Recently I had a conversation with one of my oldest friends about the ways we’ve grown as “holy-shit-are-we-middle-aged?” people. As I (and she) evolve into these new people we’re becoming, we’re starting to take more stock of understanding the ways in which our brains work. One of those ways is learning (and leaning into) our love languages.
I had heard of the book and concept of Love Languages surreptitiously, as it wasn’t seen as something that held a lot of weight scientifically; it felt like something in the “men are from Mars, women are from Venus” sort of vein. I thought it was just something used to separate us and blindly accept that who “we” are is fundamentally different. Whether it was for your partner, your family, coworkers, whatever.
But recently, I’ve begun to dig into it more. Call it a middle-aged quest to figure out who the fuck I really am if you like. What I have learned from it, though, is that there are feelings inside of me that I couldn’t really define. Feelings that made me anxious and unfulfilled. So finding my love language “Category” sorta made things click for me. Like, “oh, well duh. Yeah, that does make sense.”
Working out our love languages in a COVID world
I won’t say that the world opened up or anything. But something opened up inside of me. A recognition of the need to be loved and to feel love in a certain way. And now that we’re in a world of social distancing, quarantine, and haphazard connections, I think it’s more important than ever that we take time to understand our inherent needs as feeling people and use that to help mitigate the strange times we’re navigating.
There are 5 types of Love Languages, as shown here:
My Love Language is Words of Affirmation. I won’t go into the entire history of my childhood traumas (because this post is long enough as is). But suffice to say that finding that out completely made sense to me
I am a person who loves to give compliments and make people feel good about themselves. Because that was something I felt was lacking in my own life. Consequently, I crave attention and words of love about what I do and who I am to feel good. If I don’t receive Words of Affirmation, I’ll feel needy and anxious. And will continue to fidget and feel off-base until someone tells me that what I’m doing (or who I am) is good.
It’s an incredibly interesting concept and one I recommend if you’re feeling like something inside of you isn’t getting the fulfillment it needs. You can take this quiz here to find out your Love Language, but I absolutely recommend picking up the book and doing a deeper dive into the 5 types and finding out where you fit.