Love Language
By Erin Deborah Waks
The idea of love languages has long since permeated popular culture. All humans want to be loved, but the way we show and receive love differs from one person to another. Indeed, even the way we show love differs from the way we may want to receive it.
Anyone who knows me knows the way I show my affection is through gifts and acts of service. I regularly send my friends postcards, buy presents for them when I travel abroad, and will happily drive my best friends to appointments, exams, grocery stores - you name it.
But I’m relatively unbothered about people buying things for me. I’m far more moved by acts of service - you could buy me the most expensive flowers in the world, tell me you love me a million times, express your feelings through touch, and I’d still be more affected if you did as little as remembering my coffee order (cafe allongé or oat milk flat white, depending on which country I’m in).
And, as I have slowly realised, humans don’t really want to tell people they need more love, or love shown in a different form, as it tugs at that innate fear that we are difficult to love, or need to ask for it in order to deserve it. No one wants to beg to be loved.
My best friend is far more of a words of affirmation person than I am. So how we have navigated 12 years of friendship with such vastly different ways of expressing our love for one another is quite the mystery.
The solution? Listening, watching, talking. Sure, it may be far more natural for me to show my love than to say it, but if I truly love someone, it shouldn’t be so hard for me to show it in the way they so desire, not that I do. If I transfer all the energy and love I put into gifts, it can surely produce words with enough love and support to satisfy even the wordiest of human beings.
Even though we show it differently, I think I speak for both of us when I say there has never been any doubt of the love we share for one another. Sure, I may need it shown rather than said to me from time to time, and her vice versa. But as long as the love is there, the language of communicating it will only be of secondary importance.
So, love languages are significant, but not pivotal in deciding compatibility. Having matching languages might help, but is certainly not paramount. At the heart of things, it doesn’t really matter. What is, however, of primordial importance, is a willingness to learn each other’s language to speak to their heart.
