Thursday, December 29, 2016

361. Love Languages

One trope that has frequently popped up in my dating life is discussion of the five love languages. They are words of affirmation, quality time, acts of service, receiving gifts, and physical touch. It’s an interesting way to distill such an abstract theme

Quick sidebar: I’ve noticed a handful of things that can signify that a date is going well or not. One of those things is discussion of the five love languages, or if we note how absolutely awful dating is. If we just seemingly go through a checklist of what we’re watching or reading, it’s probably not going to work out. I get that it’s healthy to bond over something, but if it doesn’t go any deeper than that, you’re probably going to run into trouble.

I’ve never actually figured out what mine is, so I thought I’d take a turn at it today. The website I used offers you about two dozen comparison questions between different statements like, I appreciate it more when someone I love A: Buys me a gift to show how much they mean to me B: Tells me that they love me. It took me less than 10 minutes to get through.

My results were as follows. My number one was words of affirmation. I suppose that makes sense. I’m a very communicative person when it comes to those things. I’ve been known to write love notes, talk about how I feel, and try and be honest with how I communicate. I like hearing those sorts of things, so I guess it would be natural that I would put out what I want to hear. There were no surprises about that.

My second one was quality time. That makes sense as well. I’m not much of a gifts guy. Or rather, I like thoughtful gifts as opposed to random tokens. I’m not that big on “stuff.” I really hate it, actually. I don’t mind an occasional gift or two, but I don’t like to focus on that. I thought it was interesting that my least popular note was for physical touch. I guess I don’t mind it, but it’s never been something that’s been all that important to me.

Maybe this is something I should bring up earlier in my dates. I think it’s really important to know what sort of gifts you want. I recently learned that the gifts you would like aren’t always the ones that will be beneficial to a relationship. I sent a girl some chocolates as a small token. I don’t mean to assume things, but I felt like it was a pretty solid thing to do. I don’t think it’s too much of a generalization to assume that most girls like chocolates. Except I didn’t hear any sort of thanks from her. That sort of hurt me. She mentioned it in passing, but there wasn’t any sort of thank you. That might be the best thing I learned in a relationship in the past year. Give what you are willing to give, but don’t be offended if they refuse the gift.

This year has been all about figuring out what I want and what I need. I guess I can use this as a starting point in more of those conversations.

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