My take on the 5 Love Languages

Gary Chapman writes about the Five Love Languages: words of affirmation, quality time, receiving gifts, acts of service and physical touch. These are the ways humans give and receive love. In all healthy relationships, all five of these behaviours are present. As our consciousness and awareness increases and we evolve, through growth, our values change and our love language can change. Consciousness brings the realization that at the end of our life, the only thing that really mattered was how much we loved; ourselves and the people in our lives, and how we experienced life. This realization can also happen when recovering from trauma.

My divorce was extremely traumatizing for me. There was so much I didn’t understand about what was happening in my marriage. The cognitive dissonance was more than my brain could handle to the point where I had basically shut down for the last year of it. I finally decided to do something about it because I did not want to experience any more emotional pain. I finally realized that I had a choice and that I didn’t have to stay in a marriage where I was so unhappy and that was causing me so much pain.

In my opinion, divorce happens for two reasons.

1. The husband and wife are not speaking the same language and one or both of them don’t have the skills to understand the other person’s language. They don’t get these skills by working on the relationship (usually in couples therapy) and too much damage is done to continue.

2. The husband and wife realize that they chose each other as partners based on something other than similar values and interests. This generally happens when they are unconscious to the unhealthy patterns of dysfunction they use to cover up their own childhood trauma that they are usually unaware they even have! Then they don’t do the work to find a common goal they can work towards. Phew, that’s a lot to absorb!

Divorce is unnecessary but happens so often in our current world. It requires both people to do the work of changing, but as soon as one is unwilling to put in the work a healthy relationship takes, it’s over.

My experience was number one. We were not speaking the same language and therefore we both felt unloved and unappreciated. We were both doing things to hurt the other, even though that is the last thing we intended to do. All we wanted was to be happy together, yet we had no idea HOW to do that. Relationships are work and take time and effort and require both people to be involved. If one person doesn’t want to improve the relationship, you have to make a choice. Accept the relationship as it is, or walk away. This was the hardest thing I have ever had to do. I found myself in a relationship where I was the only one that wanted to work on it, that wanted to fix it, that wanted it to grow and become something better and was willing to put in the work to get there, so I chose to walk away. For months after I left, all I wanted to hear him say was “I’m sorry. This isn’t what I want. Let’s figure this out together.” I heard nothing so I kept moving forward alone, doing the work, until I figured it out on my own. At the time, I was also unable to see his perspective, though it’s very clear to me now where we went wrong, why and the part I played.

We are born into this world not being able to care for ourselves and we rely on our earliest caregivers to meet our needs. They should be loving us in the way we don’t yet know how to, until we learn to do this for ourselves. This consists of the five love languages. Parents should love their children through words of encouragement and support, through affirmations and communicating feelings of love, through physical touch in hugs and snuggles, through quality time by giving them their undivided attention, by buying them things they value to make them feel special, and by doing acts of service for them. When all five languages are present, children feel loved, valued, and important.

Speed ahead to adulthood. Many of us don’t receive all five love languages from our parents and some seek out more knowledge throughout their lives, while others don’t learn anything at all and continue to love like they were loved when they were small. This all happens on a spectrum. This is how patterns continue through generations. At the very core, of a human beings needs, is the need to feel important and the way to do that for others can only happen if you understand HOW they feel important. Do they feel important when you buy them things? Do they feel important when you say nice things to and about them? Do they feel important when you are affectionate? Do they feel important when you give them your undivided attention? Do they feel important when you do nice things for them?

Each of us will have our primary love language. And if we don’t receive love in this way, we won’t feel loved no matter how many of the other love languages are being spoken. It’s natural for people to go out and love others the way they themselves want to be loved. And this isn’t a problem until we try to love someone who has a different love language than us. It can cause a lot of conflict. You can increase your emotional intelligence by seeking to understand others, and how they view things. We will all have a different perspective and assign a different meaning to an experience based on our beliefs formed through our previous conditioning. At the end of the day though, we all want to be loved. Mother Teresa said “If you want to change the world, go home and love your family.” Because when you love your family, they will go out and love others. They will seek compassion, understanding and harmony because this is what they received. And hey who knows, maybe we can have of a world of peace and love one day.