The 5 Love Languages

I'm one of the facilitators for a high school retreat this Thursday-Friday, and at the training for it, I found one exercise really interesting. It's called "The Five Love Languages" and talked about the different types of expectations people have when giving and receiving love. They are:

Receiving Gifts
Quality Time
Acts of Service
Physical Affection
Words of Affirmation

When I read the brief descriptions, I immediately thought, 'I'm definitely words of affirmations'. I write and talk about my feelings all the time, and I feel accomplished when people praise my efforts, so I thought this was a no-brainer. Then I took this quiz, and it told me I'm 'bilingual': I had identical high scores for Quality Time & Physical Touch. Words of affirmation didn't even come close. Then I thought about it in terms of what I tend to take away when I start to feel taken for granted, and it's not the kind words or "I love you"s. What I stop are the unexpected kisses in the car or the rubs on his back when I walk by, and in a fight or tension, the biggest thing that makes me feel unloved and uncared about is when the other person leaves.

And I guess that's why this weekend was hurtful for me. Because leaving to me signifies that I don't care about him or he doesn't care about me. Because I think that even though I'm upset or angry, it's not enough to not want his presence around in some capacity. When for other people, it just means giving space and letting things cool off. Which is perfectly normal. If Physical Touch and Quality Time weren't your main love languages damnit. We sometimes think love has to be packaged a certain way, the way we think it should look like, so we get disappointed or overlook it when it's shown differently. I can speak English, Tagalog, Spanish, Portuguese, and some German, but I should work on these five languages too.

L'amour n'a pas de, frontiere (Love has no boundaries)
Restes car je t'aime comme tu es (Stay because I love you as you are)
J'ai traverse l'ocean du verbe (I crossed an ocean of words)
Et je t'ai trouve (And I found you)