What’s your love language?

//Photo Courtesy: tumblr.com//

Let’s talk about love languages.

Before I begin let me preface by saying that I’m the girl who very proudly used to get her compatibility advice from astrology books. Of course, that was my early twenties – I have evolved since then. And while a piece of my adolescence may die a little when I say this, I now realize zodiac signs may not be *entirely* accurate in identifying a love match. A “love languages” analysis though, well now that’s a different story.

Yes. This is the part where I tell you something really fantastic I discovered (no birth chart required) and how you should probably do it too! 

I heard the term “love languages” from a friend of mine and it immediately peeked my interest. For those of you who aren’t familiar, your love language refers to how you perceive love internally, and how you would most likely show your love to another person. The most well-known study on this identifies five primarily love languages:

1. Acts of Service
2. Words of Affirmation
3. Physical Touch
4. Quality Time
5. Receiving of Gifts

Just by this list you may already know which language you most identify with, however I challenge you to take the accompanying personality quiz and see if your instincts are right. Like me, you may be surprised.

The quiz takes you through a series of “either-or” questions about your relationships, and at the end is able to scale how much importance each language carries in how you perceive and show love. Most likely you will receive scores in all the categories, but there may be one or two languages that stick out from the rest. These are the ones to pay attention to.

I thought for sure that my outlier would be physical touch. If you know me, then you know I’m a hugger. And if you’re my boyfriend, you know I’m a kisser. And if you’re my bestie, you know I love both. I’m all about physical affection, so I figured it must be my most important love languages.

Not even close.

My top two scores were in “Quality Time” and “Words of Affirmation”. Who knew?

Well I did, I just didn’t know I did.

When I really thought about my relationship, and the times I felt most loved, they had very little to do with physical affection. I started to think about how much I love it when my boyfriend leaves love notes around my apartment for me to discover (words of affirmation), or when he makes an effort to get all his work done before I come over to give his undivided attention to us (quality time). Sure when he puts his arm around me or gives me a warm embrace I feel good, but the true love (for lack of a better term) comes from those moments where my most important love languages felt heard.

Understanding how you interpret love is so important when building a relationship with someone. Not just because it’s important to know how you perceive love, but because knowing how your PARTNER perceives love will save you a lot of grief. I know, because I’ve been on the grieving end.

//Physical Touch isn’t my love language, but hell, I’ll never turn down a kiss//

Naturally, I insisted my boyfriend take the quiz too. Turns out the man doesn’t give a crap about quality time. Which makes sense because we can go days without spending time together and he’s peaches and cream. I of course am freaking out. His outliers were “Acts of Service” and “Receiving of Gifts”. As his girlfriend this told me two things:

1. This man is nothing like me.
2. This man is fucking brilliant. If I listen to this, he’ll be getting homemade dinners and spontaneous gifts until the cows come home. Lucky bastard.

Regardless, I think we can agree a car operates a lot better when you know what fuel to put in it right? Your relationship isn’t much different. If you know what makes your partner feel most loved and you can provide that, then why wouldn’t you? After my boyfriend and I took the love languages quiz, our relationship changed. We started paying more attention to what was most important to each other, and really making an effort to cater to that.

So while it may pain me that a day of fun one-on-one activities for on his birthday will never mean to him what those custom Celtics Air Jordans for Christmas would, I want him to know how much he’s loved, and that’s most important.

What’s your love language? What’s your partner’s? Did the results surprise you? 

If you haven’t taken the official Five Love Languages Quiz – Click Here!