effort to make them happy with something I did. So if someone offers me honest words of encouragement, it can mean the world to me.

4) Quality Time - Again, my overdeveloped sense of self-sufficiency cuts into the usefulness of this language for me. I can spend long periods of time away from those I care about, even without talking to them on the phone or anything, and not feel like anything is missing in our relationship. And even when spending time together, I struggle to not multi-task. I wonder if my assessment of this language is a little skewed, however, because since I let down those walls a couple of weeks ago I'm finding a renewed appreciation for Quality Time.

5) Receiving Gifts - If you know me, you probably saw this coming a mile away. I have to admit that Carl was right a couple of weeks ago when he said that even I liked getting gifts every once in a while. There have absolutely been times when I have gotten a gift that made me very happy because it demonstrated that someone really understood me, what I like, what is important to me. I hate to single just one out, so I hope that nobody feels like I forgot/didn't appreciate their gifts, but last year for my birthday (you know, when I first announced that I'd rather not receive gifts) my sister, Rebekah, sent me a gift that she'd purchased before my decree: a Homestead Grays baseball cap to match the Grays jersey I'd recently bought. It was a fantastic gift because it showed that she had really paid attention to something (the jersey) I said I was excited about and had put a lot of thought and effort into choosing something that would complement that. I was very, very impressed and I really felt loved as a result of that gift.

So that's my list. What do you think is your primary love language?